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!

04.03.08: White Bean and Cauliflower with Turnip

This soup started out last night as a half kilo bag of haricot beans that I put in to soak over night with the vague intention of marrying them with cauliflower and maybe using gram flour as a thickener. But then, buying veg. in East Street, I picked up one of those stainless steel bowl bargains, probably a couple of kilos of turnips gone a bit soft. And then again, buying bread at Oli's, I picked up a couple of 800g cans of butter beans. So, this soup was going to be thick enough with no need for flour.

Back at base, I boiled the soaked haricots for half an hour while I chopped and cooked a mirepoix of onions, carrots, and celery - roughly half a kilo of each - with the peeled cloves of half a head of garlic and sweated the diced veg in a splash of vegetable oil in the bottom of the soup pot, keeping its lid on to preserve the moisture, but stirring frequently to prevent sticking. That's what I usually do. Then I seasoned the slowly cooking mirepoix mixture with turmeric, ground cumin and ground coriander, about a dessert spoonful of each.

I peeled and roughly diced the turnips, adding them to the pot and mixing them in with two litres of boiling Marigold bouillon. I removed the florets from four cauliflowers, discarded the outer leaves and diced the stem, adding the dice to the pot. I drained the contents of the two cans of butter beans and added them to the soup, which I brought to the boil and simmered for about ten minutes before adding a further two litres of bouillon and the cauliflower florets. I brought the soup back to the boil and simmered it for ten minutes before turning the heat off and leaving the pot to cool for ten minutes before blending.

While blending the soup, I poured in another couple of litres of Marigold bouillon - making six in total - and when the soup had achieved a smooth consistency, I added the cooked haricot beans and returned the pot to the hob. Served with copious freshly-chopped parsley, I thought this was a pretty fine soup. V. Soup Kitchen and, in our finest tradition, 23 persons were served (several of whom had seconds).

Joe (right) and Esme (left) did art today: Esme's lady with chicken is shown.

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.

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

Day One: Cauliflower

Topcats frenetic performance last night KO-ed any help I might have expected this morning, when a plan to meet in Sainsbury's car park at Nine Elms to get free veg from the skips at the back of New Covent Garden was abandoned. Instead, I went down to Oli's, the Turkish greengrocer down Walworth Road and spent £4.64 on a couple of cauliflowers, a great big onion and a head of celery to add to the bag of carrots had in my fridge.

My other major expenditure was £4.50 on a tub of Marigold bouillon powder from Fare Shares, our friendly local not-for-profit whole-food anti-shop (you'd pay a quid more at the health food store). Recently, Marco Pierre White came out of semi-retirement and onto a TV game show and into the press. To The Caterer, he revealed his secret ingredient: "Knorr chicken cubes? Genius product". Which really goes to show how long Marco's been out of it because, as any fool knows, Marigold rules.

Twenty five years ago Alastair Little taught me to make a basic soup: mirepoix sweated well down in a pot with the lid on and any other flavours added to this base. Cut whatever vegetable into cubes and then sweat 'em in the mirepoix for a while before pouring over a stock - AL used Knorr chicken bouillon out of a tub - and simmer for up to fifteen minutes before liquidisizing. That's the way I made soup every morning at 192 for a couple of years back in the early 80s and that's still the way I make a basic vegetable soup. Except nowadays, I use Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon (reduced salt, natch.)

The idea is to shop every morning before opening the Pullens Centre at 11am and starting to make soup, which should be ready around midday. I was slow getting started this morning and had to ask Gordon, Graham and Naomi to come back later, so the first folks to sample the soup were Mike & Alex, film makers from the workshop across Iliffe Yard, who pronounced it 'excellent'. In the comments book, one of them wrote, 'Excellent Soup!!' and it's not like I twisted his arm too hard.

To make this excellent soup, I diced a big onion and sweated it with the lid on my pot over low heat in a little vegetable oil while peeling and dicing half a kilo of carrots and half a head of celery (a Big Head). I don't know why I went with cauliflower, because I had been thinking about parsnips. I'd been thinking about a curried parsnip soup, actually, but I ended up with cauliflowers, so I thought I'd spice 'em up a bit with turmeric and ground jeera, adding a couple of heaped teaspoons of each to the mirepoix.

Often, people don't get full flavour out of a cauli, because they focus on the florets and throw the stalk away. When making soup, its best to cut the florets off and set them aside before chopping the stalk into cubes and sweating them with the mirepoix for a good ten minutes so they're well softened before you add the stock. Then add the finely chopped florets before covering the vegetable mixture with about twice the quantity of boiling bouillon: in this case, three litres.

Jan Duke, of Iliffe Yard Arts, loaned a big tea urn type of thing, which is just as well because the boiler in the Pullens Centre is kaput, so you can't get hot water out of the tap. Once the boiling bouillon is poured over the vegetables, the soup doesn't need much more cooking. If you've got time, you can turn off the heat and leave it too cool for a while before liquimifising. There's an old Braun stick mixer but Shaun donated, among other things, a rather more superior whizzer. He also came up with a brand new chopping board and a choice of aprons. But not yet a bigger soup pot.

As it went, six litres was plenty of soup,. Maybe another bowl full but not much more was left in the bottom of the pot after fourteen people had had their soup and some of those had had seconds innit. Among notable visitors to the Pullens Soup Kitchen on its first day of operation was lifetime Pullenite, Daisy Kelly-Granger, whose brother is the recipient of a mysterious envelope that fell onto the mat addressed to 'Oscar, 184 Crampton St... Mmm.

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Cauliflower
Other ingredients: Jeera, turmeric
Bowls served: 14
Expenditure: £11.91
Donations: £12.05

Running balance: +14p

I neglected to get a photo of Daisy, but Gordon came back with Graham and Naomi, who had picked up some other items to go with the soup and make more of a lunch: