Soup: hearty stock and warmth for winter eating

Soups clockwise from left, are roasted acorn squash and apple cider soup with creme fraiche, spinach and tomato soup and cabbage soup.

My father grew up loving the cabbage soup served at the Izzy Kadetz delicatessen in Cincinnati.

This was back when Izzy Kadetz himself was still alive and working behind the counter. No prices were listed for his piled-high sandwiches and hearty soups; he would famously (if illegally) size up each customer and decide what to charge him.

When my parents married, my mother naturally wanted to please my father by cooking some of his favorite foods. And the food he most wanted her to make was the cabbage soup served by Izzy Kadetz.

My mother called Mrs. Kadetz, who kindly obliged her with a recipe that was only partially helpful ("You take a nice piece flanken." "What's a flanken?") And the proportions were meant for a restaurant. But my mother sampled the restaurant's soup, used some of Mrs. Kadetz' ideas and added some of her own. Into a pot went shredded cabbage, short ribs, and stewed tomatoes. To give it a sweet-and-sour flavor, she added brown sugar and stirred in some vinegar. And in a moment of inspiration, she tossed in a spoonful or two of whole allspice berries.

The result, it was widely agreed around our house, was even better than they served at the restaurant.

When I began cooking for myself, I called my mother to ask for the recipe. Although it always tasted pretty much the same each time she made it, the recipe turned out to be somewhat less than exact.

"Put some water in a pot," she began, "and then add, oh, maybe a quarter of a cabbage. Maybe a third. And that might be a good time to put in some short ribs."

"How many?"

"A few, I guess. And then I suppose you should add a can or two of stewed tomatoes."

So I had to figure out the proportions myself. But it wasn't hard; these ingredients seem naturally to go well together. I quickly had a recipe for a decent facsimile — that is, a facsimile of the facsimile — and added it to my repertoire of soups.

This is the time for soup, a time for keeping warm and full while still adhering to those New Year's resolutions. And for me, winter soups simply do not get better than cream of celery root soup.

Celery root, also called celeriac, is just about as ugly as food can get, yet its taste is sublime. As its name suggests, it is the root part of celery, and it looks knobby and dirty and gross. But clean it up, peel it, and trim off the tough ends, and you have a thick, earthy vegetable with just a subtle taste of celery. Too hard to be eaten raw, it develops a complexity of flavors when it is slowly cooked.

In other words, it is perfect when cooked in a broth and pureed for soup. Typically, I first make a cream base, which requires a little more time and effort than I wanted to give it this time, and more cream than is helpful when still thinking of those resolutions. And then I found a recipe I had forgotten I'd had.

Many years ago, I ate a splendid dinner at the Culinary Institute of America, and was so taken with the Smoked Pheasant and Celery Root Soup that I asked for the recipe, which they gladly provided. The recipe begins by smoking roasted pheasants, and because I have never roasted a pheasant in my life, much less smoked one, I had never made it. But the celery root part sounded intriguing. You just cook the root in stock, puree it, and stir in reduced cream.

It's just the thing on a cold winter's night; it sticks to your ribs, but it's as smooth as silk. And for an unexpectedly sophisticated treat, the leftovers can be served chilled.

I next made a Polish chicken soup from the Jan. 18 edition of The Week magazine, which in turn took it from the cookbook From a Polish Country House Kitchen, by Anne Applebaum and Danielle Crittenden. The recipe was simply too tantalizing to skip.

This is much heartier than a typical chicken soup: Along with the expected chicken, carrots, parsnips, and leeks, it also includes beef, celery root, cabbage, peppercorns, allspice berries, parsley, dill, a bay leaf, lemon, sugar, salt, and chives. Cook it all together and you wind up with a soup and a half.

I'm not sure what makes it Polish in particular, except maybe the dill, which is commonly used throughout northern Europe.

For a much simpler soup, I turned to a recipe I dug out of an old file of recipes. I have no idea where it came from; it's in my wife's handwriting, and she doesn't know, either. I'll just assume she made it up one day, liked it, and wrote it down to remember it. Whatever the provenance, it is easy to make and features the classic combination of tomatoes and spinach, with a good dose of garlic and onion thrown in.

Tomato-Spinach Soup, as it is called, is a rustic soup, filled with chunks of good things. The whole thing comes together in less than an hour, and it is also easy to clean up. Though it is made with chicken stock, substituting vegetable stock will make it a worthy dish for vegetarians.

And you don't have to be a vegetarian to love our final offering, Roasted Acorn Squash and Apple Cider Soup. This ingenious, slightly sweet soup from chef Dale Reitzer actually roasts a couple of acorn squash in a pan filled with apple cider and vegetable stock. Each squash half is first topped with a pat of butter and a teaspoon of honey.

Sounds great, but where is the cinnamon? Whenever you have acorn squash, apples, butter, and honey, you almost have to have cinnamon, right?

Don't worry, it's in the clever garnish of cinnamon mixed into creme fraiche.

That's cinnamon, creme fraiche, and roasted acorn squash and apple cider soup. Wow.