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.

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.

18.01.08: Harira + Café Cairo

Café Cairo in Landor Road was a fixture on the South London landscape, renowned for the unique atmosphere of its tent-out-the-back, where one could recline on cushions and smoke a hookah while sipping mint tea. That's all past tense though because, after a succession of break-ins, the tent went up in flames last November on the night before Bonfire Night. While its operators seek new premises, the Cairo crew came to the Pullens Centre for a fund raising evening and, seeing as it takes them so long to set up their extraordinarily rich interior decor, I suggested that they should make soup at lunchtime, too.

Harira - extolled on soupsong.com as 'quite possibly the best soup in the world' - is the Middle Eastern meal-in-a-bowl that's traditionally served to break the day's fast during Ramadan. This is Daisy's hand-written recipe for a vegetarian version:

(Heat oil and fry onions and garlic 'till soft. Add parsley, ginger, black pepper, turmeric, cayenne, paprika, ground coriander. then add potatoes, carrots, celery, green lentils, tomato puree. Stir well and add processed tomato (i.e.: fresh or tinned tomatoes that have been whizzed in a food processor), then stir again and add enough water (or light vegetable stock/Marigold bouillon) to cover all ingredients well and bring to boil. Simmer for 30-45 minutes, concentrating the flavours and reducing the volume of liquid to make a thickish broth. Then add chickpeas, white beans, and vermicelli. Cook for a further 5 minutes, until the vermicelli softens, and add lemon juice and salt to taste.)

Not only was this soup was a great success, so too was the evening's event, with many people remarking that they'd never seen the Centre looking so fabulous. Café Cairo will return to 184 Crampton Street on February 15th (that's Valentines' Day + 1) while Daisy and Rhiannon will return to the Soup Kitchen next week.

17.01.08: Gingered Royal Yellow Peas + Pasta Night

Carlo made a terrific, gingery soup with yellow split peas that inspired an artist whose style is strongly reminiscent of Mr Natty Bo to draw a picture of it with the comment appended: 'Cool man! O'Reety!!' Someone else wrote, '"Really rather yummy," said the Princess with a pea up her arse', while a third commented that it's 'so good to have real food so close to work, the soup gets better every day'. Which is frightfully gratifying, but the sad fact is that too few people tasted today's soup and quite a lot got thrown away.

In the evening, Carlo served a pasta dish he called Penne Kemptonaise, after the town in Germany where his girlfriend lives. Sigh. He bought organic ricotta and made a cream with avocado and diced hottish red peppers. Not only that, but he curried the rest of the new potatoes left over from the previous day to amazing effect. Wow. Sadly, hardly anyone turned up to eat this fantastic fare, so Carlo had to throw food away and he probably lost money. So, it looks like that's the end of Pasta Night:-(

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.