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Garlic Soup
3 PINTS BOILING WATER 3 SLICES BREAD 3 HARD-COOKED EGGS, SLICED Slowly fry in 3 tablespoons oil the minced and crushed garlic cloves until golden brown, but not burned. Add a little water and cook until tender. Mash, and add boiling water, stirring well. Season to taste. Cook 10 minutes. Heat remaining oil in frying pan until it smokes. Cool it a little and fry bread in it. Put bread in bottom of a hot soup tureen. Pour soup over bread and put slices of hardcooked eggs on top. Serve very hot.
A camp-fire version of Spanish sopa de ajo, built from bread, oil, garlic and water. The method is sound; the quantities need filling in before you start.
- Garlic quantityThe ingredient list names no amount of garlic. A head's worth, say 10 to 12 cloves, suits 3 pints of water if you want the soup to taste of garlic rather than of hot water; with only two or three cloves there is little left to mash.
- The oilThree tablespoons are called for to fry the garlic, then "remaining oil" is heated for the bread. Budget a further 4 to 5 tablespoons for frying the slices; olive oil is traditional and stands up to the garlic.
- Frying the garlic is the hingeGolden brown, never darker. Burnt garlic turns the whole pot bitter and no amount of seasoning recovers it. Keep the heat low and pull the pan off the moment the colour turns.
- Smoking the oilThe recipe has you heat the oil until it smokes, then cool it a little before the bread goes in, which keeps the slices from scorching. Olive oil's smoke point varies widely with refinement, so treat "until it smokes" as the recipe's own gauge rather than a fixed temperature; a steady moderate heat does the same job with less smoke.
- Seasoning"Season to taste" means salt and pepper, and the soup needs a good deal of salt: it is water, bread and garlic with nothing else to carry flavour. A pinch of sweet paprika stirred in with the mashed garlic is a common Spanish addition, though this recipe does not call for it.
- The eggsHard-cooked and sliced here, so no raw-egg question arises. Many versions instead slide raw eggs into the simmering soup to poach for three minutes; if you want that, do it in the pot rather than the tureen, where the soup will not be hot enough to set them.
- BreadStale, dense, open-crumbed bread cut about half an inch thick. Soft sandwich bread dissolves into paste under 3 pints of liquid.
- YieldThree pints and three slices of bread serve three to four as a first course, two as a meal.