14.03.08: Pumpkin & Split Pea

The Soup Kitchen reveres Delia Smith, even when having a gentle dig at her for promoting McCain's frozen discs of mash potato as a soup thickener. But of course there are people who just don't have the time, inclination or skillz to mash! These days, Deals is driving a vehicle called How To Cheat At Cooking in which she cuts corners by incorporating readymade products into her recipes. In that spirit, I offer this interpretation of my friend Jennifer's soup, the secret ingredient of which is a 425g jar of Loyd Grossman's Jalfrezi Sauce.

To make 30 portions, you'll need 2kg of yellow split peas and a couple of pumpkins, or one big one. I saw some lovely green skinned pumpkins in East Street yesterday, but today they were gone and so I had to haggle with a wily Jamaican pumpkin purveyor instead and pay his price. Not that I minded, because his pumpkin was every bit as good as he claimed and he was grateful for all my change. Plus, with a couple of the Scotch bonnets left over from t'other day for added heat, I could (and did) claim that this soup is coming direct from JA:

1. Soak the split peas overnight and start by boiling them up and simmering for at least half an hour.

2. Finely chop a mirepoix of onion, carrots and celery, about a pound or half a kilo of each. As this soup will not be blended, it's important that the dice is small and neat. And a couple of de-seeded and minced Scotch bonnets (left), or more if you dare, but be aware that these peppers are HOT.

3. Sweat the mirepoix over medium/low heat in a good splash of oil in the bottom of your soup pot with the lid on to preserve moisture, taking it off every few minutes to stir the contents with a wooden spoon and prevent them from sticking or burning.

4. While the mirepoix sweats, peel the pumpkins, remove their seeds and dice their flesh into centimetre cubes.

5. When the mirepoix has cooked down and begun to caramelise in the bottom of the soup pot, add a dessert spoonful each of ground jeera 'n' dana (cumin and coriander), stirring it into the mixture. Then add the jar of Loyd's jalfrezi sauce and the contents of a tin of tomatoes, stirring that into the mirepoix as it continues to cook.

6. Now add the diced pumpkin, stir, cover with two litres of boiling Marigold bouillon, turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Add another couple of litres of bouillon and simmer for ten minutes or so before adding the peas.

7. Now add the cooked split peas with a further two litres of Marigold bouillon, making six litres in all. Stir the soup so that it's well mixed and simmer for a further ten minutes. The soup will continue to thicken as the split peas disintegrate.

8. Check the seasoning. If you've overdone the chilli, calm down the flavour by grating creamed coconut into your soup. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander as you serve.

19 people enjoyed this soup, which was an improvement on the day before, but the experience was a lot more pleasant. A small party came in from the Buddhist Centre up the street, where Ira doesn't cook on Fridays, and one of them also tried a bowl of yesterday's left over cauliflower soup. As did Joe, because he's a bit young to appreciate chilli. Several of the Soup Kitchen regulars lingered over second bowls and wrote compliments in the dairy: 'legendary - makes me sweat in a good way.

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.

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'.

12.11.07: Spacey Carrot & Coriander

I got over my cold but am still feeling a bit spacey and the Soup Kitchen is back in the business of dispensing its goodness. I opted for carrot and coriander today because: it's a solid gold classic with a recipe that's close to perfection; I wanted to use the new blender to make it quicker; and I could easily get the carrots from Oli's, the Turkish supermarket in Walworth Road, since East Street market doesn't wasn't on. Plus I wanted to celebrate the return of the Mighty Boosh, if not quite to the extent of serving croutons.

It's amazing, the goodwill generated over the past month by the simple expedient of making fresh soup and serving it for whatever people are willing to give in return.

To take just one pertinent example, I'd expected to pay around a hundred quid to get our liqudiziser, AKA the liquidimifier, fixed. This industrial stick mixer was donated to the Soup Kitchen, but was on its last legs: it worked, just not very well.

Gaynor, at Denton's, opposite Clapham North tube, identified its manufacturer over the phone by its orange handle as Dynamic and said it would be sent away for servicing. The inspection fee would be sixty quid and then there'd be the cost of the parts: new blades and a lead. I took it down there the afternoon we closed, on October 31, as my cold was brewing. But then they reckoned it also needed new barings and a new handle, too: two hundred quid at least! Gaynor reckoned I'd be better off buying a new one. Except I couldn't afford a new one. I'd have to pay sixty quid to get the old one back in bits! There had to be another way.

Happily, when I explained that the Soup Kitchen isn't a commercial enterprise and its operation absolutely depends upon the soup-making machine, Gaynor was sympathetic. She said she'd have a word with the engineer and he's sorted us out with an ex-demonstration PMX98 Mini-mixer (300W, 40L, 300mm shaft) for fifty quid! Plus VAT = £58.75. I picked it up morning and, as Monday is Gaynor's day off, I didn't get to thank her in person, but will name the appliance she supplied in her honour. Or maybe I'll call it Gloria. Thanks too, of course, to the anonymous engineer from Mitchell & Cooper. What a gent.

Here's my almost definitive Pullens Soup Kitchen recipe for Spacey Carrot & Coriander:

From the greengrocer: I big onion, weighing at least half a kilo; a flowering head of celery; six kilos of carrots, roughly; and two bunches of fresh coriander.

Also: half a 200g block of creamed coconut - that's 100g! - dissolved in a litre of boiling water; a couple of dessert spoons full of coriander seed, dry roasted over medium heat in a cast iron pan, then powdered in an electric coffee grinder.

Plus: Five litres of Marigold bouillon. A dusting of nutmeg, or allspice.

1. Dice the onion and start cooking it in the bottom of the soup pot in a little oil over low heat, lid on.
2. Chop the leafy top off the celery and reserve it. Chop up all the rest of the celery stems and add them to the pot.
3. Cook for five minutes while peeling and chopping carrots, then add the powdered coriander seed to the pot and cook for a further five minutes while continuing to peel/chop carrots.
4. Add the carrots you've peeled/chopped to the pot and cover with two litres of Marigold bouillon.
5. Peel the rest of the carrots and chop 'em all up, save four big ones. Add the chopped carrots to the soup with another two litres of bouillon and simmer for fifteen minutes.
6. While the soup simmers, coarsely grate two of the reserved carrots.
7. Chop the leaves from the bunches of coriander and reserve them. Put the coriander stalks through a masticating juicer, chasing them through with the two remaining carrots, and reserve the intense green liquid.
8. Turn off the heat under the soup pot and leave it to stand for ten minutes with the lid on before blending the soup using a stick mixer like our very own glorious Gaynor.
9. While waiting for the soup to cool before blending, finely chop a generous handful of the reserved coriander leaves for garnish and, when it comes to blending, add the rest of the coriander at the last minute with a further litre of bouillon and whizz the leaves into the soup.
10. Finish the soup by blunding in the creamed coconut, the grated carrot and the coriander juice returning the soup pot to the heat to warm it through.

Another marvellous thing happened today with the soup. We've got great big pepper grinder that came from the same donor as the original stick blender. It's been on the counter for the past month and we've all been merrily twisting 'black pepper' over everything. But today that mill turned out to contain allspice! Just what was needed to garnish this soup as it was served.

bowl by Daniel Reynolds

Today, Pullens Soup Kitchen served 23 bowls of spacey spicy carrot and coriander soup and, although our regulars were reticent in the log bok, one anonymous soul wrote: 'Good to see you back in good health. The illness has not affected your ability to make fantastic soup. This is my favourite so far!' That's what they all say, all the time!!

Day Nine: Carrot & Coriander

Today I set out to copy the soup that made the New Covent Garden Company famous, Carrot & Coriander. Well, I say copy, but I didn't use any nutmeg and instead concentrated upon building coriander flavours by toasting a generous handful of coriander seeds in a dry pan, then grinding them in an electric coffee grinder. This spice I put in the base of the soup, which I finished with an injection of intense fresh coriander flavour, produced by putting the stalks of a couple of bunches of the herb through a masticating juicer with a stalk of celery to produce a bright green chlorophyl-rich liquor.

Six kilos of carrots, a big onion, a head of celery and a bunch of coriander cost me a fiver in East Street market. Back at base, I chopped the onion and sweated it in a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot with the lid on, adding the ground coriander seed and then the leafier parts of the celery, chopped up. I peeled and chopped up all except two of the biggest carrots and added them to the pot with four litres of Marigold bouillon, simmering for twenty minutes. Then I pureed the soup with the stick mixer.

To finish the soup, I used creamed coconut instead of dairy cream to give a rich, smooth texture and this is actually becoming a bit of trademark of Pullens Soup Kitchen. If I'm making the soup, I'd prefer it to be vegan and dairy free, but the addition of a little fat always gives a more unctuous mouth feel (as I'm sure they'd say at the New Covent Garden Soup Company). I melted a block of creamed coconut in a little boiling water before adding it along with the green liquor from the juicer.

The texture of New Covent Garden's patented carrot 'n' coriander is varied with the inclusion of chunkier pieces of carrot, so I grated the two big carrots I'd held back into my soup, added another couple of litres of Marigold bouillon to the pot and brought it back to the boil before serving, garnished with fresh chopped coriander

Customers for my better-than N.C.G.'s c'n'c soup were slow to arrive and it was half past one before Gordon showed up. He said there wasn't enough salt in the soup, which is what he always says. I offered him LoSalt but he wasn't impressed and said next time he'd bring his own Maldon salt, which is fine by me. I mean, I wouldn't mind him smoking a cigarette after thoroughly enjoying his soup, but it's against the law, innit.

Some people from the workshops in Iliffe Yard are getting very good about bringing their own bowls to get their soup and then scuttling back to their drawing boards, or kilns, but if no one hangs around for a chat it can be a bit boring, so I was pleased to see Natty and Oskar, who held the fort when I had to leave at 3pm. Louisa kept the Soup Kitchen open till six and served another eight or ten bowls to people including Amy, who wrote in the log bok: 'Awesome! Great job!!'

Soup Maker: Russell
Soup: Carrot 'n' Coriander
Other ingredients: Creamed coconut
No. of bowls served: 24
Expenditure: £9.70
Donations: £18.83
Running balance: +£85.19