11.03.08: Chickpea & Spinach

This soup proved to be as popular as any served at the Soup Kitchen and caused someone to remark that the soup making is peaking as the season draws to a close while some others expressed sadness that their soup supply is to be cut off at the end of next week. But let us not mourn the passing of time and rather celebrate the turn of the seasons' wheel. Let's write down a few more definitive recipes while this blog is still active. And let us also get the table tennis tournament played out before the middle of next week!

To make 30 x 250ml portions, you will need: two kilos of dried chickpeas; two 800g cans of Natco spinach puree; a jar of tahini; a whole head of garlic, at least; plus a pound, or half a kilo each of onion, carrots and celery for the mirepoix and a kilo of floury white potatoes to thicken the soup. (Alternatively, you could use gram flour as a thickener.) This soup is seasoned with jeera 'n' dana - cumin and coriander - which you can buy as powder, or grind yourself for a fuller flavour and finished with Cayenne pepper, or a squeeze of lemon juice, if you prefer.

1. Soak the chickpeas over night. Start by discarding the soak water and boiling the peas in fresh water, simmering for an hour or more.

2. Wash, peel and cut the onion, carrot and celery into a rough dice. Peel and crush the garlic. Sweat this mixture of chopped veg. over medium heat in a generous splash of oil in the bottom of the soup pot with the lid on, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

3. Season the cooking mirepoix with ground cumin and coriander, two desserts spoons full of each. Make up two litres of Marigold bouillon and add a splash or two to the soup pot to stop the seasoned mirepoix from sticking.

4. Peel and roughly chop the potatoes and add them to the pot with the rest of the two litres of bouillon. Turn up the heat and bring the soup to the boil.

5. Prepare a further two litres of Marigold bouillon before adding two thirds of the chickpeas to the soup pot and then pour it over and continue to cook. If the peas left in the pot, which will be added to the soup later, are soft, take them off the heat. Otherwise, continue to cook them until soft.

6. Simmer the soup for fifteen minutes, then turn the heat off and leave it to stand for ten minutes before blending. Blend to a smooth consistency.

7. Return the blended soup to the heat and add the cans of spinach puree and the rest of the chickpeas with a further two litres of Marigold bouillon.

8. Stir in tahini to finish the soup. I used a full 450ml jar, but you can vary the quantity according to taste.

9. Serve garnished with a sprinkle of Cayenne or a squeeze of lemon juice to cut the flavour of the chickpeas and tahini with something a bit sharp. Enjoy!

31.01.08: Seven Pulses

Carlo claimed this soup contained seven pulses, including at least four varieties of lentil, plus chickpeas and some little brown peas he called 'Ghana peas', prolly black eye peas. OK, that's only six pulses and I can't adequately describe the method by which Carlo invented this soup, either, but I can tell you it worked brilliantly well, however he did it. From somewhere, he'd picked up a bag of crispy fried onion bits (sic) which he mixed into the soup as he served it to vary the texture and add flavour to a concoction that someone described in the log bok as being 'ooh, coriandery and coconutty and chunky and smooth. Marvellous. I want more!' Someone else wrote, 'fantastic'. Which it was, in its characteristically Carlo type of a way. Popular, too.

Look, I know these blog posts have become a bit perfunctory and I haven't posted many images recently, but to paraphrase the late John Lennon, life is what happens from day-to-day while you're busy making more grandiose plans. Normal service will be resumed when I've got a bit less on my plate;-)

24.01.08: Pomodoro E Basilico

Back once again came the Bolognese maestro, reprising his creamy tomato soup, this time in a version with chick peas in the bottom, a subtle touch of chilli, and ample quantities of fresh basil torn over and stirred in for tip top flavour. Carlo brought with him a couple of getting-past-it pot plants that all but died on the bus journey, but he wasn't to know that I'd picked up a (literal) shed load of basil @ Nine Elms on Monday. So, however unseasonally, this was another beautifully balanced tomato with ample herbaceousness. But the bad news is that only eleven peeps ventured over the Soup Kitchen threshold to taste it and non saw fit to comment in the log bok, leaving the chef to question whether it had been worth his effort?

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.

28.11.07: Organic 'Blue' Peas

This chick pea soup is apparently from Carlo's blue period, hence the name. When challenged, he said something about Andy Warhol, perhaps a reference to his Campbell Soup cans. Who can say? As a wise man might have said, unless it's clear to the bottom of the bowl, the meaning of soup may be opaque. It may be meaningless, beyond the taste experience of its consumption and the energy derived from its nutrition. One man - Sumana - was inspired by this soup to whip out his banjo and give it some strumming there and then (see below).

Carlo was less vague about how his soup - organic 'blue' peas with creamy curry coconut, cumin & coriander - to give it its full title, came to be:

1 First, wash your hands and soak your beans. 2kg of chick peas, ideally soaked overnight, but an hour with bicarbonate of soda will do. Boil them separately for an hour.

2 Heat your pan slowly with organic olive oil in the bottom. Chop 6 small white onions roughly in quarters and 6 carrots into batons. Cook slowly in the bottom of the pot until caramelised.

3 Add spice/herb mix: cumin and coriander seeds, paprika; plus two cloves of garlic.

4 Add a quarter of the part-cooked chick peas to the pot, cover with water and cook for a further 40 minutes, stirring often. Continue to cook the rest of the peas, adding a dessert spoon full of Marigold bouillon powder to the boiling water to improve the flavour.

5 When the melange (in the pot) is cooked, add the two lots of chick peas together and blend with a stick mixer.

6 Finish the soup by adding a 200g bar of coconut cream dissolved in half a litre of boiling water. Serve it with a swirl of cinnamon yoghurt.

That recipe isn't complete because tomato puree comes into it somewhere and 'crunchy appeals', which I'm guessing are actually crunchy bits of chopped apple. Kadett wrote, 'yummy, yummy, not sure what makes it so good.' Nor can anyone be sure of the secret ingredient when the soup maker won't say. Bottom line: 'a phantasmic soup and a cockle warmer'.

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