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.

30.01.08: Chunky Green Vegetables with Thyme

Daisy and Holly - a.k.a. 'the wholesome darling girls' - didn't do so well down at Nine Elms this morning, perhaps because they were too late and all the freegan bargains had been snaffled by earlier worms, so they went down to East Street and returned with bundles of gear: asparagus, celery, onion, spinach, leek and thyme.

Asparagus in January does represent something of an ethical dilemma, but the important point is that these wholesome darling girls didn't pay a premium price for their 'grass, which would probably have been thrown away if they hadn't negotiated it into their soup. Dasiy also had reservations about using Knorr vegetable stock powder, which contains MSG, but the Soup Kitchen had run out of Marigold and needs must, is it not?

Anyway and for whatever reasons, the soup was delicious. An unblended, chunky and very herby stew that Cathy declared in the log bok, 'the best thing I've slurped all year' while Crispin - winding up Daisy over her resemblance to fellow Brits School graduate, Adele - said it was 'superb'.

10.10.08: Tomato & Crunchy Celery + Pasta Night

Hard though it may be to believe, over the past three months, we've somehow not got around to doing a creamy tomato soup à la façon de Heinz. Until today, when Signor Atif - who didn't grow up in Britain and isn't intimidated by the cultural status of Heinz 57 Varieties - produced a soup so stupendous that someone wrote in the log bok, excitedly, 'Best soup every BINGO!'

Carlo wasn't about to start with fresh tomatoes, but he refuses to use purée, which he reckons has a tinny, industrial flavour, and insists upon the best quality Napolitana brand tins of chopped tomatoes (70% flesh!) He made the soup by slowly sweating a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrots in plenty of oil, adding rosemary, mixed herbs, coriander (all dried) and two mild green fresh chillies.
I reckon he probably sneaked a bit of garlic in there, too, but maybe that goes without saying?

The key to incorporating the tomatoes, apparently, is to do it ever so s-l-o-w-l-y. Add a can of tomatoes and allow it to cook down thoroughly, then add another can every five minutes. Since this soup used eight cans, this process took forty minutes, but the results were more than worthwhile. Carlo thickened the soup with pureed chickpeas.

Rewind: before you do anything else in this recipe, you've got to soak half a kilo of organic chick peas! They've got to be organic, see, because organic chick peas are the sweetest. If, for some reason, you don't soak your dried chick peas overnight, you can take a shortcut by soaking them for just an hour with a teaspoon full of bicarbonate in the water. Change the water before boiling them, or it's liable to start foaming;-)

Carlo finished his soup with 100g creamed coconut dissolved in hot water and served it with crunch diced celery, which was a really neat final flourish, I thought. And the number of potions served, inevitably, was 23.

In the evening, Carlo stayed on for Pasta Night, which I reckon will become an established fixture on Thursday nights as we move into the New Year. So far, it's not been easy to establish a clientele because it's been hard to get the word out and attract peoples' attention in the pre-Xmas period. Anyway, about 15 people did get the message and enjoyed one of Sgnr. Atif's idiosyncratic pasta dishes: penne with tofu, sweetcorn and green peas in a wonderful, rich and spicy coriander sauce. Seriously, if you live on the Pullens and you're at home next Thursday, don't bother cooking for yourself but come and join us @ the Centre.

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