Soup has a dialogue of its own. It’s never just a bowl of soup, and we all have our favourite for a reason: a memory, an emotion, a hard time, a joyful time. The comforting things we ladle into bowls are among the most personal foods we make and consume.
There is no absolute definition of what makes a soup: ingredients, culture, texture and flavour vary to produce a dish that can be creamy and thick, bright and zingy, or hot and brothy. Whatever it looks like or tastes like, soup is the language of home.
Blanca Valencia, Mei Chin and Dee Laffan are three women from wildly different backgrounds, countries and cultures connecting over a shared love of food in Ireland. Hailing from Spain, the US and Ireland respectively, together they are the voices behind the award-winning Spice Bags Podcast. The podcast focuses on food in Ireland through the perspective of the international communities who live and work there. Valencia, Chin and Laffan describe the podcast as coming in three flavours: deep-dive explorations of a national cuisine; interviews; and staple chats where the hosts “banter” over a selected topic from their own cultural perspective.
It was during one such staple chat on the topic of soup that all three hosts found common ground they could unite upon. The idea arose to pitch a book about soup centred around the international diaspora in Ireland. They brought the idea to Kristin Jensen, founder of Nine Bean Rows publishing house and creator of the Blasta Books series of cookbooks, which is shaking up the cookbook publishing scene in Ireland.
In January 2023, that nugget of a cookbook idea was published. SOUP showcases 25 recipes gathered from friends, acquaintances and podcast guests. From Africa to Turkey, China to Scotland – from Mexican sopa de tortilla to a Danish elderberry gazpacho-like soup – each recipe represents a person, a culture, a history.
“No-one has ever described a soup to me without a story,” said Laffan. “These are personal renditions with food memories and nostalgia attached. Soup does that; it evokes emotions and stirs us up in the best way.”
Ireland is known as the country of a hundred thousand welcomes, but as immigrants, Chin and Valencia desired a platform for their voices to be heard. “It was hard,” said Chin, “No-one was listening to us.”
Producing the podcast connected them to the wider international community in Ireland.