Betty Rosbottom of Amherst — author, TV chef, cooking instructor — spent her formative years in areas known for their food. In her childhood home of Memphis, Tennessee, she enjoyed that city’s signature barbecue. She attended college in New Orleans, where she learned to love Cajun and Creole dishes. She spent her junior year at the Sorbonne savoring French cuisine.
But she didn’t spend any time in the kitchen herself until she married. “I couldn’t cook a thing during any of my upbringing,” she said in a recent interview. “I was just an appreciator.”
Her husband gave her a copy of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” as a wedding present. Once she started cooking, she never stopped.
She founded a cooking school in Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1970s and learned from guest teachers like gourmet legend Jacques Pepin and “queen of cake” Maida Heatter. Eventually, she attended the Parisian cooking school La Varenne.
Rosbottom has written a syndicated food column, hosted “On the Menu,” a show on WGBY, the public broadcast station in Springfield, taught cooking classes at Yankee Candle in Deerfield and at the Baker’s Pin in Northampton, and written 12 cookbooks. The most recent, “Soup Nights, Satisfying Soups and Sides for Delicious Meals all Year” was published in the fall by Rizzoli New York. It is just entering its second printing
Soups, she says, engender a sense of well-being.
“Every culture has soups,” she said. “They’re comforting:” hot in the winter, cold in the summer.
They can also be very forgiving, she pointed out, easily thickened or thinned. “If you put a little too much salt in a soup, you can put in a raw potato.”
Soups also are handy for anyone looking for a simple, inexpensive way to entertain. “Not only can you make soup in advance and it’s helpful for you as a host or a hostess, but it improves with time,” she said.
I asked Rosbottom to walk me through her process for creating one of the recipes in “Soup Nights.” She chose her roasted butternut squash soup which she contributed to “Bon Appétit” magazine.
“It seemed to me like a good idea to serve the soup with crème fraîche, which was a little bit different from cream, which I had been using, and to infuse the crème fraîche,” she said.
“I heated the crème fraîche up and then put dried sage in it. It gave the soup another herbal note. And then I roasted the butternut squash and intensified the flavor.
“And then there’s what I call the ‘secret ingredient.’ We put grated Gruyère on the top of it!”
For anyone (like me) who doesn’t live near a store that sells crème fraîche, Rosbottom explains in the book how to make it (See * below).
She also explained the thinking behind her winter tomato and garlic soup, which uses ingredients she tends to have in her cupboard — canned tomatoes, chicken stock, onion, garlic.
“I love tomato soup,” she said. “As a child, the only tomato soup I ever had was the one that came in the red-and-white Campbell’s can. It was a revelation to me that you can make tomato soup.
“I always like to give a kind of citrus taste to tomato soup. This one has orange zest. It lightens the soup a little bit.”
In “Soup Nights” she also features sandwiches, salads and desserts to serve with the soups: She suggests pairing the tomato soup with Gorgonzola bruschette.
One of her favorite soups, French onion soup gratiné, graces the cover of “Soup Nights.” She says she fell in love with this classic during her junior year of college in Paris. Here she shares that recipe along with the roasted butternut squash soup from her book.
Betty Rosbottom
For the soup:
2 quarts beef stock
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 pounds yellow onions, sliced ¼-inch thick, to yield 10 cups
Kosher salt
¼ teaspoon sugar, plus more if needed
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup dry white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
For the croutons:
18 baguette slices, cut about ⅜ -inch thick
3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil, plus more if needed
1 12-ounce piece good quality aged Gruyère grated to yield 1-½ cups and the remainder cut into slivers (¼-inch by 1-inch long) to yield ½ cup
Set the stock in a pot over very low heat; then cover it. Keep the stock warm at a very low simmer while you prepare the soup.
In a five-quart heavy pot (with a lid) over medium-low heat, heat the butter and oil. Add the onions. Cover and cook, stirring frequently, 15 minutes.
Remove the lid, and raise the heat to medium. Stir in 1 teaspoon salt, the sugar and the flour. Cook, stirring constantly, scraping the bottom of the pan so that the flour does not burn, until the onions are rich golden (like the color of light brown sugar), 35 to 40 minutes or more. (While you are cooking the onions, the flour will start to darken too and the onions will cook down considerably.)
When the onions are done, add the simmering stock and ½ cup of the wine. Season the soup with salt and pepper, and a pinch or two of extra sugar if desired. Simmer, partially covered with the lid set ajar, 40 minutes more.
With a large spoon, skim off any foam that forms. Add the remaining ¼ cup wine and season the soup again with salt and pepper. (Soup can be prepared three days ahead. Cook to this stage, then cool, cover, and refrigerate. Reheat over medium heat.)
While the soup is simmering, prepare the baguette slices and the cheese topping. Arrange a rack at center position of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.
Brush the baguette slices generously on both sides with olive oil and arrange on a rimmed baking sheet.
Bake until the slices are crisp, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Remove and cool. (The baguette slices can be prepared two days ahead; store in an airtight container at room temperature.) Retain oven temperature.
Arrange six ovenproof soup bowls or ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet and fill them ¾ full with the hot soup.
Divide the slivered cheese among the bowls. Float two to three baguette slices on top of each serving, and sprinkle generously with some grated cheese. Depending on the size of your bowls or ramekins, you may have some soup, cheese, or croutons left over.
Bake the soup until the cheese has melted and is lightly browned, 15 minutes. Watch constantly. If desired, run under a hot broiler to brown more, 1 to 2 minutes.
Serves 6
Betty Rosbottom
4 cups (about 2 pounds) butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch dice
2 tablespoonsolive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
¾ cup crème fraîche *
1½ teaspoons dried rubbed sage leaves
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
¾ cup chopped shallots
4 cups chicken broth
½ cup grated Gruyère
4 fresh sage sprigs, for garnish, optional
Arrange a rack at center position and preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large, heavy baking sheet with foil and spread the cubed squash on it. Drizzle cubes with oil, and season with ¾ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper. Toss cubes to coat well with oil and seasonings.
Bake squash, stirring every 10 minutes to prevent sticking, until tender and lightly browned, 30 to 35 minutes. Watch carefully to make certain it does not burn. Remove from oven.
Place crème fraîche and sage leaves in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and let stand 10 to 15 minutes while the sage infuses the cream.
Heat butter in a large, heavy pan (with a lid) over medium heat. When hot, add shallots and cook, stirring, until softened and translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in the squash, add the broth, and bring mixture to a simmer. Cover and simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 10 minutes. Purée soup in a food processor, blender or food mill, and return to the pot. (Or, use an immersion blender to purée the soup in the pot.)
Whisk in ½ cup of the crème fraîche. Taste soup and season with additional salt if needed. (Soup can be prepared one day ahead. Cook to this stage, then cool, cover, and refrigerate. Reheat over low heat, stirring. Cover and refrigerate ¼ cup remaining crème fraîche separately; stir well before using.)
Ladle soup into bowls. Sprinkle each serving with Gruyere and a drizzle of the remaining crème fraîche. If desired, garnish each bowl with a sage sprig.
Serves 4
*Crème fraîche, a thick cream used in French cooking, is available in the dairy section of many supermarkets. If you can’t find it, the following recipe works well.
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sour cream
Whisk cream and sour cream together in a medium non-reactive bowl. Let stand at room temperature until thickened, 6 hours or longer. Cover and refrigerate. (Crème fraîche can be stored up to 1 week, covered, in the refrigerator.) Makes about 1⅓ cups.
Tinky Weisblat of Hawley is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.”