My father loved pea soup; he could eat two-three-four bowls in rapid succession on a Saturday night --- provided it had first been boiled to the approximate thermal reading of molten lead.
“Hotter,” was his continual refrain. “It's supposed to burn when it goes down.”
My mother tried to oblige, but somehow the soup was never scalding enough. He would spoon down several mouthfuls then hand the bowl back to her.
“I want it to burn,” he’d tell her, “I want it to feel fire inside my guts.”
So my mother would pour the soup back into to the pot and boil it up again. On and on it went. I was no great fan of pea soup in those days, but I had begun to wonder if maybe the extreme heating process didn't bring about the release of some hitherto unsuspected flavor element that was impossible to resist. One night when my mother placed the soup bowl on the table I grabbed a small tea spoon from the kitchen drawer and skimmed a taste off the top. My howls of agony still echo down the Brooklyn streets to this day.
“Hold this against your tongue,” my mother said, handing me an ice cube from the freezer. My father merely glanced at me and shrugged. Someday when you're a man you will understand, his look seemed to say. Then he went back to his soup. It had been boiled and re-boiled to the point where it could have melted chrome steel, but it still didn't satisfy my father.
“Hotter," he decreed. I don’t know how he did it, except that he chased the soup down with a cold beer, so maybe that helped.
My father wasn’t ordinarily a fussy or demanding man when it came to his food. Normally he ate whatever my mother placed in front of him. Nor was he given to eccentricities of any kind. Weeknights he didn't get home until after seven, long after the rest of us had already had our supper, and he ate fast and alone (and without re-heating instructions) at the kitchen table so he’d have time to relax and watch television. But on a Saturday night with a couple of beers under his belt he grew expansive, and he’d occasionally call for a special dish, super-hot pea soup or maybe a plate of sauerbraten, a German specialty he remembered from his childhood. My mother, being a full-blooded Italian, was naturally aghast at the very idea and concept of sauerbraten. She made it for him all the same, of course, but was determined to shield her children from such gastronomical horrors. So there was laid down a strict law that I could not have so much as a taste of this strange dish until I was over twenty-one and living on my own. Having gotten a look and a whiff of my father’s plate, I was certainly in no hurry for that day to arrive. In fact it wasn’t until a great many years later that I tasted sauerbraten for the first time. On the afternoon following my father’s funeral we took the family to a well-known German restaurant called Niederstein’s, which stood for over one-hundred-and-fifty years on Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village, Queens, and there I had sauerbraten for the first time in my father’s honor. My mother had some too. It wasn't half bad at that. But on those long ago Saturday nights sauerbraten was strictly off-limits.
As for pea soup, I can take it or leave it, but once when I had it in a restaurant it came out lukewarm and I asked the waiter if he could take it back and heat it up.
"We can't do that," the waiter told me. "If it's too hot, and someone gets burned, they're looking to sue us."
I'm not sure what my father would have made of that, though as far as I know he only ever ate my mother's pea soup. And it was only in later years that I gained any insight into his odd culinary preference.
I had come into the house after midnight. My mother was already in bed but my father was sitting at the kitchen table having a bowl of soup he'd obviously reheated from that night's supper. I could see the steam rising out of the pot on the stove.
"Pop," I asked him. "Why do you eat your soup so hot? Aren't you afraid of burning your throat?"
The question seemed to startle him. "I like it this way," he said.
"It's not good for you too hot," I lectured him. "You can damage your insides that way."
He only shrugged. "But I like it hot."
It went back and forth that way for a while, but eventually he told me a little bit more:
"My mother used to make a big pot of pea soup on a Saturday night," he said. "In the wintertime. It's how we kept warm. There was no oil furnace in those days, just the wood stove. The soup would warm us up at night."
I thought about that for a while. I wasn't sure how much it explained.
Finally I said, "But we have heat now, Pop."
Again he shrugged. "I just like it hot."
That was all a long time ago, and now my mom and dad are both gone, and the rooms we lived in belong to someone else. Even Neiderstein's is no longer there, having closed its doors permanently a few years back, after an unbelievable run of a century and a half.
So we grow older and older, and my father's soup preference is no great matter, just another small mystery in the great warehouse of mysteries we will never solve in our lifetimes.
“Hotter,” was his continual refrain. “It's supposed to burn when it goes down.”
My mother tried to oblige, but somehow the soup was never scalding enough. He would spoon down several mouthfuls then hand the bowl back to her.
“I want it to burn,” he’d tell her, “I want it to feel fire inside my guts.”
So my mother would pour the soup back into to the pot and boil it up again. On and on it went. I was no great fan of pea soup in those days, but I had begun to wonder if maybe the extreme heating process didn't bring about the release of some hitherto unsuspected flavor element that was impossible to resist. One night when my mother placed the soup bowl on the table I grabbed a small tea spoon from the kitchen drawer and skimmed a taste off the top. My howls of agony still echo down the Brooklyn streets to this day.
“Hold this against your tongue,” my mother said, handing me an ice cube from the freezer. My father merely glanced at me and shrugged. Someday when you're a man you will understand, his look seemed to say. Then he went back to his soup. It had been boiled and re-boiled to the point where it could have melted chrome steel, but it still didn't satisfy my father.
“Hotter," he decreed. I don’t know how he did it, except that he chased the soup down with a cold beer, so maybe that helped.
My father wasn’t ordinarily a fussy or demanding man when it came to his food. Normally he ate whatever my mother placed in front of him. Nor was he given to eccentricities of any kind. Weeknights he didn't get home until after seven, long after the rest of us had already had our supper, and he ate fast and alone (and without re-heating instructions) at the kitchen table so he’d have time to relax and watch television. But on a Saturday night with a couple of beers under his belt he grew expansive, and he’d occasionally call for a special dish, super-hot pea soup or maybe a plate of sauerbraten, a German specialty he remembered from his childhood. My mother, being a full-blooded Italian, was naturally aghast at the very idea and concept of sauerbraten. She made it for him all the same, of course, but was determined to shield her children from such gastronomical horrors. So there was laid down a strict law that I could not have so much as a taste of this strange dish until I was over twenty-one and living on my own. Having gotten a look and a whiff of my father’s plate, I was certainly in no hurry for that day to arrive. In fact it wasn’t until a great many years later that I tasted sauerbraten for the first time. On the afternoon following my father’s funeral we took the family to a well-known German restaurant called Niederstein’s, which stood for over one-hundred-and-fifty years on Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village, Queens, and there I had sauerbraten for the first time in my father’s honor. My mother had some too. It wasn't half bad at that. But on those long ago Saturday nights sauerbraten was strictly off-limits.
As for pea soup, I can take it or leave it, but once when I had it in a restaurant it came out lukewarm and I asked the waiter if he could take it back and heat it up.
"We can't do that," the waiter told me. "If it's too hot, and someone gets burned, they're looking to sue us."
I'm not sure what my father would have made of that, though as far as I know he only ever ate my mother's pea soup. And it was only in later years that I gained any insight into his odd culinary preference.
I had come into the house after midnight. My mother was already in bed but my father was sitting at the kitchen table having a bowl of soup he'd obviously reheated from that night's supper. I could see the steam rising out of the pot on the stove.
"Pop," I asked him. "Why do you eat your soup so hot? Aren't you afraid of burning your throat?"
The question seemed to startle him. "I like it this way," he said.
"It's not good for you too hot," I lectured him. "You can damage your insides that way."
He only shrugged. "But I like it hot."
It went back and forth that way for a while, but eventually he told me a little bit more:
"My mother used to make a big pot of pea soup on a Saturday night," he said. "In the wintertime. It's how we kept warm. There was no oil furnace in those days, just the wood stove. The soup would warm us up at night."
I thought about that for a while. I wasn't sure how much it explained.
Finally I said, "But we have heat now, Pop."
Again he shrugged. "I just like it hot."
That was all a long time ago, and now my mom and dad are both gone, and the rooms we lived in belong to someone else. Even Neiderstein's is no longer there, having closed its doors permanently a few years back, after an unbelievable run of a century and a half.
So we grow older and older, and my father's soup preference is no great matter, just another small mystery in the great warehouse of mysteries we will never solve in our lifetimes.
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