The Stone Soup

Do you know the story of The Stone Soup?

It is actually my favorite Grimm Brothers tale, because it favors the madiskarte. It's a story about cooperation, too.

The story goes like this (from extremelinux.info):

Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "Better keep moving on."

"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the soldier sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

"Ahh," the soldier said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage -- that's hard to beat."

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "Capital!" cried the soldier. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king."

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all. The villagers offered the soldier a great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and traveled on the next day.

Beautiful, no?

And here is my version of the Stone Soup (hehehe, joke lang, stylized beef nilaga lang yan :) ):

To cook Mai da Paypay Stone Soup, you don't really need a stone (sa Pilipinas, si Ding lang po ang may bato...eng eng eng corny!!! :P ). All you need are: good quality beef shank (better if it has lots of meat around it), potatoes, carrots, fish sauce (patis), cabbage (in the photo though, I used Romaine lettuce because wala na kami cabbage -- alternatively, you can also use pechay), onion leeks, onion, garlic, salt and pepper.

Put your garlic, onion and beef shank into a pot of boiling water. Season with salt, pepper and patis. Lower the heat, cover the pot and simmer for about two hours. When the beef is finally tender (falls off the bone easily), add the potatoes, carrots and cabbage. Let it simmer some more until the potatoes are almost cooked, and then add the onion leeks. Add the pechay only when you are ready to serve the soup.