Blue Cayenne

Got those change-of-seasons blues?

This Soup Au Pistou is just the right soup to blast you right out of those doldrums. 

It hits all those fall color vibes, too. Look at those orangey colors! Not visible in this photo is the dollop of basil pistou stirred into the soup at the time of serving. Mervilleux!

You’re probably asking yourself “What in the heck is pistou?” though. Is that just a misspelling for pesto?  The answer? Kind of. 

Pistou is a cold basil sauce original to the Provenςal region of southeastern France. The sauce originated in the 16th Century. It is the French cousin of pesto and is a side of the family that doesn’t include pine nuts. To carry this analogy a little farther, this Soup Au Pistou is the French cousin of Italian minestrone. 

This is a Melissa Clark recipe from her cookbook Dinner In French. It is a great cookbook to have in your personal library and is available through your local bookstore or on Amazon here..

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for a classic Wedge Salad. Here is the link: Wedge Salad.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne Food and Photography Blog.If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” —Alfred Austin

This recipe is from Sami Tamimi’s new cookbook, Boustany. Boustany is an ode to Tamimi’s Palestinian roots and to Palestinian vegetable cooking in particular. If you are wondering, the word boustan translates to the word garden and Tamimi dedicates this cookbook to his grandfather and to fond memories of time spent in his grandfather’s garden.

I can certainly relate. My garden is a special refuge in my life. There, “head in the sun, heart with nature” I find peace and beauty and more than a bit of refuge from the struggles in our world today. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by  good friends whose love of nature matches my own.  Here is a vase of rose blooms from the garden of  my good friends Carole and Maria. 

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.