13.04.08: Cauliflower, White Bean & Fennel

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!

03.03.08: Freegan Auberginey

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!

06.02.08: Freegan Fennel, Potato, Watercress + Rocket

'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?

22.01.08: White Bean & Fennel (Slight Return)

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.

14.01.08: Cauliflower, White Bean & Fennel

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.