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Debra Borchert is the author of the Château de Verzat series that follows headstrong and independent women and the four-hundred loyal families who protect a Loire Valley château and vineyard and its legacy of producing the finest wines in France during the French Revolution. Learn more about Debra and her books at her website.
A Soup-aholic Confesses
I am a soup-aholic. If it grows, oinks, pecks or swims, I find a way to incorporate it in a soup. I also own eight slow cookers, which I use not to make soups but to serve them. My holiday traditions center around an annual Soup Party where I serve eight soups and ask guests to bring bread or a dessert. So popular is this event, requests for the date of the next party roll in around Labor Day.
While researching the French Revolution, I discovered that many families living in Paris could afford only single-room lodgings. Because those homes often lacked a fireplace, people had no heat or cooking facilities.
Enterprising cooks who had fireplaces and a cauldron, often simmered a batch of soup and brought the steaming pot out onto the street where they sold hot servings in wooden bowls with wooden spoons, recycling those bowls and spoons for the next customers. Soup might be the first form of fast food.
During the 18th century, the French believed broths and bouillons were restoratifs, restoratives. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word restaurant was initially used to describe a variety of rich, meat-based bouillons. Since soups were a main culinary staple, I developed recipes for my characters.
The soups I created gave me an opportunity to reveal characters’ personalities.
In my historical romance, Her Own Revolution, Geneviève, the daughter of the public prosecutor, rescues a fallen noble, Louis LaGarde, a man she thought she hated, from the guillotine. Prison has changed the once arrogant bully into a caring man who transforms his château into an orphanage. The orphans claim the soup tastes like chamber-pot slops, so Louis creates a new soup, including all the things he enjoyed eating as a child. And, when the cook is not looking, he adds a few splashes of wine. To encourage the children to eat it, he claims he used magic. Although skeptical, the children devour the soup.
As Geneviève witnesses the children’s love and adoration for Louis, she sees him in a new light and is disturbed by the fondness she feels for him—a key ingredient in a recipe for romance.
I include my recipes in my books and newsletters. I also print them on postcards, featuring my book covers, and distribute them as I would business cards and bookmarks. I am currently working on a cookbook I’ll use as a promotion. Not only am I sharing my stories, but also my love for soups.
Bon Appetit!
Uncle Louis’s Lentil Soup featured in Her Own Revolution
Ingredients:
1/2 cup diced parsnips
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced red pepper
1/2 cup diced yellow pepper
2 sliced leeks, white part only
1 small onion, chopped
A few splashes of extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. turkey or chicken sausage, sliced into bite-size pieces (optional)
1-1/2-2 quarts chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups lentils, rinsed and picked over
1/2 cup dry white wine (optional)
4 cups chopped fresh kale or baby spinach
Sea salt & pepper
Dash cayenne pepper
Wash, peel, and dice the first 6 vegetables. Allow them to dry on a towel.
In a large stock pot and over low to medium heat, sauté batches of first 5 vegetables in olive oil for about 5 minutes, do not brown. As they begin to soften, remove from pot, and add more vegetables. Add leeks and chopped onion, do not brown. Cook all vegetables until they are soft.
If you are using sausage, remove vegetables from pot, add a bit more olive oil and sauté sausage slices until lightly browned.
Return all cooked vegetables to pot. Add the stock and cook on low for about 10-15 minutes.
Add lentils and cook for 15 minutes, until lentils are soft but not mushy.
Add wine. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Add kale or spinach and more stock if needed. Cook on low until greens wilt.
Add cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper to taste.
The Château de Verzat Series, Book 2
A Woman Forges a Treacherous Path to Save Hundreds from the Guillotine
If Geneviève Fouquier-Tinville had the same rights as a man, she wouldn’t have to dress like one. She risks facing the guillotine herself when she replaces names of those she believes innocent on the list scheduled for the guillotine with names of those already dead. Her compassion for innocent people leads to both loss and love.
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