Eat All About It

I have my share of benefit cookbooks on the shelf, but I often buy them more for the cause than the recipes. That’s why “40 Seasonal Soups” made an impact when I started browsing through it: The fund-raiser for Queen Anne’s Sacred Heart Shelter is a recipe collection from some of the best restaurants and most accomplished chefs around town. Canlis takes a bow with a parsnip veloute; Tilth offered up a broccoli-cheese soup made with aged Grafton cheddar; Ethan Stowell chips in his Mediterranean mussels and chickpeas; Le Pichet shares its famous onion soup; Tamara Murphy cooks up  sweet pepper soup, highlighting “the glamor girls of the garden.” The well-known stars are joined by neighborhood favorites such as The Continental and its avgolemono.

Volunteer Elizabeth Kruse, who spearheaded the project, began cooking dinners about two years ago at the shelter, which was founded in 1979 with the belief that everyone deserves a safe place to sleep. Volunteers bring their own food, cooking for 30 or so residents at a time. “I saw what a fabulous place it was, and the great things it was doing, really, on a shoestring,” she said. She started looking for more sustained ways to help. The shelter’s annual fundraiser was soup-related — a downtown luncheon with soup and bread donated by restaurants and bakeries — so she began asking chefs around town to contribute recipes for a book.

Some said no — too busy with other causes, just not interested, or just plain no. Most said yes. Dan Braun of Oliver’s Twist, whose son went to preschool with Kruse’s son, stepped up to make calls, encouraging colleagues to chip in as well as contributing himself. The only real prerequisite at first was that the recipes be user-friendly. (After a few came in at restaurant-quantity, serving 50, she began suggesting they be scaled to serve 4 to 12). As they kept pouring in, Kruse started adjusting — putting the brakes on tomato soups, for instance, or chowders.

Kruse tested the bulk of the recipes at home. ”They were all fantastic. Quite honestly, it was a pleasure. Not only I, but my family, my brothers, and my friends - a lot of people have had a lot of soup over the last couple of months.” Lisa Peterson, a friend with a graphic design company, volunteered hundreds of unpaid hours to design the book and see it through.

As I was talking about the delightful ins and outs of the food — how good it sounded to simmer ham hocks on a chilly day for Betty’s winter posole, or how fine it sounded to poach eggs in the broth of Taberna del Alabardero’s Castilian garlic soup — I realized that’s only one key part of the book. The recipes are great so they can help support the cause — the shelter, which serves families who often can’t be helped by other charitable organizations in town. Teenagers can stay with their families at Sacred Heart. Single dads with children are welcome. The organization serves up to six families and six single women at a time, giving them a place to stay for up to 90 days, along with trying to find them stable housing and help them get the skills and means to maintain it. Along with recipes, the cookbook includes first-hand stories from the adults and children who have been nourished there in all ways.

“The rug is being pulled out of places like this…” said Kruse. They do such beautiful work, she said, and so much work, under such tough circumstances. “I love the cookbook, and I loved so much working on it, but the best thing is really that all of the proceeds go back to the shelter, and really make a difference.”

The grand release party for “40 Seasonal Soups” will be Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Queen Anne Farmers Market. The party will include soup demos and samples, with soups by contributors Greg Atkinson, Becky Selengut, and Craig Serbousek. Sacred Heart’s annual Soupline Luncheon Oct. 9 will also feature the cookbook, or check out contact information for ordering here.