For the Love of British Food

Soup is a wonderful food for cold weather. It is cheap, nourishing and warning. Virtually whatever you have lurking in your fridge or cupboard can be turned into a pot of wonderful food and it doesn’t necessarily take hours.

Here are some easy ones that will persuade you that making soup for your family is like giving them a hug from the inside!

The first is the soup I mentioned in the last post, from this month’s Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine. It originates from the Basque country which is geographically where France meets Spain, but has its own language and its people would like it to be a separate country. Whatever you think about that, it has a very distinct and delicious cuisine.

Purrusalda

This is supposed to serve 4, but that would be over half a litre of soup each and you will need very big pan. I reckon that 6 or even 8 would get a decent bowlful from these quantities.

Leeks. The recipe I have says TEN but it would have to be those little mean tiny overtrimmed ones in plastic packets. I used just ONE big healthy unpackaged one that probably weighed 250g or so and got enough soup for two servings. I would probably use 4 that size for this much soup, or proportionally more smaller ones.

2 large potatoes – jacket baking size, peeled and diced.
Bunch flat leaf parsley.
2 litres water
2 cloves garlic peeled and finely sliced
100ml virgin olive oil
Nutmeg for sprinkling

Trim and wash any grit out of the leeks. Don’t throw away the coarse green bits and the ends. Put them in the pan with the water and the parsley stalks, reserving the leaves for garnish. Bring to boil and simmer 10 mins.

Meanwhile finely slice the leeks into rounds or ribbons. Strain the broth into a clean pan or a bowl and return to the pan with the prepared leeks and potato. Add a pinch of salt, bring to boil and simmer till the potatoes are completely soft.

In a small pan, warm the garlic in the oil. Don’t fry or allow to brown. Mash the potatoes into the soup. Give it a short whiz with a stick blender if you like, but leave plenty of texture. The other thing that will work is using leftover mash to thicken rather than the raw potato.  Add it broken up into little bits, not as one lump.

Now, you can either add the oil and garlic to the soup or use it to swirl on top of each serving with a sprinkle or grind of fresh nutmeg, not the ready ground kind.  Finely chop and garnish with the parsley leaves.

A common variation I found uses salt cod for protein making it a more complete main meal.

Next comes a soup that I’ve been making for years, but can’t remember where I got the recipe.

When I was on holiday in the USA in 2005, one of our tour stops was in Santa Fe . The hotel restaurant was booked up so we wandered round till we found a restaurant we liked the look of called the Blue Corn Café. Their version of it was CONSIDERABLY hotter than mine! It’s rather a pity, but it seems to have gone downhill since then and the reviews I found for last year were nothing as good as we experienced.

I have had to re-construct the recipe from memory, because I can’t find it in any of my books. Provided you use the tin of creamed corn somewhere and don’t blitz too much, all will be well. Experiment with the dried chilli, and try fresh green or red ones too.

Sweetcorn soup with chilli

1 x tin creamed sweetcorn – this gives the soup a nice texture and sweetness
Frozen sweetcorn – use as much as you need for how much soup you want to end up with. One cup measure of frozen kernels is about right for two generous portions of finished soup.
Stock – use whatever you have. If you’ve cooked up a chicken carcase after a roast, that’s great or use a chicken or veg cube or stock mix, but NOT beef stock and watch the salt content
Dried chilli flakes and/or fresh green or red chilli to your taste
Seasoning

Put the frozen kernels in your pan and barely cover with stock. No need to thaw first. Add the chilli. You can put in more later, but can’t take it out if you add too much! 

Heat to boiling point and turn down to a very gentle simmer for 20 mins. Taste and add more chilli if you want.  Blitz in pan with one of those handy stick blenders or in a juq liquidizer and return to pan. Don’t over do it, leave some texture. Add the creamed corn and re-heat. While your soup is cooking you could bake up some of those partly cooked baguettes or ciabatta. 

Almost better reheated the next day if there’s any left!

Cullen Skink

A Scottish soup based on smoked fish and potato. Please buy naturally smoked cod or kippers, not the artificially coloured sort. I owe the basic recipe to my oldest and most loved cookbook, The Pauper’s Cookbook by Jocasta Innes. It is out of print, but you might find a copy on ebay or something. It is worth a try if you are poor and hungry.

8 oz smoked fish
Any fish bones or heads you can get if you go to a proper fishmonger
1 pint milk
Large potato
Large onion
Salt and lots of pepper
Butter

Peel and dice potato, finely chop the onion and fry gently in a good knob of melted butter till the onion is soft but not coloured. Add milk and fish in one piece to the pan, with any extra bones and bits you managed to beg. Bring to boil and simmer till the potato is soft. Take the fish out onto a plate, take out bones, bits of skin etc if you used them. Mash the potato into the soup. Flake the fish and put it back into the soup and correct the seasoning. Add some nutmeg if you like it. Put an extra little knob of butter into each serving. You can also garnish with croutons, preferably your own home made, even add a bit of grated cheese. Use a blender before you put the fish back if you like.

Recipes aren’t for following slavishly and soup making is not an exact science.

Some of the bread mixes on the market now are very easy to use, even if you don’t have a breadmaking machine. I don’t. The ciabatta mixes give particularly good results. You’ll need to plan for a lot more time if you are doing this, than just heating up the part baked ones. These soups deserve a lot better than industrial sliced bread.  Today, I chose a flat square loaf called a grand rustique, from Waitrose fresh bakery and re-warmed pieces in oven, wrapped in foil.

PS. The Soup Dragon is a character from an almost-cult TV show from the late 60’s/70’s called the Clangers. Its author Oliver Postgate passed away recently. The Soup Dragon cooked up her green soup in wells in underground volcanic caves and craters and the Clangers enjoyed Blue String pudding for dessert.

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