Hay Soup

Every so often, a recipe really speaks to my inner Ritualist, my inner Pagan. Whether it's Cat Cora's Milk and Honey Soup, idea for Imbolc, or something more like Martha Stewart's gorgeous and timeless Yule Log cake, decorated with those genius meringue mushrooms, there's always a recipe out there waiting for me to discover, obsess, and subsequently design a party for.

Today while watching Richard Bangs' Adventures with a Purpose on the PBS sister station Create, I discovered something called "Hay Soup". At the Gasthof Rössli in Escholzmatt, Switzerland, Chef Stefan Weisner creates an organic version of this recipe that sounds mindblowing:

RB: What’s your most famous dish?....
SW: The hay soup.
RB: It’s the hay soup? Well, let’s go make some hay. Let’s go have some soup.
[VO:] He gathers everything himself, and leaves no stone unturned as he roots around the biosphere. His ingredients: ants, coal, stones, snow, hay, silver, gold, moss, ferns, peat, alpine roses, tree bark and...whiskey. His menu seems a demonic offering that lays somewhere between between absurdity and transcendence. The soup even has a hay nest for garnish.
RB: What an explosion of flavor…There are 49 different herbs that are in this hay soup and Stefan picks them personally.


Now I'm on a mission to create this soup, myself. 49 herbs? I can think of maybe 15 offhand! Not to mention it's traditionally served in a small bowl literally nestled in a nest of fresh, green hay. I can't afford to fly to Switzerland right now, much as I would love to.