Home › The World's Kitchen › Potage, Nimoise
Potage, Nimoise
Soak a pint large white beans in cold water for at least eight hours. Drain and place them in a saucepan with a sliced carrot, two each sliced onions and leeks, a bean garlic, two branches parsley, a branch chervil, sprig thyme, bay leaf, two cloves and half-pound piece salt pork cut in small pieces. Moisten with two quarts broth and two quarts water, season with one and a half teaspoons salt and half teaspoon pepper, cover pan and let simmer for two hours and a half. Remove, press puree through sieve into a basin, then through a Chinese strainer into same saucepan, previously wiped. Let come to a boil, then dredge in three ounces well-cleaned sago, add half pint boiling milk, mix well and let gently boil for twenty minutes, mixing at bottom of pan once in a while, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A thick white-bean puree finished with sago and milk, built on the old two-stage straining that gives it its texture. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are banquet-sized and one or two of the terms have gone out of use.
- A pint of beansDry beans were measured by volume: a pint is about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz to 1 lb of large white beans such as cannellini, Great Northern or the coco blancs of the Midi. They will roughly double in bulk after soaking.
- "A bean garlic"Awkward English for the French une gousse d'ail; gousse is a pod or husk, and of garlic it means one clove. Not a head.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. The recipe wants the puree pushed through a coarse sieve first to break it down, then through the chinois to catch skins and fibre. A food mill followed by a fine sieve does the same work; a blender alone will not remove the bean skins.
- SagoStarch pearls from the sago palm, once a standard soup thickener and still sold at Asian and South Asian groceries. "Well-cleaned" means rinsed until the water runs clear, since the pearls carry loose starch dust. Small pearl tapioca behaves almost identically. Three ounces is about half a cup.
- Salt pork and seasoningHalf a pound of salt pork simmering for two and a half hours puts a good deal of salt into the pot. Hold back most of the 1.5 teaspoons until after straining and taste then. The pork is not returned to the soup; it is strained out with the aromatics.
- Liquid and yieldFour quarts of broth and water for a pint of beans makes a very large pot, ten to twelve generous servings. It reduces during the simmer and thickens again with the sago, so expect a soup of coating consistency, not a stew. Halving throughout works cleanly.
- The finishOnce the milk and sago are in, the soup catches easily. Keep it at a bare boil and stir the bottom of the pan from time to time, as the recipe directs. Twenty minutes should leave the pearls translucent.
- ChervilSold fresh only in season and does not dry well. If none is available, leave it out rather than substituting; a little extra parsley plus a few fennel fronds comes closest.
The name points to N u00eemes, in the Gard, and to the wider Languedoc habit of building a whole meal on dried white beans, salt pork and garlic. The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, and much of its French material reads as it does here, translated fairly literally from professional French usage.