Economy of Style

with a beef and vegetable soup

I trim the ends of a turnip so it sits flat, then run a knife along the sides to peel the tough purple skin off the edges. Turnips are a rugged sphere, a small bowling ball with a purple top with a bottom dipped in yellow. It rolled around this morning on the self scanner at the grocery store, the only vegetable in my pile without packaging, the only one unscannable. I punched in TURNIP into the database. Nothing. I punch it in again. The attendant, with permed hair and a grandmother's smile, appears at my shoulder and says, “the computer calls it a rutabaga. I know, it’s not a rutabaga. But what can we do?”

It’s just after nine and I am making beef and vegetable soup for the first time in years. It’s a recipe of my grandmother’s, passed down from her mother: a beef shank, filled with marrow and flanked with lots of meat, covered in cold water and simmered for a few hours. Finely sliced parsnips, carrots, celery, potato, a rutabaga (or turnip or swede) and onions and added to the pot along with a bay leaf, lots of salt and many twists of black pepper. Simmered again until the shards of vegetables are cooked through. The meat removed from the bone, chopped finely, then added back to the pot. More pepper, maybe more salt, then it’s ready to serve. 

Beef isn’t the main event here; it’s subtle in the end, a backstory with depth. It’s the sweet root vegetables that shine, fine in the mouth with a quick kick of pepper. Affordable but special, an economy of style, just like my grandmother.

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In Claire Cameron’s recent newsletter, she writes about re-reading Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient after her first read in 1992. In 1992 she was in university. Tree planting in the summer. Single. Since then, she has tasted death, given life, experienced love, and witnessed wars, and felt she deserved the book more this time around. “I wept, I gasped, I marvelled, felt stunned, and was left undone,” she writes. 

It was an encounter with the sublime the second time around, the kind of experience that shifts beauty into awe. Age and circumstance brings on the legibility of words, allowing us to see them more clearly, deeper. And in Claire’s words, to deserve them. 

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The first time I made this soup I had a baby on my chest. I was testing recipes for a soup book and wanted, always, to time the recipes with dinner. I was living in a rented flat that year, cooking in a kitchen with four doors - one to the basement, one to the hallway, another leading to the dining room, another to the pantry. That left a small wedge of space for a freestanding stove, and a run of counter between hallway and basement. The stove didn’t have a light above; there was nothing but a wall coated in the grease of my recipes. The only light source was on the ceiling, behind me. My body, bigger with a baby strapped on, cast a wide shadow over the food. I rushed through this recipe, watching the simmering bone, willing it to flavour the water. I chopped vegetables in dim light. Tasted for salt. Scratched notes on paper. Blamed the baby for crying. Blamed the light for not shining. Blamed myself for not doing this in the morning, when I was fresh, when the sun was shining.

I didn’t call my grandmother to ask her about the providence of this simple soup. She was alive then, living in her apartment, perhaps playing bridge. She would have sat at her little telephone desk and told me all about it. She would ask why I was making a long simmering soup on a weekday in the late afternoon. Why not in the morning on the weekend, when the day is full of promise? And always plan your meal before 11am, she would have said. She was a teacher, her meals were organized by 7am. Why had I taken so long?

She would say I deserved this food, we all did. Babies too. But it would taste better with some organization. I wouldn’t understand that until many years later. 

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Bone marrow, I know now, increases energy levels. It improves joint health and immune function too. And it flavours a soup. A pile of root vegetables can be finely chopped in a food processor in less than a minute. If it’s a cheap little food processor, like mine, this can be done in batches. 

The recipe makes enough for a family of five, with leftovers. It will be too thick if you don’t start with enough cold water to cover the bone. If that’s the case, top it up as the vegetables simmer. 

It snowed hard last weekend, coating the trees in a clear, candy lacquer. Today is warmer and the melting chunks of ice are landing with a staccato beat against the ground. I am in my kitchen with three doors - two are retracted into the wall leading to the living room. The other leads to the hallway. I have a light over the stove, but I don’t need it. The sun is shining through the window casting a bar of light across the stove. I am making soup in the morning, ahead of time. Tonight will be tight - a basketball practice followed by a basketball game. We will need this soup on the stove, warming and ready. It’s not always this organized around here. But when it is, I feel like it’s a note from my younger self, a message from my grandmother, a jolt of wisdom. I have always deserved this soup, we all do, but I now I appreciate it.

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The recipe:

Place 2 beef shanks, about 500g or 1 lb in total, in a large pot and cover with cold water. Simmer for 2 hours, skimming the surface of any residue as needed. Finely chop an onion, three celery sticks, 3 carrots, 2 parsnips, 1 turnip, 2 potatoes and add them to the pot along with 1teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon cracked black pepper, and one bay leaf. Continue to simmer the soup until the vegetables are tender, about 45 minutes. Remove shanks with tongs and cut off any remaining meat. Return the meat to the pot and discard bones. Serve with more salt and pepper to taste.