By Mary Ellen Zangara Special Writer
Cafeteria chef serves up soup made famous in popular ‘Seinfeld’ episode
MANVILLE — Debbie Agans, Manville High School’s head cook, wasn’t looking to mimic the famous soup maker on NBC-TV’s “Seinfeld” comedy show of the 1990s, but her Mulligatawny soup gave students a bit of a gourmet choice in cafeteria lunches on Oct. 20.
The lunch ladies are trying to kick it up a notch from the same old menu, and Ms. Agans tries to come up with something different for the students and staff to eat at lunchtime. She and fellow cafeteria helper Judi Nurnberger were trying to think of food that had a lot curry in it as they were talking about the spice.
The only thing both could think of was trying a creamed chicken over rice with the curry.
”I went home and looked in my cook book and found a recipe with curry in it,” said Ms. Nurnberger.
The recipe was for Mulligatawny Soup, which was served on “Seinfeld” that was so popular, customers would wait in line and tolerate the rude behavior of the maker, known as the “soup Nazi.”
But that was just a coincidence, as the cafeteria chefs were looking for a recipe with a lot of curry.
”We thought it was really funny,” Ms. Agans said.So we decided to try it. It has green apples in it and all these weird ingredients in it and we had everything so we decided to give it a try. It turned out really good.”
The soup, which is an old Indian soup favorite, also uses chicken stock, milk and cream, butter, flour, finely diced celery, onions, leeks, green apples, white meat turkey, rice and, of course, the curry.
Ms. Agans spent the day making about six gallons of the soup. The hardest part of cooking the soup, according to Ms. Agans, was converting the recipe from a book to make 300 servings.
It all started out as a joke as Ms. Nurnberger was making fun of Ms. Agans as she does tend to make some unusual menu foods at times.
”We totally ran out of it by the third lunch — they ate it all,” Ms. Agans said. “Usually we have chicken noodle, beef vegetable and the normal stuff and every once in while we try to throw something else in there that is a little different.
”They like it, they really do,” Ms. Agans said.
Jen Astoria, the cafeteria manager, thought it was a good idea to try something different — as long as it meets the cafeteria’s requirements for nutrition.
Junior Andrew Franko tried it and reported it was “different,” but he liked it. He said he would definitely have it again.

