“Every soup has its own personality”

Soup. It can be hot or cold, thick and creamy or thin and light. A comforting bowl or a hearty meal in wintertime, or a chilling respite in the heat of summer.

Some folks grew up with parents or grandparents who made soup from scratch, using vegetables grown in their small gardens and farmed fields. Others came to love soup after growing up and moving to places where the temperatures actually stayed close to freezing for weeks at a time.

Your idea of soup may be vastly different from the person sitting next to you, but if you have the basics – a liquid (water, wine or stock), some vegetables, seasonings (herbs, salt and pepper), and an optional protein (meat, chicken, fish) – you have soup.

‘The way I figure it, you can start any soup with chopped onion’

Linda Sellers doesn’t use recipes. “I know basically what I’m going to put in (the soup) and then I adjust that based on the smell and the taste.”

It’s Monday morning and Sellers is making corn chowder and chicken tortilla soups at The Other Store Deli in Forest Acres. While she lists a single daily soup on the regular menu, some days she’ll add a second soup made with ingredients that she has on hand.

“When it gets cold, I like to have a couple of different soups,” said Sellers. “Our tomato soup ... it was very good and it was another one of those things that I thought, well, what can I make with what I have on hand? I had plenty of tomatoes and some heavy cream and I just went from there.

There’s nothing fancy at The Other Store, known by the regulars as TOS. Sellers uses a two-burner stove for making the soups and hot sandwiches. After browning some onions in a large stock pot, she starts a butter-based roux in a saute pan.

“In this case, for the corn chowder, you don’t make a dark roux, just a dark blond. When I make the gumbo, I need to take it to a dark, reddish brown roux. (For the chowder) I don’t need that kind of taste or that depth of flavor or that coloring.” From melting the butter and incorporating the flour to the desired dark blond color, it takes Sellers just under five minutes to make the roux.

“If I were going to go really dark with this, I’d never walk away from it. It burns so easily if you don’t keep it moving... especially with the butter. If I’m making a roux for some of the Cajun dishes, I’ll use vegetable oil (rather than butter) for the taste.”

Sellers continues with the corn chowder, adding garlic and diced smoked sausage to the sauteed onion in the pot. Preparing the ingredients, Sellers uses different types of cuts for different soups – for the chowder and vegetable soups, vegetables and smoked sausage are diced close to the size of a corn kernel, so that everything cooks uniformly and has the same feel in the mouth. For gumbos, the sausages get a chunkier slice. Chicken is always boiled first separately (for broth) and then shredded for soup.

“Every soup has its own personality,” she said.

Back at the chowder, Sellers adds thyme, six-pepper blend, paprika and gives everything a stir. She will let the spices and herbs come together over at a low boil before adding chicken broth. This will bubble away for about 10 minutes before she adds two types of frozen corn – white corn and flame-roasted corn with red and green peppers. After this comes back to a boil and the potatoes are tender, Sellers will add the roux and some half-and-half cream to thicken the soup.

Sellers has been making soups at the deli for about 25 years, but making them at home for about 50. . The vegetable soup is “something I remember helping my mother make as a teenager. And I do it the same way today. The only difference being, back then, we made vegetable soup and canned it because we used everything that came right out of our garden. I don’t have that luxury now. I don’t have a garden.

So, what makes a good soup?

“Got to have depth of flavor,” Sellers said. “I like a lot of seasoning but the seasoning should not compete. When we’re making the vegetarian soups and you don’t have all the fat – like ham hocks – I have to use tarragon or thyme, a lot of celery. Celery gives it a good flavor base. It can be any texture, any consistency; I like some real thin soups, I like consommé en geleé, I like a cream soup, all of those. I made a turnip green soup the other day that I thought was really flavorful but it was a thin soup.”

‘It’s basically like a meat smoothie

Sarah Simmons’ family didn’t serve very much soup when she was growing up in North Carolina and South Carolina.

“When you live in a city with a tag line that’s ‘Famously Hot,’ well ... they’re not talking about the soup.”

For Simmons, who has returned to Columbia as chef/owner of Rise Gourmet Bake Shop after more than a decade as owner/operator of Birds & Bubbles in New York City, a good soup is one that warms from the inside.

“Soup is what I feel; in New York, it is essential for winter. This is my first winter outside of New York City in 12 years and, even though it’s 70 degrees outside in January, I’m still missing that soup,” said Simmons.

Not growing up with many family soup recipes, Simmons creates soups from the things that she loves.

“We’re serving a green gumbo (gumbo z’herbes), classic tomato bisque, chicken and rice with a velouté made with real chicken stock, and a meatball parm soup.

“I’ve just finished a base for a cassoulet (a rich, pork and white bean based casserole that originated in the south of France). I’m taking a classic bean casserole, slow cooked for 12-15 hours, and turning it into a soup ... but still topping it with buttermilk biscuit breadcrumbs.”

Some of the best soups also can evoke the best memories – or have the best stories behind them.

“The gumbo z’herbes is one of my favorite dishes of all time,” said Simmons. “I cooked it during my first dinner when I came to Columbia (at The Oak Table, in 2014), when I was thinking about maybe wanting to come home (from New York) and open a restaurant. It was so well-received. It’s just not the prettiest dish – and we try really hard in all of our restaurants to make beautiful food, as well as delicious – it is GREEN!”

It gets the distinctive color from collard greens and pot likker, spinach and parsley. Simmons then adds roasted chicken, brisket, bacon, pulled pork, sliced pork shoulder, andouille sausage and Rise’s house ground sausage. “It’s basically like a meat smoothie.”

The recipe that Simmons uses is an adaptation of the great Leah Chase’s gumbo z’herbes that Simmons found in the Southern Foodways Alliance cookbook. The recipe itself has been around for ages in Louisiana but had not appeared in print in close to 100 years. Chase, of Dooky Chase’s in New Orleans, known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, prepared this hearty gumbo for many post-Katrina events because a pot of it feeds a lot of people.

Simmons fell in love with the story and the idea that out of tragedy, something can be reborn. She has had the gumbo off-and-on at her restaurant in New York. At Rise, where soups are usually sold by the quart container in the cold case – although they can be warmed for dining at one of the outdoor tables – it has become a popular item.

Simmons has a plan coming together to have a daily rotation of seasonal soups, including a gazpacho during the height of the summer tomato season (the recipe came from Jose Andres’ wife). Returning to the popularity of the gumbo, she is still surprised by the popularity of hot soup in the warm South. Smiling and shaking her head, she says, “I mean its Army green!”

Place the ham shanks and water in a large pot. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce the heat to medium-low and let simmer until needed.

Wash all of the greens thoroughly in salt water, being sure to remove any grit, discolored outer leaves, and tough stems. Rinse in a bath of plain water. (A clean double sink works well for this.) Drain the greens in a colander. Place the greens, onions, and garlic in a very large stockpot and cover with water. (If all of the vegetables won’t fit in the pot, cook them in batches, using the same cooking liquid for each batch.) Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the greens are very tender, about 45 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked greens into a large bowl to cool for a few minutes. Pour cooking liquid into a large bowl and set it aside. Working in batches, puree the greens in a food processor or by running them through a meat grinder. Use a little cooking liquid to loosen the puree, if needed. Transfer the puree into a large bowl and set aside.

Cook the fresh sausage in a large skillet over medium heat until it renders its fat and moisture, breaking up the sausage with the side of a spoon. Transfer with a slotted spoon into a large bowl and set aside. Brown the chicken in the rendered sausage fat over medium-high heat and then transfer with a slotted spoon to the bowl with the cooked sausage. (The chicken will cook more later, so it does not need to cook through at this point.) Set the skillet and the drippings aside.

Remove the ham shanks from their cooking liquid, reserving the liquid to use as stock. When cool enough to handle, pull the meat from the bones. Chop the meat into bite-sized pieces and add it to the bowl with the sausage and chicken. Discard the bones and the fat. Pour the ham stock into a large bowl and set it aside.

Return the vegetable puree to the large stock pot. Add the hot sausage, chicken, andouille, smoked pork sausage, stew beef, ham-shank meat, and chopped ham. (If it will not fit into one pot, divide between two pots.) Cover with equal parts ham stock and greens-cooking liquid and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

To make the roux, place the skillet containing the hot sausage pan drippings over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the flour over the drippings and stir well with a wooden spoon. If the mixture is dry and crumbly, stir in enough vegetable oil to make a smooth, thick paste. Cook, stirring constantly, slowly, and intently until the roux turns light brown. (This isn’t a dark roux, but the flour should be cooked.) Drop tablespoons of roux into the simmering gumbo, stirring well after each addition. Stir in the thyme, cayenne, bay leaves, and salt. Simmer the gumbo until the stew meat is tender and the chicken is cooked through, about 1 hour. Stir often to prevent scorching. If the gumbo gets too thick to stir, add more stock or water.

If desired, slowly add the filé at the end of cooking. (It will lump if you’re not careful.) Serve hot over cooked white rice.

Leah Chase and Sara Roahen of New Orleans, Louisiana

This story was originally published January 24, 2017 at 4:28 PM with the headline "“Every soup has its own personality”."