20.03.08: Spicy Red & Black Bean

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!

29.02.08: Butternut Bisque

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;-)

18.02.08: Spicy Red & Black Bean

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.

29.01.08: Yellow Sunshine Soup

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.

07.01.08: Has Bean

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!!