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!!

06.11.07: Mushroom

My lousy cold is lingering, hence no soup yesterday, but today Lou took over from where she left off last week, making mushroom soup with Graham. It was one of her minimalist recipes: minced garlic and thyme sautéed in butter (she actually used Utterly Butterly, don't ask me why) followed by two kilos of 'shrooms, sweated in the soup pot with the lid on for ten to fifteen minutes, stirred every few minutes to stop it sticking and ensure even cooking. Then she poured over six litres of Marigold bouillon and simmered the soup for a further ten minutes before blitzing it with the stick blender. And that's it, really.

I thought this soup was delicious and sufficiently pungent for its earthy aroma to penetrate my cold. Lou served it with a swirl of single cream and there were 17 takers, six of whom had seconds, making a total of 23 bowls served (as usual!) As someone wrote, rather enigmatically, in the log bok: 'Must Understand Soups Have Really Orsum OM Factor'. Indeed.

Some technical notes: Lou bought her 'shrooms at Somerfield, because they have bargainous 750g packs of field mushrooms. She used two, plus a 500g punnet of button mushrooms, which went into the pot whole and were a birrova bovver to liquidizise with the baby stick mixer. Our big mixer is still at the menders where it's gone for a service: new lead and blade. You'd think that would be a pretty straightforward proposition, but oh no. Turns out there's only one guy at the factory who does servicing and he's got some kind of grievance, so I don't think we're going to get our Dynamic magic wand back any day soon. Never mind that this machine is integral to our operation every single day and it's going to cost, like, a hundred quid to tune it up. I only hope it's going to be as good as new for that price, because I could have a new one tomorrow for twice as much. Innit.

Day 23: Pumpkin

It's the last day of our October souping and I've got a stinking cold. Happily, Lou was fit to make soup and, it being Halloween, she reprised her pumpkin concoction from Day Five, when spicey was spelled as it should be rather than it actually is.

As someone wrote in the log bok: 'Halloween - pumpkin soup? Work that one out!' Evidently, the equation was simple enough people for the Soup Kitchen to achieve a record number of bowls served on our last day of operation: 30!

Lou's variation on her tried and tested formula was lashings of ginger which worked for me with my cold. As someone else wrote in the log bok: 'Damn lovely - I'm not feeling well so it's given me a lift.' And as a third person wrote, 'it's not a trick, definitely a treat.'

So ends the first chapter of the Soup Kitchen. Over the month, we've done better than break even, showing an average profit of nearly nine quid per day! Of course, we don't pay utility bills and we don't pay ourselves. We are going to have to pay about a hundred quid to service the magic wand that makes it all happen, though.

Apparently, the Soup Kitchen was favourably mentioned at last night's AGM - which I didn't attend because of my rotten cold - and our Resident Liaison Officer is enthusiastic about our innovative experiment in social cohesion. Consequently, after a short break, we will resume the daily service of soup next week.

Happy Samhain, everybody. May the Great Pumpkin shower you with Autumnal abundance.

Soup Maker: Lou

Soup: Gingery Pumpkin
No. of bowls served: 30
Expenditure: £15.78
Donations: £26.98
Final score: +£203.96

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

Day 21: Spicy Bean

Never mind what the dictionary says, 'spicy' is wrong. At least, it looks wrong. Of course it should be 'spicey', IMO, but in a spirit of willing co-operation, because it's spelled that was in Debra Mayhew's Soup Bible, and because Natty wrote it that way on the blackboard today, on this occasion I will cheerfully conform with the conventional spelling. Maybe the way forward is to opt for 'spiced'?

In this recipe, the spices in question are cumin and Cayenne pepper. I didn't have any Cayenne and used paprika instead, spiked with a hefty pinch of chilli powder. The recipe also calls for red wine and beef stock. For the stock, I used a jar of Marks & Spencer's concentrated vegetable stock. For the red wine, I used a box of Chilean cab. sav. that's been hanging around the Pullens Centre kitchen since the last Annual General Meeting (and the next AGM is tomorrow!)

Overnight, I soaked 750g of black beans and the same quantity of red kidney beans in two separate bowls and, first thing this morning, I boiled them in two separate pans for an hour. The quantities were determined by the fact that, having trawled the length of Walworth Road, I was only able to buy a single 750g bag of black beans. Still, this 1.5 kg of beans turned out to be just the right amount since all the soup (made with 4 litres of stock) was eaten: another 23 bowls full!

I deviated from the recipe by increasing the quantity of red peppers and reducing the celery in the mirepoix of chopped vegetables that forms the flavour base of this soup, to make it richer. I diced a single very large onion, four or five medium-sized carrots and half a dozen red peppers. Rather than bland bell peppers, I used the more elongated, slightly piquant variety. Heating a little oil in the bottom of the soup pot, I put in the diced vegetables and added the spices, about two dessert spoons full of cumin and the same amount of paprika with a teaspoon of chilli powder.

Once the spice was added, I continued to sweat the diced veg. in the soup pot with the lid on over low heat for a further five minutes or so, stirring every now and then to stop the mix from sticking to the bottom of the pot, which I de-glazed with a glass of red wine before straining the cooked beans and adding them to the soup pot. The M&S concentrated veg. stock makes four pints, or not quite two litres, which is about half what I needed, so I added another two litres of Marigold bouillon to the soup and simmered it for half an hour.

I blended the soup a bit with the Dynamic stick mixer then, while it was still fairly chunky, removed about a quarter of the soup to another pot. I continued to blend the bulk of the soup until it was quite smooth and then returned the chunkier soup to the main pot and mixed it, to give contrasting smooth and slightly chunkier textures. I served it with a dollop of full fat cow's yogurt, which went down very well with just about everyone.

This was a very popular soup on what was a cold, brilliantly clear day. Several people had second bowls and Linda wrote in the log bok, 'the best yet! My favourite so far'.

Soup Maker: Russell

Soup: Spicy Bean
No. of bowls served: 23
Expenditure: £12.66
Donations: £26.87
Running balance: +£179.49