We’re happy to welcome you back to The Food Podcast with our first episode of the season: The Jellyfish Buffet. It begins with a turtle soup savoured in a 19th Century Danish home, then travels to present day Nova Scotia, where Sea Turtles visit from the Caribbean every summer. We meet Kathleen Martin, Executive Director of the Canadian Sea Turtle Network, who explains why Sea Turtles find their way to Nova Scotia, and what challenges they face on their epic journey. We also learn about the lion’s main jellyfish, the Sea Turtle’s favourite food. It’s a meandering coastal exploration, on this episode of The Food Podcast.

We discuss:

Kathleen Martin, Executive Director of the Canadian Sea Turtle Network

Chef Oliver Rowe’s recreation of Babette Feast in Vice Magazine

Food Stories - a Newsletter - lindsaycameronwilson.substack.com

Credits

Hosted by Lindsay Cameron Wilson

Edited by Abby Cerquitella

Theme song is One More Night by Jenn Grant

Follow: @thefoodpodcast and Food Stories

A Finely Sliced Soup

I’ve been working on speaking French, slowly, lentement, since I studied in France at the end of university. My French roommate Cécile and I are still friends. Last June I visited Cécile and we spent the week cooking, eating, walking and exploring favourite places while speaking our usual mélange of French and English. I get scrambled from time to time, like one evening when Cécile was in her garden and asked me if I would like to help her arrose le jardin (water the garden). I heard, would you like a rosé dans le jardin ( a rosé in the garden)? So I went inside and opened the fridge in search of a bottle of rosé while Cécile watched me from the garden door, a watering can in her hand.

Rosé, in addition to a lovely pink wine, means the colour pink in French. Early spring in my Halifax kitchen means wintery foods with a tiny touch of pink. I say this every year, I know. But I, we, need this colour when the ground is still frozen, buds are weeks from unfurling and crocuses are just peeking through. Pink is the bridge. I find it in the beet microgreens I scatter over salads, or in the cluster of pickled red onions balanced on top of a bowlful of chili. Thinly sliced radishes also work. So does my pink hat.

So this is why I placed a bunch of fat, crinkly, rainbow chard leaves in my grocery cart the other day. Their magenta stems are wide and tender crisp like celery. They take longer to cook than the leaves, so I will chop them separately and add them to the beginning of a soup with the chopped onions and garlic. But this extra time in the pan means the pink stems will fade to a dark, murky tone, as though winter’s claw is pulling them back into the soil. Vibrance isn’t in season, not quite yet.

Ribollita is on the menu. It’s an Italian soup made with vegetables, cannellini beans, yesterday’s bread and a good grating of parmesan cheese. I have chard, a big bunch of Tuscan kale, a random assortment of vegetables and a loaf of almost stale sourdough- the perfect lid for this homey, almost-spring soup.

But I had forgotten about the bread. I thought we were getting better at anticipating Dottie’s unrestrained desire for food. We know not to leave slices of pizza in a pizza box on the center of the kitchen island, many paw lengths away, or chocolate chip cookies inside a glass jar, sitting on the counter, or a bowl of cat food casually on the floor. Of course not. We didn’t know that Dottie could pull open a bread drawer with her paw and help herself to the delicacies inside. Well she can.

So I made the ribollita without the bread.

Ribollita translates from Italian as ‘re-boil.’ It’s a soup meant to sit on the stove for hours, boiling and re-boiling as people come and go. The vegetables inside are hearty and forgiving. The cannellini beans might turn to mush and the stale bread will eventually melt into the soup, but this only makes it better.

I used to think ribollita was a nod to the word ribbons - ribbons of kale and ribbons of chard, swirled together in the pan with finely sliced leeks, sticks of celery and whatever other vegetables you have on hand. A celebration of strips of things. The internet tells me ribbons translates to nastri in Italian. Ribollita sounds more appetizing.

As I made the soup I jotted down measurements and recipe notes with a golden mechanical pencil. I gave it to my middle son, Charlie, last Christmas. Charlie loves a sharp pencil. We used to have a jar in the kitchen filled with yellow HB pencils and a manual sharpener that vacuum sealed to the counter. He’s moved on to mechanical pencils, and this one, a brass beauty that I bought at Inkwell around the corner, is special. Charlie says it’s a bit ‘extra’ for highschool math class, so we keep it in the kitchen for moments like these.

I served the soup to my conversational French class. We gather once a week, taking turns at each other’s houses, trying our best to chat in French as we eat lunch. I served the soup after its first boil - the colours had faded from vibrant pinks to ruddy reds and forest greens. But a grating of parmesan lifted the tones, and the new loaf of bread I had to buy sopped up the juices beautifully. It was a ribbons of greens soup, rubans de verdue, with a flavourful, faded, touch of rosé.

A Ribollita of sorts

3 leeks

1 red onion

3 cloves garlic

3 ribs of celery

1 bunch of rainbow chard (slice the stems and green tops, but set stems aside)

1 bunch of kale, sliced greens only, discard the stems

*sliced greens amounted to 7 cups / 250g in total - they shrink a lot!

2 tablespoons olive oil

5 baby potatoes (that’s how many I had on hand) halved

1 x 398ml can chopped tomatoes

A good pinch of chili flakes

1 x 540 ml can cannellini beans

6-8 cups vegetable or chicken stock (1.5-ish litres)

A parmesan rind, if you have one

Salt and pepper to taste

Begin by finely slicing all the vegetables, except for the potatoes which can be halved or quartered, depending on their size. Heat olive oil in a large soup pot and add the leeks, onion, garlic, celery and stems from the chard. Mine were bright pink, aren’t they gorgeous? Stir well, add a pinch of salt, and let the vegetables cook low and slow, about 30 minutes, until soft. Add the potatoes, the can of tomatoes, a good pinch of chili flakes and stir, leaving to cook for five minutes more. Add beans, stock, parmesan rind (it’s a block of flavour), salt and pepper to taste and simmer gently until potatoes are cooked through. Add more stock if soup gets too thick. Serve with a good grating of parmesan cheese.

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