Good Soup: 52 Colorful Recipes for Year-Round Comfort (Soups and Stews Cookbook)

Soup was once the preface to a main course. Now, soup has become popular as an entire meal. The fifty-two recipes in Good Soup provide a choice each week, from the familiar tomato soup to a shell soup (not the pasta kind!) and cuttlefish with a fennel salad. Every page blazes color and offers instructions for tackling exotic innovations.

The combinations of ingredients will delight adventurous cooks: pumpkin soup with ginger and coconut, cold beet soup with blackberries, and wild garlic soup with snails. This one poses an especially provocative illustration with snails, still ensconced in their shells, clambering over the parsley!

Families that like to prepare the coming week’s cooking over the weekend may opt at first for a conventional choice, and the vividly colored pages might disguise familiar choices that often add an extra jolt. The listed ingredients, as well as the toppings, are unexpectedly long. But even those ingredients not gracing your pantry shelves are generally available at supermarkets, specialty grocers, or meet the challenge online.

Chef Joris Bijdendijk has been awarded three Michelin starts in Amsterdam restaurants, and Samuel Levie is a sausage-maker and columnist, so add Good Soup to a popular list of cookbooks.