Pullens Soup Kitchen

21.03.08: Harira + Cafe Cairo

2008-03-25T20:22:00.004Z

The final Soup Kitchen for now coincided with the Equinox, Good Friday, and a Full Moon, so it was an auspicious date for Cafe Cairo to host their third - and first officially licensed! - night at the Pullens Centre. For lunch, Rhiannon and Daisy made a vegetarian Harira, along the lines of the one they first made on 18.01.08, which should become emblematic of the cafe when it goes on the road, travelling around festivals this Summer. Keep up with the Cairo crew via their MySpace and Facebook pages.

20.03.08: Spicy Red & Black Bean

2008-03-20T17:37:00.005Z

With Kai assisting on the production of my final soup of the season, I opted for what has been, I reckon, my most successful recipe. One of my personal goals for the Soup Kitchen was to develop a deep bean recipe and this one incorporates two ingredients that have become emblematic of the soup kitchen, for me: biber salçası (red pepper paste) and creamed coconut.

I followed the Nearly Perfick Recipe, pretty much. Soaked the beans over night and boiled them up separately for an hour. Added chopped garlic and three minced Scotch bonnets to the usual mirepoix of carrots, onions and celery and sweated the mixture down thoroughly in the soup pot, seasoning with jeera 'n' dana (cumin and coriander) before adding the contents of a 340g jar of tatli biber salçası (sweet red pepper paste). I had a litre of bean soup frozen in my 'fridge, so added that to the pot. Then I added two thirds of the beans with four litres of Marigold bouillon, simmered for fifteen minutes and relaxed for five before blending. Finally, I incorporated the rest of the beans, finished the soup with 100g creamed coconut dissolved in a litre of boiling water and garnished each bowl with freshly chopped coriander.

Sanchez - who discovered us late, but has been coming in daily over the last week - pronounced this a "serious, black man's soup" which I guess means hearty and soulful. Mind you, Sanchez did not like the yoghurt I swirled into his soup and demanded a replacement bowl. He wasn't the only one who declined the yog, though most of the others are vegans.

25 people enjoyed this soup and several others popped in who couldn't pause for a bowl, but to say thanks for all the soups over the past months. Several wrote extravagant praise in the dairy, with repeated entreaties to revive the Soup Kitchen when the season rolls around again. And there were a couple, caught in the pic below, who were visiting the Soup Kitchen for the first time!

Last soupers: Sayonara!

19.03.08: Potato & Leek

2008-03-19T15:03:00.007Z

The Soup Kitchen has essayed several leek and potato soups and produced a Nearly Perfick Recipe, but Daisy's and Holly's novel spin was potato and leek. They produced a terrific soup that was typically chunky (unblended) and herby, with lots of thyme and lashings (or should that be grindings?) of black pepper. Frugally, it also incorporated a jug full of Spring onion soup left over from the day before.

The Ladies Who Lunch always bring a great vibe with them, as you can see (that baby does not belong to Daisy, BTW;-). Maybe they'll get it together to offer food the Pullens Centre sometimes over the coming months, after the Soup Kitchen closes? Let's hope!

18.03.08: Creamy Spring Onion

2008-03-19T11:02:00.005Z

For my penultimate soup, I wanted a straightforward single-varietal vegetable recipe based upon the traditional mirepoix and maybe made creamy with the judicious addition of coconut. I thought to refine the Spring Onion soup improvised on 06.03.08, when there were no leeks in the market, blending the soup and straining it through a sieve to achieve a silky consistency.

I bought a 3kg box of Spring onions from pals in East Street, bruv, for a quid more than I paid last time, plus a couple of leeks, a kilo of spuds and a bunch of parsley. I went to Oli's for bread and to get a head of their celery, which always seems greener and bushier, and saw that they had wonderful white onions, so I bought a couple of them, too, as per the pic.

Back at base, I peeled and diced the white onions, washed and diced the leeks and half a kilo of carrots, plus a whole head of celery, and sweated this mirepoix over medium-low heat in a splash of oil in the bottom of the soup pot with its lid on to retain the moisture, stirring every couple of minutes to prevent sticking. I peeled the potatoes, chopped them into a rough dice, and added them to the pot. The spuds will cook down completely to thicken the soup.

I washed and then I started to chop Spring onions, adding them to the pot as they were chopped, stirring the contents and adjusting the heat to prevent sticking. Fresh Spring onions give off quite a lot of moisture, so no further liquid was necessary until all the Spring onions had been chopped - which took a minute or 45 - and added to the pot. Then I covered the contents with four litres of Marigold bouillon and simmered for ten minutes before turning off the heat and leaving the pot to cool for ten minutes more before blending.

I blended the soup thoroughly, adding another litre of bouillon and a litre of boiling water with 100g of creamed coconut dissolved into it. However one blends and blends, little bits of onion will always remain, with a slightly slimy texture that's not too pleasant, unless you pass it. Yes force all this soup through a sieve into another pot, using the back of the ladle. It's worth the effort, I guarantee.

One person described this soup in the dairy as 'very Springy' and someone else wrote, 'fucking lovely', but they should watch out, because language like that can get you excluded from Pullens Tenants & Residents Association. A third person put, 'totally gorgeous', which is the same sentiment expressed in a less spunky form. And then there's the woman who has so fallen for my soup that she talks about it in her sleep, to her boyfriend's consternation. She reckons 'soup of souperman are so gooood!!' C'est vrai, cherie. What are you going to do without me?

Defeated ping pong champ sniffs the soup (pic of Victoria by Bruce Webb)

17.03.08: Irish Broth

2008-03-17T18:48:00.008Z

I set out this morning to make a chunky vegetable miso soup thickened with pearl barley, but then I realised it's St Paddy's day and miso is hardly very Oirish, is it begorrah? So, I figured I'm leave out the miso, amp up the herbiness and call this stand-your-spoon-in veggie stew-soup, 'Irish'. It was a chilly day and this rib-sticker hit the spot with 20 people, several of whom wrote nice comments in the dairy: 'I finally feel warm again'.

I used a kilo of pearl barley (pot barley might've been better, but that's for another time) and bought a selection of roots, including a couple of different types of turnip, parsnips and swede. And cabbage, nice Savoy cabbage. And some baby button mushrooms, just for the hell of it. I boiled up the barley with a couple of dessert spoons full of dried herbs, diced a mirepoix and sweated it while peeling and dicing the roots into 1cm cubes. I wok-fried the diced roots (and mushrooms) - as they do in Ireland - before adding them to the pot, then added the cooked barley, plus six litres of Marigold bouillon. Simmered the soup for fifteen minutes and finished it with shredded cabbage. Garnished with shamrock.

14.03.08: Pumpkin & Split Pea

2008-03-14T21:41:00.009Z

The Soup Kitchen reveres Delia Smith, even when having a gentle dig at her for promoting McCain's frozen discs of mash potato as a soup thickener. But of course there are people who just don't have the time, inclination or skillz to mash! These days, Deals is driving a vehicle called How To Cheat At Cooking in which she cuts corners by incorporating readymade products into her recipes. In that spirit, I offer this interpretation of my friend Jennifer's soup, the secret ingredient of which is a 425g jar of Loyd Grossman's Jalfrezi Sauce.

To make 30 portions, you'll need 2kg of yellow split peas and a couple of pumpkins, or one big one. I saw some lovely green skinned pumpkins in East Street yesterday, but today they were gone and so I had to haggle with a wily Jamaican pumpkin purveyor instead and pay his price. Not that I minded, because his pumpkin was every bit as good as he claimed and he was grateful for all my change. Plus, with a couple of the Scotch bonnets left over from t'other day for added heat, I could (and did) claim that this soup is coming direct from JA:

1. Soak the split peas overnight and start by boiling them up and simmering for at least half an hour.

2. Finely chop a mirepoix of onion, carrots and celery, about a pound or half a kilo of each. As this soup will not be blended, it's important that the dice is small and neat. And a couple of de-seeded and minced Scotch bonnets (left), or more if you dare, but be aware that these peppers are HOT.

3. Sweat the mirepoix over medium/low heat in a good splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the lid on to preserve moisture, taking it off every few minutes to stir the contents with a wooden spoon and prevent them from sticking or burning.

4. While the mirepoix sweats, peel the pumpkins, remove their seeds and dice their flesh into centimetre cubes.

5. When the mirepoix has cooked down and begun to caramelise in the bottom of the soup pot, add a dessert spoonful each of ground jeera 'n' dana (cumin and coriander), stirring it into the mixture. Then add the jar of Loyd's jalfrezi sauce and the contents of a tin of tomatoes, stirring that into the mirepoix as it continues to cook.

6. Now add the diced pumpkin, stir, cover with two litres of boiling Marigold bouillon, turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Add another couple of litres of bouillon and simmer for ten minutes or so before adding the peas.

7. Now add the cooked split peas with a further two litres of Marigold bouillon, making six litres in all. Stir the soup so that it's well mixed and simmer for a further ten minutes. The soup will continue to thicken as the split peas disintegrate.

8. Check the seasoning. If you've overdone the chilli, calm down the flavour by grating creamed coconut into your soup. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander as you serve.

19 people enjoyed this soup, which was an improvement on the day before, but the experience was a lot more pleasant. A small party came in from the Buddhist Centre up the street, where Ira doesn't cook on Fridays, and one of them also tried a bowl of yesterday's left over cauliflower soup. As did Joe, because he's a bit young to appreciate chilli. Several of the Soup Kitchen regulars lingered over second bowls and wrote compliments in the dairy: 'legendary - makes me sweat in a good way.

13.04.08: Cauliflower, White Bean & Fennel

2008-03-13T17:44:00.006Z

Strange day. Uneasy atmosphere, with funereal talk and the news of Irene at no.89 having been burgled. I've got used to shifting most, if not all of the soup and seeing twenty three friendly faces, but today I struggled to serve 14 bowls to lost souls, same as the day we started, on 01.10.07, when cauliflower was also involved. Not that I'm blaming the caulis, mind, nor Kai, who helped to make this soup. It was inspired by the sight of perfectly decent looking cauliflowers on a stall down East Street for 70p each. I bought five. I thought the combination with fennel and white beans was pretty good when I first tried tried it on 14.01.08, but I got left with loads and served it up again the following week. Still, the version with turnips I did at the beginning of last week went down well. So, I thought I was onto a winner. Mmm...

I'd intended to produce a definitive recipe, but now I can't be bothered and so I'll keep it concise: sweated mirepoix augmented with three bulbs of fresh fennel; seasoned with fennel seed and powdered turmeric; added cauli stalks and leaves, reserving the florets, covered with two litres of Marigold bouillon; added three 800g cans of butter beans and another 2l. bouillon; simmered for ten minutes and rested for five before blending. After blending, returned pot to heat and added cauliflower florets with a final 2l. bouillon (making six litres in total) and simmered for ten minutes before blending again, just enough to break up the florets, leaving some texture in the soup. Served garnished with chopped Spring onion and scattered fennel seeds. Yum, yum? Ho, hum!

12.03.08: Carrot 'n' Ginger + Chilli

2008-03-12T17:50:00.002Z

Carrot and Ginger. Or is it the other way round?

Daisy was absent with the sniffles today and so Rhiannon made the kind of pungent soup that would probably have made her better if she'd had any. But, seeing as Daisy stayed under her duvet, all her soup got eaten by others. Fantastic it was, too, with gob-smacking flavour: ginger upfront, hotly pursued by the almost smoky Scotch bonnets; the carrot coming through nonetheless, with the tang of fresh coriander, as garnish. 'Twas truly, deeply, madly orange.

11.03.08: Chickpea & Spinach

2008-03-11T17:22:00.006Z

This soup proved to be as popular as any served at the Soup Kitchen and caused someone to remark that the soup making is peaking as the season draws to a close while some others expressed sadness that their soup supply is to be cut off at the end of next week. But let us not mourn the passing of time and rather celebrate the turn of the seasons' wheel. Let's write down a few more definitive recipes while this blog is still active. And let us also get the table tennis tournament played out before the middle of next week!

To make 30 x 250ml portions, you will need: two kilos of dried chickpeas; two 800g cans of Natco spinach puree; a jar of tahini; a whole head of garlic, at least; plus a pound, or half a kilo each of onion, carrots and celery for the mirepoix and a kilo of floury white potatoes to thicken the soup. (Alternatively, you could use gram flour as a thickener.) This soup is seasoned with jeera 'n' dana - cumin and coriander - which you can buy as powder, or grind yourself for a fuller flavour and finished with Cayenne pepper, or a squeeze of lemon juice, if you prefer.

1. Soak the chickpeas over night. Start by discarding the soak water and boiling the peas in fresh water, simmering for an hour or more.

2. Wash, peel and cut the onion, carrot and celery into a rough dice. Peel and crush the garlic. Sweat this mixture of chopped veg. over medium heat in a generous splash of oil in the bottom of the soup pot with the lid on, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

3. Season the cooking mirepoix with ground cumin and coriander, two desserts spoons full of each. Make up two litres of Marigold bouillon and add a splash or two to the soup pot to stop the seasoned mirepoix from sticking.

4. Peel and roughly chop the potatoes and add them to the pot with the rest of the two litres of bouillon. Turn up the heat and bring the soup to the boil.

5. Prepare a further two litres of Marigold bouillon before adding two thirds of the chickpeas to the soup pot and then pour it over and continue to cook. If the peas left in the pot, which will be added to the soup later, are soft, take them off the heat. Otherwise, continue to cook them until soft.

6. Simmer the soup for fifteen minutes, then turn the heat off and leave it to stand for ten minutes before blending. Blend to a smooth consistency.

7. Return the blended soup to the heat and add the cans of spinach puree and the rest of the chickpeas with a further two litres of Marigold bouillon.

8. Stir in tahini to finish the soup. I used a full 450ml jar, but you can vary the quantity according to taste.

9. Serve garnished with a sprinkle of Cayenne or a squeeze of lemon juice to cut the flavour of the chickpeas and tahini with something a bit sharp. Enjoy!

10.03.08: Rooty Miso

2008-03-10T20:39:00.009Z

All weekend the forecasters kept predicting that heavy weather was imminent so, this morning, I thought I'd better make a proper hearty soup to insulate us all against low, low pressure. Plus, I've been intending to revisit my experiments with miso that began back with winter vegetables on 17.10.07, continued with various beans and pulses on 23.11.07, and reached some sort of a conclusion with root veggies on 10.12.07. Also, I wanted to have a go with Marigold Organic Instant Miso Bouillon Powder.

I bought this array of ingredients from Somerfield (swede, kale, carrots, potatoes) and Oli's (white radish, two types of turnips, 3 tins of kidney beans for a quid). I might say I spent a bit more than I usually do and then I spent £2.69 more at Baldwins for a tub of the aforementioned miso powder. Previously, I've mixed fresh miso paste into a soup stock made of Marigold bouillon and learned to add it last and then not to let the soup boil in order to preserve the precious enzymes as far as possible. But this powder is a whole lot easier to use and the 140g tub makes 7 litres, which is exactly how much I require. So, thanks once again, Marigold, and lets talk about sponsorship, eh?

To make the soup, I peeled and diced the swedes and turnips and radishes into centimetre cubes, put them in a roasting tray with a little vegetable oil, and roasted the dice on high heat for half and hour or forty minutes, stirring the mixture occasionally. Since this soup was not going to be blended, I took extra care chopping a finely diced mirepoix of leek instead of onion, with carrot and celery, plus half a dozen cloves of garlic, and sweated it in the bottom of the pot. I peeled six large white potatoes and steamed them for about half an hour, until they were cooked right through.

I assembled the soup by adding the roast root veg. to the mirepoix in the soup pot, covering with four litres of Marigold Miso, then squeezing the steamed potatoes through a ricer into the soup to thicken it, adding a further two litres of boiling miso bouillon, stirring, and finishing with shredded curly kale plus the last litre of miso. Looking back, shredded curly kale has been the green component of all four of my miso soups. To paraphrase Al Murray, all hail to the kale.

I garnished this rooty miso soup with fresh bean sprouts for crunch and served 21 people with at least 28 portions, as many had seconds. A bowl was left over for me to enjoy and, while I don't necessarily concur with the person who wrote in the dairy that this was the 'best so far', it was better than OK if I do say so myself.

07.03.08: Butter Bean & Parsnip

2008-03-07T17:48:00.002Z

I soaked a couple of kilos of butter beans over night in the expectation that there would be someone to help me shuck their skins off this morning. Wrong! So, that was an unexpectedly happy hour, which put the time of soup readiness back to nearly one o'clock. By then, Iaxte and baby, plus husband, had been sent away once and returned already, hungry. Happily, they declared the wait for this super smooth soup to have been worthwhile.

The news from my (provisionally) favourite cheap veg. stall down East Street is that the character who runs it has learned a new word and it is the South London diminutive of 'brother' that's usually used only by close friends, innit, bruv? However, it's hard to take exception to inappropriate expressions of familiarity, I've found, when they are made by a Breugelesque bloke of indeterminate Eastern European origin who is sorting you out with 3 kilos of parsnips, a head of celery, half a kilo of carrots and a packet of three garlic bulbs for a fiver, bruv.

I made the soup in my usual way: starting with a sweated mirepoix with garlic, ground jeera 'n' dana (cumin and coriander); adding the diced parsnips to the soup pot, covering with four litres of Marigold bouillon, boiling and simmering for twenty minutes with the de-skinned butter beans; resting the cooked soup for ten minutes and then blending it, adding a further two litres of bouillon, until smooth and silky. I garnished each bowl with a teaspoon of finely chopped Spring onion.

06.03.08: Spring Onion

2008-03-06T20:33:00.006Z

Kai has been one of the Soup Kitchen's most regular customers. He comes in practically every day after 2.30, even when he's overdone it a bit and really doesn't have the stomach for any kind of food. Maybe sitting around in the soup kitchen doesn't beat sitting around at home, but at least it's a change of scenery, eh? Anyways and for whatever reason, Kai declared himself ready and willing to make soup and the Soup Kitchen accepts all levels of ability. Kai rocked up at ten o'clock this morning, as arranged.

He said he fancied Leek & Potato but East Street market was all out of leeks and full to bursting with great big fat fresh Spring onions, so that's the way it went. I got a whole box of Spring onions - 3.5kg, maybe? - for £3.50 from what's becoming my favourite stall (finally!) I also got another 3kg of white spuds from them, plus carrots and celery: a fiver, all in (that's why they're my favourites). Back at base, we got choppin' and there was a lot of choppin' to be done. Because the soup was to be only partially blended and some chunks would remain, I explained to Kai, the potatoes must be diced quite precisely into 5mm cubes. He duly complied.

Like I keep telling anyone who cares to hear, my soups follow the method I was taught a quarter of a century ago by a bloke who had read, digested and taken to heart Michel Guerard's Cuisine Gourmand: stage one, sweat a mirepoix and season it; stage two, add the main ingredient(s), cover with liquid and boil; stage three, blend. Adjust seasoning. Garnish. Serve. Simple, innit?

Kai seemed to get the hang of it. He chopped those spuds mighty fine. At stage three, I removed a third of the cooked veg before blending and returned it tot he pot after, to give texture. People loved this soup: 21 of 'em finished the pot, which is usually about 30 portions, so I guess that half had seconds. Someone wrote in the dairy: 'it put a Spring in my step'.

05.03.08: Minted Pea

2008-03-05T20:30:00.004Z

This vivid green soup proved so popular that it was all gone by 2.30, when I went to try a bowl. Rhiannon says it was an easy soup, made with frozen peas a bit like the one back on Day Six and obviously it was delicious because it all got eaten up PDQ and, by the time I arrived, the Ladies Who Lunch had moved on to tea and tamarind, as seen here:

04.03.08: White Bean and Cauliflower with Turnip

2008-03-04T19:12:00.005Z

This soup started out last night as a half kilo bag of haricot beans that I put in to soak over night with the vague intention of marrying them with cauliflower and maybe using gram flour as a thickener. But then, buying veg. in East Street, I picked up one of those stainless steel bowl bargains, probably a couple of kilos of turnips gone a bit soft. And then again, buying bread at Oli's, I picked up a couple of 800g cans of butter beans. So, this soup was going to be thick enough with no need for flour.

Back at base, I boiled the soaked haricots for half an hour while I chopped and cooked a mirepoix of onions, carrots, and celery - roughly half a kilo of each - with the peeled cloves of half a head of garlic and sweated the diced veg in a splash of vegetable oil in the bottom of the soup pot, keeping its lid on to preserve the moisture, but stirring frequently to prevent sticking. That's what I usually do. Then I seasoned the slowly cooking mirepoix mixture with turmeric, ground cumin and ground coriander, about a dessert spoonful of each.

I peeled and roughly diced the turnips, adding them to the pot and mixing them in with two litres of boiling Marigold bouillon. I removed the florets from four cauliflowers, discarded the outer leaves and diced the stem, adding the dice to the pot. I drained the contents of the two cans of butter beans and added them to the soup, which I brought to the boil and simmered for about ten minutes before adding a further two litres of bouillon and the cauliflower florets. I brought the soup back to the boil and simmered it for ten minutes before turning the heat off and leaving the pot to cool for ten minutes before blending.

While blending the soup, I poured in another couple of litres of Marigold bouillon - making six in total - and when the soup had achieved a smooth consistency, I added the cooked haricot beans and returned the pot to the hob. Served with copious freshly-chopped parsley, I thought this was a pretty fine soup. V. Soup Kitchen and, in our finest tradition, 23 persons were served (several of whom had seconds).

Joe (right) and Esme (left) did art today: Esme's lady with chicken is shown.

03.03.08: Freegan Auberginey

2008-03-03T19:03:00.001Z

In just a few weeks, Olga a.k.a. Ola has established a signature soup style using ingredients she fetches for free from the wholesale market at New Covent Garden, where one can usually pick up sweet peppers and tomatoes-on-the-turn, as well as a variable selection of other stuff. Ola's style is a vegetable potage, thickened with potatoes in the base, perked up with tomatoes in the top and usually incorporating at least one other prominent ingredient.

Today, Olga and Eugene came back from the market with various items, including a few bulbs of fennel and eight or so big aubergines, individually packaged in cellophane. Mmm... Aubergine soup? I advised Olga to slice and roast the aubergines with quite a lot of oil to concentrate their flavour and I didn't stick around to watch, but I guess that's what she did. I know she put the fennel in the base of the soup with onion and leek, carrot and celery. Then, I expect, she added the aubergines that had been roasted with tomatoes and peppers and pureed the lot with Brenda the blender.

Garnished with chives, this was a thick, distinctly 'auberginey' (Eugene's word) concoction that went down very well with 21 people. However, it was also Ola's last go in the Soup Kitchen for the time being. Having beguiled us with her filling and zesty soups, Olga is going home to see her folks in Lithuania leaving not even a picture for us to remember her by. Eugene endures!

29.02.08: Butternut Bisque

2008-02-29T16:58:00.007Z

I took a walk down East Street market and at its far end I found a stall selling two big butternut squashes for a pound, so I bought four and figured I'd refine and quantify the Carroty Gingernut recipe what I rocked on 04.02.08.

Having onion and celery for the mirepoix, I spent another pound on carrots and ginger. I also had the end of a jar of biber salçası in the 'fridge, so all I needed from Oli's when I went there to buy bread was a slab of creamed coconut and also a bunch of fresh coriander for the garnish.

1. First, make a mirepoix by chopping onions, celery and carrots - about a pound, or half a kilo of each - and sweat these chopped vegetables with a few peeled cloves of garlic in a splash of oil in the bottom of a soup pot, keeping its lid on to preserve moisture.

2. Add the ginger. If added to the base of the soup and allowed to cook down with the mirepoix, the flavour of fresh ginger will mellow and be pervasive without being over powering. It's hard to overdo it and, if you do, you can always calm down the gingery-ness with coconut. Anyway, in this instance, I used probably four fat thumbs or maybe 12cc of fresh ginger, peeled and minced and mixed into the cooking mirepoix.

3. Peel the butternut squashes. If using a speed peeler, make sure all the skin is removed, down to the orange flesh. Cut the squashes in half and remove their seeds, then chop them into roughly 2cm cubes.

4. Before adding the diced squash to the soup pot, first add 200-250g of biber salçası (red pepper paste), if you have it. If not, use tomato puree.

5. Now add the diced squashes to the soup pot and cover with four litres of Marigold bouillon (one litre per squash). Bring to the boil and simmer for twenty minutes, until the flesh is soft enough to be blended.

6. Turn off the heat and leave the pot to stand for five or ten minutes. This is particularly important in this recipe, because you want the texture of the soup to be as silky as possible and, therefore, all its contents must be thoroughly cooked before blending.

7. While the soup is cooling, before it's blended, dissolve 100g of creamed coconut in a litre of boiling water and make up another litre of Marigold bouillon. As you blend the soup, slowly pour in this extra liquid to achieve a smooth consistency.

8. Check the seasoning. If the ginger flavour is too pronounced, you can calm it down by grating more creamed coconut directly into the soup. Serve garnished with chopped coriander.

This soup went down really well, BTW, with many second and third bowls served;-)

28.02.08: Definitive Borscht

2008-02-28T21:00:00.009Z

As regular readers of this blog well know, borscht has been a recurring theme. Way back on Day 12, Lou essayed a recipe so simple that we could hardly call it Borscht since it was basically a beetroot puree. Then I had a go with a recipe from the Soup Bible. Then I had another go and so did she. By now, I reckon we're about ready to settle upon a definitive recipe.

Borscht is traditionally made with beef stock, so the main issue with making a vegetarian version is how to get that flavour and the secret is: Marmite! Not just Marmite, but mushrooms, too, sweated right down in the mirepoix to surrender their bosky essence. Like this:

For the mirepoix, you will require a pound or half a kilo each of onions, carrots and celery, plus half a head of garlic. Buy five kilos of beets, four decent sized Bramley cooking apples, and a 750g punnet of field mushrooms. You'll also need cream or yoghurt and chives or dill for the garnish. I like thick Greek yogurt thinned wiht a little lemon juice to make it runnier and a clump of chives one can cut straight into the soup wiht scissors.

1. Roughly chop the onions, carrots and celery and sweat them in a splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the peeled and crushed garlic. Keep the lid on the soup pot to keep the moisture in, but stir the contents often.

2. Next, add the mushrooms. You don't have to bother chopping them. You'll want to sweat them right down and they will release a lot of moisture. Keep the lid on, but keep stirring.

3. Apples are a bit of a controversial ingredient, but add a delightfully fruity note. Peel, core and chop the Bramleys and add the to the pot, stirring them into the mixture.

4. As the soup pot continues to cook over low heat, peel and chop the beets. Add them to the pot, stirring them into the mirepoix, and add sufficient liquid to cover, probably two litres. You need a dark vegetable stock: Marigold bouillon mixed with a dessert spoon of Marmite per litre.

5. Boil the beets quite vigorously for half an hour until they're soft enough to be blended and then liquidise, homogenise and blend, blend, blend your borscht. Add more liquid to create a silky texture and achieve your desired consistency.

6. Serve with an optional swirl of yogurt, or cream, chopped chives or dill, and black pepper.

Dairy comment: 'borscht as good as a Porche!'

Occupational hazard: beetroot hands

27.02.08: Herby Onion

2008-02-27T19:38:00.010Z

Daisy writes:
'Made with onion tears of love. While we didn't actually cry into the pot, we definitely shed enough salt water to substitute a small ocean. (The Indian Ocean, Daze?) I mean, we chopped a hell-of-a-lot of onions!
Somehow, we blindly managed to add some delicious herbaceous ingredients, including thyme and a nice amount of black pepper. The soup was served with garlic croutons and garnished with chopped parsley and Spring onions.
Hopefully our puffed-up panda eyes and slightly onionified temperament didn't frighten too many people!

Ladies Who Lunch: Sophie, Daisy, Holly

26.02.08: Baltic Freegan Soup

2008-02-27T19:10:00.007Z

Food Not Bombs pacifists, Olga from Lithuania recruited Eugene from Belarus to go cotchelling down Nine Elms today. They are Baltic Freegans and their soup was well Baltic in that it was potato-based and typically Freegan in that its top note was tomato and sweet peppers (which are discarded every day at the wholesale market).

Olga, a.k.a. 'Ola' (its supposed to be a diminutive, but I don't get it) started with onions that Carlo had left over, some carrots and a leek. I saw two celeriac roots and a couple of parsnips go in the body of the soup, which was filled out by potatoes that Carlo had boiled and left in the 'fridge. I noticed that she emulated my technique of roasting the tomatoes and peppers to concentrate their flavour and passing them through a sieve to remove pips 'n' skins.

Eugene sliced courgettes, which Ola fried and added to the blended soup to give it texture and finished it with copious quantities of dill. I can't help but say it was dill-icious. I know, I know. I beg your pardon. That's the kind of thing Jen might say. Actually, she wrote in the dairy (which is the new log bok): 'Really yummy and filling - nice to have some salad, too, Friendly faces - hope you carry on'.

In other news:

* Following Carlo's frustrating experience on Monday - of which we shall never speak - he's flown to Germany to chill out with his girlfriend and so we say, arrivederci, Signor Bueno.

* Pullens Ping Pong Club's inaugural tournament was supposed to reach its climax on Friday, but not a game's been played! However, word is that the crucial first round tie, Alex vs. Alexa, is scheduled for Thursday lunch time.

21/22.02.08: 'Cornucopia'

2008-02-22T16:26:00.009Z

Carlo's corn soup incorporated a couple of kilo bags of frozen sweetcorn from Iceland, melted with onion and slow cooked with spices and coconut until it achieved the desired consistency before being blended and thickened with fine polenta prepared with butter and mixed herbs. It was delicious!

Less successful, IMO, but wildly popular nontheless, was Carlo's lunch plate, comprising a 'non-Indian dal' of yellow split peas, a.k.a. jumbo lentils served with rice and salad. Friday's 'sunshine stew' comprised slow cooked carrots with organic split peas in a thick sauce the secret of which - I'm told - is to sweat down onions with potatoes before you start. I know, it's a mystery to me how he does it, too, but I'm as grateful as anyone.

This week, Carlo is making soup (and his lunch plate) on Monday. On Tuesday, Olga and a friend from Food Not Bombs will be doing their Freegan thing. Wednesday is Daisy's day, accompanied by Rhiannon from Cafe Cairo. I'll be making soup on Leap Day, next Friday and, as it turns out, on Thursday, too, probably. I'm thinking about borscht.

P.S. Re: Comments. Seems like the only peeps commenting were spammers, so I've opted for moderation and verifcation. Don't let that stop you, though.

20.02.08: Double Tomato + Flat Bread

2008-02-21T11:48:00.005Z

I've noted before how there's often an abundance of tomatoes-on-the-turn down at Nine Elms and nearly always loads of herbs. Following yesterday's freegan tomatoey soup, Daisy and Rhiannon came back from their foraging expedition with much the same ingredients, plus tinned tomatoes and puree, with which they created what Daisy described as 'double tomato trouble with a touch of lemon thyme and chilli, lashings of basil and some dill'. In other words, 'we made a beautiful red concoction' which went down so well that it all went PDQ.

I didn't get to try it myself, as I was staying out of the way at lunch time to give those committee members who have made assumptions about the Soup Kitchen the opportunity to visit and see for themselves. Consequently, neither did I get to try Nathan's amazing Mexican flat bread (pictured) that he baked especially for the Soup Kitchen. Nor did I get to scoff any of the cakes that Jan brought in, which were leftover from her birthday BBQ the night before. Happy birthday, Jan!

19.02.08: Freegan Thick Tomato & Sweet Peppers

2008-02-19T18:41:00.009Z

This morning's New Covent Garden rendezvous with Seba. & Olga was set for 8am, but it rapidly became obvious (to yours truly, at any rate) that Tuesday is not a good day down there. In fact, I was told over the weekend that Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and the best days to forage in the vegetable wholesale market and that info appears to be correct. However, we did scrabble around and return to the Pullens Centre with quite a varied hoard that included celeriac and fennel as well as tomatoes and sweet peppers. So, I asked Olga - who made today's soup - which way she wanted to go and Olga, sensible woman, thought that the tomatoes had to be used immediately. So that's the way we went.

Today I awarded myself the luxury of standing on the other side of the counter, directing, while Olga and Seba. did the work. They chopped the tomatoes and peppers, put them on a baking tray with a good splash of olive oil, and roasted them on high heat for about half an hour. They chopped the mirepoix vegetables and sweated the dice in the bottom of the soup pot. They peeled and roughly diced four large potatoes - which might have been one too many - added them to the pot, covered with four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the pot to the boil and simmered for fifteen minutes.

Once the tomatoes and peppers had collapsed in the heat of the oven and were swimming in their own juices, Olga liquidised them with a hand Brenda and forced the pulp through a sieve to remove the pips and skin. When the contents of the soup pot were cooked, she blended them with big Brenda. Then she mixed the two to make a thick, tomatoey soup that was given more variety with the addition of sautéed sliced mushrooms and served it garnished with torn basil leaves, of which we picked up masses in the market. It went down pretty well with the folks, at least 25 of them and I was able to sit about and chat for a change and take these pictures, reminding me of what's so cool about our community kitchen:

P.S.: The crucial meeting has been postponed to next week (if you care) and the answer to last week's other cliff-hanger is, yes, Carlo will return on Thursday, when he will be essaying a sweetcorn soup, and will be serving his patented lunch plates full of veggie stew, or something similar, with rice or something like that on both Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the young ladies from Cafe Cairo are cooking and Nathan, the baker of Draper House, is providing fresh bread. See you there?

18.02.08: Spicy Red & Black Bean

2008-02-19T17:03:00.003Z

I haven't concentrated too much on listing Almost Perfect Recipes, but I'm pretty confident of this soup, which began as my twist on Dal Makhani on 16.11.07, continued on 03.12.07, and bridged Xmas/NewYear. So here goes (these quantities serve about 25):

For the mirepoix: 500g Onion, 500g carrots, 500g celery, half a dozen cloves of garlic, red pepper paste (biber salçası)
Main ingredients: 1kg red kidney beans, 750g black beans, 250g black lentils (urid/urad), 5/6l Marigold bouillon
Spices: ground cumin (jeera), chilli powder/cayenne, 50-100g creamed coconut

1. Soak the red and black beans overnight in separate bowls.
2. Start by rinsing the beans and boiling them in seperate pans, simmering for about 45 minutes, until soft. The black lentils (urid) should be boiled for about 20 minutes.
3. Roughly chop the mirepoix and sweat the chopped vegetables with the peeled and crushed cloves of garlic (add more if you like garlic) in a generous splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the lid on, removing it every few minutes to stir the mixture and ensure it's not sticking. Let it cook down for at least 15 minutes.
4. Add cumin and chilli powder to taste: say, a couple of desserts spoons of jeera and not quite a full dessert spoon of chilli powder (add more if you like chilli).
5. Add the red pepper paste (biber salçası), which comes in sweet and piquant flavours. Choose the one you prefer and use as much as you like, but 200g is probably enough.
6. Add three quarters of the red and black beans, reserving some of each to add to the soup later, in order to vary the texture. Cover with four litres of Marigold bouillon and bring to the boil, simmering for ten minutes (so long as the beans are cooked).
7. Liquidise the soup.
8. Add the reserved red and black beans and the cooked lentils to the soup with another litre or more of Marigold bouillon (depending on how thick your soup is and how thin you want it to be) and return it to simmer.
9. Grate creamed coconut into the soup to thicken it and, perhaps, to balance the chilli. Again, the exact quantity is up to you.
10. Serve garnished with a swirl of fresh yoghurt.

Sorry about the lack of a photo (not even the new cliche blackboard shot). Wasn't really feeling myself today after a rough w/e and made this soup on auto pilot, serving 19 bowls and taking about £23 donations. Several of the soup suppers were similarly rough, so this hearty number went down well with all.

15.02.08: Spicy Lentil + Cafe Cairo

2008-02-16T16:14:00.003Z

Find Cafe Cairo on MySpace

14.02.08: 'Greenland'

2008-02-15T12:17:00.002Z

I forgot to mention and neglected to depict the freshly black-boarded panel on the font of the Pullens Centre, which prevents a certain person from knocking over our sign (or, once, turning it around to a notice written back in November that read, 'no soup today due to 'flu').

This week, it's felt like someone else - actually, a committee - wants to knock us, if not knock us out. This blog is purely about making soup and the politics of the Pullens Centre is kept out of it, but the outcome of the TRA meeting next Tuesday will determine if the Soup Kitchen closes at the end of the month. So, if you have a vote and value what we do, come along.

Carlo's girlfriend lives in Germany and it's Valentine's Day, so maybe that's why he was so spectacularly grumpy. When the Soup Kitchen sitcom comes on TV, nobody will believe his character. Or maybe he meant it and won't be returning to sling his distinctively smooth, curried soups - this one based on green lentils - before insufficiently grateful swine. Watch this space!

13.02.08: Minestrone

2008-02-15T12:11:00.003Z

Life, say Kasia and Daisy, is a minestrone.
Although not, in this case, served up with Parmesan cheese.

12.02.08: Leek Y Potato

2008-02-12T15:24:00.006Z

Today, I met up with Seba. and Olga at 9a.m. and we soon found out that we were too late for effective scrumping @ Nine Elms. What hadn't been picked up, already, had been swept up by the cleaners, who seem to be starting earlier these days. We found a solitary leek and some potatoes. Then we found a celeriac root with a few dodgy bits that needed cutting out and a bag of spinach that was on the turn. So, I thought, Leeky Potato (geddit) with additions. Except that I didn't have hardly any leek and not enough spud. See:

Back @ Pullens Centre, I got Seba. and Olga choppin' while I nipped down the market and scored another 3kgs leeks plus a quid's worth of big floury white spuds. We made the soup in the standard manner. Seba wouldn't believe that iceberg lettuce was a legitimate soup ingredient, but I shredded and sweated it down with the mirepoix, added the spinach that Olga had carefully picked over and sweated that, too. Then, we added the diced spuds and cubed celeriac, plus the shredded leeks, continued to cook for ten minutes before covering with a couple of litres of Marigold bouillon and cooking for ten minutes more.

We decanted several great big ladles full of soup into another pot and whizzed the soup up with Brenda the blender, slowly pouring in another litre of bouillon. Once it achieved a smooth-ish consistency, we amalgamated the chunky bits to make a good pot full of soup. "That's as much soup as we ever make," I told Olga, our new recruit, "about 30 portions". Turns out, we served 29 bowls and it was all gone by 2pm! Here's Olga & Seba. with their empty pot:

11.02.08: Seven Pulses Soup + Veggie Stew

2008-02-12T15:09:00.000Z

Carlo re-rocked his Seven Pulses concoction at the request of a bunch of architects (what is the collective noun for architects?) who wanted to serve soup at their Monday meeting. I put a couple of packets of mixed pulses in to soak overnight and tasted a creamy soup base that apparently incorporated polenta, but I lost track of how these two elements were put together. All I can say is that creamed coconut was involved and the finished soup was garnished with torn basil leaves. Mmmm.

Groovy though this was, it paled in popularity against Carlo's 'fantastic, realistic' lunch plate deal: 'Buddhafield' stew with aromatic brown rice and mushrooms, chestnuts and tofu for £2.80. I wasn't sure how much demand there would be for this on a Monday, but I needn't have worried because it was incredibly popular and all went so quickly that I didn't get a chance to taste it, myself. Hopefully, I'll do better on Thursday, when Carlo is promising to serve the same 'Buddhafield' stew (which he named after the festival where he created it). If you'd like to try it, too, my advice: be early.

07.02.08: Yellow Satay Soup + Veggie Stew

2008-02-10T11:04:00.000Z

Inspired by the Chinese New Year, apparently, the basis of this soup is yellow split peas, aka jumbo lentils, soaked and cooked down with paprika and cracked black pepper (the pepper corms roasted in hot oil until they crack) then blended to the consistency of polenta. Carlo made his own vegetable stock by boiling up carrots, celery and onion with garlic - your basic mirepoix mixture - and straining the resultant liquid, which he used to liquidise some peanut butter, seasoned with coriander and more paprika. Then he mixed the peanutty liquid with the creamy split pea base, uttered a few inscrutable incantations under his breath, and voila: another big hit soup!

The next day, Carlo extended his soup from the day before by adding pureed mushrooms and called it 'Morning Glory', oblivious to the English slang connotations of that phrase;-) This, however, was a side attraction to his second weekly experiment in offering a lunchtime plate of food for a set price, £2.80. Today's stew comprised various pulses with tomato, onion and garlic, plus parsnips, carrots, and organic red potatoes, with tofu, flavoured with parsley and coriander. Served on Basmati rice and accompanied by a little salad, it was pretty special.

Jan Duke had walked around the yards, telling everyone that a lunchtime special was in the offing at the Pullens Centre and so, by the time I came over at half-past-midday, the place was rammed and there wasn't anywhere to sit. The February weather was so clement that some people took their plates of rice and stew to sit outside at the benches in Iliffe Yard. Consequently, Carlo fed at least forty people, all of whom were quite content, with many happily giving more than the prescribed £2.80, making the day a roaring success from every point of view. Here's a photo from my P.O.V., when I eventually got a seat:

Graham rocking the David Live look; Naomi gazing into space

Carlo will return on Monday when, at the request of DSDHA, he will be reviving his 7 Pulse soup from last week. Some kind of vegetable stew-type punch plate may well also be offered. Seba. and Russell will (probably) be ransacking Nine Elms on Tuesday and may be joined by a new soup maker. On Wednesday it's Daisy, Rhiannon and Holly, essaying another of their ingenuous freegan creations. Carlo returns on Thursday and, on Friday, Cafe Cairo will be decking the hall for their event in the evening, so it's not certain what we'll be doing so far as the soup is concerned. But you can be sure it will be tasty.

06.02.08: Freegan Fennel, Potato, Watercress + Rocket

2008-02-07T12:46:00.001Z

'This morn, the luscious ladettes (pictured) battled the early morning commuters and raging winds to fetch spectacular ingredients from the corners of the Earth.' Or, more accurately, from the four corners of New Covent Garden Market's skips. Apparently, 'it felt like we were travelling through Mordor, with ogre-like market officers and such...' Which I can't say is ever a feeling I've had while rummaging through the bins at Nine Elms, but obviously my imagination isn't quite as vivid as that of the average luscious ladette.

The ingredients they gathered for free included several bags of potatoes and loads of herbs, plus watercress and rocket and the resulting soup was in the style that's becoming characteristic: chunky, greeny and herby. Or, as one commentator wrote in the log bok, 'FAB! As usual'. Someone else wrote, 'the best things in life are free (like soup)', but that can't be right, can it?

05.02.08: Cream of Asparagus + Pancake Day

2008-02-06T12:12:00.000Z

Yesterday, Seba scarfed up ample asparagus and we'd intended to roast if off for our lunch, but never did. So, I thought I'd make soup out of it. I had a few spuds and some parsnips for thickening and the best parts of three heads of celery, plus big bunches of flat parsley for a sprightly mirepoix. I chopped the stalks of the parsley, reserving the leaves, and mixed their dice into the sweating mirepoix, in the soup pot with the lid on.

I washed the asparagus and snapped each stem, reserving the tips and chopping the woodier lower part of the stem into a dice, then mixing it into the sweating vegetables in the soup pot. This is how to squeeze maximum flavour from the asparagus, but it's stringy: you have to pass it through a seive once it's cooked. Having sweated the diced veg thoroughly, I added two litres of Marigold bouillon and then two litres more and simmered until the diced stalks were as tender as they were going to get.

While cooking the mirepoix/asparagus, I peeled and diced the root vegetables - potatoes and parsnips - and simmered them in two litres of Marigold bouillon.

When the mirepopix mixture with the chopped parsley and asparagus stalks was cooked, I whizzed the cooked mixture and passed the resulting coarse liquid through a seive into another pot before returning it to the main soup pot. Then, I added the cooked root vegetables and fresh asparagus tips, brought the soup to the boil and simmered it for five-to-ten minutes, until the tips were tender enough to amalgamate, m8. Then I gave the soup a last loving going over with Brenda the blender

I don't suppose there were many more than a couple of dozen portions and, naturellement, many regulars had seconds, so my supply of creamy asparagus flava-inna- bowl expired around the nineteenth customer - before 2pm! - but by then I was well into flipping pancakes, because today was Shrove Tuesday.

I wish I could honestly say I didn't have to check Delia to know the basic formula for pancake batter: 2oz flour X 1 large egg X half a pint of milk + a drop of melted butter. Let's make that a mantra. From Somerfield, I got a litre of Gold Top full fat Jersey milluk, half a dozen free range eggs and a 250g bag o' flour to add to a little bit I had left over.

I must have flipped thirty something pancakes today, carrying on serving pancakes until the mix was all used up without ever quite getting my eye in. Still, there were no complaints. And plenty of seconds. And thirds.

04.02.08: Carroty Gingernut

2008-02-06T12:01:00.001Z

Seba. & I went foraging at 9.Elms this a.m., but we were late and the pickings were slim. In the market, I scooted ahead to suss out the main ingredient, hoping to find a discarded case of Jerusalem artichokes. Chance would be a fine thing but, as it happened, I did discover a trove of butternut squashes that had been well squashed. I suppose they'd fallen off the back of the lorry and the lorry had kept on reversin'. Out of the squished tubers, I picked up about ten butternuts with only superficial bruises, or the odd bit that wanted cutting out.

Meanwhile, by some kind of innate Gallic instict, Seb had assembled the basis of a mirepoix: onions, celery, carrots, plus a goodly selection of herbs. He found asparagus, too, of which we'll be hearing more about tomorrow... Back there in the then, there was an abundance of carrots and not a few scattered tomatoes. So one picked up a few of the less dodgy-looking specimens. The other main ingredient of this soup is carrots and we picked up quite a few to put with a bag of organic carrots I had left over from the weekend.

Back at base, we laid out the pickings on a table, as per the picture on the left. Seba got busy peeling carots and butternut squashes and chopping them up. I washed the tomatoes and put them in roasting trays with roughly chopped onion and peeled cloves of garlic, as per the picture on the right. Then I went and got ginger from our friendly local Sino/Viet market on Walworth Road and creamed coconut from Oli's, along with the bread.

Upon my return, I sweated a mirepoix of onion, celery and lots and lots of carrots, prolly 4kg. Peeled and finely chopped a lot of ginger: maybe 250/300g and added it to the soup pot. Put the roasted tomato/onion/garlic in another pot, covered it with 2 litres of Marigold bouillon, then whizzed the mixture and passed it through a seive to remove the pips and skin. To the main soup pot, I added the peeled and cubed squash - let's say 5kg - with another 2 litres of Marigold. Simmered for 20 mins, rested for five and then introduced Brenda the blender to the soup. Finally, I added the liquidised tomato, plus 100g of creamed coconut dissoled in a litre of boiling water. Gave it a last loving blending with Brenda.

Et voila: a gingery, carroty soup that was almost sweet, with a velvet texture if I say so myself. It went down very well with everyone, including our final visitor, Tracy, who brought in the Pullens newest resident, Johnny. Being three weeks old, he's strictly a breast milk man and didn't partake of the soup, directly, but ginger gets into the bloodstream so no doubt he'll know about it sooner or later.

01.02.08: Blue Cheesy Parsnip + Veggie Stew

2008-02-02T12:27:00.000Z

As an experiment today, alongside his soup-by-donation, Carlo offered a substantial lunch plate of rich vegetable stew with fresh tofu on a bed of aromatic pearl barley for the set price of £2.80. I sent an e-mail round the businesses in the Yards and the set lunch proved to be very popular. While some of the people who came in had soup as well as stew, most of those who opted to pay for the stew failed to make an additional donation for the soup. Indeed, the lunch plate was so substantial that few bothered with soup and there was masses left over. Which is a shame, because this was a wicked soup, made with gorgonzola blended with an ultra smooth parsnip puree.

The incorporation of cheese into a Soup Kitchen recipe, based upon a roux, was unprecedented and the danger of doing that was quickly demonstrated by the first person, Linda Brooker. Lactose intolerant, Linda emphatically does not do cheese. So she had the stew instead. Likesay, though, the soup was awesome. I'll be eating it all weekend. Maybe with cauliflower and broccoli florets?

31.01.08: Seven Pulses

2008-02-02T12:17:00.000Z

Carlo claimed this soup contained seven pulses, including at least four varieties of lentil, plus chickpeas and some little brown peas he called 'Ghana peas', prolly black eye peas. OK, that's only six pulses and I can't adequately describe the method by which Carlo invented this soup, either, but I can tell you it worked brilliantly well, however he did it. From somewhere, he'd picked up a bag of crispy fried onion bits (sic) which he mixed into the soup as he served it to vary the texture and add flavour to a concoction that someone described in the log bok as being 'ooh, coriandery and coconutty and chunky and smooth. Marvellous. I want more!' Someone else wrote, 'fantastic'. Which it was, in its characteristically Carlo type of a way. Popular, too.

Look, I know these blog posts have become a bit perfunctory and I haven't posted many images recently, but to paraphrase the late John Lennon, life is what happens from day-to-day while you're busy making more grandiose plans. Normal service will be resumed when I've got a bit less on my plate;-)

30.01.08: Chunky Green Vegetables with Thyme

2008-01-31T15:10:00.000Z

Daisy and Holly - a.k.a. 'the wholesome darling girls' - didn't do so well down at Nine Elms this morning, perhaps because they were too late and all the freegan bargains had been snaffled by earlier worms, so they went down to East Street and returned with bundles of gear: asparagus, celery, onion, spinach, leek and thyme.

Asparagus in January does represent something of an ethical dilemma, but the important point is that these wholesome darling girls didn't pay a premium price for their 'grass, which would probably have been thrown away if they hadn't negotiated it into their soup. Dasiy also had reservations about using Knorr vegetable stock powder, which contains MSG, but the Soup Kitchen had run out of Marigold and needs must, is it not?

Anyway and for whatever reasons, the soup was delicious. An unblended, chunky and very herby stew that Cathy declared in the log bok, 'the best thing I've slurped all year' while Crispin - winding up Daisy over her resemblance to fellow Brits School graduate, Adele - said it was 'superb'.

29.01.08: Yellow Sunshine Soup

2008-01-30T12:55:00.001Z

I set out to evoke some January sunshine with this sweetcorn (2X£1, Iceland) chowder, thickened with yellow split peas (1kg, about 75p) and potatoes (half a bag of them Roosters that were going cheap, 50p) and enlivened by yellow bell peppers (eight; £3 from Oli's) plus a 680g jar of tatli biber salcasi, sweet red pepper paste (£1.79). I was late getting going this morning, for reasons I won't go into suffice it say the neighbours have noticed my speaker is fixed, and the soup wasn't ready before 12.45pm.

I did it by soaking the kilo of yellow split peas over night and simmering them for half an hour this morning while sweating a mirepoix of onion and leek and carrot and celery. I cleaned half a dozen yellow peppers, removing their cores and seeds and cutting them into inch wide segments, and roasted them in a hot oven with a generous splash of oil. I peeled and roughly cubed the potatoes, adding them to the soup pot, stirring, turning down the heat and adding a splash of liquid to prevent sticking. Then I added half the cooked split peas to the pot with a couple of litres of Marigold bouillon and brought the pot back to simmer.

For that sweet smack of sunshine, I wanted pure flavour and none of the stuck-in-the-teeth texture of sweetcorn. Or bell peppers, FTM. So, I boiled up the frozen sweetcorn with a couple of litres of Marigold bouillon and churned it with Brenda the blender, adding the roasted yellow peppers and blending again and then forced the mixture through a sieve to obtain a broth so rich and luxurious it would have made the Jolly Green Giant impersonate Freddie Mercury: Galileo, Magnifico!

Brenda thoroughly blended my mirepoix mixed with potato and split peas into a smooth puree, to which I added the strained sweetcorn 'n' pepper liquid, the remainder of the cooked split peas and the contents of a jar of sweet red pepper paste. This last ingredient, of course, turned the yellow soup orange. Finally, I finely diced the two remaining raw yellow peppers for garnish and to give the soup a touch of crunch, which seemed to go down well with the seventeen soupees who tried it, several of whom had seconds.

28.01.08: Lightly Curried Roots

2008-01-29T14:43:00.001Z

Monday was becoming our day for rootling through the jetsam of New Covent Garden wholesale market, but Sebastien was otherwise engaged this morning and I didn't want to go it alone, so I mooched off to Lidl instead. Not only is Lidl the land of chocolate-with-hazelnuts and paprika crisps, but it's also the only place I know of locally where one can be reasonably sure of bagging a 'brain' of celeriac. Yer, celeriac brains. As in the roots of the celery plant. Plus, there's this sign in the car park:

At Lidl this morning, never mind the schogetten, I scored a couple of celeriac brains (@ £1.19), a cute lil' bag o' parsnips (79p) and another of leeks (£1.29), plus onions (69p) and garlic (65p). That's five-eighty: not quite a sick squid. On the way back to the Pullens Centre, I swung by Oli's for bread, plus a 200g slab o' creamed coconut (39p: they've got a new brand in) and a bunch of coriander, along with a couple of loaves of bread.

I made the soup the standard way, substituting leeks for most of the onion/celery in the mirepoix, with three diced carrots and about half a dozen crushed cloves of garlic. I peeled and roughly diced the root vegetables, adding them to the sweating mirepoix in the soup pot. Added turmeric and curry powder, about a dessert spoon of each, and mixed with the big wooden spoon. Mixed it pretty good. Mixed it down sweet and added some moisture: slowly, I filled that soup pot up with four litres of Marigold bouillon and simmered it for nigh on a half hour before I brought on Brenda the blender.

Mark was waiting to try the finished soup and he had a cup of tea to warm himself up because, silly billy, he'd locked his dumb self out of his gaff and so he slept in the park last night! I finished the soup with half a block - 100g - of creamed coconut dissolved in a litre of boiling water and garnished it with a generous sprinkling of coarsely-chopped fresh coriander. Just your common or garden hearty neighbourhood soup: I served seventeen peeps, several of whom had seconds, and had a litre left over that I took round to Jen's.

25.01.08: Gorbanos

2008-01-28T14:23:00.001Z

As if in answer to Carlo's exasperated question, yesterday, when he wondered if it was worth his while struggling half way across London laden with wilting basil plants in order to make amazing soup for less than a dozen souls to enjoy, today was a sell-out. Seriously, a neighbour knocked on my flat door to tell me how good the soup was and, when I went round to investigate, someone else crossed the road to say the same thing. The log bok collected ten written endorsements, or commendations, incl.: two 'fantastics'; an 'absolutely delicious'; one 'damn good and a 'couldn't put it better myself. Yummy!'

'Gorbanos' is another of Carlo's enigmatic appelations. Basically, this soup was made of lightly curried yellow split peas blended with creamed coconut and mixed with fresh spinach. Carlo also dressed some spinach and chopped celery with a lemon vinaigrette to serve as a side salad, which two people described in the log bok as, 'great'. So what was a difficult week finally ended on a high note.

A few things went wrong this week. Lou - who has been on board the Soup wagon since we started - quit (come back!) and my home phone line got cut off, so I've been playing catchee uppee on this blog. On the other hand, I've cured my sick loudspeaker. One of my precious House Pods had developed a mysterious buzz, but I seem to have fixed it by the simple expedient of TURNING THE VOLUME AS LOUD AS IT GOES.

24.01.08: Pomodoro E Basilico

2008-01-27T12:37:00.000Z

Back once again came the Bolognese maestro, reprising his creamy tomato soup, this time in a version with chick peas in the bottom, a subtle touch of chilli, and ample quantities of fresh basil torn over and stirred in for tip top flavour. Carlo brought with him a couple of getting-past-it pot plants that all but died on the bus journey, but he wasn't to know that I'd picked up a (literal) shed load of basil @ Nine Elms on Monday. So, however unseasonally, this was another beautifully balanced tomato with ample herbaceousness. But the bad news is that only eleven peeps ventured over the Soup Kitchen threshold to taste it and non saw fit to comment in the log bok, leaving the chef to question whether it had been worth his effort?

23.01.08: Sweet Potato with Red Peppers & Chilli

2008-01-27T12:30:00.000Z

Returning to the Soup Kitchen following their successful debut last Friday, Daisy and Rhiannon, assisted by Holly, made (according to the new log bok) 'a splendid concoction of the following: sweet potato, red peppers, carrots, chilli, coriander... and a little bit of love'. Sounds delish, no? Well, apparently, it was. I saw, apparently, because I never got to try it. Instead, I spent most of the day trying to get to Tooting: first on a Northern Line tube train that couldn't get past a broken signal; then on a 155 bus for which I had to wait nearly an hour while several buses packed to the gunnels with disgruntled tube passengers sailed by. Cheers, TFL.

Anyway, I digress. Digress while standing at a bus stop near the Oval re-reading a dogeared copy of Metro, that is. When I got back, the soup was all gone and, heinously, our talismanic frog pot that we used to collect donations was in smithereens! According to Daisy - in loco parentis - it leapt off the counter and croaked on the floor. I don't know how she can joke about it. I was very fond of that hungry frog and it served us well over sixty full days of serving soup. But all must pass. So, farewell then, amphibious Friend of Soup. May you attain in this last leap the lilly pad of Nirvana.

22.01.08: White Bean & Fennel (Slight Return)

2008-01-25T17:14:00.000Z

There was a time when I worked with New Covent Garden market traders. I say 'worked', but that's stretching it a bit. 'Hung out with' may be a more accurate description of the times we passed together, since they tend to work dread early in the morning and I would usually turn up a bit later. Anyway, they used to talk about 'knife and forking it' or sometimes, sadly, 'having to wipe our mouths'. Well, I wasn't prepared to wipe my mouth over the large quantity of broccoli soup left over from yesterday, or sling it, or walk away. So I knife-and-forked it. I soup-spooned it. Yes, I served it up again today.

No more was I prepared to let that cauliflower, white bean and fennel concoction from last week go to waste. That was in the freezer, probably six litres of the stuff. So I defrosted it, extended it with more fennel and three cans of flageolets (for a quid from Oli's) and served it alongside the broccoli. Actually, it proved to be more popular than the broccoli among the sixteen people who came in today, probably because many of them had already had the broccoli, yesterday, although several remarked upon the great flavour of fennel. Whatever, all the soup got eaten up. Which maybe says something about the value of perseverance. Maybe.

21.01.08: Broccoli & Watercress

2008-01-24T13:36:00.000Z

Apparently, the start of the third week in January is the most miserable day of the year, when the vestiges of Xmas cheer have finally faded and the credit card bills from the seasonal excesses hit the door mat. Maybe that's the reason why we've had the fewest customers since Day Two, serving only a dozen bowls of broccoli soup. Or it might be that Mars is retrograde and the moon is full.

Luckily, for our finances, the ingredients for Monday's soup cost nothing as Sebastien and I went down to New Covent Garden @ Nine Elms and picked them up for free. First, he found some potatoes and a couple of onions - one red, one white - and then he found a single, solitary leek. 'Mmm,' I thought, 'leek & potatoes'. Then I found a box of watercress, on the turn with some yellowing leaves, but mostly perfectly OK. So, it was going to be a watercress soup thickened with potato. But then I came upon the broccoli mountain. An entire pallet of broccoli had been dumped. Like the watercress, some of it was past its best but there was plenty that was still nice and green and so I filled a bag full. (We also brought home a lot of herbs: chives, basil and thyme, non of which really belonged in this soup).

Back at the Pullens Centre, we made the soup in the usual fashion, sweating a mirepoix of onion and garlic, leek and celery (no carrots, because there weren't any). Sebastien trimmed the florets from the broccoli and roughly diced the stems while I peeled and diced the potatoes. We added these diced veggies to the pot, covered them with four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the pot to the boil and simmered for twenty minutes before blending. Once the soup was blended, we added the watercress and broccoli florets with another three (or four?) litres of bouillon, simmered for a further five (or ten?) minutes and whizzed it again.

This was an intensely green soup, served with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice over the surface, which those who tried it said gave a certain je ne sais quoi. At least, I think that's what they said.

18.01.08: Harira + Café Cairo

2008-01-18T16:09:00.001Z

Café Cairo in Landor Road was a fixture on the South London landscape, renowned for the unique atmosphere of its tent-out-the-back, where one could recline on cushions and smoke a hookah while sipping mint tea. That's all past tense though because, after a succession of break-ins, the tent went up in flames last November on the night before Bonfire Night. While its operators seek new premises, the Cairo crew came to the Pullens Centre for a fund raising evening and, seeing as it takes them so long to set up their extraordinarily rich interior decor, I suggested that they should make soup at lunchtime, too.

Harira - extolled on soupsong.com as 'quite possibly the best soup in the world' - is the Middle Eastern meal-in-a-bowl that's traditionally served to break the day's fast during Ramadan. This is Daisy's hand-written recipe for a vegetarian version:

(Heat oil and fry onions and garlic 'till soft. Add parsley, ginger, black pepper, turmeric, cayenne, paprika, ground coriander. then add potatoes, carrots, celery, green lentils, tomato puree. Stir well and add processed tomato (i.e.: fresh or tinned tomatoes that have been whizzed in a food processor), then stir again and add enough water (or light vegetable stock/Marigold bouillon) to cover all ingredients well and bring to boil. Simmer for 30-45 minutes, concentrating the flavours and reducing the volume of liquid to make a thickish broth. Then add chickpeas, white beans, and vermicelli. Cook for a further 5 minutes, until the vermicelli softens, and add lemon juice and salt to taste.)

Not only was this soup was a great success, so too was the evening's event, with many people remarking that they'd never seen the Centre looking so fabulous. Café Cairo will return to 184 Crampton Street on February 15th (that's Valentines' Day + 1) while Daisy and Rhiannon will return to the Soup Kitchen next week.

17.01.08: Gingered Royal Yellow Peas + Pasta Night

2008-01-18T15:40:00.000Z

Carlo made a terrific, gingery soup with yellow split peas that inspired an artist whose style is strongly reminiscent of Mr Natty Bo to draw a picture of it with the comment appended: 'Cool man! O'Reety!!' Someone else wrote, '"Really rather yummy," said the Princess with a pea up her arse', while a third commented that it's 'so good to have real food so close to work, the soup gets better every day'. Which is frightfully gratifying, but the sad fact is that too few people tasted today's soup and quite a lot got thrown away.

In the evening, Carlo served a pasta dish he called Penne Kemptonaise, after the town in Germany where his girlfriend lives. Sigh. He bought organic ricotta and made a cream with avocado and diced hottish red peppers. Not only that, but he curried the rest of the new potatoes left over from the previous day to amazing effect. Wow. Sadly, hardly anyone turned up to eat this fantastic fare, so Carlo had to throw food away and he probably lost money. So, it looks like that's the end of Pasta Night:-(

16.01.08: Freegan Soup

2008-01-17T13:45:00.002Z

I haven't foraged for free food at the Nine Elms wholesale market, New Covent Garden, since 02.10.08, but Sebastien inspired another go this morning and equipped himself for the expedition with a bicycle pannier improvised from a plastic bin that he somehow managed to strap to his rear wheel, as seen on the left. He was ever so apologetic at arriving 15 minutes late for our rendezvous, but I was too amused by his ingenuity to care.

We scooted round the market on our bikes, looking for viable produce that had been dropped, or thrown away. Although Sebastien didn't say so, specifically, I got the impression that one advantage of the bike is that it facilitates a quick getaway in the event of being challenged by authority figures. Not that any were in evidence. By 9.30am, I expect they're all in the pub. I did see several other scroungers on bicycles, much like ourselves, often with added dreadlocks, and I guess there's going to be a lot more 'em as Babylon crumbles.

First, we found a trove of new potatoes, then some yellow peppers. Tomatoes, in various states of decrepitude, were all over the shop. The rule of picking up such things off the concrete or out of a skip is that mud can be washed off and bruises can be cut out, but if the skin is broken, it's not worth the risk of contamination. By the bins, where we were sorting through boxes of discarded plum tomatoes, we met this chap in the Royal Mail waistcoat, Jacob, who had a big bag of peeled garlic cloves, going slightly brown.

With the garlic, peppers and tomatoes, this soup was shaping up to be remarkable similar to the soup that emerged from my last foraging expedition. Only this time, instead of thickening the soup with red lentils, we found a nice butternut squash and a couple of parsnips to put with the potatoes. We also found a big bundle of very good quality flat parsley, a couple of bundles of chives and a sealed bag of oregano. Oh, and a big bag of shallots. All of which went into the soup.

Back at base, between us we cleaned and roughly chopped the tomatoes and yellow peppers, mixed with then with some of the garlic and shallots, and roasted the mixture in the oven for about half an hour over medium high heat, to concentrate the flavours. Meanwhile, we chopped and sweated a mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery with more of the garlic, adding a lot of parsley - a couple of two handed bunches - chopped with stalks and all. To this cooked mix, we added the roughly diced root veg. and squash, covered it with four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the pot to the boil and simmered it for twenty minutes or so, until the veg were soft enough to meet Brenda the blender.

I took the roasted tomatoes and peppers out of the oven and boiled them up with another couple of litres of bouillon before liquidising the mixture and passing the resulting liquid through a sieve to remove the pips and bits of skin. Then I amalgamated the contents of the two pots, the fresh, sharp flavour of the toms and peppers meeting the creaminess of the potato and squash. Finally, I added the chopped oregano and gave the soup a last little whizz before serving it garnished with generous amount of finely chopped parsley and chives.

Today was a lot of fun and we'll definitely do this again. In fact, we're going to do it next Monday, 21st, and you're welcome to join us foraging in the bins of Covent Garden and then making soup. Call 07863 100 711 first.

15.01.08: Red Lentil

2008-01-16T17:23:00.001Z

Dismal day, it was pissing down all morning. Lou made a red lentil soup along the lines of her triumphant Ezo Gelin from 10.10.07 and once again it seems to have hit the spot. Comments included, 'warm, filling, hearty and tasty just like something...' A Soup Kitchen regular - whose hand writing I recognise - put 'much nicer than Russell's' and then goes on to say it was 'truly warming and filling'. Yer well, next time I'll fill you with something hearty and fulfilling, don't you worry about that.

I was in a shitty mood, myself, and got told off for souring the air in the Pullens Centre, so I do find it a tad sus that three people should have been inspired to remark on the friendly atmosphere. One wrote: 'Absolutely delicious - Lou has always a smile which warms the soul also'. Yer well, she may have a Saintly radiance but she only served 18 bowls of soup, five short of the usual 23. I dunno why our numbers are down in the second week of January, when the weather's diabolical and people are broke after Xmas. You'd think they'd appreciate hot soup for whatever they want to pay and those that manage to prise themselves out of their flats and offices do. But we need more custom.

14.01.08: Cauliflower, White Bean & Fennel

2008-01-14T22:33:00.000Z

As it appears in the Soup Bible, this recipe utilises canned flageolet beans and Oli's are currently offering three cans of Sofra brand beans for a quid, but for some perverse reason I chose to buy a 2kg bag of 'white beans from Argentina' (cannelli beans, I guess), which are bigger, and to soak the lot overnight. When combined with five heads of cauliflower, this made a lot of soup and, although I counted out 21 bowls, litres of the stuff was left over.

First, I put the beans on to boil for half an hour. I diced a bulb of fennel and into the mirepoix with all the cloves of a head of garlic, squashed and peeled; one very large onion, roughly chopped; and about half a head of celery. No carrot. To the cooked mirepoix, I added a generous sprinkling - two dessert spoons, lets say - of fennel seed. I trimmed off the cauliflower florets and saved then for later, diced the stems and added them to the soup pot. Added two litres of Marigold bouillon. Then added two thirds of the cooked beans and two litres more Marigold and simmered for about fifteen minutes.

I left the cooked soup to stand while I went to collect my laundry (from the launderette on Kennington Lane, where the New Year has brought dramatic prices rises, but that's another story). When I came back, I got Brenda to give it a whizz. When the soup was well blended, I added the cauliflower florets and another couple of litres of bouillon (six in total), returned it to the heat and cooked for a further ten minutes. Then I gave the soup another quick whizz - enough to break up the florets, but not liquidise them - and added the remaining beans to finish the soup, which I served with a sprinkle of paprika.

Those who tried it were appreciative and there were some nice synchronicities today. First, I was talking to Iaxte, who regularly comes in with little Irene, about looking for a high chair on Freecycle and the folks sitting at the round table in the corner piped up to say they had a couple of high chairs to give us!

Later, a woman came in who told me that she'd last lived on the Pullens 16 years ago but had just moved in to Oyster Court, the new development across the road from the Pullens Centre. While she was telling me this, Crispin came in and recognised her as his former upstairs (or downstairs) neighbour. But he's long since sold the drum kit;-)

She wrote in the log bok, 'lovely soup and stimulating gossip'. He wrote, 'Pukka soup - very nice, Russell. Keep up the good work'. Cheers, m8. I've frozen what's left, so it won't go to waste.

11.01.08: Split Pea & Pumpkin

2008-01-11T18:58:00.001Z

Today, I was joined by Sebastian, a new face in the Soup Kitchen, who I hope will become a regular, even though he insists he needs to get a paid job. I picked this recipe for yellow split peas and pumpkin out of Debra Mayhew's Soup Bible and purchased a bag of dried yellow split peas and a couple of nice looking chunks of pumpkin from an Afro-Carib grocery in the Heffalump shopping centre yesterday evening and soaked the split peas overnight.

This morning the weather was diabolical again but that didn't stop me dragging Sebastian down Walworth Road in the sleet and bluster to show him round the shops. In East Street, I bought a head of celery and half a kilo of carrots (onions I had), plus a couple of extra bits of pumpkin to make the total weight up to 3kg and a bunch of coriander.

Back at base, I put the split peas on to boil for twenty minutes while Sebastian cleaned, peeled and diced the pumpkin into small, bite-sized chunks. He also had a good go at roasting the pumpkin seeds, which I've never managed to do successfully. The trick, apparently, is to clean and then dry them them thoroughly before spreading them onto a roasting tray with some good quality oil and roasting slowly, turning the seeds in the pan often so that they cook evenly and adding salt, or paprika, or whatever flavouring you desire. S'nice.

Although the Soup Bible doesn't call for the full mirepoix, I made one anyway and seasoned it with two dessert spoons each of freshly ground dana (coriander seed) and jeera (ground cumin). The recipe calls for tarragon and chilli, but I didn't have any tarragon and I chose to do without chilli (although, on reflection, a couple of fresh green chillis would have been nice) and, instead, to emphasise the great flavour of coriander, both ground and fresh.

Those who tasted the soup enjoyed it, at least there were no complaints, but there weren't many of 'em and nobody wrote in the log bok. After a week in which we've consistently served 23 people every lunchtime, today there were only 17. Go figure.

I neglected to take any photographs, but in the evening, the soupers enjoyed an exeat to Dex, in Brixton, where our good neighbour and regular soup lover, Mr Natty Bo, led his Topcats once more through their rhythmic paces. So here's a couple of pics of that:

Next week's soup kitchen rota: it's Russell on Monday, serving a soup of Cauliflower, Flageolet and Fennel Seed; Lou. is on Tue, probably re-rocking the Turkish red lentil soup from day ten; on Wednesday, Russell & Sebastian plan to forage in Nine Elms for a freegan soup; Carlo will be smiling throughout Thursday and going into the evening with Pasta Night; and on Friday, a crew from Stockwell's legendary but sadly fire-damaged Café Cairo will make soup at lunchtime and go on into the evening, weaving magic carpets. See you there.

10.10.08: Tomato & Crunchy Celery + Pasta Night

2008-01-10T14:53:00.000Z

Hard though it may be to believe, over the past three months, we've somehow not got around to doing a creamy tomato soup à la façon de Heinz. Until today, when Signor Atif - who didn't grow up in Britain and isn't intimidated by the cultural status of Heinz 57 Varieties - produced a soup so stupendous that someone wrote in the log bok, excitedly, 'Best soup every BINGO!'

Carlo wasn't about to start with fresh tomatoes, but he refuses to use purée, which he reckons has a tinny, industrial flavour, and insists upon the best quality Napolitana brand tins of chopped tomatoes (70% flesh!) He made the soup by slowly sweating a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrots in plenty of oil, adding rosemary, mixed herbs, coriander (all dried) and two mild green fresh chillies.
I reckon he probably sneaked a bit of garlic in there, too, but maybe that goes without saying?

The key to incorporating the tomatoes, apparently, is to do it ever so s-l-o-w-l-y. Add a can of tomatoes and allow it to cook down thoroughly, then add another can every five minutes. Since this soup used eight cans, this process took forty minutes, but the results were more than worthwhile. Carlo thickened the soup with pureed chickpeas.

Rewind: before you do anything else in this recipe, you've got to soak half a kilo of organic chick peas! They've got to be organic, see, because organic chick peas are the sweetest. If, for some reason, you don't soak your dried chick peas overnight, you can take a shortcut by soaking them for just an hour with a teaspoon full of bicarbonate in the water. Change the water before boiling them, or it's liable to start foaming;-)

Carlo finished his soup with 100g creamed coconut dissolved in hot water and served it with crunch diced celery, which was a really neat final flourish, I thought. And the number of potions served, inevitably, was 23.

In the evening, Carlo stayed on for Pasta Night, which I reckon will become an established fixture on Thursday nights as we move into the New Year. So far, it's not been easy to establish a clientele because it's been hard to get the word out and attract peoples' attention in the pre-Xmas period. Anyway, about 15 people did get the message and enjoyed one of Sgnr. Atif's idiosyncratic pasta dishes: penne with tofu, sweetcorn and green peas in a wonderful, rich and spicy coriander sauce. Seriously, if you live on the Pullens and you're at home next Thursday, don't bother cooking for yourself but come and join us @ the Centre.

09.01.08: Curried Parsnip

2008-01-09T17:24:00.000Z

Cheap wine can turn out to be a false economy. I only paid £2.50 for this bottle of Spanish red - 'a rich, rich blend of Bobal - a traditional Spanish grape and the well-loved Shiraz' - and didn't even finish it last night, but woke up this morning with the blues around my bed and a buzzing in my head. Oh yeah.

So, I started late and opted for a straightforward recipe, indeed a contemporary classic. In East Street, I purchased about 4kg parsnips, plus carrots and onions to go with the head of celery I already had to make a mirepoix, spending a grand total of £5.50. I then nipped across the road to Somerfield to stock up on tea bags and suchlike and picked up three of their baguettes to go with the soup.

At the checkout I saw Rob, a resident of the Buddhist Centre on Manor Place, who was also stocking up on tea bags and suchlike, as well as a large quantity of fruit. Not only is he a committed Buddhist, Rob's also possibly the only policeman to pound the Peckham beat in possession of a philosophy degree. New Year's Eve, he told me, he'd been working. On the stroke of midnight, he was in the casualty department of King's College Hospital holding the hand of a bloke who'd been bottled. Bloodied and shocked as he was, the geezer still wished Rob a happy new one. Happier.

I made the soup in the usual way: by sweating a mirepoix of chopped onions, celery and carrots in a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot with the lid on; adding a dessert spoon and a half of 'medium' curry powder, plus one of garam masala and another of turmeric. I peeled and roughly diced all the parsnips, adding each to the pot as it was chopped, stirring the contents and moistening with a little bouillon from a litre jug, to prevent sticking. When all the chopped 'snips were in the pot, I poured over a further four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the soup to the boil, and simmered for twenty minutes before blending with Brenda. I added a further litre of stock (making six in total) and finished the soup by grating in about 50g of creamed coconut to tone down the curry flavour and give a creamier mouth feel.

This to me is a classic, basic Soup Kitchen recipe: mirepoix flavour base + main vegetable ingredient + Marigold bouillon + creamed coconut. However, I felt there was something missing from this particular soup that makes me reluctant to nominate it an Almost Perfect Recipe. It really did have the texture of baby food and I thought it needed some slight element of crunch. Also a green garnish, which I somehow omitted. Anyway, Kadett wrote in the log bok: 'legs were frozen and they're not anymore, so (this soup) must be good stuff'.

As it goes, several mothers with babies and toddlers enjoyed the soup today, including little Irene, with her big blue eyes and high beam smile, who was the last customer today and made the numbers up to 23.

08.01.08: Carrot & Ginger

2008-01-09T17:01:00.000Z

loopylou@soupers_united.not writes:

A cold grey wet morning was just the thing to inspire me to cook up something warm and perky - Carrot and Ginger soup leapt out at me from Russell's Soup Bible, so I bimbled off to East Street to buy the ingredients - well most of them. In the words of Ol Blue Eyes, I Did It My Way. Had to wait a while to get served, but was entertained by the trader on the next stall punting out duvets with patter like "it's got a 25-year guarantee - as long as you never use it", etcetera. If any of these people go out of business, they can always take up writing the gags in Xmas crackers! Markets always cheer me up, but supermarkets have the opposite effect...

Once back in the Centre, I got cracking and sweated 2lbs/1kg onions with 2lbs/1kg of carrots and a smallish head of celery for about 20 minutes. Then I added 6 cloves of garlic and a large lump of ginger - about 2 thumbs' worth - and continued cooking while I peeled and diced 5lbs/2.5kg of carrots. I added them to the pot with about 7 litres of Marigold vegetable stock, brought the soup to boil and let it simmer for approx 15 minutes. I stirred in lots of black pepper during and, after the cooking, and got our colleague Brenda the Blenda to do the business with her blades. I'd bought 8lbs/4kg of carrots in total, so had 1lb left, which I grated straight into the pot as the soup was bubbling away. I simmered the pot for another 5 mins and finally added about 50g of creamed coconut: just enough to make it creamy and give it a bit more body, as I didn't want the flavour of coconut to be obvious in this soup.

I served the soup with bread from the Old Post Office Bakery in Landor Rd, Stockwell (left). This is a worker's co-operative that makes organic bread which you'll find in many wholefood shops in South London, as well as Fareshares. You can also buy from the bakery direct, which is what I do as you get it slightly cheaper and can choose from their whole range. They sell a large loaf for about £1-20 as opposed to anything up to £4 in some (WARNING: IMMINENT RANTING) poncey rip-off wholefood delicatessen. But let's keep it friendly. As well as the staff of life, I also recommend their delicious cakes, biccies and pizza. In fact, just thinking about it is making me ravenous, so let' me finish this blog entry so I can go there now and stuff my craw.

My sole New Years Resolution is to get the soup ready by midday, but today I fell at the first hurdle by failing to get out of bed in time. I am going to try harder, I promise. Luckily there's some kind of magic in the Pullens Centre and one of the myriad of ways this manifests itself is that, no matter what time the soup is ready, that is the exact moment the first punters arrive. This time, it was a pair of our stalwarts, Linda Brooker and Bruce Webb. Every time I do this, I worry that no-one's going to turn up and I'm going to be left with a whole pot of soup, but every week it all gets eaten - hooray !

Soon the place was busy and warm and full of life. There was plenty of second portions and cups of tea all round. I love coming to the Centre every week to make soup. The Pullens' community is sadly unique (not the other way round thankfully). There's no communities left like this in London and, as someone who doesn't actually live on the estate, trust me, it's a very special place. I know the spirit of the place is the result of the Pullens community having been born from the squatting movement, while all the other large local squatted communities were broken up years ago and the buildings either demolished (e.g.: St Agnes Place, R.I.P) or evicted, gentrified and none of its' original guardians living there (e.g.: Oval Mansions).

So Big Up all the Pullens ex-squatters who through sheer hard work and bloody-mindedness ensured that neither of those things happened here.

One of the people working in Peacock Yard offered his services in the near future to help cooking/serving one day. This was in response to the flyers asking for volunteers. We are delighted with any offers of help - don't feel you have to be here all day - a few hours you can spare even only as a one-off is most welcome and this is the spirit of the whole enterprise: to encourage a feeling of ownership of the Centre by the community. So if you have an urge to get involved, don't be shy - it's great fun.

The other way the Pullens Centre magic manifests itself is that we nearly always serve 23 bowls of soup. Today it was 22, but as I was locking the door, a woman came along asking if we were still serving... (cue Twilight Zone music).

07.01.08: Has Bean

2008-01-07T16:56:00.000Z

This blog got a bit scrappy in the week before Christmas, when a memorable Leek 'n' Sweet Potato concoction, courtesy of Carlo, went unrecorded and the Red and Black Bean Soup that I provided on Friday 21st went largely uneaten. I made masses in the expectation that demand would be strong on our final day, but it appeared that our regulars were all doing their Xmas shopping and so only about a dozen bowls were served.

I froze the uneaten soup from 21.12.07 in three litre-sized portions and served it again today, providing continuity to our enterprise and acting in the spirit of thrift that's surely appropriate to the age, is it not? I extended with more black and red kidney beans, biber salçası - red pepper paste - plus a can of borlotti beans, making a thoroughly rib-sticking bean soup, which I served with a swirl of fresh Greek yoghurt, to cheer everybody up on what was for many their first day back to work.

Intended to be more unctuous than spicy, this soup didn't contain any chilli and utilised the sweeter paprika paste rather its more piquant alternative. The frozen soup incorporated sweetcorn and the fresh one would include a can of meaty borlotti beans (although I did think of using the rest of the urid black lentils left over from making Dal Makhani) making for a really hearty soup. You can gauge how successful it was from this picture of Daisy and Annie, who have evidently been inspired to draw a heart in the condensation on the window:

Overnight, I soaked half a kilo of red kidney beans and another half kilo of black beans. To make the soup, I started with a mirepoix. Actually, I roughly chopped three purple onions, a white onion and a shallot and peeled the cloves of most of a head of garlic (all of which I found in the bottom of my fridge) and left them roasting in a medium oven, with the beans simmering in separate pot on the top, while I popped down the shops for bread, spread and milk.

Back at the Pullens Centre, I transferred the cooked onion and garlic to the soup pot, with a splash of hot oil in the bottom, added most of a head of celery, roughly diced, and the best part of a pound of carrots, also chopped. Continuing to cook this mixture over low heat with the soup pot lid on, I added a dessert spoon full of cumin seed and another spoon full of ground cumin, plus half a jar of paprika paste (let's say three dessert spoons full) and a splash of Marigold bouillon from a litre jug to keep the mixture moist and prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pan, adding more liquid as necessary. Meanwhile, the beans carried on simmering.

To the flavour base in the bottom of the soup pot, I added half the cooked beans from each pot with the rest of the litre jug of bouillon, plus a further two litres (making three in all) and carried on cooking until the beans were soft enough to blend. I turned the heat off and left the pot to stand for five minutes before blending its contents with Brenda the blender until it had a fairly smooth consistency. I assembled the finished soup by tipping in the rest of the cooked beans, the 3 litres of left over soup that had been defrosted and the 500ml can of borlotti beans (with their liquid).

Finally, I returned the soup pot to the stove top and reheated the soup, stirring well, and added another litre of bouillon to thin and make it more soupy. The soup was served with a swirl of fresh Greek yoghurt and some two dozen people enjoyed it. One wrote in the log bok, 'Lovely hearty soup - come on the New Year, let's have you!!

18.12.07: Another Borscht

2007-12-19T09:06:00.000Z

Lou had some of her puréed beetroot soup leftover from Friday and so she extended it with the addition of sweet red peppers and shredded red cabbage, which worked particularly well. She made a mirepoix using a couple of large and one smaller onion, eight carrots and six celery stalks, with six cloves of garlic. As these diced veg sweated down, she chopped and added the pepper and cabbage, plus four cans of plum tomatoes, then the beetroot purée and four litres of water. It was served, with a swirl of yoghurt and garnish of chopped dill, to 23 appreciative people.

17.12.07: Leek & Potato

2007-12-17T17:58:00.000Z

I chose to go with L+P this morning in order to record at least one more Almost Perfect Recipe before we break for Christmas and also because mighty fine looking leeks were on special offer in Somerfield, so I bought three kilos (@ £2.50/kg). As for the other main component of this soup, I used most of a 2kg bag of Désirée, a versatile variety that mashes well but is waxy enough to hold its shape when diced and boiled in a soup.

The challenge when making leek and potato soup is to produce a variety of textures and flavours: a creamy background to tangy leek with some chunks of potato. On 3.10.07, I mashed the spuds separately and finely chopped all the other ingredients. On 15.10.07, I whizzed the soup and experimented with coconut instead of dairy products to get a creamier texture (and I rather overdid it). This recipe combines both approaches and makes at least 25 250ml servings:

1. Slice the leeks lengthways and clean them thoroughly under running water. Make a mirepoix by dicing three medium sized onions, three biggish carrots and half a head of celery. Peel and smash half a dozen cloves of garlic.

2. Cook the mirepoix and garlic, with a couple of Bay leaves, in a generous splash of vegetable oil over medium heat in the bottom of your soup pot, with the lid on. Stir often to prevent sticking.

3. As the mirepoix cooks, finely shred the cleaned leeks and add them to the pot as you do so, stirring and replacing the lid. Add a litre of Marigold bouillon.

4. Peel and dice your spuds. The leeks will sweat down quite a bit, so you don't need an equal quantity of potatoes (unless you want to make Potato & Leek soup): a bit more than half and lees than two thirds by weight is about right. In this case, with 3kg of leeks, I used about 1.75kg of spuds. Add the diced potato to the soup pot and cover with a further four litres of bouillon.

5. Bring the soup to the boil and simmer it for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, melt 50g of creamed coconut - a quarter of a 200g block - in a litre of boiling water. Turn off the heat under the soup and leave it to stand for five-to-ten minutes more. Fish out any Bay leaves before blending.

6. Remove about a third of the soup to a separate container and then blend the rest with a stick mixer, adding the coconut mixture (to make a total of six litres of liquid in this soup).

7. After blending, reincorporate the chunky portion of the soup and serve. Popular garnishes include chopped parsley and Spring onion, or chives, but I grated nutmeg over the surface of this soup to give it a slightly spiced finish.

The log bok is full and, rather than replace it, I want to get a page-a-day diary for people to comment on their Soup Kitchen experience, so no specific remarks about this soup were recorded, but it went down very well. So well that almost every single person who sampled it had seconds, several had third bowls, and it was all gone by 3.30pm.

14.12.07: Fresh Beetroot

2007-12-16T10:44:00.001Z

Magda works for the cleaning company that has its offices almost next door to the Pullens Centre and is one of our regulars, often bringing in her own bowl so she can take her soup back to the office. Being Polish, her house mates assume she must make a pretty good borscht and no doubt she could if she put her mind to it, but this weekend we agreed to help her out and Lou made beetroot soup for everyone, but especially for Magda and her dinner party guests.

As on Day 12, Lou bought a net of beets from Crusons in Camberwell and followed the absurdly simple recipe she found in The Great Green Cookbook: boil 'em up, rub off their skins, add stock (enriched with Marmite) and puree. I'm calling this 'Fresh Beetroot Soup', rather than 'Borscht', because I don't think it would work unless the beets were absolutely fresh. As it happened on Friday, however, they were and this soup certainly hit the spot.

I did manage to slip over the Pullens Centre for soup, but wasn't able to there much over the second half of the week because the contractors finally got around to my flat and I had a yard full of Polish guys in florescent vest (see left). I don't want to moan (but I'm going to anyway): I put up with four months of living in semi-darkness while the scaffolding was up, all Summer long, yet they waited until the coldest days of the year to paint my window frames and front door. Wonder what the Polish is for 'sod's law'?

12/13.12.07: Carlo Interlude

2007-12-12T20:55:00.000Z

As you can see from this picture of the sun in the tree opposite the Pullens Centre, the weather this past few days has been crystal clear and freezing cold. The kind of conditions that surely call for the kind of hot and spicy soup of which Signor Atif is a past master.

Carlo is establishing himself as the Soup Kitchen's midweek attraction and his style is becoming familiar: on Wednesday, he makes a powerfully-flavoured soup which he calls by some enigmatic name that gives no clue as to the constituents of the soup, although its usually supported by such weighted adjectives as 'vegan' and 'organic'. This week's concoction was billed as 'Sweet 'n' sour Valentine': basically, a very gingery orange broth with pearl barley in the bottom. When I say gingery, it cleared the sinuses. Carlo told me he made it 'Thai style' and I'm not sure what that means, but I suspect what he did was grate the ginger and boil it up to make an infusion, added to finish what was a sensational and distinctly adult soup.

The day after, Carlo tends to extend what's left of his soup from the day before by adding a green vegetable puree, re-jigging the spices, and serving the soup with garlic bread as croutons. This week, he used broccoli (billed on the black board as 'Something Fab') and the resulting soup was thicker and heartier. Or maybe that was just me, getting into the festive mood a couple of weeks early.

Freed from the need to make soup from scratch, Carlo can focus his considerable culinary expertise upon the pasta, as Thursday is Pasta Nite. Again this week, he served fusilli with an extraordinary, fruity veggie sauce that defies conventional notions of Italianate, tomato-based pasta dishes. This one incorporated rhubarb (rhubarb!), which was a first for me, and was accompanied by a crisp carrot and sultana salad. Which was nice.

Although there weren't really enough takers to make it worth his while, hopefully Carlo will persevere with Pasta Nite for at least a few weeks into the New Year, until sufficient numbers of people get used to the idea that they can eat their dinner at the Pullens Centre on Thursday evenings.

11.12.07: Broccoli

2007-12-11T23:26:00.000Z

Lou usually makes soup on Tuesdays but this today it was down to me. I sank a few pints last night with former Pullenite, Tim Platt, and started late this morning, so I thought I'd fall back on a classic, one for which I have an almost perfect recipe that I can knock out while slightly groggy and half asleep. So here goes:

1. At a stall in East Street, I spent a fiver on a carrier bag full of broccoli, about the kilos, plus the mirepoix vegetables: carrots, onions and celery, plus garlic and half a dozen waxy potato.

2. Start by peeling and crushing the cloves of a head of garlic and dicing three medium-sized mild onions, four biggish carrots and a smallish head of celery, tossing the veg as it's chopped into a splash of oil in the bottom of the soup pot, over medium heat.

3. Turn down the heat and season the mirepoix with a generous sprinkling - say, two desserts spoons full - of powdered coriander. Continue to cook with the lid on the soup pot, lifting which it regularly to stir the chopped veg to stop it from sticking.

4. Prepare the broccoli by removing and reserving the florets and chop the stalks into approximately a 1cm dice, adding it to the soup pot. The broccoli I had was nice and fresh, but the stalks were a bit stringy and needed quite a lot of cooking to soften up before being liquidizised.

5. Peel the potatoes, dice them into centimetre cubes and put them into the pot with the rest of the veg. Cover it with four litres of Marigold bouillon, bring the soup to the boil and simmer it for twenty minutes, until the broccoli stalks are soft and the potatoes start to dissolve. Then leave the soup to stand for five or ten minutes before whizzing it up.

6. Throw the broccoli florets into the soup with another two litres of bouillon, return to the heat and cook for a further ten minutes before blending the cooked florets into the soup with a stick mixer.

7. Serve with an optional swirl of fresh yoghurt, or cream if you prefer.

I used fresh, runny EasiYo yogurt and went a bit over the top in the bowl that's pictured, but it sorted my hangover and generally went down very well. Especially with Mike who wrote in the log bok: TRIFFIC - Broccoli; King of the Soup Jungle!!

10.12.07: Miso & Celeriac, Roots & Kale

2007-12-10T17:24:00.001Z

This was the third variation on the winter Miso soup I've been developing, with chunky root veggies and shredded greens. The first, on 17.10.07, was thickened with pearl barley in the bottom; the second, on 23.11.07, had a base of red kidney beans, whizzed up. This one was thickened using a celeriac mash I made for my Sunday dins. I looked all over for celeriac and never thought of Lidl, but there I found a great big celeriac root. I steamed it with an equal quantity of potatoes and mashed the two together with a bit of fat. OK, you might as well know the truth. I admit I used real, unsalted butter from real cows and it was delicious.

First thing this Monday morning, I had to shop. Foolishly, I'd neglected to stock up on Marigold at Fare Shares last week, so was obliged to pay a quid extra in Baldwins this morning, where I also purchased a 300g pouch of Clearspring Hatcho Miso. As it turned out, this was probably more than I needed and maybe I could have saved some in the re-sealable pouch. This miso has seriously deep flavour and I reckon I could've got away with using maybe 200g in the six litres of liquid that went into today's soup.

I had a selection of rooty veg left over from the weekend, two types of turnip and those long red radishes from the Turkish supermarket, to which I added a couple of smallish swedes from Somerfield (on sale at half price!) and a polythene pillow of shredded curly kale.

To make the soup, I started by peeling the cloves of a head of garlic and roughly chopping a couple of largish onions, throwing them into the bottom of the soup pot with a splash of oil while I peeled and diced four large carrots and washed and chopped a head of celery, which also went into the pot. These mixed vegetables cooked slowly over very low heat with the soup pot lid on, being removed occasionally to stir, while I got on with peeling and dicing the rooty veg. I spread the diced swede, turnips and radishes onto an oven tray with a smear of oil and popped them into a hot oven to roast for 15-20 minutes. In retrospect, I'd have been better off with a wok, but I didn't have one to hand.

To the cooked mixed vegetables in the soup pot, I added the celeriac and potato mash, at least 3/4kg of it, plus the off cuts from the cubed root vegetables and covered it two litres of Marigold bouillon. I simmered the soup for fifteen minutes, left it to stand for ten and then liquidizised it with Brenda the blender while adding another two litres of bouillon.

The blurb on the back of the miso packet advises: 'avoid lengthy boiling to preserve the enzymatic properties of this unpasteurised miso', so I dissolved the 300g of miso paste in two litres of water that was hot, but not boiling. Finally, I assembled the soup by adding the cubed root vegetables and the miso to the pot and shredding the kale a bit more finely before stirring it in to the finished soup.

Before the soup was finished - and it was ready for 12:30 - a couple of women were waiting and nearly all the soup was gone by 3:00. Soon after 3:15, when Crampton Primary School lets out, Jack Kelly Granger burst in, breathlessly, to claim the last bowl.

Among today's soup slurpers were Taz and Will, Alexa and Julian . Taz has got an iPhoney and Julian had to restrain himself from dunking it in his soup. I needed a photo for the blog, so Will took a picture of me with the iPhone and pretended to dunk it in my soup. My face in I+I soup, innit.

7.12.07: Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash

2007-12-07T17:45:00.000Z

I visited Lidl in the Old Kent Road, to stock up on paprika-flavoured crisps and confectionary that incorporates hazelnuts, and I noticed that they also sell quite a wide selection of veg. So, I bought a couple of kilos each of sweet potatoes (@ £1.45/kg) and butternut squash (99p/kg), which translated as three big potatoes and four small squashes.

I also bought carrots. onions, celery and garlic at Lidl and, on the way back to base, picked up a handful of plump green chillies and a packet of creamed coconut from Oli's and a stick of very fresh ginger (30p) from the Sino-Viet grocery store in Walworth Road. I searched for sage, but had to settle for a bunch of thyme (50p) from a stall on East Street.

Back at the Pullens Centre, I peeled probably a dozen cloves of garlic and roughly chopped two of the largish, mild onions, which I spread onto a roasting tray with a little oil and cooked in a hot oven until they turned brown and started to caramelise. I thought to do it that way rather than cook the chopped veg in the bottom of the soup pot, but I'm not sure it made any discernible difference to the eventual flavour, so I probably won't bother again.

I minced the ginger and half a dozen chillies, peeled and chopped the carrots and washed and sliced half a head of celery. Then, with my sturdiest peeler, I peeled and diced the squashes and sweet potatoes into roughly 3/4 inch cubes.

Over a moderate flame, I first tipped the partially roasted onion and garlic mixture off its tray into the soup pot, adding the chillies and ginger and cooking for a few minutes before adding the carrots and celery. While continuing to peel/chop of the other veg, I cooked this base with the lid on the pot for a good fifteen minutes before adding the diced orange roots and squashes, covering with four litres of Marigold bouillon and whacking the heat up to bring the pot to a boil.

I simmered the soup for half an hour until the sweet potatoes were soft, added a 200g block of coconut cream dissolved in a litre of boiling water, and left the pot to stand for ten minutes before going to it. I tried to use Gaynor, but Gaynor was no-go. So, I had to decant half the soup into a smaller pot and use a hand mixer to blend it. Which worked fine, with one commentator in the log bok remarking that the soup's texture was 'smooth as silk'.

Ken - in his first visit to the Soup Kitchen - wrote that 'the sweet taste of these veg. together is exactly what my acupuncturist told me to eat'. To which I say, 'hurry back, Ken!'

Later, I got Jan to see to Gaynor and she opined that - apart from the blown fuse caused by a loose lead - the basic problem was that she had been mis-named. Apparently, one cannot call a stick mixer 'Gaynor', no matter how glorious the soups she swirls. It's like there's a law against it. Especially when the blender's name is quite obviously Brenda. Like the Queen in Private Eye. So, from now on, it's Brenda the blender, innit.

6.12.07: Tamarind 2 + Silent Pasta Night

2007-12-07T16:58:00.000Z

Tim Hutchin's Christmas window in Iliffe Street.

Carlo extended yesterday's soup with the addition of pureed Brussels sprouts, which fooled Jan, who had two bowls despite her loathing of those baby brassicas. Later, when I texted to remind people that pasta was being served in the Pullens Centre, Jan texted back to ask if Brussels were involved and I had to assure her that, although they were present, they were easily avoided.

The crisply-boiled sprouts were served cold, dressed with spiced yogurt as an accompaniment to the pasta, billed as Fusilli Green Costa Rica with a touch of sultana and pineapple. The green was derived from a can of Natco spinach puree, naturally, and the dish also included cubes of swede and shreds of curly kale, seasoned with Carlo's distinctive style. As Daisy wrote in the log bok, 'Amazing food... in the evening'.

Daisy just happened by and saw the sign and I texted all the Pullens people in my phone, but still Carlo served only about half a dozen people. One of them, Graham, came back at noon the next day to ask if here was any pasta left and, indeed, there was loads. Next week, hopefully, there'll be a few more takers.

5.12.07: Tamarind Peas & Pearl Barley

2007-12-05T16:36:00.000Z

Soak a kilo of organic dried green peas and 500g pearl barley over night. Start by putting the peas on to boil for an hour. Simmer the pearl barley separately and keep an eye on it, since its rate of cooking will be affected by the soaking. The grains of barley are added to the soup at the end, so should be cooked as soft as you wish them to be, perhaps retaining a little chewiness.

This soup depends for its flavour on tamarind, which comes in various forms. It's worth seeking out a good quality tamarind paste, or you may have to faff about soaking the dried fruit and cleaning it of any remaining seeds.

When it comes to cooking, this soup recipe needs to be taken slowly, very slowly. First, you need carrots chopped into cylinders and chopped onion - mixed chunks, small and big - celery and a couple of bay leaves, sautéed until golden in sunflower oil in the bottom of the soup pot.

Then add a generous mix of spices: curry powder; paprika; ground coriander, two or three teaspoons full of each, mixed with 50g of coconut cream melted in a cup of boiling water. This is followed into the pot by a couple of dessert spoons of piquant red pepper paste, Aci Biber Salçasi, plus three more cups of hot water.

Now add the cooked peas, with their cooking liquid and 100g of tamarind paste dissolved in hot water, plus two dessert spoons of mango chutney, and puree the soup, using a stick mixer, like our Gaynor, or a domestic blender or food processor. Finally, incorporate the pearl barley and add more hot water to thin the soup, if you think it's necessary.

Log bok tributes included: 'that was lovely and meaty-tasting again (although it was veggie) - yummy!' 'Beautifully seasoned and seasonal soup.' 'Quite interesting. Chef smiled today, too, which was nice.' Carlo will be smiling again tomorrow and, in addition to soup, branching out by offering pasta and salads for dinner tomorrow evening from six...

4.12.07: Mushroom

2007-12-04T17:51:00.001Z

This was the same minimalist recipe Lou deployed on November 6th and it produced the same result: deep boskiness. Natty was so overwhelmed by the flavour that he compared it in this log bok sketch to Fat Man. Or Little Boy?

3.12.07: Red and Black Bean

2007-12-03T21:05:00.000Z

Today, the start of our third month of operations, was quietly significant in the evolution of the Soup Kitchen since Brian O'Neill, senior Resident Involvement Officer let me know that our small grant application to buy equipment has been approved by the Tenants Fund Management Committee. So, I can start buying stuff! Brian came in with a couple of his colleagues from Southwark Council and all three of 'em had second helpings of today's beany soup.

Despite the weather, the Open Yards Weekend seemed to have gone really well and the community art exhibition mounted @ the Pullens Centre, showing works by about two dozen residents, was a great success. Daisy Kelly Granger (below) sang to a packed room on Friday evening and returned on Saturday, somewhat hoarse, to delight a more relaxed house. A really soulful singer, Earl Green, also performed, backed by Les Back on guitar and joined by an amazing harmonica player whose name I didn't get. Cold drinks were served. Which was nice.

Daisy's outfit is by Linda Brooker

Because the weather has been so morose, I thought I'd do a hearty soup, not unlike Day 21's Spicy Bean. Recently, it seems like there's been a dearth of black beans around these parts, but I managed to score a couple of 500g bags in an ethnic grocery down the Walworth Road. Overnight, I soaked 1kg of black beans and 500g of red kidney beans. This morning, I started by washing my hands and boiling my beans, in separate pans, simmering for an hour.

I minced most of a head of garlic - probably ten cloves - and roughly diced one very large onion, starting to cook these in a generous splash of vegetable oil over medium heat at the bottom of the soup pot. I diced half a dozen carrots and half a large and leafy head of celery, adding the diced veg. to the pot, and continued cooking over medium heat with the lid on, stirring every few minutes.

When the veg. mix cooked down and was starting to caramelise, I added about a dessert spoon full of paprika, a teaspoon of chilli powder, a teaspoon of garam masala and a sprinkling of cumin seeds. I mixed these spices into the cooked vegetables, allowing the flavours to mingle for a few minutes before de-glazing the soup pot with red wine. I used the end of a bottle of claret left over from the weekend, boiling off the liquid before adding the secret ingredient: Aci Biber Salçasi.

I used a couple of good-sized scoops of this piquant red pepper paste, stirring them into the cooked mirepoix before adding the red kidney beans and half the black beans, covering them with three litres of Marigold bouillon and bring the pot to the boil. While the pot simmered, I continued to boil the rest of the black beans and, in the pot used for the red beans, I boiled another 500g of urid, black lentils, which take about 25 minutes to boil until soft.

Finally, I assembled the soup. I turned off the heat under the soup pot and left it to stand for ten minutes before blending with Gaynor the stick mixer, adding 100 creamed coconut dissolved in a litre of boiling water. Then I added the separately-cooked black beans and urid and returned the soup to the heat to warm it through before serving with chopped fresh coriander, a swirl of yoghurt and a sprinkle of cumin seeds.

While the soup was cooking this morning, parties of primary school kids from Crampton Street school (which isn't actually in Crampton Street) came in to look at the art exhibition. Among them was Jack, Daisy's youngest brother, who was evidently so tantalised by the aroma that he came back for a bowl after school. Hopefully, he agreed with the verdict written in the log bok, that this one was a hearty, filling, winter-warming sooooop. Jan Pun: truly beanificial.

28.11.07: Organic 'Blue' Peas

2007-11-28T16:01:00.001Z

This chick pea soup is apparently from Carlo's blue period, hence the name. When challenged, he said something about Andy Warhol, perhaps a reference to his Campbell Soup cans. Who can say? As a wise man might have said, unless it's clear to the bottom of the bowl, the meaning of soup may be opaque. It may be meaningless, beyond the taste experience of its consumption and the energy derived from its nutrition. One man - Sumana - was inspired by this soup to whip out his banjo and give it some strumming there and then (see below).

Carlo was less vague about how his soup - organic 'blue' peas with creamy curry coconut, cumin & coriander - to give it its full title, came to be:

1 First, wash your hands and soak your beans. 2kg of chick peas, ideally soaked overnight, but an hour with bicarbonate of soda will do. Boil them separately for an hour.

2 Heat your pan slowly with organic olive oil in the bottom. Chop 6 small white onions roughly in quarters and 6 carrots into batons. Cook slowly in the bottom of the pot until caramelised.

3 Add spice/herb mix: cumin and coriander seeds, paprika; plus two cloves of garlic.

4 Add a quarter of the part-cooked chick peas to the pot, cover with water and cook for a further 40 minutes, stirring often. Continue to cook the rest of the peas, adding a dessert spoon full of Marigold bouillon powder to the boiling water to improve the flavour.

5 When the melange (in the pot) is cooked, add the two lots of chick peas together and blend with a stick mixer.

6 Finish the soup by adding a 200g bar of coconut cream dissolved in half a litre of boiling water. Serve it with a swirl of cinnamon yoghurt.

That recipe isn't complete because tomato puree comes into it somewhere and 'crunchy appeals', which I'm guessing are actually crunchy bits of chopped apple. Kadett wrote, 'yummy, yummy, not sure what makes it so good.' Nor can anyone be sure of the secret ingredient when the soup maker won't say. Bottom line: 'a phantasmic soup and a cockle warmer'.

27.11.07: 4 Grain Tomato & Basil

2007-11-28T10:11:00.000Z

Lou used this recipe on www.fatfreevegan.com, which is by Nava Atlas from her book, Soups For All Seasons. Except the given quantities are intended to free two, so Lou increased the volume of each of the four grains - pot barley, brown rice, millet, and bulgur wheat - from two tablespoons to half a kilo. That turned out to be quite a lot and this 'soup' took on the consistency of a risotto - one you could stand you spoon in - but was non the worse for its rib-stickingness.

FYI: According to Nigel Slater, the difference between pot and pearl barley is that the former has only its outer husk removed, while the latter is more refined. Mr Slater likes to soak his pot barley over night, but it's not strictly necessary. Unsoaked, it takes at least 50 minutes to simmer until soft, but adds much in sustenance, not to mention its nutty flavour, and is 'great in cold weather', Slater says.

Indeed, it was a cold day and this semi-solid soup went down very well with one person awarding it six stars and an effusive - though barely legible - recommendation that includes the words 'Body & Soul'! Saucy Siren wrote, 'too good not to come back for more' while Cathy put, 'very delicious soup. My first visit. I'll be back'. On the subject of grains, Jan wrote: 'now wait a millet, isn't that bird food? Well, it was tweetific, a twoo delight and another great tummy warmer'.

Because of the Open Yards weekend, when the Pullens Centre will house an art exhibition of work by residents of our flats, as well as the brilliant kids from the local primary school, the Soup Kitchen will not be in operation on Thursday and Friday this week. Carlo is cooking on Wednesday and our usual daily service will resume next week on Monday.

26.11.07: Brussle Sprout & Chestnut

2007-11-26T16:22:00.001Z

Brussels sprouts and chestnuts are a classic seasonal combination and one which I'd been keen to try, but for the fact that fresh chestnuts are a right pain to peel (not to mention that they cost a fiver per kilo). Sprouts aren't exactly fun to peel, either. So what possessed me to attempt this soup this morning, when I started late anyway, I dunno.

I looked in Somerfield for a can of unsweetened chestnut puree (some hope!) and found 200g packets of roasted, peeled and ready-to-use whole chestnuts, vacuum packed by Merchant Gourmet, right next to the raw chestnuts. So I ended up spending the best part of a tenner on two packets of prepared chestnuts and a kilo of the fresh 'n' wild kind.

I started making the soup by dicing a mirepoix of carrots, onions and celery and starting to cook the dice in a generous scoop of margarine, adding the contents of the two 200g packets of chestnuts, a grated nutmeg (a couple of teaspoons full) and a generous sprinkling of ground cinnamon. I mixed these ingredients thoroughly as they continued to cook over low heat while I peeled the sprouts.

I spread out the kilo of fresh chestnuts onto a tray and roasted them in a hot oven. Apparently, I should have cut a slit in the skins first and then they wouldn't have started popping in the oven and would have been easier to peel. But I only found out about that after Marie had laboriously peeled them.

Marie came into the soup kitchen early, when the soup was barely begun, and stayed for a cup of tea. When she saw how long it was taking me to work my way through 3kg of Brussels sprouts, she volunteered to help, thankfully. Between us, we peeled the sprouts and I chopped then in half and added them to the soup pot with two litres of Marigold bouillon.

When all the sprouts were added to the pot and covered with bouillon, I turned up the gas and simmered the soup for fifteen minutes and let it cool for five before blending with Gaynor the stick mixer, adding another couple of litres of bouillon , plus a litre of boiling water with 100g of creamed coconut dissolved in it (that's five litres of liquid in total). Et voila!

Marie had peeled half the roasted chestnuts by the time I finished the soup so I blended them in, too. One of our arty regulars came in before the soup was finished, so I asked her to chalk up the blackboard while she waited, which is how come this soup came to be so spelled. Jan is allergic toBrussle sprouts, or something, and wrote in the log bok, 'unfortunately not a soup I can eat, but it looks and smells fantastic'.

It was good: very nutty, with a bit of crunch in its texture. I served it with a swirl of freshly-made EasiYo Greek-style yoghurt. Ange wrote, 'what a gorgeous soup!! Seasonal and fresh. Very addictive - but I've kept to one bowl. PS: I.O.U. a double donation next time'. Sure, Ange. That's what they all say.

23.11.07: Red Miso Beany Veg

2007-11-23T17:26:00.000Z

It's properly cold now and people appreciate a soup that really warms them up, so I thought I'd do something with miso, using red kidney beans to thicken the soup base rather than the pearl barley I used in the miso vegetable soup on Day 13 and more beans to bulk out the soup, instead of root veggies.

Over night, I soaked 500g of red kidney beans and, separately, a 500g packet of Tesco exotic bean mix: dried black eyed beans, alubia beans, Dutch brown beans, baby Lima beans, butter beans and haricot beans. This morning, I went to buy vegetables in Somerfield and ended up with two swedes and a couple of plastic pillows of curly kale that were offered at a reduced price.

I boiled the two lots of beans in separate pans for an hour. I diced carrot, onion, and celery, minced half a head of garlic, and began to slowly cook the mixed vegetables in a splash of oil in the bottom of the soup pot. I peeled and diced the swedes and stir-fried the dice in a wok until it was thoroughly cooked, setting it aside. The kale was finely shredded and the stalks discarded.

When the beans were soft, having been simmered for an hour, I added the red kidney beans to the cooked mirepoix in the soup pot and covered it with two litres of Marigold bouillon and added another litre of boiling water with a 240g tub of Organic Mellow Field Bean Barley Miso dissolved in it before blending. One of my customers tells me that's all wrong and the miso should only be added at the last mo. so that its goodness isn't too compromised by cooking. But I wanted a strong, almost meaty flavour in the soup base..

Having thoroughly blended the red kidney beans and mirepoix with the miso and bouillon, I then assembled the soup by adding the cooked exotic bean mix, the stir-fried diced swede and the shredded kale with another two litres of bouillon (making five litres of liquid in all).

This was a popular soup - 'hot, healthy and ready to go', said someone in the log bok - and it was all gone before 3pm. A party of school girls doing a workshop and looking for somewhere to eat their lunch came in and six of them had soup; Jonathan, from the Buddhist Centre, must've had three bowls;-)

22.11.07: Re-Guguk + Kandi

2007-11-23T09:01:00.000Z

I forgot to mention the salad leaves that Carlo (eyes right) presented yesterday along with his soup. Today, having quite a lot left, he served 'yesterday's soup with today's new touch'. Which was a slice of garlic bread served in the soup as a great big crouton. His soup taken care of, Carlo also produced a couple of side dishes: a fresh salad, comprised mostly of bean sprouts and grated carrot, matched with a curried mayo dressing; and 'kandi'.

Kandi - a.k.a. Kandy - is the name of a town in the middle of Sri Lanka which is either the home of or the inspiration for this mixture of spinach and pulses with tofu. When I say spinach, I mean Natco spinach puree (eyes left) and when I say pulses, I mean Asda's exotic bean mix. Carlo reckons Asda is the best supermarket (Somerfield is the worst). Ideally, Carlo would've soaked his beans overnight, but instead he soaked them with bicarb. for an hour and boiled 'em for another hour. As you do. In contrast to his hurrying up of the beans, he cooked his onions slowly and no doubt mixed in some spices before he added the spinach and the cooked pulses, slowly stirring in cubes of tofu. It was unusual and, according to Alan, 'very enjoyable'.

Mr Atif enjoyed himself at the Soup Kitchen and will return next week for more. He's talking about maybe doing something one evening next week. So, if you're reading this because you got a flyer through your door and you're intrigued but you work in the day, this could be your chance to experience the delights of the community kitchen in action. Maybe.

21.11.07: Guguk

2007-11-21T15:53:00.000Z

Today, Carlo essayed his Guguk, which apparently means, 'peace to everybody' in German and, like it says on the blackboard, evokes sunny coconuts and lemon trees. One may not associate Germany with lemons and coconuts, but Carlo has a German girlfriend, so maybe his perspective is a bit warmer, like that Señor Coconut.

Carlo quartered onions seven smallish onions, he roughly chopped a dozen carrots into fingers and minced the stems from a bunch of coriander, cooking the mixture in a generous splash of oil in bottom of soup pot until the onions browned and carrots began to 'get a bit crusty' (whatever that means).

Separately, he boiled two kilos of yellow split peas, a.k.a jumbo lentils, with a teaspoon of bicarbonate in the water to make them softer and a whole lemon with three deep cuts for flavour for about twenty minutes. While the lentils were still quite firm, Carlo added half of them to the soup base while continuing to simmer the other half.

The soup base was spiced with powdered coriander, curry powder, and paprika, plus two teaspoons of sugar, salt and pepper. Carlo added a couple of glasses of hot water to prevent sticking and carried on cooking the soup in a covered pan. Then he added 100g creamed coconut dissolved in two litres of boiling water and liquidisized. Finally, the rest of the cooked lentils were incorporated, along with a two kilo packet of frozen fava beans and 200g bean sprouts for crunch.

This was a really unusual soup that went down very well with those who tried it. 'Very new and interesting,' wrote someone in the log bok, 'I loved it!' Even Esme (below) enjoyed it, which is high praise indeed. The meat eaters among us found the flavour intriguing, asking if the soup contained crab, perhaps, or chicken stock? As if!

20.11.07: Sweet Potato & Chilli

2007-11-20T17:24:00.000Z

Lou overslept and then she got a shock, down East Street, at the price of sweet potatoes. The ones she got were Jamaican, apparently, and therefore more silky smooth in their texture than other sweet potatoes, such as the kilo bag from Somerfield that I chucked into the pot. Following this recipe to the power of six, Lou paid £13 for 3.5kg of the Sexiest Sweet Potatoes from Jamaica (I added another kilo) and six chillis. Six of those mean little red Jamaican chillies. Maybe they weren't yer actual Scotch Bonnets, but those chillis were hot, hot, hot.

So this was a hot soup. Lou sprinkled paprika across its surface, but those chillies were overwhelming. Happily, there was yoghurt in the 'fridge for those who don't like it so hot. Rather than Gruyere, Lou garnished her soup with coarsely grated Red Leicester, which worked for me. It was a damn fine soup on a cold and drizzly day and I had seconds. Lou only counted out sixteen, though it's not clear if that's bowls or people.

We seem to be stuck on 16 this week, but hopefully the numbers will pick up now that I've put one of the new fliers through every letterbox on the Pullens. The design of these fliers - the back side of which is below - was donated by Stuart Pickering and the printing was done for nothing by a geezer who works nights and is happy to remain anonymous. Thanks to both;-)

The Tenants' & Residents' Association had a meeting tonight, which voted in favour of a funding application for a Small Grant from the tenants' fund for equipment, so I'm hoping that we'll soon be able to spend around a grand on: a water purification system; a stainless steel soup pot to replace the aluminium one we're currently using; a 10 litre soup kettle to keep the soup warm and free up the stove top; a toaster to make toast; and a rice cooker.

19.11.07: Parsnip 'n' Pear

2007-11-19T18:04:00.000Z

The weather today was miserable, dark grey and damp, and I was a bit slow to get started. I'd put pears out in the fruit bowl at the end of last week and they'd been in the 'fridge all weekend, so I thought I'd put 'em in the soup. Parsnip and pear is not quite so common a combination as parsnip and apple, but it works similarly, with the creaminess of the parsnips offset by the tart fruit. In this case, I enhanced the creaminess with creamed coconut and punched up the fruity flavour with curry.

I went down to Oli's and spent eleven pounds, including three loaves of their corek bread. I bought about six kilos of parsnips, I guess, plus a head of celery and a big onion and a a handful of carrots for the mirepoix and a bunch of fresh coriander for garnish. Overnight, I'd made a litre of EasiYo Greek style yoghurt, a jug of which I put on the counter for people to add to their soup.

Back at the Pullens Centre, I trimmed the leaves from the celery and reserved them, then the onion/celery/carrot mirepoix mixture, throwing the diced vegetables into a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot over medium heat. As the soup base cooked, I added minced ginger - say, a square inch - and two dessert spoons of medium hot curry powder.

I peeled the parsnips and cubed them into roughly 2cm spares, adding them to the pot as I cut them and mixing them into the gently cooking mirepoix, keeping the pot lid on and adding a splash of bouillon from a jug to prevent sticking. Once all the parsnips were in the pot, I peeled and cut out the cores from the pears, roughly chopped and added them to the pot. Then I poured in the rest of the two litre jug of bouillon and whacked up the heat.

Adding another two litres of Marigold bouillon (four in total) and melting a 200g block of creamed coconut in two litres of boiling water, I added the leafy celery tops and simmered the soup for fifteen minutes, until the parsnips were cooked through. Then I blended the soup, pouring in the 2l coconut (making 6 litres of liquid in total) and served it with an optional swirl of yoghurt (I don't think anyone declined).

I only served sixteen people today, but they all loved it and several had seconds. I'm hoping that the numbers will pick up this week as M. brought in the fliers that his bro. has printed, which look lush.

Preview: tomorrow, Lou plans to follow this recipe for Sweet Potato & Chilli Soup; on Wednesday, Carlo is talking split peas 'n' spinach with tofu. Join us!

16.11.07: Dal Makhani

2007-11-16T17:32:00.000Z

I don't think any one who knows their chutney would seriously contest the suggestion that Simply Indian offers the best curry-on-demand delivery service in our part of Sarf London . It's certainly got the most irritating Flash website (but you can order online and turn off the sound;-) You know a dish is becoming properly trendy when it appears on the Simply Indian menu and 'Dall Makhani' made it, oh, about a year ago: 'This is a very typical Punjabi dish containing black lentils, red kidney beans, butter, cream, and various spices. Makes this a wonderful, warming and tasty dish" (sic) it says. This version is no soupier than S.I.'s, or not much. Instead of lashings of butter and cream, its creamy texture is derived from a 200g block of creamed coconut.

Carlo had cooked up some black lentils, urad, that filled a 2 litre jug left and were left over in the 'fridge. Yesterday, I picked up two 400g cans of Bio Idea brand organic fagioli nero, black beans, from Fare Shares for 50p each. Overnight, I soaked probably a kilo and a quarter of red kidney beans. This morning, a geezer turned up to service my boiler, so I put the kidney beans on to cook at home while investigating a recipe via Google. Boiler and appliances duly checked, I went to Oli's and bought garlic, ginger and green chillies, plus a couple of big onions and a packet of cumin seeds (99p). I also picked up a jar of piquant red pepper paste - Kirimizi Biber Salcasi - which turned out to be a crucial ingredient of the eventual soup. And one of Oli's big round loaves, too.

Back at the Pullens Centre, I carried on simmering the red kidney beans, which need to be cooked until they're soft, for at least an hour. I minced two bulbs of fresh garlic and equal quantities of ginger and green chili, then diced and started to cook the two big onions in a generous splash of oil (Carlo left some nice Spanish olive oil), adding the minced trinity of garlic/ginger/chillis, a big fist full of each. I sprinkled probably a dessert spoonful of cumin seed and another of garam masala into the mix. Then I added two tins of plum tomatoes, a couple of dessert spoonfuls of tomato puree that was left over in the 'fridge, plus half a jar of the aforementioned red pepper paste.

To this dense red base of spicy tomato and onion, I added the pulses: first, the red kidney beans and three quarters of the cooked black lentils. Adding four litres of Marigold bouillon, I brought the soup to the boil and simmered it for ten minutes. Before blending it, I scooped out a couple of great big ladles full of the kidney beans, etc, and reserved them for later re-incorporation. Then I Gaynored soup, liquidizising it fairly thoroughly and adding a further couple of litres of liquid: creamed coconut melted in boiling water. Then I returned the reserved kidney beans and black lentils to the soup and added the two tins of black beans, with their liquid, these late additions giving texture to the soup, which I served with a swirl of yogurt soured with lemon juice .

It went very well with the regulars. Gordon and Nick were particularly enthusiastic, declaring it 'fan dabbie dosey' and 'the best soup to date' (respectively;-) My friends from the Buddhist Centre on Manor Place (here's a pic of the shrine) brought a cake, so people were encouraged to linger after a portion or two of what was generally agreed to be a pretty damn fine soup and then have a cup of tea and and slice of cake. It was all very civilised but, I must say, I only served sixteen, not counting refills. The Soup Kitchen's numbers are down on a fortnight ago, but perhaps people aren't aware that we're back in business. That should change imminently as some fresh flyers are being printed...

Talking of fresh flyers, here's Kai (eyes right), who I reckon has been the Soup Kitchen's most faithful devotee, having hardly missed a soup since we started. Here, he is waving away the camera in a futile attempt to avoid public ridicule for this pathetic, soup-related joke: a pilot ejects from his plane over dense jungle and drifts down on his parachute, guiding himself towards the one clearing he can see in the rain forest below. Too late, he realises he is about to land in the middle of a tribal gathering and, as luck would have it, he drops down smack into a great big cooking pot that's simmering over an open fire in the middle of the clearing. Whereupon, the tribal chief exclaimed, "there's a flyer in my soup!" No, you're right and I told him, Kai, you oughta be ashamed...

15.11.07: Borscht

2007-11-15T19:33:00.001Z

I served borscht today with a swirl of sour yogurt and garnish of chopped chives. I used a gallon or so of frozen beetroot puree left over from when Lou made her simple borscht, and following the Soup Bible recipe which I called complex borscht, because it contains mushrooms, apples and red pepper. The mushrooms - a 750g punnet from Somerfield - impart an earthy flavour to the base of the soup, which is important as I was not about to use beef stock, while the apples - half a dozen Bramleys - provide a fruity zing that worked well with the beetroot.

I started with half a dozen medium sized onions, roughly chopped and sweated in the bottom of the soup pot with half a dozen stalks of celery and two red bell peppers, seeded and roughly chopped. To this mixture, I added cumin (ground jeera in this case, since I didn't have any whole cumin seed), bay leaves, and dried thyme. Then I added the chopped mushrooms, continuing to cook over low heat with the lid on, stirring occasionally, while I peeled and chopped the apples.

After adding the apples to the pot, I tipped in the beetroot puree which I'd defrosted in another pot and added another couple of litres of stock. I used Marigold bouillon, adding a dessert spoon-sized dollop of Marmite to achieve a darker colour and richer flavour. I brought the pot back to the boil, simmered for about fifteen minutes and left the pot to cool for ten minutes before blending its contents with Gaynor.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the consistency of the soup, so I passed it through a sieve into another pot, achieving a silky texture that was enhanced with the addition of sour yogurt (rather than cream). I used fresh yogurt form the EasiYo yogurt maker, thinning it with a little lemon juice, which one commentator found 'a little sour' which is surely the point? Anyway, this person - actually, it was Professor John Eacott (he's got a PhD in funk!) - also said the borscht was 'lovely' and 'worked a treat'.

Only about 15 people came in for soup today - one of whom declined to make a further donation on the grounds that he gave a fiver yesterday;-) - but it was good to see them all. Naveed (left) was among those who spared a half hour to hang out and chat. He's one of a small group of students of City Design & Social Science from the London School of Economics who are doing a project on the Pullens; its history and social evolution. They haven't quite worked out what angle each is going to take, yet, but will be looking to interview residents in the near future. So, if you're reading this and you live on the Pullens, or used to, and you've got something to say about about the experience, leave a comment here or come into the Soup Kitchen one lunchtime soon.

14.11.07: Thai/Indian Curry Veg

2007-11-15T19:30:00.000Z

I went on a booze cruise to the hypermarkets of Calais on a trip organised by Jan from Iliffe Yard, leaving Carlo to make a soup he described on the blackboard as 'Thai/Indian Curry Veg with Love (donations)'. He left me a half a bowl to sample and this was an intensely curried, orange soup with gob-smacking flavour.

Recipe info is scant, but I gather Carlo made use of what he could lay hands on. He roughly quartered half a dozen onions and cooked them quite hot, in a good couple of splashes of oil, browning the onion. Then he added spice: the end of a packet of cumin seeds; mild curry powder; green curry paste. He added diced vegetables, predominantly carrots, plus a tin of tomatoes and half a tin of tomato puree. He also used up the Marigold bouillon powder, making a few litres at least. When his soup was cooked, Carlo blended it with Gaynor and finished it with half a block of creamed coconut dissolved in boiling water.

He reckons he only served about 15 people, but one of them left a fiver so Carlo easily covered his costs and had enought fun to want to do it again. No photographic evidence was gathered, but log bok comments include: 'nice + spicy - very warming'; Kadett put, 'really nice spicy soup, just what I want'; and Linda wrote, 'love the Thai flavours, thankyou a lot!' Carlo returns next week.

13.11.07: Lentil and Vegetable Stew

2007-11-13T17:37:00.000Z

Compare the image above with the one on the right and you can see that things are starting to happen at the Pullens Centre. One of the residents - Simon - repainted the woodwork downstairs on the side of the building that faces into Iliffe Yard in order to smarten the place up before the open weekend at the end of the month, when the Centre will be the venue for a community art exhibition. Simon wasn't prepared to erect scaffolding and tackle the upstairs and so the chaps from Makers - the contractor responsible for the external refurbishment of the estate - were persuaded to take the job on themselves. They've also brought forward the redecoration of the frontage so it too will look good for the Open Yards weekend.

What's more, you'll notice the white van in the photo belonging to OCO, the heating engineers contracted to Southwark Council. The boiler at the Pullens Centre hasn't worked all year, despite the attentions of various chaps at various times. Now, however, its been replaced with a brand new one that actually dispenses hot water on demand! Yay! Now we can retire the energy-hungry urn we've depended upon for hot water this past month.

Today, Lou made a lentil & vegetable stew that went down very well, with comments in the log bok that included: 'Really delicious soup, thank you!' 'Yes it is, Ta!' 'Simply the best' (or should that be beast?) and 'a true tummy treat'. 21 bowls were served.

Lou used 2kg of brown lentils which were soaked over night. Lentils don't necessarily need to be soaked in advance, but it reduces the cooking time and - according to some - soaking one's lentils and discarding the soak water before boiling them in fresh water reduces 'gaseousness' a.k.a. 'fartiness'.

I wasn't watching when this chunky lentil soup was made, but I'd guess that Lou boiled the lentils separately while frying onion and garlic in the bottom of the soup pot, to which she added coarsely diced potato, carrot and leek. I daresay she continued to the veg. for ten minutes or so before adding the lentils, covering with stock and cooking for at least half an hour, garnishing the soup with chopped parsley as it was served.

12.11.07: Spacey Carrot & Coriander

2007-11-12T16:51:00.001Z

I got over my cold but am still feeling a bit spacey and the Soup Kitchen is back in the business of dispensing its goodness. I opted for carrot and coriander today because: it's a solid gold classic with a recipe that's close to perfection; I wanted to use the new blender to make it quicker; and I could easily get the carrots from Oli's, the Turkish supermarket in Walworth Road, since East Street market doesn't wasn't on. Plus I wanted to celebrate the return of the Mighty Boosh, if not quite to the extent of serving croutons.

It's amazing, the goodwill generated over the past month by the simple expedient of making fresh soup and serving it for whatever people are willing to give in return.

To take just one pertinent example, I'd expected to pay around a hundred quid to get our liqudiziser, AKA the liquidimifier, fixed. This industrial stick mixer was donated to the Soup Kitchen, but was on its last legs: it worked, just not very well.
Gaynor, at Denton's, opposite Clapham North tube, identified its manufacturer over the phone by its orange handle as Dynamic and said it would be sent away for servicing. The inspection fee would be sixty quid and then there'd be the cost of the parts: new blades and a lead. I took it down there the afternoon we closed, on October 31, as my cold was brewing. But then they reckoned it also needed new barings and a new handle, too: two hundred quid at least! Gaynor reckoned I'd be better off buying a new one. Except I couldn't afford a new one. I'd have to pay sixty quid to get the old one back in bits! There had to be another way.

Happily, when I explained that the Soup Kitchen isn't a commercial enterprise and its operation absolutely depends upon the soup-making machine, Gaynor was sympathetic. She said she'd have a word with the engineer and he's sorted us out with an ex-demonstration PMX98 Mini-mixer (300W, 40L, 300mm shaft) for fifty quid! Plus VAT = £58.75. I picked it up morning and, as Monday is Gaynor's day off, I didn't get to thank her in person, but will name the appliance she supplied in her honour. Or maybe I'll call it Gloria. Thanks too, of course, to the anonymous engineer from Mitchell & Cooper. What a gent.

Here's my almost definitive Pullens Soup Kitchen recipe for Spacey Carrot & Coriander:

From the greengrocer: I big onion, weighing at least half a kilo; a flowering head of celery; six kilos of carrots, roughly; and two bunches of fresh coriander.

Also: half a 200g block of creamed coconut - that's 100g! - dissolved in a litre of boiling water; a couple of dessert spoons full of coriander seed, dry roasted over medium heat in a cast iron pan, then powdered in an electric coffee grinder.

Plus: Five litres of Marigold bouillon. A dusting of nutmeg, or allspice.

1. Dice the onion and start cooking it in the bottom of the soup pot in a little oil over low heat, lid on.
2. Chop the leafy top off the celery and reserve it. Chop up all the rest of the celery stems and add them to the pot.
3. Cook for five minutes while peeling and chopping carrots, then add the powdered coriander seed to the pot and cook for a further five minutes while continuing to peel/chop carrots.
4. Add the carrots you've peeled/chopped to the pot and cover with two litres of Marigold bouillon.
5. Peel the rest of the carrots and chop 'em all up, save four big ones. Add the chopped carrots to the soup with another two litres of bouillon and simmer for fifteen minutes.
6. While the soup simmers, coarsely grate two of the reserved carrots.
7. Chop the leaves from the bunches of coriander and reserve them. Put the coriander stalks through a masticating juicer, chasing them through with the two remaining carrots, and reserve the intense green liquid.
8. Turn off the heat under the soup pot and leave it to stand for ten minutes with the lid on before blending the soup using a stick mixer like our very own glorious Gaynor.
9. While waiting for the soup to cool before blending, finely chop a generous handful of the reserved coriander leaves for garnish and, when it comes to blending, add the rest of the coriander at the last minute with a further litre of bouillon and whizz the leaves into the soup.
10. Finish the soup by blunding in the creamed coconut, the grated carrot and the coriander juice returning the soup pot to the heat to warm it through.

Another marvellous thing happened today with the soup. We've got great big pepper grinder that came from the same donor as the original stick blender. It's been on the counter for the past month and we've all been merrily twisting 'black pepper' over everything. But today that mill turned out to contain allspice! Just what was needed to garnish this soup as it was served.

bowl by Daniel Reynolds

Today, Pullens Soup Kitchen served 23 bowls of spacey spicy carrot and coriander soup and, although our regulars were reticent in the log bok, one anonymous soul wrote: 'Good to see you back in good health. The illness has not affected your ability to make fantastic soup. This is my favourite so far!' That's what they all say, all the time!!

06.11.07: Mushroom

2007-11-06T18:27:00.000Z

My lousy cold is lingering, hence no soup yesterday, but today Lou took over from where she left off last week, making mushroom soup with Graham. It was one of her minimalist recipes: minced garlic and thyme sautéed in butter (she actually used Utterly Butterly, don't ask me why) followed by two kilos of 'shrooms, sweated in the soup pot with the lid on for ten to fifteen minutes, stirred every few minutes to stop it sticking and ensure even cooking. Then she poured over six litres of Marigold bouillon and simmered the soup for a further ten minutes before blitzing it with the stick blender. And that's it, really.

I thought this soup was delicious and sufficiently pungent for its earthy aroma to penetrate my cold. Lou served it with a swirl of single cream and there were 17 takers, six of whom had seconds, making a total of 23 bowls served (as usual!) As someone wrote, rather enigmatically, in the log bok: 'Must Understand Soups Have Really Orsum OM Factor'. Indeed.

Some technical notes: Lou bought her 'shrooms at Somerfield, because they have bargainous 750g packs of field mushrooms. She used two, plus a 500g punnet of button mushrooms, which went into the pot whole and were a birrova bovver to liquidizise with the baby stick mixer. Our big mixer is still at the menders where it's gone for a service: new lead and blade. You'd think that would be a pretty straightforward proposition, but oh no. Turns out there's only one guy at the factory who does servicing and he's got some kind of grievance, so I don't think we're going to get our Dynamic magic wand back any day soon. Never mind that this machine is integral to our operation every single day and it's going to cost, like, a hundred quid to tune it up. I only hope it's going to be as good as new for that price, because I could have a new one tomorrow for twice as much. Innit.

Day 23: Pumpkin

2007-10-31T17:16:00.000Z

It's the last day of our October souping and I've got a stinking cold. Happily, Lou was fit to make soup and, it being Halloween, she reprised her pumpkin concoction from Day Five, when spicey was spelled as it should be rather than it actually is.

As someone wrote in the log bok: 'Halloween - pumpkin soup? Work that one out!' Evidently, the equation was simple enough people for the Soup Kitchen to achieve a record number of bowls served on our last day of operation: 30!

Lou's variation on her tried and tested formula was lashings of ginger which worked for me with my cold. As someone else wrote in the log bok: 'Damn lovely - I'm not feeling well so it's given me a lift.' And as a third person wrote, 'it's not a trick, definitely a treat.'

So ends the first chapter of the Soup Kitchen. Over the month, we've done better than break even, showing an average profit of nearly nine quid per day! Of course, we don't pay utility bills and we don't pay ourselves. We are going to have to pay about a hundred quid to service the magic wand that makes it all happen, though.

Apparently, the Soup Kitchen was favourably mentioned at last night's AGM - which I didn't attend because of my rotten cold - and our Resident Liaison Officer is enthusiastic about our innovative experiment in social cohesion. Consequently, after a short break, we will resume the daily service of soup next week.

Happy Samhain, everybody. May the Great Pumpkin shower you with Autumnal abundance.

Soup Maker: Lou

Soup: Gingery Pumpkin
No. of bowls served: 30
Expenditure: £15.78
Donations: £26.98
Final score: +£203.96

Day 22: Moroccan Chickpea

2007-10-30T17:15:00.000Z

I woke up this morning with a nasty cold, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't have to make soup today and then Lou rang to say she'd woken up feeling terrible and couldn't make soup today! At least Graham was his usual self and he went off down the Walworth Road to do the shopping.

I'd left a couple of kilos of chickpeas to soak overnight and Lou sent me a link to this recipe for Moroccan Chickpea soup, which I compared to the recipe on www.epicurious. Then I blithely ignored both and devised my own recipe which incorporated the end of a tub of tahini that was in my 'fridge and the end of the jar of ajvar from the Pullens Centre 'fridge.

I started by boiling the chickpeas for an hour. I minced ten cloves of garlic and diced four medium sized onions, a whole head of celery, and just a couple of carrots and sweated these chopped vegetables in a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot. I added a tablespoon full of cumin, plus a tablespoon full of garam marsala. What would've perked up this soup and made it properly Moroccan is harissa paste, but I didn't have any so I used the ajvar instead.

When the soup base had sweated down a bit, I added the cooked and strained chickpeas, plus the contents of eight cans of chopped plum tomatoes to the pot. I covered the chickpeas with four litres of Marigold bouillon and brought the pot to the boil, simmering for half an hour.

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have whizzed up this soup at all, but I did. I whizzed it a bit, decanted about a third, whizzed a bit more and returned the decanted third to the pot before finishing the soup by mixing in the tahini, probably a couple of generous tablespoons full. It ended up being a very thick and chunky soup, more like a chickpea stew.

The recipe Louisa was intending to follow included broad beans and lemon, both juice and zest. Graham had come back from Iceland with a bag of frozen, chopped green beans and I forgot to tell him to get lemons. I tell you' I'm not well. However, Graham managed to get a couple of lemons when he popped out for milk and we served the soup with a squeeze of lemon over the surface and a sprinkle of chopped parsley.

Graham said he'd take the beans home with him but he forgot them in the 'fridge and so, later, I added them to the soup and served the last ten portions or so with added green bean. I guess this took it even further away from Morocco, but nobody seemed to care. Although one or two commented that the soup failed to scale the heights of yesterdays chilli bean, Alan wrote in the log bok, 'Another bull's eye!

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Moroccan Chickpea
No. of bowls served: 22
Expenditure: £9.77
Donations: £23.04
Running balance: +£192.76

Day 21: Spicy Bean

2007-10-29T19:02:00.000Z

Never mind what the dictionary says, 'spicy' is wrong. At least, it looks wrong. Of course it should be 'spicey', IMO, but in a spirit of willing co-operation, because it's spelled that was in Debra Mayhew's Soup Bible, and because Natty wrote it that way on the blackboard today, on this occasion I will cheerfully conform with the conventional spelling. Maybe the way forward is to opt for 'spiced'?

In this recipe, the spices in question are cumin and Cayenne pepper. I didn't have any Cayenne and used paprika instead, spiked with a hefty pinch of chilli powder. The recipe also calls for red wine and beef stock. For the stock, I used a jar of Marks & Spencer's concentrated vegetable stock. For the red wine, I used a box of Chilean cab. sav. that's been hanging around the Pullens Centre kitchen since the last Annual General Meeting (and the next AGM is tomorrow!)

Overnight, I soaked 750g of black beans and the same quantity of red kidney beans in two separate bowls and, first thing this morning, I boiled them in two separate pans for an hour. The quantities were determined by the fact that, having trawled the length of Walworth Road, I was only able to buy a single 750g bag of black beans. Still, this 1.5 kg of beans turned out to be just the right amount since all the soup (made with 4 litres of stock) was eaten: another 23 bowls full!

I deviated from the recipe by increasing the quantity of red peppers and reducing the celery in the mirepoix of chopped vegetables that forms the flavour base of this soup, to make it richer. I diced a single very large onion, four or five medium-sized carrots and half a dozen red peppers. Rather than bland bell peppers, I used the more elongated, slightly piquant variety. Heating a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot, I put in the diced vegetables and added the spices, about two dessert spoons full of cumin and the same amount of paprika with a teaspoon of chilli powder.

Once the spice was added, I continued to sweat the diced veg. in the soup pot with the lid on over low heat for a further five minutes or so, stirring every now and then to stop the mix from sticking to the bottom of the pot, which I de-glazed with a glass of red wine before straining the cooked beans and adding them to the soup pot. The M&S concentrated veg. stock makes four pints, or not quite two litres, which is about half what I needed, so I added another two litres of Marigold bouillon to the soup and simmered it for half an hour.

I blended the soup a bit with the Dynamic stick mixer then, while it was still fairly chunky, removed about a quarter of the soup to another pot. I continued to blend the bulk of the soup until it was quite smooth and then returned the chunkier soup to the main pot and mixed it, to give contrasting smooth and slightly chunkier textures. I served it with a dollop of full fat cow's yogurt, which went down very well with just about everyone.

This was a very popular soup on what was a cold, brilliantly clear day. Several people had second bowls and Linda wrote in the log bok, 'the best yet! My favourite so far'.

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: Spicy Bean
No. of bowls served: 23
Expenditure: £12.66
Donations: £26.87
Running balance: +£179.49

Day 20: Celery/Celeriac

2007-10-26T09:07:00.002+01:00

Here, I was looking to construct a two-tiered flavour with the creaminess of the celeriac, enhanced with coconut cream, serving as a background for fresh celery spiced with coriander. At the heart of the soup were five small, fresh bulbs of celeriac, organic and locally grown, which I purchased from Fare Shares for about a quid each. They looked not unlike the ones in this photo, only dirtier.

Antonio, who lives on Crampton Street, helped me this morning and he says he's going to make soup himself one day soon. We went to buy bread at Oli's and, having walked through East Street, ended up getting the rest of the necessary vegetables there, too, including a magnificent head of celery.

Back at base, Antonio peeled the celeriac roots while I toasted and ground a good handful of coriander seed, which I added to the mirepoix cooking in the bottom of the soup pot. Antonio picked the leaves off the head of celery and put them to one side for later incorporation.

We added the celeriac, diced, and celery, chopped, plus four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the soup to the boil and simmered for 20 minutes before finally added the celery leaves, turning off the gas and leaving the pot to stand with its lid on for ten minutes before blending.

The soup was whizzed up with the Dynamic liquidisizer, then we added another litre of bouillon plus half a block of creamed coconut melted in a litre of boiling water and whizzed it again. The soup was still a bit stringy, so I passed it through the sieve into the smaller, 6 litre soup pot for service.

Again, I used the creamed coconut for texture rather and put some spice in the base of the soup to counteract or compliment its flavour, which improved the creaminess of the celeriac. Hopefully. This was a very green soup. Louisa wrote, 'although it looks like snot it didn't taste like it' and some one else wrote, 'the soup was out of this world'.

I counted out 29 bowls, which equals yesterday's record. A couple of those were left over Caulinut soups, served to a couple of guys who came in early doors, and a couple were refills for hungry folks. My portion size is a pretty consistent 250ml, this soup incorporated six litres of liquid and every drop of it was eaten, so you do the math.

I didn't take any photos, so here's a shot of the London Park Hotel, which is being demolished to make way for a tower designed by Richard Rogers. It's got 44 storey and is 13 meters (45 foot) shorter than the Multiplex Tower nearby. No prank.

Soup Makers: Russell + Antonio
Soup: Celery/Celeriac
No. of bowls served: 29
Expenditure: £16.76
Donations: £26.12
Running balance: +£165.28

Day 19: Cauliflower & Walnut Cream

2007-10-26T08:35:00.000+01:00

I wasted time this morning hunting celeriac, first in the great big Tesco in Kennington, then in Sainsbury's @ Nine Elms, but to no avail. So I went back to basics as to East Street, to buy what's cheap: cauliflower at three for a quid; walnuts at a quid a pound.

I've seen a recipe in Debra Mayhem's Soup Bible (that title gets more wrong every time I type it) that uses equal quantities of skimmed milk to stock to improve creaminess, but I replaced the low-fat milk with full fat creamed coconut, keeping it Vegas. This time, I used half a block dissolved in 500ml boiling water.

Back at the Pullens Centre, I roughly chopped a mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery and sweated the chopped vegetables in the bottom of the soup pot, lid on. I added a couple of teaspoons of curry powder, not so much for the sake of its flavour as to counteract the coconut. In retrospect, I wouldn't have bothered, because the flavour of walnuts in this soup was ultimately hard to detect (although they were there in the crunch).

Shelling 3lbs walnuts - one per cauli - was arduous. Although they were fresh enough to crush under the heel of my palm, I was v.pleased to see Jen and Mike come in early doors and immediately set them to work, cracking nuts open with a knife.

I cut the outer florets off the caulis and set them aside, then diced the stalks and added the dice to the cooking mirepoix in the pot. Then I added the walnuts, stirring them into the contents of the pot and leaving it to steam with the lid on for ten minutes or so before pouring over four litres of Marigold bouillon, whacking up the heat and bringing the the pot to the boil, then simmering for ten minutes.

I blended the soup fairly thoroughly with the Dynamic stick liquidimizer, which is sounding sicker with every passing day. After the first blending, I added another two litres of boiling bouillon, plus the coconut and all the reserved florets, returned the pot to the hob and brought the soup back to the boil. Then I turned off the heat, gave it five minutes and blended again, whizzing the just-cooked florets into the soup.

By this time, there were people waiting for today's soup. I'd kept their interest with the ends of yesterday's borscht served with a dollop of Sainsbury's organic reduced fat Greek style natural yogurt, but the natives were getting restless and declining to be photographed (left). I served the soup garnished with roughly chopped flat parsley.

Louisa came in to take over so I could leave at three, by which time I'd served 19 soups, but some of them were borscht. Lou served another ten bowls, but if I counted as many as half a dozen borscht, maybe the number of nutty cauli soups served was twenty three.

Upon my return, I went to Fare Shares to replenish the Marigold stock (we go through a 500ml tub a week at least; that's 25 litres of bouillon) and blow me down if they didn't have 'local' organic celeriac @ £2.45 a kilo. So I did get my celeriac in the end.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Cauliflower & Walnut Cream
Ingredients: Curry powder, coconut
No. of bowls served: 29
Expenditure: £14.10
Donations: £30.80
Running balance: +£155.92

Day 18: Complex Borscht

2007-10-24T17:27:00.001+01:00

I called this one 'Complex' Borscht in contrast to the Simple Borscht that Louisa made last week, which was basically a puree: a single varietal soup. This version comes straight out of The Soup Bible, incorporates apples and mushrooms and is garnished with very fresh yoghurt soured with lemon juice, so its flavours are more complex. If it's not a lot more complicated to make, it is more laborious.

I was able to offer a jug of very fresh yoghurt for the people to swirl into their soup because I've invested in an EasiYo yogurt maker. I it got off the internet from a firm at which EVERYONE WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING WITH US. Don't cha hate that, when they can't quite bring themselves to actually thank you? I mean, in my stairwell on the Pullens, there's a notice from Makers, the contractors who are refurbing the estate saying, 'WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT THE SCAFFOLDING WILL BE COMING DOWN ON...' So, one wonders, what were their reservations?

Anyway, I digress (and the scaffolding came down weeks ago). The thing is, I've bought a yogurt maker that requires sachets of dehydrated milk powder. The sample worked really well so, as soon as I obtain a supply of these sachets, a jug of yogurt to swirl into your soup will become a staple of the Soup Kitchen.

There was about three kilos of beets, I reckon, in the 'fridge and I arduously peeled every single one first thing this morning, before a trip to Somerfield, where I was served by Alice and Lady Madonna by the Beatles was playing as I queued, segueing into You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones as I left. Which reminded me of Gimme Shelter, which I stayed up to watch on TV last night, remembering the first time I saw I saw it as a teenager. This time, never mind the murder, I savoured the juicy bits, like that scene at Muscle Shoals when they listen to the playback of Wild Horses for what looks like the first time.

I digress. Anyway, I assembled the indgrediments, seen on the left. Got the mushrooms the recipe called for, 250g, and looked around for a darker concentrated vegetable stock to work with the 'shrooms to give bottom to the flavour of the soup. Traditionally, borscht is made with beef stock. Louisa, in her Simple Borscht, substituted Marmite mixed into Marigold bouillon. I thought about using Marks & Sparks veggie stock concentrate, which is pretty good, but then I saw that new Oxo Concentrated Liquid Stock and thought I'd give it a go. I also picked up a couple of purple onions to co-ordinate with the beetroot, innit.

I had some celery in the fridge and probably one and half kilos of apples, 'local' Bramleys I got from Far Shares. Don't ask me what 'local' means in this context. Maybe someone's got a tree on their allotment? Or perhaps they've been scrumping?I also had about half a dozen red peppers, not the bell peppers, but those slightly more elongated and more piquant peppers that are sold by the stainless steel bowlful for a quid down East Street.

I chopped the onions and celery and sweated them over low heat in the bottom of the soup pot with a couple of bay leaves, adding fresh thyme (left over by Louisa) and cumin seeds, then seeded and chopped the peppers and added them to the pot. Adding a splash of hot water to prevent sticking, I chopped and added first the mushrooms, then the beets, and finally the apples, adding each to the pot and turning the cooking vegetables in their juices.

Then I added the Oxo Concentrated Liquid Stock, or tried to. It's two tablespoons to half a litre. The stuff isn't very runny and I probably needed two bottles to make the six litres of stock I needed. In the end, I added hot water to the bottle, gave it a shake, and mixed the contents 50/50 with Marigold. I poured four litres of this stock over the steaming vegetables, brought the pot to the boil, and simmered it for half and hour before blending.

Our liquidimizer - it's a Dynamic, apparently you can tell by the orange handle - needs servicing, to say the least. Louisa remarked on how it was grinding yesterday but she achieved a very silky consistency to her beany soup without, so far as I know, passing it through a sieve. I gave out a couple of bowls of rough borscht before deciding to pass it and I reckon it was well worth it. Everyone seemed to like it. At least, no one complained. Spookily, for the third day running, the number of bowls of soup served was 23.

Ingredients: beetroot, Bramley apples, mushrooms
Garnish: Sour yogurt
No. of bowls served: 23
Expenditure: £11.91
Donations: £28.87
EasiYo yoghurt maker: £21.04

Running balance: +£139.24

Day 17: Butter Bean

2007-10-23T18:43:00.000+01:00

Lou followed this recipe for 'Judy's white bean soup with chilli oil' from BBC Good Food but called it Butter Bean because (a) yesterday's soup was a White Bean (b) she used butter beans and (c) we dunno who Judy is. Somebody to do with Cary Grant, is it?

I left a 2kg bag of butter beans to soak overnight, but the bowl I put them into wasn't big enough and not all those beans got properly soaked, which made things a bit tougher for Louisa when it came to shucking them out of their skins this morning. As it says on the Beeb Good Food, 'it's a laborious job, but worth it'. Happily, Jen came to help and, it being half term, she brought Shanti (14) along.

I wasn't watching, but imagine Lou followed the recipe, scaled up with six litres of Marigold bouillon, and she certainly produced a really rich and buttery, beany soup that did exactly what it said on the blackboard. In the log bok, Shanti wrote, 'wosent that nice and looked like costerd' (sic) which does kind of make you wonder what they're learning in skool these days.

Appropriately, since it's the 23rd, Louisa shifted twenty three bowls of her soup and was honoured to have Irene (left) climb the stairs to sample it. She was so impressed she said she'd be coming back every day from now on, so we have a big rep. to live up to.

Soup Maker: Lou
Soup: Butter Bean
Garnish: Thyme, sweet chilli sauce
No. of bowls served: 23
Expenditure: £12.47
Donations: £29.49
Running balance: +£143.32

Day 16: White Bean & Parsnip

2007-10-22T20:03:00.000+01:00

There was a chill in the air today, but the Pullens Centre was warm and my bean 'n' parsnip soup was appreciated by 23 peeps, which is not bad for a Monday, and it had all gone by 3pm. The average donation was 115p, which is also not too bad, considering the numbers of people who didn't have change and said they'd donate later, innit. I need to keep a separate count of takeaways because I'd estimate that at least half the soups served are taken back to workshops and offices.

I saw this recipe in The Bible and then I saw a pile of cheap tins of beans at Oli's, three a quid, so I got six 240g tins of white beans, fagioli cannellini, haricot blancs (two of each!) and six big parsnips, weighing about the same as the beans, or around 1.5kg, plus half a dozen medium sized English onions and a magnificent head of celery. They do celery well at Oli's, but their parsnips were a bit leathery.

At the Pullens Centre, I couldn't find the garlic until too late, otherwise I would have minced some and added it to the chopped onions that I started to cook in a little oil over a medium flame. I added about a desert spoon full of powdered coriander seed and the same quantity of jeera, mixing the spices into the cooking onions. I chopped the tops off some Spring onions to use as garnish, chopped up the rest of the onions and and added them to the pot.

I washed the celery and chopped off the leafy top, setting the leaves aside for later incorporation, and chopped up probably half a dozen fat stalks of celery, or all the outer stalks, leaving the heart. In retrospect, I realise that this was the point at which what was to be a white soup took on a green tinge and, with the benefit of hindsight, I could've used those two green chillies that have been hanging around in the fridge for more than a week.

I peeled and diced the parsnips, mixing the chunks in with the spiced cooking vegetables in the pot and adding a few splashes of Marigold bouillon (from a 2 litre jug I made up) to stop the contents of the pot from sticking. I opened the six cans of beans and drained and washed them in a colander. Had I soaked my own beans, I might've used some of the bean water in the soup, as the recipe I was supposed to have been following prescribes, but this bean water was too salty. I added the washed white beans to the soup pot, poured over the rest of the contents of the bouillon jug, refilled it and added two litres more.

I turned up the heat and brought the soup pot to the boil, leaving it to simmer for twenty minutes and to cool for ten before liquidizing the soup. I went through it with the mighty stick mixer thoroughly, then added another two litres of Marigold stock (making 6L in all, to 1.5kg beans and 1.5kg parsnips) and liquidimizised it again. Daniel the potter was first to come in for soup (to take away) before I'd properly evaluated it and I didn't think it was as silky as it could be, so I passed the soup through the new big sieve into the smaller pot, which it just filled.

Likesay, all the soup went over the next couple of hours, garnished with chopped Spring onion and a sprinkling of paprika, with the option of a dollop of ajvar in the mix, and it went down well. Kadett wrote, 'heel lekker soepje hoera wy willen meer', which Kai translated as, 'ultimate soup here, why not more?'

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: White Bean and Parsnip
Other ingredients: Cumin & coriander; ajvar
Garnish: Spring onion, paprika
No. of bowls served: 23
Expenditure: £10.28
Donations: £26.55
Running balance: +£126.30

Day 15: Spiced Red Lentil

2007-10-19T18:23:00.000+01:00

This recipe is out of a big glossy book portentously entitled The Soup Bible (ed. Debra Mayhew) that a thoughtful friend got for me from that discount book shop on the corner of The Cut, diagonally across from the Old Vic. It echoes last Friday's Çorbasi and, in my interpretation, uses some of the left over ingredients.

It also incorporates coconut milk, which has become something of a trademark of Pullens Soup Kitchen. For the sake of experimentation, this time around, I used two tins of coconut milk (79p each) instead of a single block of creamed coconut (about 50p) to achieve much the same effect. Admittedly, the stuff from the can is has a more ready-to-use consistency, but in future I'll stick with the cheaper option.

There wasn't much shopping to do for this soup, but the daily expenditure was inflated by the purchase of a decent sized sieve and a storage jar. Also, I restocked with Marigold bouillon powder from Fair Shares and bought several varieties of bean and pulse, including a 2kg bag of red lentils, which I used in this soup.

I started by peeling and mincing two heads of garlic, then peeling and dicing six medium sized British onions, and put them into a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot over low heat. With the lid on the soup pot, I sweated the onions and garlic for a few minutes while I assembled the spice mix of turmeric and cumin - I used two tablespoons of each - plus a big stick of cinnamon and a couple of dozen cardamom pods. I added these spices to the pot, mixing them thoroughly with the onions and garlic, before adding the contents of three cans of chopped tomatoes (that cost a quid from Iceland). I also added half a jar of sweet red pepper paste that was in the fridge.

Taking the pot off the heat, I tipped in three quarters of the big bag of red lentils, probably 1.5kg, plus the rest of a bag of fine bulgur wheat, perhaps 250g, left over from last Friday's recipe, which called for half as much bulgur as lentils. Here, I figured a much smaller proportion of bulgur would combine with the coconut fat to give the lentil soup a velvety texture. Adding two litres of boiling water and two litres of Marigold bouillon, I brought the pot to the boil and simmered the lentils for about half an hour before blending.

While whizzing up the lentils, I slowly added another two litres of bouillon and then I finished the soup by blending in the contents of the two cans of coconut milk the about 500ml of lime juice (limes were five for a quid at Oli's). This was as per the recipe in The Bible, which suggests that you 'reserve a little of the coconut milk for the garnish'. If I were going to do that, I'd squeeze a wedge of limes into the soup as its served, too, since the coconut and lime flavours quickly became muted as the soup sat warming on the hob.

The soup pot sat undisturbed for quite a while, as trade was slow. Maybe half a dozen people from the workshops and offices in the yards came in with their bowls to collect soup to take back to work - Alex Monroe and his posse; the good people of Six O'Clock Cleaning Services - leaving me alone and the Pullens Centre deserted, so when Taz (left) tried to pull the same stunt, I implored her to linger 'n' chat. Later, a few more women (all women!) came in and a couple generously wrote 'Wow' in the log bok. Joy said, 'such a lovely place to come for lunch. Wow, what a fab soup' and Essie said, 'Wow! Absolutely gorgeous. A real treat'.

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: Spiced Red Lentil
Other ingredients: Cumin, coconut milk, lime
Garnish: Cumin seeds, chopped parsley
No. of bowls served: 16
Expenditure: £24.67
Donations: £21.67
Dry goods: 30.13
Running balance: +£110.03

I've been a bit slow to update the blog because, instead of doing it last night, I went to watch Capital Tales, 'a whistle-stop journey across 100 years of London' via a selection of rarely seen short films shown on a big screen in Trafalgar Square:

Day 14: Creamy Curried Parsnip

2007-10-18T21:30:00.000+01:00

I had a couple of parsnips left over from yesterday, plus the trimmings of the diced root veg I put in yesterday's soup. I also had quite a lot of yesterday's soup, at least 5 litres, and it was too damn good to through away. In fact, in terms of flavour and stick-to-the-ribs gloopiness, the Miso had mellowed and the pearl barley disintegrated, while most of the diced veg. retained a detectable crunch, so it was arguably better on the second day. In Somerfield I bought for a quid a bag of ready shredded cabbages - a 'medley' of cabbage - to green it up a bit.

Somerfield is where I went for more parsnips, to make a total of about three and a half kilos, plus I bought the carrots/onions/celery there, too. One thing you can say about Somerfield is that a lot of their produce is proudly British and so, in the interests of terroir, I may have to pay more attention. I discussed my supply problems with Alison, who stopped by early and enjoyed a bowl of yesterday's soup and a full and frank exchange of views. She suggested she could solicit cheap ingrediments from contacts @ Borough, but that hardly seems likely when the salient feature of Borough market is silly prices.

I bought bread from Oli's and remembered that we were down to the last scrapings of the Marigold barrel and that I couldn't get any more until Fare Shares opened unless I paid an extra quid for it at Baldwin's, so I reviewed their stock cube options. I bought a six packet of Knorr Rosot Warzywny cubes - Polish stock cubes purchased from a Turkish 24 hour market in Sarf London - which I guessed would make about three litres: 89p. I also bought a block of coconut cream for 49p.

For curry flavour, I had half a tub of mild curry powder that's been hanging around for a while, a couple of tablespoons full; plus turmeric and mustard seeds, a couple of teaspoons of each of those. I added this spice mix to the cooked mirepoix and added parsnips to the pot as I diced them, moistening the pot with some of the Knorr stock to stop the veg from sticking, and then covering the diced vegetables with all the rest of the 3L stock, plus a litre of water, before turning up the heat and boiling the pot for twenty minutes.

I whizzed the soup with the liquidizifier, finished it with creamed coconut melted in a litre of boiling water and served it garnished with chopped fresh coriander and a dollop of Greek yogurt mixed with a little lemon juice to make it runnier. I do like a nice beige parsnip soup, but most recipes obtain that colour from butter 'n' milk, whereas all the Soup Kitchen recipes until now have been vegan, with any animal fats being optional. But I do think that final swirl of yogurt takes it into another dimension.

Having two soups worked well because I was able to offer early birds yesterdays while todays was still cooking and when a delegation from Cottrell & Vermeulen, Architects, came round for a quantity of soup to take back to the office, I was able to offer choice. Other Architects, as seen left, enjoyed the ambience of the Pullens Centre in which to enjoy their soup, of which someone wrote: 'thick, creamy and tasty just how we like it.'

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: Chopped Parsley
Other ingredients: Creamed coconut
Garnish: Yoghurt, chopped coriander/parsley
No. of bowls served: 27
Expenditure: £16.53
Donations: £26.87
Running balance: +£143.16

Day 13: Winter Vegetable Miso

2007-10-17T18:34:00.001+01:00

I've been wanting to do a chunky vegetable soup with miso but - likesay and to my dismay - good old British root vegetables aren't exactly plentiful in these parts and I didn't see so much as a parsnip down East Street this morning. Oli had parsnips and also these amazing radishes, which I thought might work in the absence of turnips. I stepped in to Somerfield on my way back up Walworth Road and picked up a couple of shrink-wrapped swedes and a bag of curly kale.

radishes, parsnips, swedes, carrots, onion, celery and kale (in colander)

Back at the Pullens Centre, I started by boiling up the pearl barley, probably about 500g. You cover it with cold water, bring it to the boil, then drain and repeat. When the barley water boils for the second time, it has to simmer for at least an hour.

This soup isn't going to be blended, so everything needs to be diced quite small (as in the picture). I roasted the diced swede, parsnip, carrot and radish in a little vegetable oil for about half an hour with the oven turned up as high as it goes, turning the dice in the roasting tray every ten minutes. Meanwhile, I made a mirepoix of finely diced onion, carrot and celery and sweated it in a little oil with the lid on the soup pot.

I dissolved a 240g tub of Organic Sweet Brown Miso - which is especially rich in soups, or so it says here - in a litre of hot water. I assembled the soup by tipping the cooked pearl barely into the cooked mirepoix, mixing them together while adding a 2 litre jug of Marigold bouillon. Then I added the miso, plus another three litres of Marigold bouillon. Finally, I added the diced root vegetables, which were just cooked through, and the kale, which I washed and shredded a bit finer than it came out of the bag.

Iraxte and her Mum, a Basque, were first through the door with baby Irene. Iraxte thought her Mum might not like the taste of miso, but she cleaned her bowl.

Of the 18 people who came for soup this lunchtime, at least half a dozen brought their own bowls and scurried back to their workshops with their soup. Which is fine, of course, but it gets a bit lonely if no one hangs out. Ira from the Buddhist Centre sent over a chocolate cake today, but I didn't get around to offering any. In fact, I didn't make a cup of tea all day. There was loads of soup left over, too, and I'll serve it again tomorrow rather than see it go to waste.

Among those who did hang out at the Soup Kitchen today, Kevin from Iliffe Street said the 'soup was fantastic, heart warming', and Shelly said: 'third time. I'm officially hooked! Love the soup, great idea. Tell your friends. Long may it reign.' Yay!

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Miso Winter Vegetable
Other ingredients: Pearl Barley
No. of bowls served: 18
Expenditure: £14.83
Donations: £21.09
Running balance: +£133.06

Day 12: Simple Borscht

2007-10-16T18:51:00.001+01:00

We've been talking about borscht practically since day one, but until now the discussion has been academic due to an absence of beetroot. I've remarked before on the absence of ye olde English grocers of green down East Street and among the stall-holders surrounding the Heffalump shopping centre, where plantain and cassava are abundant. I was contemplating a trip to New Covent Garden to purchase a net if beets when Louisa made an arrangement with the bloke at Crusons in Camberwell, paying seven quid for 12.5 kilos.

While I've been weighing the theoretical virtues of cumin and apples in the composition of borscht, Louisa's found a recipe for Fresh Beetroot Soup in The Great Green Cookbook by Rosamond Richardson (1996) that truly is, as described: 'the simplest of soups - a straight puree of freshly cooked beetroot, served with chopped dill and yoghurt.' Seeing as Lou omitted the dill, her soup had only a couple of ingredients: beetroots and stock.

Multiplying the quantities in the recipe book by six, Louisa scrubbed about 9kg of beets and trimmed their tops, leaving a stub so that the beets didn't bleed too much as they boiled. She placed the beets in the big pot, covering them with cold water, which she then brought to the boil and simmered for three quarters of an hour. Testing with a fork to see if they're tender, Louisa fished out the smaller beets first, leaving the bigger ones to cook through, and plunged them into a sink of cold water.

By this time Graham had turned up, so Louisa got him to peel the beets as they cooled enough to be handled. Their skins rub off easily enough after being boiled/cooled. As he peeled them, Lou roughly chopped the beets and returned them to the big pot, from which she had poured out the water in which they were cooked. Then she covered the chopped cooked beetroot with eight litres of Marigold stock mixed with four dessert spoons full of Marmite.

The idea to use Marmite came about because, traditionally, borscht is made with beef stock and we thought Marigold would be a bit light. Marks and Sparks do quite a nice dark vegetable stock concentrate, as it goes, and we might experiment with that when beetroot day rolls around again (which will be next week, 'cos we've still got about 3.5kg of beetroot). But, for today's soup, Louisa darkened the stock and deepened its flavour by adding dollops of Marmite into the Marigold bouillon mix. She liquidimated the soup once with the big stick mixer, added a further two litres of stock, and then she liquidizised it once more. And that's all!

According to Rosamond Richardson (whose book the late Linda McCartney called 'inspiring and practical'), 'beetroot is an epicurean vegetable and often severely underrated: just the smell of it as it boils is mouth-watering.' Enticing as the aroma was, just 21 bowls of simple borscht were served, each one garnished with a dollop of Greek yoghurt. Comments included, 'yummy'; 'scrummy' and 'gorgeously delicious'. Indeed, it was a bowl full of pure beet goodness. Thanks, Louisa.

Soup Maker: Louisa
Soup: Fresh Beetroot
Other ingredients: Greek yoghurt, Marmite
No. of bowls served: 21
Expenditure: £10.78
Donations: £21.58
Running balance: +£126.80

Day 11: Leek & Potato

2007-10-15T16:42:00.000+01:00

I don't disrespect St. Delia, no matter what footy-related shenanigans she gets up to. Indeed, if I were Scroobius Pip, remixing 'Thou Shalt Always Kill', I'd command that 'thou shall not desecrate the good name of Delia, nor cast aspersions upon the integrity of her commercial relationships'. I yield to no cook in my enthusiasm for Marigold bouillon powder, so I can hardly sneer when Deals declares it 'without doubt an ingredient that has revolutionised modern cooking'.

But then you check Delia's recipe for Leek, Onion and Potato Soup and she says, 'This is my most favourite soup in the world and now we can buy extremely good mashed potato frozen it means we can be a little bit more spontaneous about the whole process of soup making'. Oh right, Deals, Q.E.D. The good folks at McCain bring out their frozen discs of Simply Mash and the world is a better place. No doubt the Catholic church will soon ordain women priests while the Canaries qualify for European competition.

Today's L & P differs from Day Three's in that it's blended whereas that one was chunky. In that recipe, I used my mashed potato (not McCain's) in the manner Delia describes, as a 'backdrop to other ingredients', but in this version, I'm going to blend the soup anyway, so I don't need to make mash separately. In order to get a nice creamy texture, Delia uses milk and butter, but I'm going to experiment with creamed coconut to add texture rather than flavour to the soup while keeping it vegan.

First I needed to locate the ingredients and somehow - since it's a Monday and there's no market down East Street and because I wasn't very together this morning - I ended up in Tesco. Blimey, they really run those places for their own convenience, innit? Took ages at the checkout because the machinery didn't work and the operator struggled to weigh 2.5 kilos of leeks (@ £2.28/kg) in three instalments. On the plus side, I got a 2.5kg bag of Desiree spuds for 89p.

Starting with a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrot, sweated in a big knob of Flora, I alternately added shredded leek and diced potato to the pot, keeping the lid on. I kept back a couple of the leeks, shredded and sautéed them separately. I added two litres of Marigold bouillon to the sweated vegetables, whacked the heat up and boiled vigorously for about ten minutes, then added another couple of litres of bouillon, turned the heat off and left the pot to cool for ten minutes before blending.

Meanwhile, I melted a block of creamed coconut in boiling water and added it to the sautéed, shredded leeks. Then I tasted the mixture and suffered a crisis of confidence because coco-leek is a bit weird. I briefly considered having two soups, but then I told myself not to be silly and stirred the coco-leek mixture into the blended soup, along with another couple of litres of bouillon (making a total six litres of bouillon in all, to two-and-a-half kilos each of leeks and potatoes) then returned the pot to the heat and brought it to the boil. Right on cue, my upstairs neighbour, Cathy, came in and she had the first bowl. She didn't mention anything about coconuts, but she did write in the log bok that the soups are 'getting better by the day'.

In fact, the barely perceptible coconut flavour attracted little comment. Joe here certainly didn't mention it. A trio trooped in from the Buddhist Centre and one of them remarked upon it, favourably, and another one of the regulars later picked up on it, but nobody had anything bad to say. I noticed how the coconut fat continued to thicken the soup after it had been reheated a few times while the flavour faded even further into the background as lunch time wore on. There was a bit of rush again today and I served 28 bowls of soup by 3pm.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Leek & Potato
Other ingredients: Creamed coconut
No. of bowls served: 28
Expenditure: £12.77
Donations: £36.01
Running balance: +£116

Day Ten: Turkish Red Lentil

2007-10-12T17:54:00.000+01:00

Today went by so fast, I failed to photograph it, so here's one I made earlier of Oli's, the Turkish supermarket in Walworth Road that provided all the ingredients of today's soup and, indirectly, the inspiration to make Ezo Gelin Çorbasi, the Turkish Red Lentil 'Ezo The Bride' Soup. What actually happened was that Nadia, who works in one of the architects' offices in Iliffe Yard, gave us this recipe. So we gave it a go.

Louisa was making the soup today along with Kadett from Beautiful & Damned and she had some paprika. I went to Oli's and shopped for the rest of the ingredients before meeting them at 10:30. Ish. They were a bit slow to get going and I left them to it until gone midday, when Louisa came round to say what she'd thought was paprika was obviously cayenne, so I hot footed it round to Oli's...

Half an hour later, when I went round with the log bok, the soup was far from cooked and so I left 'em to it for another hour, when I got a panicky phone call saying Louisa was swamped! What had happened was that Kadett had to leave at 1:30 and, soon after, a legion of architects from DSDHA trooped in and set about the soup. By the time I got there at ten to two, it was all gone! Or just about. I did warn Louisa not to use that gigantic ladle for portion control!

Louisa managed to extend the soup to get a few extra portions out of the pot for Caroline and Gareth, who nipped off to the Italian deli at the bottom of Brixton Road for a loaf to go with. I still didn't get any pictures. Log bok comments included: 'I didn't manage to spill it down my new shirt,' (Bruce); 'a truly tasty tummy filler, but if I end up married I will complain,' (Jan); and 'what's next?' (Anon).

The perfect end to a pretty good week, I felt Louisa and I had earned ourselves a treat so we went and spent thirty quid from the donations on dim sum at Dragon Castle. Have a good weekend, won't you?

Soup Makers: Louisa and Kadett
Soup: Turkish Red Lentil
Other ingredients: Paprika, cayenne pepper
No. of bowls served: 28
Expenditure: £10.77
Donations: £48.34
Dim Sum subtraction: £30
Running balance: +£92.76

Day Nine: Carrot & Coriander

2007-10-11T22:27:00.000+01:00

Today I set out to copy the soup that made the New Covent Garden Company famous, Carrot & Coriander. Well, I say copy, but I didn't use any nutmeg and instead concentrated upon building coriander flavours by toasting a generous handful of coriander seeds in a dry pan, then grinding them in an electric coffee grinder. This spice I put in the base of the soup, which I finished with an injection of intense fresh coriander flavour, produced by putting the stalks of a couple of bunches of the herb through a masticating juicer with a stalk of celery to produce a bright green chlorophyl-rich liquor.

Six kilos of carrots, a big onion, a head of celery and a bunch of coriander cost me a fiver in East Street market. Back at base, I chopped the onion and sweated it in a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot with the lid on, adding the ground coriander seed and then the leafier parts of the celery, chopped up. I peeled and chopped up all except two of the biggest carrots and added them to the pot with four litres of Marigold bouillon, simmering for twenty minutes. Then I pureed the soup with the stick mixer.

To finish the soup, I used creamed coconut instead of dairy cream to give a rich, smooth texture and this is actually becoming a bit of trademark of Pullens Soup Kitchen. If I'm making the soup, I'd prefer it to be vegan and dairy free, but the addition of a little fat always gives a more unctuous mouth feel (as I'm sure they'd say at the New Covent Garden Soup Company). I melted a block of creamed coconut in a little boiling water before adding it along with the green liquor from the juicer.

The texture of New Covent Garden's patented carrot 'n' coriander is varied with the inclusion of chunkier pieces of carrot, so I grated the two big carrots I'd held back into my soup, added another couple of litres of Marigold bouillon to the pot and brought it back to the boil before serving, garnished with fresh chopped coriander

Customers for my better-than N.C.G.'s c'n'c soup were slow to arrive and it was half past one before Gordon showed up. He said there wasn't enough salt in the soup, which is what he always says. I offered him LoSalt but he wasn't impressed and said next time he'd bring his own Maldon salt, which is fine by me. I mean, I wouldn't mind him smoking a cigarette after thoroughly enjoying his soup, but it's against the law, innit.

Some people from the workshops in Iliffe Yard are getting very good about bringing their own bowls to get their soup and then scuttling back to their drawing boards, or kilns, but if no one hangs around for a chat it can be a bit boring, so I was pleased to see Natty and Oskar, who held the fort when I had to leave at 3pm. Louisa kept the Soup Kitchen open till six and served another eight or ten bowls to people including Amy, who wrote in the log bok: 'Awesome! Great job!!'

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Carrot 'n' Coriander
Other ingredients: Creamed coconut
No. of bowls served: 24
Expenditure: £9.70
Donations: £18.83
Running balance: +£85.19

Day Eight: Butternut Squashed

2007-10-10T18:01:00.000+01:00

Today's soup was determined by a butternut squash donated by Mandy, who works on an organic veg. stall in Marylebone on Sundays. She's given me this perfectly good squash that's a bit bashed at one end and a few sweet potatoes to play with. She reckoned they'd make a nice soup, perhaps finished with creamed coconut? I had some garlic and a small sack of shallots, so I thought I'd roast them to give the soup another dimension.

I went down to Oli's on Walworth Road to get the creamed coconut and coriander, plus one of their great big onions (as seen, below right) and their corek bread was fresh out of the oven soon after 10am, which is wonderful. I can't find a decent link to describe this plaited bread that's covered in sesame seeds and has been a great hit at the Soup Kitchen and nor can I provide a photo because it always get scoffed. Anyway, I assembled the following ingredients:

coriander, coconut,sweet potatoes, shallots, squash, carrot, celery, onion

My other expenditure today was on a roasting tray, which I used to roast off the peeled cloves of garlic and peeled and chopped shallots at high-ish heat, using a little olive oil and moving the chopped vegetables around in the tray so that they browned more evenly and began to caramelise. Meanwhile, I made a rough mirepoix of diced onion, carrot and celery and sweated it in the smaller, six litre soup pot over a low flame with the lid on, stirring every few minutes.

I peeled the squash, split it and scooped out the seeds, cubed the flesh and added it to the mirepoix stewing in the pot, then did the same with the three (or was it four?) sweet potatoes I had, mixing the contents of the pot well. Then I added four litres of Marigold bouillon, brought the pot to the boil and let it simmer with the lid on for a quarter of an hour. Then I turned the gas off and left it to cool for ten minutes before liquidizising. I melted the coconut cream in hot water and added that along with another two litres of bouillon while continuing to run the stick mixer and, I must say, the consistency of my soup today was silky!

Natty came in early doors, fresh back from Korea, where he's been entertaining the locals with Ska Cubano. Nat tells me he and Megumi - 'probably the world's top ska saxophonist' - ran a soup kitchen at the Pullens Centre themselves, back in the day! Apparently, they served miso soup with lots of vegetables in, which sounds great, but it was hard work and they didn't make any money so they gave up after three weeks. I challenged Nat to collaborate with Megumi to do and udon soup kitchen one day soon and I think he agreed but don't hold your breath because you know what musicians are like.

Nat got the first bowl of soup, officially, but Jan and Angela are also developing the knack of turning up around 12:30 when the soup is usually ready, and Oskar happened along soon after, so today's soup was critically appraised by four sets of taste buds and none found any fault with it. In fact, three of the four had a second portion. Somebody wrote in the log bok today: '10/10, the best soup yet!' Someone else wrote, 'all problems can be resolved at the soup kitchen. What a great thing'.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Butternut Squash & Sweet Potato
Other ingredients: Garlic, shallots, coriander
No. of bowls served: 18
Expenditure: £9.48
Donations: £19.62
Running balance: +£76.06

Day Seven: Curried Parsnip

2007-10-09T17:12:00.000+01:00

Louisa and Graham started bright and early on what turned out to be a very wet day with an actual written-down recipe, to serve 24:

6 tsp. coriander seeds
6 tsp. cumin seeds
3 tsp. ground turmeric
3 tsp. mustard seeds
6 large onions
12 garlic cloves
4.5 kg parsnips
12 plum tomatoes
6 litres of Marigold vegetable bouillon
6 tsp lemon juice

What distinguishes this particular curried parsnip soup is that the 'snips are coated with the spices and roasted for half an hour with the garlic, chopped onions and tomatoes before being blended with the stock. This intensifies the flavours and saves a certain amount of faffing about with the spice mix, which otherwise would be toasted and ground.

Also mildly controversial is the use of tomato, adding another dimension to the soup, which proved very popular. Nobody had a bad word for the log bok and positive comments included: 'twas full and wholesome and well welcomed on such a dank day'; 'that's just what me and the baby needed' (Iraxte & Irene); 'soup, soup, soup, soup, soup...' (Jen and Esme); 'I had seconds and that says it all. Yum.'

Apparently, quite a few people came in from Iliffe Yard workshops early doors and Louisa used the great big ladle to weigh out her soup in portions so generous that she only counted out 20 bowls before her soup was all gone, by 2:30pm.

Soup Makers: Louisa and Graham

Soup: Curried Parsnip
Other ingredients: Coriander
No. of bowls served: 20
Expenditure: £16.73
Donations: £23.37
Running balance: +£65.92

Day Six: Fresh Sweet Pea

2007-10-08T19:32:00.000+01:00

I trapped the tip of the index finger of my left hand in the hinge of the cupboard door, so when I say I take pains to publish this blog every day, I mean it literally today. So I'll keep this brief. There's no market in East Street on Mondays, so I thought I'd try the soup Jennifer makes with frozen peas. In this case, three one kilo bags (@ £1 each) of frozen peas from Iceland.

My recollection of Jen's instructions about the base of her soup was a bit hazy, but the crucial point was that it included ginger and green chillies, but cumin in lieu of garlic. She said you've got to use both ground jeera from a packet and fresh cumin seed that you toast and grind yourself. I added a generous fist full of coriander seed, since I had some in the cupboard (not the one I trapped my throbbing finger in). The soup is finished with lemon juice and fresh coriander and/or mint.

Figuring that the soup kitchen may not be so busy on a grey Monday, I started in the smaller six litre pot with one huge onion I got from Oli's, roughly diced and softened in a little oil with the leafier parts of a head of celery, lid on, while I minced the about two cubic inches of fresh ginger and half a dozen small plump green chillies, which I added to the vegetables in the pot. My spice mix consisted of about a generous tablespoon full each of toasted and ground whole cumin and coriander seeds, plus the same quantity of ground jeera powder from a packet, which went in first.

While these flavours were getting acquainted and despite the pain from my finger, I peeled and diced half a dozen small potatoes to thicken the soup, added them to the pot, and poured over two litres of Marigold bouillon. I brought the pot to the boil and simmered for twenty minutes, until the potato started to dissolve, then I whizzed it with the stick mixer. Returning the pot to the heat, I added two litres of boiling Marigold bouillon and tipped in the three kilo bags of frozen peas.

When the pot boiled, I turned the gas off under it and left it to stand with the lid on for ten minutes before blending. Then, the soup was a wee bit on the thick side, so I transferred it to the bigger pot and added two more litres of bouillon - that's six litres of bouillon altogether with three kilos of frozen peas - together with a bunch of mint leaves and another bunch of coriander, plus the juice of half a dozen lemons, before giving the soup a final whizz.

By the time it was done, around a quarter to one, a few people from the workshops in Iliffe Yard were browsing the free clothes rail while waiting for their soup. Jan Duke refused to be photographed, but said that she'd like to have a go at making soup herself one day soon. Of today's Fresh Sweet (and sour) Pea soup, Jan (I think it was she) wrote in the log bok: 'nice as it is, the Broccoli and the Pepper have the edge on the Pea'. But someone else wrote,'lovely. Slightly spicey, full body, and a hint of lemon.' And Steve and his boys cleaned their bowls!

Today's other notable visitors today included Jonathan and Ira from the Buddhist Centre on Manor Place (seen left) one of whom may have written in the log bok: 'be proud of your super powers to make healing soups', which is a comforting thought when your finger throbs. Anyway, Louisa's making the soup tomorrow with Graham, so I should have a day off to rest my poor finger, and I think I can set a precedent by announcing the flavour of their in advance: it's going to be Curried Parsnip, adapted from the classic Jane Grigson recipe.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Fresh Sweet Pea
Other ingredients: Lemon,
No. of bowls served: 20
Expenditure: £13.90
Donations: £22.01
Running balance: +£59.28

Day Five: Spicy Pumpkin

2007-10-05T22:44:00.000+01:00

Louisa set out to make pumpkin soup today. She had a packet of creamed coconut, setting a West Indian vibe, so we went down to East Street together to shop for other ingredients and bought the biggest pumpkin we could find, a fifteen pounder. At 60p per pound, we paid nine quid, or an even tenner with the garlic and the ginger. We went to the cheerful lady in the headscarf, a bit further down the lane, for onions, green chillies and coriander and to Iceland on Walworth Road, six tins of chopped tomatoes for £2. And to Oli's, of course, for corek that was still warm.

Back at the Pullens Centre, while I peeled and cubed the pumpkin, Louisa chopped three pounds of onions and started frying them in Flora margarine for about a quarter of an hour while she minced equal quantities of garlic ginger and green chillis (roughly: one head of garlic; a couple of inches of fat fresh root ginger; five plump chillis). As the mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot) is in the West, this mix is the Holy Trinity of Eastern (and West Indian) cuisines. The proportions of spice mix to pumpkin are as shown:

Louisa added the trinity mix to the onions in the pot and continued to cook them for a further five minutes or so before adding the cubed pumpkin. She stirred the contents of the pot for a few minutes before adding the tinned tomatoes, plus enough boiling water to cover all the vegetables, put the lid on and turned up the heat. After the pot came to the boil, she turned down the heat and simmered for about half an hour, until all the pieces of pumpkin softened. Then she liquidised it. Louisa melted the creamed coconut in hot water and added it to the soup, stirring it in with the whizzer. She chopped fresh coriander to garnish the soup and also sprinkled a few pumpkin seeds over each bowl, from a packet we picked up in the market for a quid.

Emma was first to try the Spicier Pumpkin Soup and wrote in the log bok, The soup dragon hissed for more. Linda Brooker brought over a rail of clothes she had hanging around her Peacock Yard Atelier to give away. These garms. are hardly even second hand, but are mostly left over from advertising shoots. I got a perfectly decent pair of Abercrombie khaki kecks, ta very much, and there's still quite a few items left over for next week... Iraxte returned with baby Irene and wrote in the bok the soup was 'really delicious' and her 'favourite so far'. Other comments included, 'Yum, Yum, Police officer's posterior' (whatever THAT means) and, 'Wow great recipe + just right cup of tea. Thanks, I'll be back'.

Soup Maker: Louisa
Soup: Spicey Pumpkin
Other ingredients: Coconut, coriander
No. of bowls served: 22
Expenditure: £15.95
Donations: £27.17
Running balance: +£51.18

Day Four: Broccoli

2007-10-04T22:19:00.000+01:00

I was thinking this morning about a friend's broccoli soup with lemon and so I called her for the recipe and she said, it's not broccoli but pea! It's a soup she makes out of frozen peas with - er - whatever. I won't go into it now, because I'll probably have a go next week, like. I did go down to East Street to buy the ingrediments but I guess I had broccoli on the mind and, down East Street, they all had broccoli on ice.

I went to the stall displaying the cheapest price, but so did almost everyone else and I really didn't have time to queue. I noticed, BTW, that this was the only greengrocery stall in the market run by your actual b+b sarf Londoners. I mean, it's no skin off my nose, but what happened to all them ruddy faced f+v merchants? I looked around and they've all been replaced by immigrants. The woman who sold me my broccoli in the end had a headscarf and an indeterminate accent I can categorise only as 'foreign'. I filled up a carrier bag with probably five kilos of yer broccoli and got half a dozen big fat carrots and a couple of onions she said she'd thrown in for free. At least I think that's what she said, boom boom: £5.70.

With the bigger, 16 litre pot and a hunky outboard liquidiziser I've acquired and what with it being Fare Shares day, I figured I'd up the quantities. Strait broccoli soup is all very well, but then there's blue cheese; Stilton, even. But the trouble with cheese and yoghurt, too, come to mention it, is that they're not vegan and the kind of people who patronise Fare Shares tend to be. So I was wondering if it was worth bothering with cheese or yoghurt while buying a couple of corek at Oli's when I clocked the jars of Ajvar.

This piquant red pepper relish is what made Yugoslavia work until Tito toppled off his perch and maybe it could offer a way back to National unity? Instead of focussing on whose Ajvar is best, the independent republics of the former Yugoslavia need to recognise that the more important fact, upon which they can all agree, is that this concoction of sweet red bell peppers and aubergines spiked with chilli is what the Balkans should be famous for. Anyway, for what its worth, the brand I bought was Podravka, from Croatia.

In order to maximise the broccoli flavour, I cooked this soup in two stages. I chopped of the florets and set them aside, then cubed the stalks and sweated the chunks with the mirepoix - no garlic, no spice - slowly adding six litres of bouillon before liquidamisering the mixture. The new-to-me outboard needs a new blade but it churned the cooked vegetables into soup, eventually. Then I poured in another two litres of boiling water and added the florets. Brought the pot back to the boil, turned off the heat and left the soup to stand for ten minutes, cooling, before giving it a final whizz.

I finished the soup and brought the outboard over to the sink to rinse by running it in a jug of soapy water and it went pop. There's literal sparks and the fuse popped out. Luckily the soup was finished and Jan Duke of Enigma Systems was sitting right there, waiting for her soup, so she fixed it straight after. Good as second hand, but it still needs a new blade.

Jan had been round the yard in her capacity as Chair of the IYA and a lot of people from the workshops came in today. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and they tended to drift down to the picnic tables in the yard, but they also tended to make donations based upon a realistic estimate of the market value of the product combined with a sincere desire to see the venture succeed. Plus one passer by was so bowled over by the concept of a community soup kitchen that she gave us a tenner and another friend of mine who's been in for three days in a row finally put his hand in his pocket. The average donation today was nearly £1.50;-)

I had to split at three, but Louisa came in after her class at Morley College and Jen came too with Esme. They kept the place open for a other few hours and maybe a dozen more folks climbed the stairs for soup. Among them, a lovely woman called Iraxte who lives on Albert Estate. She wrote in the log bok: "Muy rica! Great idea! It's been a life saver having a place to nourish myself with my baby, thank you"

my name is Irene. i am four and half months old.

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: Broccoli
Other ingredients: Ajvar
No. of bowls served: 28
Expenditure: £9.78
Donations: £41.50
Running balance: +£39.96

Day Three: Leek and Potato

2007-10-03T21:40:00.000+01:00

This morning I went down our local street market, East Street and spent a fiver on a bag of veg, including three kilos of leeks. I had the idea I wanted to do a chunkier soup that's not blended, but still had a thickened consistency, so in this recipe, I mashed the potato and dissolved it in the soup to give a creamy background against which the flavour of the leeks stands out.

Because this soup isn't blended, I took extra special care to cut the carrot/onion/celery base into a fine dice and cooked that in the bottom of the pot with a couple of bay leaves, lid on, while finely shredding the leeks. Leeks, BTW, have to be thoroughly washed: peel off the outer leaves and slit the leek length-wise before washing it under running water to rinse out any lingering traces of mud.

Rick the homeless guy was first through the door, around midday, before the soup was ready. Following the incendiary incident and with the vicar's connivance, he's relocated to a shed in the churchyard of St John's in Larcom Street, but is hopeful that soon he'll get a bedsit through St Mungo's. Helpfully, he vacuumed the carpet and mopped the lino before being the first to sample the soup of the day.

I sweated the shredded leeks with the cooked mirepoix and at the same time steamed half a kilo of peeled potatoes. When the leeks were cooked, I poured over three litres of boiling Marigold bouillon to fill the six litre pot and mashed the cooked spuds through a ricer directly into the soup, which immediately thickened it.

I chopped some parsley for garnish and, bizarrely, discovered an unopened jar of pesto in the 'fridge, so I was able to offer the option of a dollop of the stuff in the soup. I thought this worked pretty well and Rick agreed. He wrote in the log bok: "Just Right Nothing Better". Kai from Crampton Street wrote, who is also becoming a regular, wrote, "your soup just keeps getting better".

One of the blokes working on the exterior renovation of the estate complained, obliquely, that his soup wasn't salty enough. It's true that I don't add salt to my soups and a couple of people have remarked upon it. I reckon that's because these people are smokers and their taste buds are clogged!

I anticipated that more workmen would take advantage of a warm place to eat their sandwiches, not to mention free soup, but word evidently hasn't got round yet. However, if anyone knows the Bulgarian for 'free soup', the place could apparently get packed out v. quickly! Rick said he'd taken one of the Soup Kitchen flyers to Webber Street, which didn't exactly fill me with glee, and I gently explained that the Pullens Soup Kitchen is primarily intended to serve Pullens people.

Speaking of Pullens people, Linda Brooker was in today, adding a copious sprinkling of salt to her soup. Turns out that the big pot Gabrielle used to use when he ran the cafe at the Centre a few years ago belongs to her and she brought it back, so now we have a 16 litre pot to work with, if things get busier. As it goes, the last bit of soup went home with Jen York , who came in at the end of the day with Esme, six, and brought with her a saucepan for Shanti, 14, to have hot soup after school.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Leek and potato
Other ingredients: Bay leaves, parsley/pesto
No. of bowls served: 14
Expenditure: Fiver
Donations: £11.15
Running balance: +£8.24

Day Two: Roasted Tomato and Sweet Peppers

2007-10-02T22:53:00.000+01:00

The day dawned grey and damp: good weather for soup. But then, miserable weather makes people reluctant to leave their cosy comfort zones. For whatever reason, too few people climbed the stairs at the Pullens Centre today. Which is a shame because today's soup was delicious. According to one comment in the log bok, it was 'soupylicious'.

What happened was I went down to Nine Elms to see what I could find there for free. Went into New Covent Garden through the gate in the corner of Sainsbury's car park and mooched about a bit, nonchalantly checking out those skips that weren't bolted shut. I passed over half a box of shitake mushrooms and bundles of asparagus, because I wasn't prepared to actually dive into those dumpsters. I walked past a discarded bag of perfectly good basil and around the corner to find a discarded box of very ripe tomatoes and some yellow bell peppers that had been spilled on the ground.

When picking discarded vegetables, the basic rule is to leave anything that's skin is broken. Mud can be washed off and bruised bits can be cut out, but if the skin's been breached, it's no good. I picked up at least a kilo of tomatoes and another kilo or more of yellow and red peppers. And I went back for the basil.

Back at base, I had a head of garlic and half a packet of red lentils - probably 150g - which I thought would work well for flavour and thickening, respectively. Louisa had volunteered to help and so while she got chopping, I nipped out to Somerfield on Walworth Road and picked up half a kilo of carrots, a few French sticks, and a tub of Flora: £3.18.

We roasted the cleaned and chopped peppers and the tomatoes to concentrate their flavours. The oven at the Pullens Centre is a cheap domestic model, only a couple of years old, but it's not much cop. I can't imagine where it's all gone, but most of the kitchen equipment that was there only a few months ago isn't. There's no saucepans, only one oven shelf and no roasting trays.

Anyway, we roasted the tomatoes and peppers with the peeled cloves of garlic for about half an hour and at the same time cooked down a mirepoix of diced carrots, celery and onion, before combining the two and covering the mixture with three litres of bouillon. Then we liquidised the soup and passed it through a sieve to take out the bits of skin and seeds. Finally, we returned the soup to the cleaned pot, added the red lentils and cooked them in the soup for another twenty minutes, until they softened. The basil leaves were torn and used to garnish each bowl as served.

Likesay, soup hungry punters were few, but appreciative. We got our first homeless person in. Rick has been living on the library steps on Walworth Road for the past six months, but is now reconsidering his options after last night's shenanigans, in which some kids set light to the bottom of his sleeping bag. Rick wrote in the log book that the soup kitchen was a 'life saver'. He said he'd be back with all his homeless mates, but that's what the workmen who came yesterday said and we didn't see any of them today.

Soup Makers: Russell & Louisa
Soup: Roasted tomato and sweet peppers with red lentils
Other ingredients: Garlic, basil
No. of bowls served: 11
Expenditure: £3.18
Donations: £5.13
Running balance: +£2.09

Day One: Cauliflower

2007-10-01T17:25:00.001+01:00

Topcats frenetic performance last night KO-ed any help I might have expected this morning, when a plan to meet in Sainsbury's car park at Nine Elms to get free veg from the skips at the back of New Covent Garden was abandoned. Instead, I went down to Oli's, the Turkish greengrocer down Walworth Road and spent £4.64 on a couple of cauliflowers, a great big onion and a head of celery to add to the bag of carrots had in my fridge.

My other major expenditure was £4.50 on a tub of Marigold bouillon powder from Fare Shares, our friendly local not-for-profit whole-food anti-shop (you'd pay a quid more at the health food store). Recently, Marco Pierre White came out of semi-retirement and onto a TV game show and into the press. To The Caterer, he revealed his secret ingredient: "Knorr chicken cubes? Genius product". Which really goes to show how long Marco's been out of it because, as any fool knows, Marigold rules.

Twenty five years ago Alastair Little taught me to make a basic soup: mirepoix sweated well down in a pot with the lid on and any other flavours added to this base. Cut whatever vegetable into cubes and then sweat 'em in the mirepoix for a while before pouring over a stock - AL used Knorr chicken bouillon out of a tub - and simmer for up to fifteen minutes before liquidisizing. That's the way I made soup every morning at 192 for a couple of years back in the early 80s and that's still the way I make a basic vegetable soup. Except nowadays, I use Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon (reduced salt, natch.)

The idea is to shop every morning before opening the Pullens Centre at 11am and starting to make soup, which should be ready around midday. I was slow getting started this morning and had to ask Gordon, Graham and Naomi to come back later, so the first folks to sample the soup were Mike & Alex, film makers from the workshop across Iliffe Yard, who pronounced it 'excellent'. In the comments book, one of them wrote, 'Excellent Soup!!' and it's not like I twisted his arm too hard.

To make this excellent soup, I diced a big onion and sweated it with the lid on my pot over low heat in a little vegetable oil while peeling and dicing half a kilo of carrots and half a head of celery (a Big Head). I don't know why I went with cauliflower, because I had been thinking about parsnips. I'd been thinking about a curried parsnip soup, actually, but I ended up with cauliflowers, so I thought I'd spice 'em up a bit with turmeric and ground jeera, adding a couple of heaped teaspoons of each to the mirepoix.

Often, people don't get full flavour out of a cauli, because they focus on the florets and throw the stalk away. When making soup, its best to cut the florets off and set them aside before chopping the stalk into cubes and sweating them with the mirepoix for a good ten minutes so they're well softened before you add the stock. Then add the finely chopped florets before covering the vegetable mixture with about twice the quantity of boiling bouillon: in this case, three litres.

Jan Duke, of Iliffe Yard Arts, loaned a big tea urn type of thing, which is just as well because the boiler in the Pullens Centre is kaput, so you can't get hot water out of the tap. Once the boiling bouillon is poured over the vegetables, the soup doesn't need much more cooking. If you've got time, you can turn off the heat and leave it too cool for a while before liquimifising. There's an old Braun stick mixer but Shaun donated, among other things, a rather more superior whizzer. He also came up with a brand new chopping board and a choice of aprons. But not yet a bigger soup pot.

As it went, six litres was plenty of soup,. Maybe another bowl full but not much more was left in the bottom of the pot after fourteen people had had their soup and some of those had had seconds innit. Among notable visitors to the Pullens Soup Kitchen on its first day of operation was lifetime Pullenite, Daisy Kelly-Granger, whose brother is the recipient of a mysterious envelope that fell onto the mat addressed to 'Oscar, 184 Crampton St... Mmm.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Cauliflower
Other ingredients: Jeera, turmeric
Bowls served: 14
Expenditure: £11.91
Donations: £12.05

Running balance: +14p

I neglected to get a photo of Daisy, but Gordon came back with Graham and Naomi, who had picked up some other items to go with the soup and make more of a lunch: