basle

Once the holiday periods of Christmas and New Year's are past, and once the January doldrums of work and everyday life set in again, the attention of many people who live in Central Europe turns to thoughts of the next holiday along. Historically -- with the exception of local saint's days and various other church holidays -- this has usually meant the Carnival season, a period of parades and celebrations designed to ease the transition into the penitential fasting time of Lent (while also using up rich food and drink that couldn't be consumed during the Lenten season). From these early carnivals -- the word is probably derived from the Latin, carne vale, "goodbye to meat" -- many others worldwide, such as New Orleans's Mardi Gras and its great cousin in Rio de Janeiro, are descended.

In some parts of Europe, and specifically in such parts of Germany as Köln / Cologne, this season is already underway: the Kölnisch carnival season begins on "Elf Elf", the eleventh of November. But most other carnivals really kick in about a week before Ash Wednesday, in at least several days of eating, drinking, dancing, partying, and general costumed madness.

One of the notable exceptions to the timing is the famous carnival of the city of Basel / Basle / Bâle, on the northwestern border of Switzerland. Basel's carnival is called Fasnacht, and it doesn't start until four AM of the Monday after Ash Wednesday.

There are Swiss who say that the Baslers only do this to be difficult. The Baslers themselves -- who some call "the New Yorkers of Switzerland" -- laugh and ignore the opinions of others: they have been going their own way for a long time, and they do the same as regards what many of them regard as de drey scheenschte dääge, "the three best days in the year". For those three days, nonstop, from four AM on the Monday to four AM on the Thursday, the city of Basel essentially shuts down except for its hardiest bars, pubs and restaurants. Its streets fill with elaborately costumed members of the parade guilds or cliques, who fife and drum their way through the confetti-buried city streets in large groups and small at all hours of the day and night. Nothing can stop them but the desire for food and drink (and very occasionally sleep). And the food most often associated with Fasnacht in Basel is mehlsuppe.

The word translates most simply as "flour soup", but the translation does not do the soup justice. Mehlsuppe is a hearty, strongly flavored soup based on a beef stock, prominently featuring browned flour and onions, sometimes red wine, and seasoned not only with peppercorns but also with medievally-slanted spices now more typical of sweet dishes than savory ones -- usually cloves, but sometimes adding or substituting nutmeg or allspice, depending on who's cooking. Fasnacht marchers and visitors alike sop this soup up by the gallon and at all hours over the Three Best Days.

At other times of the year, mehlsuppe is available almost everywhere in Switzerland as a soup mix, or even canned. But none of these can compare with the impact of the freshly-made soup -- as attention-getting and unforgettable as being bopped on the bean by a thrown tangerine from one of the Fasnacht parade floats.

Click on "read more" to see two typical mehlsuppe recipes.