the-cancer-fighting

Just as every artist has a favorite medium, every chef has a favorite outlet. For me, that’s soup, hands down. I love giving people what I call a culinary hug: a warm, comforting dish I can wrap around them like a cashmere sweater. (In fact, that’s what I call some of my favorite soup recipes: my cashmere sweater collection.)

Soups allow me to throw my entire heart, soul, and cooking abilities into one incredibly nourishing pot. Soup completely captures the mind and body and engages all of the senses. It’s practically aromatherapy in a bowl, with the heady smells, the enveloping heat, and the stimulating scaffolding of tastes.

Best of all, especially for people in treatment, is that soup is the perfect vehicle for delivering both enticing taste and sumptuous nourishment, especially those allimportant phytochemicals and other nutrients that boost immunity and challenge cancer head-on. The combination of broth and heat alchemizes the vegetables, breaking them down and releasing more nourishment.

As you make your way through the soup recipes, you’ll develop a sense of my formula for optimizing flavor. I’ve made sure to put in variations and combinations guaranteed to appeal to people who like everything from hearty stews to light broths, but regardless of the particulars, it all comes down to what I think of as layering the flavors. Each ingredient is added in a way that brings out its maximum taste and nutrition.

The best part is that these nutrient-dense soups will appeal to everyone around the table. Sip for sip and spoon for spoon, soup will always be my go-to dish when I want to show people I really care then. Because for me, soup is where the love is.