17.03.08: Irish Broth

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.

07.03.08: Butter Bean & Parsnip

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.

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.

05.02.08: Cream of Asparagus + Pancake Day

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.

01.02.08: Blue Cheesy Parsnip + Veggie Stew

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?

28.01.08: Lightly Curried Roots

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.

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.

09.01.08: Curried Parsnip

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.

19.11.07: Parsnip 'n' Pear

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!

Day 16: White Bean & Parsnip

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 14: Creamy Curried Parsnip

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

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 Seven: Curried Parsnip

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