Soup is part of my DNA. I’m from Eastern European peasant stock. There is nothing more emblematic of an agrarian peasant culture than soup. That’s because you can make soup out of anything; meat scraps, bones, anything green (cultivated or foraged) and of course, water. My parents weren’t from the old country, but my grandparents were. While soup is the food of peasants, like my grandparents, it was also the food of families during the great Depression. Soup was a staple of that generation. Growing up my parents didn’t have to worry about where there next meal was coming from. But they did however, come from very modest, very working class families. As such, they ate a lot of soup growing up. Soup fed a lot of people; it was nourishing, satisfying and didn’t cost a lot to make.

My strongest, single memory of my Baba (my grandmother) was her cooking; especially her soups. After the long drive to Baba’s house there was always a big, steaming caldron–yes, a really big pot–of home-made chicken noodle soup–and yes, the egg noodles were home-made as well. Everybody helped themselves to a bowl and some crusty bread. Then my father and Dede (my grandfather) would split and consume the rest of the caldron; easily one to two quarts apiece. (And my Dede could slurp soup with the best of the Japanese noodle suckers.) To say my Dad liked soup is the understatement of the century. My Mom used to say that “you could put a pot of steaming water in front of Buck and he’d eat, as long as you told him it was soup.” My Dad liked soup more than ducks like water.

Given our heritage you’d think Buck would be more partial to the Eastern European classics like borscht, czernina, and potato soup. He was to be sure. But the eastern dish he was most partial to was really eastern…far eastern, Chinese to be exact. He loved Hot and Sour soup. (His other favorite was eastern too, the east coast, that being oyster stew, but that’s for another day.) He could eat a whole pot at one sitting. My father was not a big man by today’s standards– 5’ 11”, 190 pounds. But, he could put away the Hot and Sour soup. I don’t know where it all went. My Dad could be characterized by a riff of an old blues tune, “if the river was hot and sour soup, and I was a diving duck. I’d dive to the bottom and eat my way up.” That was my Dad. The fact he grew up eating soup, you’d think he would have grown to hate it or at least tire of it. As a pretty successful business man you might think he would opt for more steak and less soup. It simply wasn’t the case. He never tired of soup. In fact, as he grew older he liked it even more. It is fitting that the last meal he had before he passed away at 91, was a bowl of soup. The Marx brothers got nothing on Buck Soup.

This is the recipe for Hot and Sour soup my Dad loved so much. I hope you enjoy it as much as he did.

Dann Balesky