Day 23: Pumpkin

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

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

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

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

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