12.02.08: Leek Y Potato

Today, I met up with Seba. and Olga at 9a.m. and we soon found out that we were too late for effective scrumping @ Nine Elms. What hadn't been picked up, already, had been swept up by the cleaners, who seem to be starting earlier these days. We found a solitary leek and some potatoes. Then we found a celeriac root with a few dodgy bits that needed cutting out and a bag of spinach that was on the turn. So, I thought, Leeky Potato (geddit) with additions. Except that I didn't have hardly any leek and not enough spud. See:

Back @ Pullens Centre, I got Seba. and Olga choppin' while I nipped down the market and scored another 3kgs leeks plus a quid's worth of big floury white spuds. We made the soup in the standard manner. Seba wouldn't believe that iceberg lettuce was a legitimate soup ingredient, but I shredded and sweated it down with the mirepoix, added the spinach that Olga had carefully picked over and sweated that, too. Then, we added the diced spuds and cubed celeriac, plus the shredded leeks, continued to cook for ten minutes before covering with a couple of litres of Marigold bouillon and cooking for ten minutes more.

We decanted several great big ladles full of soup into another pot and whizzed the soup up with Brenda the blender, slowly pouring in another litre of bouillon. Once it achieved a smooth-ish consistency, we amalgamated the chunky bits to make a good pot full of soup. "That's as much soup as we ever make," I told Olga, our new recruit, "about 30 portions". Turns out, we served 29 bowls and it was all gone by 2pm! Here's Olga & Seba. with their empty pot:

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'.

25.01.08: Gorbanos

As if in answer to Carlo's exasperated question, yesterday, when he wondered if it was worth his while struggling half way across London laden with wilting basil plants in order to make amazing soup for less than a dozen souls to enjoy, today was a sell-out. Seriously, a neighbour knocked on my flat door to tell me how good the soup was and, when I went round to investigate, someone else crossed the road to say the same thing. The log bok collected ten written endorsements, or commendations, incl.: two 'fantastics'; an 'absolutely delicious'; one 'damn good and a 'couldn't put it better myself. Yummy!'

'Gorbanos' is another of Carlo's enigmatic appelations. Basically, this soup was made of lightly curried yellow split peas blended with creamed coconut and mixed with fresh spinach. Carlo also dressed some spinach and chopped celery with a lemon vinaigrette to serve as a side salad, which two people described in the log bok as, 'great'. So what was a difficult week finally ended on a high note.

A few things went wrong this week. Lou - who has been on board the Soup wagon since we started - quit (come back!) and my home phone line got cut off, so I've been playing catchee uppee on this blog. On the other hand, I've cured my sick loudspeaker. One of my precious House Pods had developed a mysterious buzz, but I seem to have fixed it by the simple expedient of TURNING THE VOLUME AS LOUD AS IT GOES.