Ode to tourin by Jean-Pierre Xiradakis
Tourin is so simple that you can make it standing on one leg.
It has no equal, it is a legend: with garlic, with onion, with tomato, with chicken stock and meat juices, or with plain water. It is written a thousand ways depending on the village.
It is of the South-West, obviously, and thoroughly Gascon, because the morning after a night out it becomes the drunkard’s tourin. A potage, a soup, but above all not a velouté, it sits proudly on the table of the lowly. A modest, family, fragrant recipe, almost nothing that quenches thirst, that nourishes the table gently, joyfully, faithfully.
Proud in its presentation, usually whitened because the egg white draws out its filaments and gives this masterpiece its noble look. Garlic from Lautrec or onions from Mazères, egg yolk to bind and, at the last moment, to mark the territory and assert its character and strength, a few drops of good vinegar to offset the duck fat.
To serve it, the choice is wide with tourin: earthenware tureen, soup plate or bowl, and why not, for the diehards, the famous chabrot, prince of the oilcloth-covered table. And even – yes, really! – wedding tradition requires it of us in a chamber pot. From that point on it enters the pantheon by the main door.
Violins and trumpets, please! This is what, in our home of Gascony, we do with a little soup: a monument to the glory of gastronomy!
