Bagration Soup

[vgqn]

We had a finale dinner for War & Peace tonight, the novel our book group (at least, some of us) have just finished reading. (Aside -- I mostly liked it, except for Tolstoy's philosophizing on the causes of events and history). I made Bagration Soup for our dinner, named after General Bagration who was a major player in the early sections of the book. The soup prep was long and sometimes unnecessarily complicated (cook barley, puree barley, cook spinach, puree spinach, prepare veal quenelles, etc.). This was even without making the white beef stock from scratch (I used a hodge podge of stocks I had around) and subbing frozen spinach (I mean really, it's just going to get pureed!). The quenelles involved sauteeing onions, soaking & mashing bread, mixing together with ground veal and other items, forming mixture into two long rolls, wrapping in cheesecloth, simmering, cooling in different water than they were simmered in (why? I don't know), getting unwrapped and sliced up, then finally combined with the soup, which is yet more broth, thickened with egg yolks and cream, then mixed with the pureed barley and spinach, then poured over the quenelles. Which, incidentally, weren't called to be reheated from their cooled state, but I microwaved them anyhow. I also microwaved the barley/spinach mixture, which she called for keeping hot over a double boiler. Uh, no.

Was it worth it?

Well, I'm glad I made it for the finale dinner. Now I'm tossing the recipe in the recycling bin, because I don't ever need to do that again!

Comments

[kicking-k.livejournal.com]

Goodness me, what a footer! I don't think I'll be asking you for the recipe... we only ever seem to eat vegetable soup anyway...

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. Much can be said in favor of Fancy Food Productions (as done by people who like to play around with Elaborate Projects), but really, _soups_ are best when relatively simple (even though each step might need to be done correctly or even perfectly). The recipe you followed (or simplified, somewhat) appears to be an exercise in Conspicuous Consumption (of time & effort) and the Ostentation of having an Expensive Chef. (Mind you, it's quite possible to write up "How to make stock" in such a way as to make it sound almost as complicated as "How to write the source code for a spreadsheet software program".) On another hand, all this Complexity sounds particularly appropriate for something connected with "War and Peace", which I recall as being a remarkably (and even intolerably) complicated novel.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

The elaborate soup recipe was indeed appropriate for the book, on multiple levels. Clearly it was meant for a kitchen with many souschefs, flunkies, and scullions (MANY dishes were dirtied in the making, even with my simplifications!).

As I said, I'm glad I made the recipe once, but never again! Though I actually enjoyed the book for the most part and found it quite readable and engaging. I was especially entertained by Tolstoy's penchant to make analogies to scientific and mathematical concepts, like analyzing the progress of events in terms of integral calculus!

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, an enormous number of things are well worth doing once, and probably doing more of them would be good for everyone.