Customer Reviews

The Best Soups in the World

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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!

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.

Soup done just Wright


Soup is great for feeding groups,
It feeds our troops--
Our homeless, who may have lost more than one tooth,
It gives you energy and keeps you prime for doing hoops or loops...

Clifford Wright's Book "The Best Soups in the World" far passes
Seinfeld's New York Soup Nazi feeding the masses--
Clifford has his own story line with each recipe,
You feel his love for it, making each step easy--

Such as the Italian hungry family of four,
Who must eat the Pasta and Pea soup before,
The pasta absorbs the liquid leaving it dense to the core--

Or the hustle bustle street market of Palermo,
"The Vucciria," where there is great food and local veggies grow,
For a Sicilian beans and greens soup; a dinner party and early spring snow--

Clear, chilled, chunky, smooth,
Bisques, legume, creamed, seafood--

Chowder, egg, cheese, minestrone,
Broth, grain based, meat or vegetable alone--

He takes you around the world with Soup,
Spicy Jamaican fish Tea to Swiss basler mehlsupp--


John Moynihan

To me, a really good cookbook should contain a lot of recipes I would really like to make. For me, most specialized-topic cookbooks might have just a very few that fill that requirement. This one does a lot better than most.

Yes, there are some recipes that don't appeal to me at all, and some I might be tempted to try but seem too time-consuming or complicated or require ingredients that are costly or not readily available at average American supermarkets. I am not so dedicated that I want to drive to a major city to find ethnic ingredients which are invariably pricy, but that may not matter to some.

As you might expect, there are quite a few classics as well as some I never heard of that will be fun to prepare. I think the book is definitely worth Amazon's price.

No index so browsing is annoying, this book is going in the archive. May be OK in paper, but not for kindle (or for vegetarians).

Really great appearing soup recipes that was given as a gift to a friend that loves to make soups. Hope I get to taste some soon.

The front and back cover of the book is attractive and inviting to look at. However, if you want to see pictures of the soups inside this book, there are none to speak of. Therefore, it does not hold my attention as I peruse the entire book, I am sorry to say.

It will be so exciting to try some of the many different varieties of soups from around the world that are in this book. I even found the book interesting reading.The Best Soups in the World