French garlic soup from Provence is named aïgo boulido, which interprets amusingly as ‘boiled water’. Properly, you possibly can imagine me — it’s quite a bit tastier than sizzling water. The garlic is boiled till tender, allowed to steep with contemporary sage, thyme and a bay leaf, puréed with an egg yolk and olive oil, and served over toast topped with freshly grated cheese. Pale yellow, creamy and deeply flavorful, it’s a delight to the palate and the attention.
Aïgo boulido / French garlic soup from Provence
Though much less well-known than it’s illustrious cousin, French onion soup, garlic soup is served all through France. Within the north, the garlic is often cooked in hen broth with potatoes, carrots and cream or butter. Typically smoked garlic is used. Within the southwest, the place garlic soup is named tourin à l’ail, it might embody onion, flour and wine vinegar. The provençal model tastes like sage-infused aïoli (garlic mayonnaise), however is way lighter.
Even in Provence, there are lots of variations. As Andrée Maureau, writer of the fantastic cookbook Recettes en Provence, explains, ‘A chaque famille sa recette‘ — every household has its personal recipe. She offers a number of variations, the primary of which consists merely of garlic boiled with sage, thyme and bay, unblended and served over toast. This may increasingly hark again to the times when hikers within the Alps of Provence made the soup utilizing herbs they gathered and water from effervescent brooks, which they boiled for functions of purification.
Probably as a result of it’s a household factor, or maybe as a result of the regional facet of French delicacies persists to this present day, garlic soup is never seen on Parisian bistro menus. In actual fact, I owe the inspiration for this publish to my sister-in-law, Mary Foran of Oakland, California. I suppose which means it’s a household factor for us, too. Mary encountered a recipe for garlic soup in a novel and ran it by me to examine on its authenticity. That recipe referred to as for cornstarch, which is unusual in French delicacies. Nevertheless it sparked my curiosity. I’d been eager to strive aïgo boulido for a very long time, seemed into it and at last made some. Very glad that I did!
Glad cooking.
