Sopa de res

For me, soup is something to be eaten on a cold, blustery, preferably snowy winter afternoon: a nice hearty ham stew, homemade chicken soup. I don’t crave a hot bowl of soup on a steamy summer afternoon. But Nicaraguans love soup all year round, no matter how hot it is outside-- sopa de albondigas (meatballs), frijoles (beans), mondongo (tripe), queso (cheese), the list goes on. I’m invited to a friend’s father’s house on a hot Sunday afternoon, easily 90 degrees in Managua, to try his mouthwatering sopa de res, which he only makes a couple times a year. Their relatives are all coming for the occasion: nobody misses dad’s sopa. When we drive up, the smell of cooked vegetables and beef wafts into the street; it has been simmering on the stove all day. We’re served in bowls so big they look like washbasins: golden broth, hunks of meat still on the bone, and pretty much every vegetable grown in Nicaragua: pumpkin, zucchini, bell peppers, onions, yuca and quequisque (both potato-like root vegetables), baby corn, cilantro.... Two bottles of Flor de Caña rum sit on the table, one at each end. There’s a shot glass next to each water glass. I’m instructed by her dad that we’ll all be taking shots of rum throughout the meal. “Don’t worry,” he assures me, “the soup is so hot that you sweat out the alcohol and you never get drunk.” Obligatory shots-- not exactly the Sunday family dinner I had grown up with. We ladle second and third helpings of scalding soup from the giant pot in the kitchen, tear moist meat from the bone, slurp the broth, wipe sweat from our foreheads. I have never had so much alcohol in one sitting, but her father is right-- I don’t feel drunk. If anything, the giant meal of hot soup on a hot day has made us a little woozy, so we all retire to the living room to put up our feet and watch telenovelas as we doze on the couch. Despite the heat, I suddenly have a flash of my childhood Thanksgivings: turkey-induced family naps in front of the football game.