Cozy Soups and Pantry Favorites With Clare de Boer and Jess Shadbolt of King
Here’s the soup that’s gonna get us through the winter.
It’s common to hear chefs waxing on about produce: that particularly sweet breed of red peppers, the radicchio that could star in an oil painting. But it’s a little more rare to hear them really celebrate the store cupboard.
“Before the produce comes the pantry,” Jess Shadbolt, chef of King in Manhattan, and co-author (with Annie Shi and Clare de Boer) of The King Cookbook (Bookshop here), says in this week’s podcast conversation. “You know, what you do with a head of fennel can be transformed by the olive oil you use to dress it or the salted anchovy that you drape over it.”
Jess and Clare (now the owner of Stissing House and writer of a particularly delicious newsletter, The Best Bit) walk us through their most prized pantry items, like the delicate taggiasca olives that meld perfectly into a dish, and the branches of fragrant oregano that are worth sifting through a sieve.
At King, they opt for salted anchovies over oil-packed ones: “The flavor is preserved with a freshness that you just don’t get under oil,” Jess explains.
These staples are an investment, but “if you’re using something like cured anchovies or cured olives or salami—or anything where someone else has done the hard work and you just get to, you know, chuck it in your pot and bring so much flavor,” Clare points out, “it’s really useful in the home context when you don’t necessarily have a lot of time or a really wide range of fresh ingredients.”
They’re especially handy when you’re improvising a simple dinner.
Clare and Jess get into their formula for soup on-the-fly, starting with “whatever you’ve got lurking that’s sort of limp and flabby at the back of the fridge.” That sad celery or fennel, plus the onion and garlic on your counter, need to be cooked until completely soft and a little darker in color. “That is where the flavor is beginning to come in,” Jess notes, “and I think that is often a step that is rushed.”
From there, she says, “you can go wherever you want. I always think it’s like one-third starch, two-thirds veg, top it up with some liquid.” Beans make a frequent appearance in the family meal at King. And then Clare suggests a quick blitz with an immersion blender, not rendering the soup completely smooth, but “just enough to make everything seem like it goes together.”
Soups like these could go a thousand ways, and you’d never need a recipe. But some are worth remembering, and having down exactly. I begged the chefs for their raclette soup recipe—the one they’d make after serving melty raclette out the window of the restaurant.
The raclette offering on snowy days seemed like a good idea, Jess says, “until you’re standing there in freezing cold weather, just covered in cheese.” At the end of every weekend, they’d take the half-moon rinds that remained and layer them with bread, cheese, anchovy, cabbage, creamy potatoes, and hot broth. “It definitely sticks to your ribs,” Jess says. It’s soup, Clare notes, but “you can almost slice it.”
Get the full recipe below. But before you scroll down, can I make two requests? First, I’d love if you’d hit follow wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts, so you can tune into this one later if now is not the right moment.
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Jess mentioned:
Carta de musica (recipe for the homemade version in The King Cookbook!)
Skye Gyngell, author of Spring, How I Cook, and A Year in My Kitchen
Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (Bookshop here)
Clifford A. Wright’s A Mediterranean Feast
Keith Floyd’s Floyd On France
Clare mentioned:
Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat (Used on AbeBooks here)
Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Italy
Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal (Bookshop here)
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Find LaBelle Patrimoine chicken at Whole Foods or GrownAsPromised.com
Unified Mills: Use code DINNERPLAN for 15% off
Made In Cookware: Head to madein.cc/dinnerplan to unlock your discount offer.
Win a tortilla press, a mountain of baking books, and so many pantry powerhouses in this big giveaway for The Dinner Plan subscribers.
Maggie mentioned:
An older version of King’s Pissaladiere recipe (NYT, gift link)
The Dinner Plan’s Cookbook Hall of Fame list
Clare’s Cider-Roasted Apples
A NOTE FROM OUR SPONSOR
This time of year, there’s nothing better than a golden-skinned roast chicken. But it really matters what kind of chicken you’re talking about. LaBelle Patrimoine’s heritage-breed chickens roam the pasture and are raised much longer than traditional breeds, with the highest animal welfare standards commercially available. They roast up rich and juicy and taste like chicken used to taste—that’s why they’ve been featured in The New York Times.
Raclette Soup
Reprinted from The King Cookbook. Copyright © 2025 by Clare de Boer, Jess Shadbolt, and Annie Shi. Reprinted with permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.
The best thing that came from our pandemic experience was this soup. After New York City shut down, we tried everything to breathe life into our restaurant. And the most treasured result was a pop-up raclette window. On weekends, during the first long winter, we’d slide open the bar’s accordion doors so neighbors and friends could gather out on the terrace. Blankets and mulled wine kept everyone warm as we scraped raclette over boiled new potatoes, cornichons, and pickled onions. At the end of each weekend, we were left with heaps of trimmings from the half wheels of raclette. And from those scraps, we made this soup. Served on Monday evenings, it gave the comfort we all needed.
Serves 6
1¾ pounds waxy potatoes, peeled
1 large head savoy cabbage (about 1 1⁄2 pounds)
1 day-old large loaf country or sourdough bread
Salt
4 large garlic cloves
About 4 cups hot chicken stock, homemade or store-bought, if not using the reserved cabbage blanching water (see method)
16 to 20 anchovy fillets, rinsed
Olive oil
⅓ cup of thyme leaves
Freshly ground black pepper
1¾ pounds raclette or Gruyère cheese, cut into 1⁄4-inch-thick slices
A 3-ounce wedge of Parmesan for grating
Roughly chop the potatoes into cubes the size of cherries. Remove the tatty outer leaves from the cabbage and discard. Snap off 8 to 10 of the outer leaves and reserve them. Once you come to the tighter leaves and core, roughly chop the cabbage into cubes the same size as the potatoes.
Cut away and discard the bread’s crust. Slice the bread into ½-inch-thick slices.
Fill a large pot with salted water, add one garlic clove and the potatoes, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat slightly and boil until the potatoes are just tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the potatoes to a colander to drain.
Add the diced cabbage to the pot and boil until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove it with a slotted spoon and add it to the colander with the potatoes.
With the pot at a rumble, taste for salt; the water can become too salty as it reduces. If necessary, top up with fresh water to dilute it; the water should be flavorful, not Dead Sea–salty). Add the whole cabbage leaves and blanch until they soften at their thickest point, about 5 minutes. Move them to the colander and reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer.
If you are not using chicken stock, this blanching water can serve as your vegetarian alternative; keep it at a very gentle simmer. If you are using chicken stock, discard the blanching water or save it for another use (it will be full of flavor) and bring the broth to a gentle simmer when ready to proceed.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Slice 2 of the remaining garlic cloves into thin slivers. Roughly chop about 8 of the anchovy fillets. Set a wide heavy pot (approximately 13 inches wide and 5 inches high) over medium heat and gently warm 3 tablespoons olive oil, along with the slivered garlic, thyme, and plenty of pepper, until the garlic sizzles. Stir in the chopped anchovies and let them melt into the oil, about 2 minutes. Stir in the blanched potatoes and the chopped cabbage and cook until everything is coated in the anchovy oil, a few minutes. Season boldly with salt and pepper (raclette is not a hugely salty cheese). Turn off the heat and transfer all but 1 cup of the potato-cabbage mixture to a medium bowl. Spread what’s left over in the bottom of the pot in a thin layer.
Grill or toast the sliced bread until it is golden brown on both sides, about 1 to 2 minutes. Split the remaining garlic clove in half and rub the warm toasts on both sides with the cut sides of the garlic clove, then season each slice with salt and olive oil (again on both sides), adding enough so the bread glistens.
Arrange a layer of toast over the potato-cabbage mixture in the pot. Follow with a layer of sliced raclette and then 1 or 2 of the blanched whole cabbage leaves. Spread another layer of the potato-cabbage mixture on top, followed by another layer of bread, cheese, and cabbage leaves. Continue until the pot is about four- hs full, ending with a layer of the potato-cabbage mixture.
Pour the warm chicken stock or blanching water into the pot until everything is just submerged. Add more stock or water if necessary. Cover the top with a lid of the remaining toasted bread, pressing down lightly so everything is snugly packed. Finish by covering the bread with the remaining bits of cheese, lots of grated Parmesan, a lattice of the remaining anchovies (see image above), and a generous drizzle of olive oil.
Cover the pot with a lid or with a sheet of aluminum foil, crimping the edges to seal. Bake in the oven until the bread softens and the raclette cheese melts, about 20 minutes. Uncover and continue baking until the Parmesan melts, the top looks golden, and the raclette is bubbling around the pot’s edges, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove the soup from the oven and let it settle for about 10 minutes.
Scoop out helpings of the piping-hot soup and finish each bowl with an olive oil drizzle and lots of pepper. Make sure every bowl has a ladle or two of the steaming broth.
This raclette soup recipe is going right on my “as soon as Los Angeles dips below 70 degrees” list; it looks delicious, and reads as really straightforward. I appreciate the guidance on how salty the broth should be! Thank you so much for sharing.
Love a godo cozy soup.