Soups

Classic avgolemono, the Greek egg-lemon soup, typically contains a little rice and a few pieces of chicken. Add more chicken if you want to make the bowls substantial enough for a main course. This recipe begins with 3 chicken breast halves to give the broth lots of flavor, but you use only 1 1/2 of them for the soup. Make chicken salad from the rest or roll up shredded meat in warm pita with chopped cucumbers, lettuce, and salsa. Orzo is rice-shaped pasta.

Chicken backs and necks make great, full-bodied soup, but they’re not always available. If you buy whole chickens, save the giblets (except the livers) in a plastic bag in the freezer and make the soup when you have enough. Chicken wings are a terrific, inexpensive alternative. Pour boiling water over them before you cook them, then transfer the wings to the pot; this helps produce a clear broth. Peel the carrots but leave them whole in the soup (cut them up later when they’re cooked). Cut onions into wedges.

Garnish this thick, velvety soup with an extra dollop of sour cream and pinch of chopped fresh thyme, if you like.

Haitian households celebrate their country’s Independence Day with bowls of this comforting soup. The national holiday falls on New Year’s Day, when Haitians walk from house to house to pay friends and family the first visits of the New Year. Although this is a vegetarian version, add small cubes of browned beef stew meat along with the pumpkin, if you like. Simply remove and then return them to the pot just as you do the hot peppers. This recipe was inspired by Norzina, a lumber and charcoal vendor and microcredit client of Fonkoze, Whole Planet Foundation’s implementing partner in Haiti.

Rajas (strips) of crisp corn tortillas and sweet mini bell peppers make a colorful garnish.

This classic Greek bean soup is thick and creamy, though it contains no cream or other dairy products. The beans cook into a smooth, pleasing mixture. Use a fruity olive oil to saute the aromatic root vegetables to start the cooking process, then add white beans that have soaked overnight.

Toss these easy homemade croutons in salads, sprinkle over soups and stews or fold into hot scrambled eggs and omelets.

Smoked fish, particularly smoked haddock, is exceptionally good in chowder. The sweet and briny smokiness tastes just right in a delicate milky broth. Finnan haddie is a type of smoked haddock originally from Finnan (also called Findon), a Scottish fishing village on the North Sea near Aberdeen. In Scotland at one time, haddock was lightly salted and then cold-smoked very gently over a slow peat fire. These days a similar product, still called finnan haddie, is smoked in New England over hard wood.

Great Thai food relies on fresh ingredients. Kaffir lime leaf, culantro, galangal, fish sauce, and chili-bean paste are available at Asian markets. Some of the ingredients - lemongrass, galangal, and lime leaf - are for flavoring only; they're not eaten. Typical Thai table condiments such as sugar, fish sauce, dried crushed chilies, and vinegar allow diners to adjust the four main flavors: sweet, salty, hot, and sour. If you like, substitute boneless chicken breast, cut into 1/4-inch slices, for the shrimp.

Adapted from “Mediterranean Light,” by Martha Rose Shulman (Morrow, 2000)