26.02.08: Baltic Freegan Soup

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.

19.02.08: Freegan Thick Tomato & Sweet Peppers

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?

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?

21.01.08: Broccoli & Watercress

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.

16.01.08: Freegan Soup

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.

Day Two: Roasted Tomato and Sweet Peppers

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