Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1065.
Making soups and stews.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1065.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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On this episode we have a dialogue between Charlotte and Mohammed about making a certain kind of food soup, and a thick kind of soup called a stew.
Let's get started.
Mmm, something smells good.
Hey.
Hey.
Put down that lid.
I'm making chicken soup.
I'm really in the mood for hearty stew.
There's nothing more appetizing on a cold day than a good stew.
Right.
Well...
This is a simple chicken soup with a clear stock and vegetables.
All you would have to do is thicken the soup and let it simmer a little longer.
Then presto, you have a stew.
I get it.
You're partial to thick soups.
I don't have time to cook a stew in a slow cooker, which is how I usually make it, not in a pot.
All right, all right.
Oh, a nice puree or bisque would be nice too.
Doesn't a chowder sound good right now?
I could really go for a nice bowl of chowder.
Fine.
We'll have chowder for dinner tomorrow.
Really?
Yes.
And it'll be the best chowder you've ever tasted that comes out of a can.
We begin our dialogue with Charlotte saying to Muhammad, Mmm, something smells good.
Mmm is a sound that we make sometimes in English for something that looks good or usually smells and or tastes good.
When you see someone preparing food or you smell good food, you might go Mmm, that smells delicious.
That smells like something I would really want to eat.
You would never do that, for example, in my kitchen when I'm cooking.
Mohammed isn't very happy with Charlotte.
Charlotte seems to be in Mohammed's kitchen, because we hear him respond to Charlotte by saying hey, put down that lid.
A lid, L-I-D, is the top of a pot or pan that you use for cooking.
To put something down means to put it back down where it was.
So we can guess that Charlotte has taken the top or the lid off of the pan where Muhammad is cooking something in order to smell it or to taste it.
Charlotte says, sorry, I just wanted to see what you're making.
Charlotte wanted to see what Muhammad was cooking.
Muhammad says, I'm making chicken soup.
Soup.
S-O-U-P, as you probably know, is a food that has some sort of sauce or liquid as the base or as the main ingredient.
Ingredient, the main part of the food.
Usually you put things into soup like noodles or, in this case, chicken.
Soup is almost always eaten with a spoon, at least in the United States.
There are some soups that you might drink and eat without a spoon.
You might just lift the bowl up and drink it, but usually you eat soup with a spoon.
Charlotte says, A stew, S-T-E-W, is a special kind of soup that's very thick.
It has typically a lot of meat and or vegetables in it.
Usually, it takes a long time to prepare a stew.
The adjective hearty H-E-A-R-T-Y when used with food, describes something that is very thick, filling and satisfying.
Something that is hearty is usually something that, after you eat it, you won't feel hungry again for a long time.
Charlotte says, there's nothing more appetizing on a cold day than a good stew.
When we describe food as appetizing, A-P-P-E-T-I-Z-I-N-G, we mean it's appealing.
It makes you want to eat it.
Muhammad says, right, well, this is a simple chicken soup with a clear stock and vegetables.
Muhammad is saying that he's not making a stew.
He instead is making a simple chicken soup with a clear stock.
Stock, S-T-O-C-K, has a couple of different meanings in English.
Here when we're talking about food, it means stock, a clear liquid that is made usually by boiling meat, vegetables and perhaps a few other ingredients.
You could have a chicken stock, which would be Liquid that comes from putting a big chicken or a little chicken into a pot of boiling water.
You get rid of the chicken and what you have left is this liquid that has a chicken taste.
We would call that chicken stock.
You can do the same thing with other kinds of meat, with fish, or with vegetables or some combination of those things.
The idea of a stock is that it doesn't have anything hard or solid in it.
It's just the liquid.
Muhammad is using a clear, C-L-E-A-R, stock.
A clear stock would be a stock that doesn't have a lot of color.
Chicken stock is usually a clear stock.
Charlotte says all you would have to do is thicken the soup And let it simmer a little longer.
Then presto, you have a stew.
Charlotte is suggesting to Muhammad how he could change his soup, his clear stock soup, into a stew.
She says all you would have to do is thicken the soup.
To thicken T-H-I-C-K-E-N food means, not surprisingly, to make something thicker, especially by adding either flour or another ingredient called cornstarch.
You can thicken soups in a number of different ways.
You can even use egg yolk, the inside of an egg, a raw egg, an uncooked egg, to thicken soup.
Or at least that's what I read in a cookbook once.
To simmer, S-I-M-M-E-R, means to boil something at a very low heat.
The water or the liquid in the pan is boiling but it isn't boiling very rapidly.
We would say it's not a full boil.
It is bubbling.
You can see the bubbles on the top of the surface but it's all being done at a very low heat.
Charlotte explains that stews are typically prepared or made by simmering the liquid for a long time.
She says, then presto you have a stew.
Presto.
P-R-E-S-T-O is a word we use to indicate that something has happened very quickly, even magically.
Presto comes from the Italian meaning quick or fast or rapid.
We sometimes use that term in music when talking about music that goes quickly or rapidly.
But more generally, the word is used to describe something that happens very quickly.
And that's what Charlotte is using the word here to mean.
Muhammad says, I get it, meaning, yes, I understand.
You're partial, he says, to thick soups.
To be partial, P-A-R-T-I-A-L, to something, means to prefer something.
Some men are partial to blondes.
They like women who have blonde hair.
Some people are partial to brunettes, women who have dark or brown hair.
Some people are partial to beer.
If they want to drink something with alcohol in it, they drink beer.
Some people are partial to wine.
They have a preference for wine and so forth.
Charlotte is partial to stews, to thick soups.
Muhammad says however, i feel like making a simple chicken soup.
I don't have time to cook a stew in a slow cooker, which is how i usually make it, not in a pot.
A slow cooker is a special kind of cooking machine, an electric machine that cooks food very slowly for many hours at a time.
A more common term for a slow cooker is a crock, C-R-O-C-K, pot.
Many people have crock pots that they use to cook food for a very long period of time.
Some people put food into the crock pot in the morning before they go to work and when they come home later in the day the food is done.
It's been cooking slowly the whole day.
That particular kind of cooking machine is called a slow cooker or a crock pot.
Muhammad usually makes stews in a crock pot, he says, not in a pot.
A pot P-O-T here refers to a metal container, something you cook with that is put on top of some source of heat, usually a stove, and is used to cook things like soup.
Pot has a number of different meanings in English.
Pot can also refer to marijuana that you smoke.
So you have to be very careful which kind of pot you use in the kitchen.
Do you want to prepare some food or do you want something else to happen?
Charlotte says, all right, all right.
She is saying that, yes, she understands that Muhammad doesn't want to make her a stew.
She then says, oh, a nice puree or bisque would be nice too.
A puree P-U-R-E-E is a smooth creamy soup or other kind of food that is made by putting food usually into a special machine called a blender B-L-E-N-D-E-R.
You might make a vegetable puree, where you take vegetables and you chop them up into very small pieces by putting them in this special kind of machine that chops up and blends food, called a blender.
Charlotte says, oh, I would also like soup that is a puree or a bisque, B-I-S-Q-U-E.
A bisque is a creamy, thick soup.
We often make lobster bisque, which is a thick soup made with the meat of a lobster.
Charlotte says doesn't a chowder sound good right now?
A chowder c-h-o-w-d-e-r is another kind of thick soup, a stew that is usually made with seafood potatoes, milk and or cream.
A very common kind of chowder in the US is clam C-L-A-M chowder.
A clam is a kind of shellfish.
Charlotte says, I could really go for a nice bowl of chowder.
To go for something means to really want to do something or to have something.
When we're talking about food, it's something that you would really want to eat.
I could go for a nice big donut.
I feel like eating a nice big donut.
I always feel like eating a nice big donut.
But if I ate donuts every time I felt like eating donuts, I would be 500 pounds and not very healthy.
Anyway.
Mohammed says, fine, we'll have chowder for dinner tomorrow.
He's telling Charlotte that he will make a thick soup, a chowder for her, not today, but tomorrow.
Charlotte says, really?
Mohammed says, yes, and it'll be the best chowder you've ever tasted.
That comes out of a can.
Muhammad is saying, yes, we'll have chowder tomorrow, but I'm not going to make the chowder.
I'm going to just buy a can of soup prepared already from the store and give you that.
Of course, soup from a can is never as good almost never as soup from your own kitchen soup that you prepare.
Muhammad is not saying that he's going to cook Charlotte some chowder.
He instead is saying he's just going to buy a can of chowder and give her that, which is not very nice, Muhammad really.
But then again, if Charlotte really wants chowder, she can learn how to cook herself and make her own soup.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Mmm, something smells good.
Hey, put down that lid.
Sorry, I just wanted to see what you're making.
I'm making chicken soup.
I'm really in the mood for hearty stew.
There's nothing more appetizing on a cold day than a good stew.
Right, well, this is a simple chicken soup with clear stock and vegetables.
All you would have to do is thicken the soup and let it simmer a little longer.
Then, presto, you have a stew.
I get it.
You're partial to thick soups.
But I feel like making a simple chicken soup.
I don't have time to cook a stew in a slow cooker, which is how I usually make it.
Not in a pot.
All right, all right.
Oh, a nice puree or bisque would be nice, too.
Doesn't a chowder sound good right now?
I could really go for a nice bowl of chowder.
Fine.
We'll have chowder for dinner tomorrow.
Really?
Yes, and it'll be the best chowder you've ever tasted that comes out of a can.
If you could really go for a wonderful dialogue in English, you've come to the right place, because our dialogues are written by the best scriptwriter on the internet, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
