The Best Soups in the World [Paperback]

Clifford A. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 9, 2009

The ultimate soup cookbook-from James Beard Cookbook of the Year award-winning author Clifford Wright

Soup is an affordable, popular dish the world over. In The Best Soups in the World, renowned food scholar and cookbook author Clifford Wright compiles the globe's most delicious soups into a single collection, exploring the history and cultural significance of each recipe along the way.

Perfect for cooks at any level of experience, the book includes traditional American and thrilling international flavors alike-from Old-Fashioned Chicken Noodle to Thai Mushroom and Chile to Mexican Roasted Poblano and Three Cheese to Tuscan White Bean.

• A great value-features 300 recipes in an affordable, beautiful paperback format
• Clifford Wright is a highly-respected cookbook author who has won the James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award and the James Beard Award for Best Writing on Food
• The perfect soup cookbook for anyone who loved Wright's highly acclaimed casseroles cookbook Bake Until Bubbly

The Best Soups in the World presents exciting, enticing, easy-to-prepare recipes using common, easy-to-find ingredients-perfect for budget-conscious cooks whose tastes know no boundaries.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Best Soups in the World

Clifford A. Wright

Cooking/Courses & Dishes/Soups & Stews

Travel the world, soupspoon in hand, with a James Beard Award—winning author as your guide

In restaurants and dining rooms on every continent, soup is on the menu. A Mexican chef simmers Roasted Poblano and Three Cheese Soup. A Sicilian nonna stirs Beans and Greens Soup, while her Thai counterpart cooks up Mushroom and Chile Soup. Wherever it's eaten, a bowl of soup—whether elegant or hearty, creamy or clear, chilled or piping hot—delivers rich flavor and simple satisfaction. In this ultimate soup cookbook, acclaimed cookbook author Clifford A. Wright has collected the best classical, famous, and not-so-famous recipes to be found anywhere.

The Best Soups in the World includes 247 recipes for heartwarming and palate-pleasing soups: Imagine savoring delicate Italian Small Rice Balls in Broth, refreshing California Chilled Peach Soup, piquant Georgian Beef and Apricot Soup, or curry-scented Tanzanian Black-Eyed Pea and Coconut Soup. But this is no mere collection of recipes. Wright is a food scholar; he applies his expertise in lively explorations of the history and culture behind each soup, which makes this book as rewarding to read as it is to cook from.

Exciting, enticing, and easy-to-prepare, these recipes use ingredients both common and unusual—Wright provides Internet sources for every item—making them perfect for budget-conscious cooks whose taste know no boundaries. From Old-Fashioned Chicken Noodle to Chayote Soup from Nicaragua and from Tuscan White Bean to Vietnamese-American Pho, these soups will take you around the globe, all from the comfort of home.

About the Author

Clifford A. Wright won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow), which was also a finalist for the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook of the Year award that same year. He is the author of fourteen books, twelve of which are cookbooks. Wright's articles on food and cuisine have appeared in Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Saveur, and other magazines. He is a contributing editor to ZesterDaily.com. As an independent researcher, Wright wrote the food entries for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and has published scholarly articles on food in peer-reviewed journals such as Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, Food and Foodways, and Gastronomica. Wright has also lectured on food at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, Boston University, Georgetown University, Davidson College in North Carolina, Loyola Marymount University, South Dakota State University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Culinary Institute of America, among other institutions. As a cooking teacher, he has taught cooking classes at the Central Market cooking schools in Texas, the Rhode Island School of Design, Institute for Culinary Education in New York, Sur la Table, and other cooking schools around the United States. His website www.CliffordAWright.com is one of the most-visited sites for people interested in Mediterranean foods. In 2009 he launched the Venice Cooking School (www.VeniceCookingSchool.com) with Martha Rose Shulman in Los Angeles, California. He lives in Santa Monica, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (December 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470180528
• ISBN-13: 978-0470180525
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.4 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Meals > Soups & Stews

More About the Author

Clifford A. Wright is a cook, food writer, and independent research scholar who won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow). His book A Mediterranean Feast was also a finalist for the cookbook of the year award given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is the author of fourteen other books, twelve of which are cookbooks, including his latest The Best Soups in the World (Wiley, 2010). Colman Andrews, former editor of Saveur magazine called Wright 'the reigning English-speaking expert on the cuisines and culinary culture of the Mediterranean--the real Mediterranean, the whole Mediterranean.' Clifford writes regularly for Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, and Food and Wine and wrote all the food entries for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Clifford has also lectured on food at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the Culinary Institute of America among other universities and venues. As a cooking teacher he has taught cooking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sur la Table, Central Market in Texas and other cooking schools around the United States and Italy.
Before writing about food, Clifford was a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., a Staff Fellow at the Institute of Arab Studies, Belmont, MA, the Executive Director of the American Middle East Peace Research Institute, Cambridge, MA and the publisher of Raising Kids, a child development newsletter for parents. He was written two books on the politics and history in the Middle East.
You can visit him at www.cliffordawright.com and read his food writing at www.zesterdaily.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I love soups and hear are hundreds of soups you and I can prepare and enjoy! January 28, 2010

By Craig Matteson HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

I have always loved soups. Unfortunately, for most of my life I didn't know how truly glorious soups could be. My experience was the overly salty stuff that came out of cans. Yet, I enjoyed them for their warmth, and their ease of preparation. When I began cooking a bit over a year ago, I did focus some of my early efforts on soups and stews. Wow! What a delight! What great flavor! Now the stuff in the cans seems all but inedible and terribly one dimensional. You too?

Clifford Wright provides us with a big book that will help us explore all kinds of soups. If you want to see the breadth of cuisine covered in this book, just turn to appendix B and see the soups (leaving out clear broths) organized by geographic region. Wow!

The author also provides soup basics and background in an eight page introduction that is clear, easy to read, and provides you with solid footing to being your soup explorations. You do not need a cooking background to enjoy this book, and even if you have an extensive background in cooking you are sure to find dozens of recipes here that will be new to you.

The recipes are organized logically into these chapters:
Basic broths
Clear soups
Chunky meat soups
Chunky vegetable soups
Chunky legume soups
Smooth vegetable soups
Smooth creamed soups
Smooth legume soups
Minestrone and minestrone-like soups
Grain-based soups
Chowders and bisques
Cheese soups and egg soups
Seafood soups
Chilled soups

Can you read that list and not want to jump into this book and start cooking all kinds of delicious, warm, and satisfying soups? I can't.

Some of the recipes use exotic ingredients that you may not be able to find locally and appendix A lists these ingredients and where you can buy them on the web.

While the book has no pictures, it has lots and lots of easy to envision recipes. I mean how many pictures of bowls and soups can you take anyway?

Enjoy more soups! I will keep this treasure in the collection of cooking resources I use regularly.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic in a Bowl! April 7, 2010

By Mary-anne E. Durkee

Format:Paperback

Clifford Wright, a James Beard award-winning author is a long time cyber foodie friend, and when I saw his newest book I just had to get it! Our food interests are in serious alignment!

As I was tossing ingredients to make my stocks after Easter I glanced at some of Clifford's recipes and well duh yes add sage to my turkey stock-I grow Pineapple Sage which as a much more subtle than in your face sage flavour and aroma. I added a tender stalk including the just to open blossoms.

There are some drooling type recipes for Tunisian Lamb soup and Moroccan steaming bowls, both of which I plan to make. I mean how good does Harira with paprika, cinnamon, lentils, turmeric, ginger, etc. sound?

I opted for Clifford's cilantro for the turkey stock too.

I simply love the organization of this book with an ingredient index as well as cuisine index. Wow, a man after my own culinary heart!

A few words of others on this must have book: Travel the world, soup-spoon in hand, with a James Beard Award--winning author as your guide.

In restaurants and dining rooms on every continent, soup is on the menu. A Mexican chef simmers Roasted Poblano and Three Cheese Soup. A Sicilian nonna stirs Beans and Greens Soup, while her Thai counterpart cooks up Mushroom and Chile Soup. Wherever it's eaten, a bowl of soup--whether elegant or hearty, creamy or clear, chilled or piping hot--delivers rich flavor and simple satisfaction. In this ultimate soup cookbook, acclaimed cookbook author Clifford A. Wright has collected the best classical, famous, and not-so-famous recipes to be found anywhere.

My Note* I will have a critical palate when it comes to Clifford's SE Asian soups, but have confidence he won't let us down. I have traveled this region some 30 plus times learning of the culture and cuisine. I am the Thai Food Editor on Bellaonline and seriously know the tastes and techniques of the area.

The Best Soups in the World includes 247 recipes for heartwarming and palate-pleasing soups: Imagine savoring delicate Italian Small Rice Balls in Broth, refreshing California Chilled Peach Soup, piquant Georgian Beef and Apricot Soup, or curry-scented Tanzanian Black-Eyed Pea and Coconut Soup. But this is no mere collection of recipes. Wright is a food scholar; he applies his expertise in lively explorations of the history and culture behind each soup, which makes this book as rewarding to read as it is to cook from.

*My Note - Soups of the Balkans will be especially interesting to try as our son-in-law and his chef mom hail from Croatia via Kosovo where she was head chef in remarkable hotel kitchens. I am always quick to grab pork and lamb bones after family feasts of whole spit roasted animals to make my stocks and resulting soups.

Exciting, enticing, and easy-to-prepare, these recipes use ingredients both common and unusual--Wright provides Internet sources for every item--making them perfect for budget-conscious cooks whose taste know no boundaries. From Old-Fashioned Chicken Noodle to Chayote Soup from Nicaragua and from Tuscan White Bean to Vietnamese-American Pho, these soups will take you around the globe, all from the comfort of home.

Are you hungry yet? LOL I am reading this book cover to cover with little post-its dearly being placed on the recipes that are simply a must try right away while there is still a chill in the air, or should I say with wooden spoon in hand, and a basket of fresh from the garden veggies and herbs?

Clifford you have out done yourself this time enticing all cooks to the magic of a bowl of flavours! THANK YOU!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Coockbook September 26, 2011

By PapaXris

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have many cookbooks, but this one is my first cookbooks dedicated to soups only. This book is extremely well organized. Very easy to follow instructions and every recipe has a bit of a side-history to elaborate on its origins. I use this book more and more every day and I have had only joyful experiences creating the recipes within (my family as well)! This is quickly becoming one of my staple cookbooks in my household.