We're well into the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' (thank you, A-Level English Lit curriculum for lodging Keats in my brain forever) and I can no longer pretend it's still summer. On the whole I am not a fan of autumn and winter because the garden is dormant, it gets dark too soon and it's soggy much of the time.
However, there are some positives about the cold and dark even a solar-powered soul like myself can appreciate. One is that it's time to get the beautiful Welsh woollen blanket on the bed once again. The other is that it's soup season.
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| It's a very good blanket |
I love soup. I really, really love it. Not just 'quite like' but actually think about and look forward to it. It's a wonderful, comforting thing. It can be healthy or indulgent, quick or take ages, smooth to soothe a sore throat or hearty and veering towards stew. I don't care, I love all of them.
One of my favourites has been sustaining me since I was breastfeeding my second baby (who is now 24) and never had time to get a proper meal. I actually fed him with a tea towel over his head while I ate this soup because there was nothing more likely to wake him for a feed than the presence of a warm dinner for me. The soup is nourishing because of the lovely Puy lentils, and helps cut through a bunged up nose or general winter blues with the kick of sour lemon juice and heat of chilli flakes.
Hot and Sour Soup with Lentils
1 diced onion
1tbs olive oil
200g mushrooms
300g Puy lentils
1.5l vegetable stock
3 crushed garlic cloves
lemon juice
chilli flakes
I fry the onions in the oil until they're lightly golden, then add the mushrooms and cook for another 5-7 minutes. I add the garlic for the last minute then pour the lentils and stock in, cover and simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the lentils are fully cooked but still hold their shape. Then it's adding enough lemon juice and chilli to fit your palate - in my case about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice and a heaped teaspoon of flakes, but I like things on the punchy side.
Other days it's nice to have something creamy and comforting. Leek and Potato is obviously a winner. Cream Of Tomato soup reminds me of snowy lunchtimes in Canada when I was a kid, dunking my grilled cheese into the soup bowl at the kitchen table in our house on Ann Street. However, most often I make soup with a single type of vegetable, roasted until sweet.
A change to these old favourites I've adopted recently is to add white beans to all my smooth soups. When they are pureed it just adds a bit of velvety smooth texture while boosting the protein, iron, minerals and fibre of the soup. Beans are ridiculously good for you and cheap, so it seems a no-brainer.
Roast 'Something' Soup
An oven tray of roughly chopped vegetable (eg butternut squash, carrots, parsnips or cauliflower)
2 tbs olive oil
vegetable stock
1 tin or jar of chickpeas or butter beans or cannellini beans
spices and salt and pepper
cream (optional)
I toss the squash slices (or carrots etc) in the oil and tip them into an oven tray which goes into a medium hot oven until the vegetable is tender. How long depends on big or small you've cut your veg, but typically it's in there for 30-50 minutes. Then I tip it in the blender with the beans and add stock slowly until it's a soup and not a puree. With squash and pumpkin soup I like to add cumin; carrot likes coriander; parsnips benefit from a dash of horseradish. Then it gets portioned up with anything not getting immediately eaten being labelled (obviously) and put in the freezer.
I took a tub of this type of soups - butternut squash with chickpeas - to have lunch with a friend the other day, and we were agreeing how brilliant this sort of food is when you just don't have the energy to stand in the kitchen. Sometimes, whether through illness, the general peri menopausal hellscape or just a case of I cannot be arsed, a container of soup in the fridge is like a hug from your past self to your current knackered self. "There, there. Don't worry, I've got you covered."
Broccoli soup is a special one - it needs almost nothing doing to it at all. Gordon Ramsay demonstrated it on telly once and it was a revelation! Literally a 5 minute soup. Just steamed broccoli put in a blender with stock and seasoning. It's a vibrant green, and is absolutely delicious with a slice of goats cheese sitting on top, gently melting. If you've ever got a slightly sad looking broccoli in the veg drawer, I can highly recommend using it up this way.
I've written in the past about the absolute queen of soup, Pasta E Fagioli which is especially pleasing made with home grown borlotti beans. In fact, some of last year's borlottis are in this week's sausage casserole, reminding me that the veg patch is a gift that keeps giving even when the garden is asleep.
My favourite ready made soup is the Smoked Haddock and Salmon Chowder made by Cully and Sully. It usually costs between £2.20-£3 and is a hearty meal all of its own. It's not quite up there with the marvellous Fiskesuppe we had in Norway, but it's the best soup I've had from a supermarket.
To be honest, for me there are very few vegetable soups worth buying in the supermarket since manufacturers started adding coconut solids to soups (rather than butter) to make them vegan. It's not nearly as nice. I stick to fish soups now if I'm buying ready made. My freezer is packed with reused Cully and Sully tubs; I buy it most weeks through winter.
The best restaurant for marvellous soup, in my opinion, is The Jolly Fisherman in Craster. They have a magnificent Crab Soup that they serve with a generous helping of homemade bread, and the House Chowder is also superb.
I am alone in my Soup Devotion in this house. Mark enjoys the odd bowl, but he'd usually opt for a sandwich instead. (Mark and I have VERY different ideas about what qualifies as acceptable bread. I am very much Not A Fan of the damned Chorleywood process that ruined bread quality in the UK, whereas he doesn't mind) Zach never quite forgave soup for being the only thing he could eat for weeks when he first got braces, and Miss B thinks soup is boring.
One thing we can all agree on is that Andy Warhol preserved for posterity the most truly repellent flavour of Campbell's Soups in his second Soup Cans collection of paintings. It's currently on display at the rather wonderful Cartwright Hall in Shipley, on the edge of Bradford. What on earth were Campbell thinking?
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| Hot Dog Bean Soup? No ta. |
