Hello readers! After a brief (non-covid) medical hiccup, I am back and ready with new ideas. It’s been a few months and winter has come and gone, but I was able to do a lot of reading while I was home, and will start back up with a nice vermicelli soup.

Many years ago while I was in graduate school I found a copy of Zola’s The Joy of Life in the university library, and I read it, loved it, and then forgot about it until years later, when I tried to remember what it was called and could not. For some reason it became a real hunt to track it down; I don’t know why it was so difficult to figure out. It became a mystery to solve, and then suddenly, I came across a copy, just like that.

La Joie de Vivre is the twelfth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series. The main character, Pauline, is the daughter of the butcher from The Belly of Paris. (For more on that novel, see Emile Zola's Larded Veal.)

In this story she is a young girl who has now lost both of her parents, and has been sent to live with her aunt and uncle and their son, (a hypochondriac and a failure, who she is expected to eventually marry), bringing with her a small fortune from the sale of the butcher shop. Her aunt makes a great show of locking the money away until Pauline is of age to receive it. Reader, don’t be fooled.

The story takes place in a small Norman village that is continually fighting the sea. Of course the title is, as ever with Zola, ironic- you will find little joy in these lives- but plenty of what I love Zola for: an unsentimental examination of the human condition. Zola’s pragmatic, unscrupulous characters share the page with the innocent or naive, whose slowly drawn-out misfortunes turn them toward resentment, resignation, or disillusion, and the wicked don’t always get what they deserve.

At this point in the story, however, we are at the beginning of little Pauline’s relationship with her new family, and all is well. She is a generous and helpful little soul who draws everyone to her with her cheerful, gentle ways. Here, she enjoys her first dinner with her new family after a long trip from Paris:

The cook brought in some vermicelli soup, warning them, in her crabbed fashion, that it was much overcooked. No one dared complain, however. They were all very hungry, and the soup hissed in their spoons. Next came some soup-beef. Chanteau, fond of dainties, scarcely took any of it, reserving himself for the leg of mutton.

It’s a drizzly, dreary weekend here, perfect soup weather. I wanted to make my own broth for this one using chicken and a beef shin; beef shins weren’t available at the store so I used beef ribs.

I made the broth the day before we wanted to eat it, so that I could let the fat come to the top and skim it off. I like a nice clear broth for soup. I cooked up the beef and the chicken thighs with carrot, shallot, one clove of garlic, a bay leaf and salt and pepper.

After refrigeration overnight. Now you can just scoop the fat off the top.

The rest is easy: cook your vermicelli separately, and put aside to add to your reheated broth at the last minute. (I used broken up spaghetti.) After reheating the broth, I took out the pieces of meat and put them on a serving platter. In the broth I mashed the carrot up with the back of a wooden spoon, adjusted the seasoning, and added the vermicelli. I sprinkled each bowl with parmesan cheese.

I made a green salad and everyone had their choice of boiled meat- it doesn’t look very tasty in the picture but it is fall-off-the bone tender and very flavorful.

If you’re in the mood for more soup, go to my entry for Sicilian Stories and Soup for a delicious chickpea recipe.