Two satisfying soups

So here's the second of my rāhui posts: two healthy, easy, filling soups, just right for the end of daylight saving and the cooling weather (yes, I know this is affecting only those of us south of Hamilton). They're also well suited to a random range of supplies. Click on the headings to find the blog recipes.

Minestrone alla Karori 

This is a meal in itself, and very adaptable. I wrote in my original post:

As Antonio Carlucci explains, in fact there's no such thing as "the real minestrone". Instead there are many versions, each one authentic for those who make it.

In these unusual times, innovation is essential. Cabbage is the mainstay vegetable, but you can use up random bits of most other veges you may have lying around. Instead of borlotti beans, use what's available - even baked beans will do at a pinch, but don't add them until the veges and pasta are cooked. And if you don't happen to have pancetta, any kind of bacon, ham, or bits of tasty cooked sausage will work. You can use any small pasta too, or broken up bits of noodles if that's all you've got.


Pretty Fast Pumpkin Soup

The name of this soup (which I invented) describes it very well - it's both pretty, and pretty fast to make. The ingredients are a bit less flexible: you do need pumpkin, carrots, and some kind of red curry flavouring. For example, I haven't got actual red curry paste right now, but I do have Tom Yam paste, which is also red, so that would do fine. (And in any case, it seems easier right now to find more exotic ingredients such as red curry paste than it does to get some basics, such as flour!)

This soup belongs to a variety of dishes I often make, called "vaguely Asian" (David Burton, look away now). No one from any Asian country would recognise any of them, but they do rely on Westernised versions of flavours relating to a range of Asian countries, from India to Thailand.

If you like, you could add noodles to this soup too, and/or cook bits of boneless chicken in it, turning it into a meal rather than just a soup.

Pretty fast pumpkin soup

I do have a good excuse, sort of, for not posting here as often as I intend to. My son is back at university and spends a great deal of time meticulously crafting his essays on this computer. Both of us find the big desktop much more comfortable to write on than a dinky laptop, let alone an iPad.
       Anyway, today he's out, so I decided it was high time to pass on my new idea for winter. Well, fairly new. I did think it up myself, but somewhere someone else (👧) has undoubtedly thought of it first. It's very simple, warming, delicious, and the most gorgeous colour. It's also really cheap to make - my little grey pumpkin was $1 at the Victoria St market. You'll find two earlier pumpkin soup posts here and here.
        For the spicy curry flavour, I used my last tablespoon of red curry paste and about half a cup of some leftover butter chicken sauce. Totally inauthentic, I know, but tidy, thrifty, and it worked perfectly. If you want to concoct your own spice mixture, go right ahead, but make sure it has a red-ish colour.

Pretty fast pumpkin soup  
(This serves four - increase quantities to get a bigger pot of soup)

1 small pumpkin, or a cut piece to give roughly the same amount of flesh
1 large or two smaller carrots
2 Tbs red curry paste (or something similar - how much you use depends on how spicy you like it)
knob of butter for frying
juice of one medium lemon or lime
half a medium tin of coconut milk
enough extra coconut milk, or milk or cream, to dilute at the end as required (you can also put a blob of plain yoghurt in each bowl after serving)
something green and finely chopped to serve on top - coriander is good, or chives, spring onion, parsley
naan bread/poppadum/lightly toasted tortillas/any other kind of bread you fancy

Using a large knife, cut the pumpkin into pieces roughly the size of your two cupped hands.
Arrange pieces in a large shallow glass or ceramic dish that will fit in your microwave.
Add half a cup of water to dish, cover, and microwave until pumpkin is semi-soft.
Let pieces cool enough to handle. Leaving the water in the dish, remove each piece, peel it and remove seeds and fibrous centre flesh. Cut any very large pieces in half.
Peel and trim the carrot(s) and cut them lengthwise, then cut into small short sticks.
Melt the butter gently in a large suacepan and gently fry whatever spices or spice paste you are using for a couple of minutes. (If it's something prepared (like my leftover butter chicken sauce) just melt the butter.)
Add the pumpkin, carrot and the water from the pumpkin dish. Add enough extra water to almost cover the vegetables.
Bring to boil, then turn heat down to a medium simmer. Cook until vegetables are soft. (Don't wander off and leave it, as I'm inclined to do - it will burn.)
Taste to see if it needs more salt. If you wish, add pepper (white pepper looks better) and/or a dash of hot sauce (like Kaitaia Fire).
Add lemon or lime juice to taste.
When it has all cooled a bit, puree with a hand blender or in a food processor until smooth. If it is too thick to puree, add a little milk.
Return to saucepan, stir in the half-tin of coconut milk, reheat gently and cook for a few minutes. Check seasoning. Add enough extra coconut milk (or milk or cream) to get the texture you want, without spoiling the vibrant colour, check seasoning again and reheat gently.
Serve with green stuff to sprinkle on and yoghurt to stir in, as well as the warm bread.

I was so greedy, I didn't remember to take the photo until I'd nearly finished my bowlful. Sorry about that.

After the earthquake: Tranquil lettuce soup

After the earthquake, we needed something calming to eat, and my thoughts turned to lettuce. It has a venerable reputation, going back at least as far as the Romans, for promoting sleep, because the milky sap which provides its distinctive taste contains a minute quantity of something known as "lettuce opium". But the concentration is only 2 to 10 parts of morphine per million, compared with the usual therapeutic morphine dose of  0.5 to 50 parts per thousand - roughly a million times as much. So some hopeful hippies' attempts to get high on lettuce products were doomed to fail.

The French continue to regard lettuce as calming, especially when it's cooked. Elizabeth David has the perfect recipe for trying this out: Potage du Père Tranquille, Soup of the Tranquil Father. She explains that he "seems to have been a somewhat mysterious Capuchin monk, but the name ... is also a reference to the supposedly soporific effects of lettuce."

It also feels very economical, because it can be made with the outside leaves of lettuce that are usually thrown away. In The Colour of Food, I tell a story about this:

Every so often Harvey would embarrass me by well-meant but misplaced praise – like the time he announced proudly to a well-to-do guest who had arrived at short notice, ‘Anne made this soup from the outside leaves of lettuce!’ Even though Potage du Père Tranquille was a good French recipe, I cringed at having my economy exposed.

I doubt that the French ever use iceberg lettuce, but it works perfectly well for this soup, and one large lettuce provides enough outer leaves for the recipe.

Potage du Père Tranquille - Tranquil Lettuce Soup 
(Adapted from Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking)
Makes 4 generous servings or six smaller ones

Outer leaves of one large iceberg lettuce or 2 to 3 buttercrunch ones (David says 3)
(If you have lots of lettuce to spare, use a whole one)
500 ml mild chicken stock (I use half chicken and half miso stock)
300 ml milk
salt and pepper
about 1/8 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp sugar
small lump of butter or 50 ml cream

- Wash leaves carefully, shake off water, pile them together and slice them across into long fine ribbons.

- Put the sliced lettuce in a large sauce[an with just enough stock to cover them. Simmer gently, adding a little more stock or water if necessary, until they are quite soft.

- Drain the cooked lettuce through a sieve into a bowl. Keep the bowl of stock.
- When the lettuce has cooled, puree it in a blender or food processor.
- Return the puree to the pan. Stir in the stock and enough milk to make a thin cream (check the flavour after adding some milk, as you do not want to make the soup too bland and tasteless).
- If you don't want any little bits of lettuce in it, sieve the soup at this point. (I rather like the texture and colour of the tiny green bits.)

When you're ready to serve the soup:
- Add sugar, a good grind of black pepper (or if you do not want to see black specks, white pepper) and a small grating of nutmeg. Taste for seasoning and add salt only if necessary.
- Gently reheat soup and just before serving, stir in either a small lump of butter or a little fresh cream.

French bread is good with this, but so are garlic bread or Vogel's Extra Thin.
I don't know if it did indeed make us more tranquil, but it certainly felt soothing and warm on the stormy day after the earthquake.

An old favourite: Nigella's pea and roast garlic soup

I had a delightful lunch at my friend Ali's place a couple of weeks ago. She's a brilliant cook, so I always look forward to her food.  This time she made one of my all-time lunch favourites: Nigella Lawson's pea and roast garlic soup. I think Ali herself passed the recipe on to me years ago, but it's a little while since I made it, so I greeted its appearance with a big grin - especially as it came with Ali's legendary home-made foccaccia.  AND she grows her own garlic.
    The soup itself isn't at all ahrd to make, but it does need a bit of forethought, because you roast a whole head of garlic first, and that takes 45-60 minutes. It's also a good idea to plan ahead because you don't usually want to heat up the whole oven just for one head of garlic - so it pays to put it in while you're cooking something else.

Pea and roast garlic soup

Nigella Lawson

one whole head of garlic
2 tsps olive oil
200g frozen peas
25g butter
2 tbsps freshly grated parmesan (and more to serve)
200ml warm stock
150ml double cream (max - you may well want to use less)

To roast the garlic:
Preheat the oven to 200C. 

Slice off the top of the garlic so that you can see the tops of the cloves revealed in a cross section.

Cut out a square of foil large enough to make a parcel with room to spare around the garlic. Put the garlic in the middle and cover it with olive oil.

Make a loose parcel around the garlic, twisting the edges of the foil together at the top.
Bake at 200C for 45-60 mins until soft.

To make the soup:
Cook the peas in boiling salted water until tender but not mushy.
Drain and blend until smooth.

Squeeze in the soft cooked cloves of garlic.

Add the butter, parmesan and half of the stock. Process to a creamy puree.

Pour into a saucepan and add the remaining stock. Add cream (or extra stock - if it's not too salty - or some of both) to get a soupy consistency.

Heat gently and check seasoning, adding salt and pepper if needed.

Serve with good bread and extra parmesan on the side.

This is a lovely fresh-tasting and yet rich soup. We followed it with cheese (including my contribution, a home-made herb boursin) and Nigel Slater's fresh plum cake - with more cream, of course.

Snow means soup

Absolutely freezing here. Oh, all right, not technically freezing - certainly nothing below zero, as it was down south last month. (At Tara Hills, near Omarama in the Mackenzie Country, it was -21C on 24 June, the coldest day in the country for twenty years.) But a top temp of 7C (for five minutes in the early afternoon) is about as cold as it gets in Wellington. There was snow on my lawn this morning, and it stayed there till lunchtime.
       I have an automatic reaction to cold weather: soup.  I haven't come up with any stunning new recipes this winter, but I've gone happily back to some old favourites, and I thought it could be handy to collect them up. So: here are four I made (and posted) earlier!

Classic pea and ham
The welcome advent of neat packs of bacon bones in Countdown sent me home to make this.

Bacon bones are better than hocks, there's less fat and they have a better flavour.

Pumpkin
Cheap, easy, lots of variations. This Turkish one is lovely: Bulkabagi Corbasi.

But straight pumpkin with curry powder or stock is fine too. If I'm too busy (or too lazy) to start from scratch, I cook up and puree a nice piece and add it to a good commercial pumpkin soup or, if I'm feeling poor, a cheap can... not as good, of course, but a lot better than no pumpkin soup at all.

Leek and potato
(or, if you prefer, Potage Parmentier)
Simplest of them all, extremely healthy (though not if you put the recommended butter and cream in, of course, but I generally don't).

Minestrone alla Karori
The "biggest" soup of them all - with bread, and maybe a bit of salami, definitely a whole meal in itself. So that's dinner sorted.

Comfort in a bowl of soup

In August my son came for three weeks, on holiday from his teaching job in China. We roamed around Wellington hunting down the best cakes and coffee - in China he can find reasonably acceptable cake, but only in limited varieties, good coffee is extremely hard to come by, and almost never can he get the two together in one place.  And the winners are:
Best Muffin: blueberry and lemon muffin at Karaka Cafe on the waterfront lagoon
Best Lemon Tart:  tarte au citron at Bordeaux.
Best Chocolate Tart: Veronique's tart at Le Marche Francais.
Best Chocolate Cake (well, almost fudge): chocolate nemesis at the Aro Street Cafe.
Runner-up: gluten-free chocolate and orange fondant at Floriditas.
Best Other Kind of Cake We Came Across: tiramisu cake at California Garden Centre cafe in Miramar. (I should have photographed the cut slice to show the wondrous layers.)

When he left, I missed him terribly, and had to quickly set about providing myself with some kind of comfort food that wasn't yet more cake. The answer seemed to be pea and ham soup. Harvey loved it and used to make it quite often, but I don't think I've made it since he died.
         I had a nice little bacon hock in the freezer, so I fished it out and went in search of split peas. I wanted the yellow ones, but couldn't find them in any supermarket. I finally tracked them down at Moore Wilson, a couple of dollars for 500g, so not expensive at all - just another one of those old-fashioned staples that has vanished from most grocery shelves.      

The recipe I used is from my original New Zealand soup bible, Digby Law's Soup Cookbook. The only new thing I did was cook it in the slow cooker. You need to add enough water to cover the contents by about 1cm, and check it after a couple of hours to see if it needs more water - those peas absorb a lot of liquid. Otherwise, this couldn't be simpler or easier to make, and it's the most comforting comfort food you could wish for.

Old Fashioned Pea and Ham Soup
(adapted from Digby Law - I think it serves 8-10, rather than the 12 he suggests)
1 bacon knuckle (hock) or bacon bones
500g yellow split peas (Digby says green, but I prefer yellow)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 sprigs mint
1 or 2 bay leaves

Heat the slow cooker on high while you chop the onion and pick the herbs. (If you haven't got one, cook it in a very large pot over a simmer mat on the lowest heat possible after bringing the water to the boil..)
Put everything into the slow cooker and add enough water to come 1cm above the ingredients.
Cook on high for 2 hours. Check level of liquid and add more water if necessary.
Cook on high for another 2 hours or until peas are mushy. (Depending on your slow cooker, you may need to reduce the heat to low for part of this second stage.)
Remove bay leaves. Remove bacon bone/s and set aside. Let soup cool and check seasoning.
If you have a soup wand, use it to puree the peas and liquid, or just mash them up as much as you can. Remove meat from bacon bones, discard fat, shred bacon into small pieces and return to soup.
Heat the quantity you require and keep the rest in the fridge or freezer for later.

The soup will be beautifully thick and smooth, and Digby Law says to serve it piping hot garnished with mint and with lots of brown bread toast. When it cools, it gets so thick you can almost eat it in chunks (so you'll need to add more water when you reheat it). Left thick, it's a very ancient staple called pease porridge, as in the old children's clapping rhyme (first recorded in 1760):

Pease porridge hot
Pease porridge cold
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old
Some like it hot
Some like it cold
Some like it in the pot
Nine days old.

You could very well eat it cold and still enjoy it very much, but I'm not at all sure about nine days old. One day I'll leave a bit out that long and see what happens to it.

By the way - the print edition of my food memoir has arrived at Unity Books in Wellington, so it should be in other shops now or very soon.

The real minestrone

This weekend I had a friend coming for supper on Saturday and another for lunch on Sunday, so I thought I'd make a good hearty soup to feed them both. I had some shredded cabbage and grated carrot in the fridge, and I was pretty sure these were ingredients for minestrone. So I got out my trusty Claudia Roden bible, The Food of Italy.
        I was right. Her recipe for "minestrone alla milanese" had finely shredded white cabbage, and also carrot - though that was meant to be diced, rather than grated. But I figured it wouldn't matter. Because as Antonio Carlucci explains, in fact there's no such thing as "the real minestrone". Instead there are many versions, each one authentic for those who make it.
        I didn't want enough soup for ten people, so I halved Roden's recipe (it still made a lot). I did use Tony Gamboni's genuine pancetta (he cut it the correct thickness and then diced it up for me), and proper borlotti beans (canned, not dried - she allows for that). But her recipe has rice in it - that's probably what makes it "milanese" - and I didn't want to put rice in, because it's inclined to suck the flavour out of soup. Instead I used a handful of the pasta called biavetta, which is shaped like grains of rice. I left out the peas (because I only had frozen ones), put in more garlic, and used a can of chopped tomatoes, plus a squeeze of paste, instead of fresh ones. And rather than celery, I used lovage leaves and stalks from the garden. I reckon my soup still had every right to be called "real minestrone".

Minestrone alla Karori (guided by Claudia Roden)

120g pancetta (Italian unsmoked bacon), cut into small pieces
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
small bunch Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 carrots, diced (or grated)
2 tender celery sticks, thinly sliced
or  small bunch lovage, finely chopped
2 floury potatoes, peeled and diced (the new Agria on sale now are perfect)
1 can chopped Italian tomatoes
tomato paste (optional)
1 can borlotti beans, drained of their liquid
about 1/4 of a not-too-huge white cabbage, shredded
2 courgettes, diced
2 tablespoons rice-shaped pasta (biavetta or orzo - if you want really thick, filling soup, use more pasta)
To serve: small bunch basil, cut into strips, grated grana or parmesan cheese, crusty bread

In a very large saucepan or stockpot, heat the diced bacon gently until the fat runs, then add the onion and fry gently until pale golden. Add garlic and parsley and stir until the aroma rises.
Add carrots, celery, potatoes and tomatoes. Cover with plenty of water, bring to the boil, turn down to low heat and simmer gently with the lid on until the potatoes are cooked through but not mushy - about 45 minutes.
Add the drained borlotti beans and salt to taste. Add a squeeze of tomato paste if you think it's needed - the soup should taste full-bodied, but not actually tomatoey. It should be thickish, but not too thick - add a little more water if necessary. Cook for another 10 minutes.
Add the cabbage and courgettes and cook for another 15 minutes.  The veges should all be thoroughly cooked but still in distinct chunks.
Add the pasta and cook for at most 10 minutes more, until the grains of pasta are cooked enough to bite through easily but not mushy. Check seasoning.

Stir in the basil. Serve minestrone in wide bowls, with grated cheese on top (large flakes in my case, as I don't have a proper fine grater), and crusty bread on the side. At this point it's appropriate for your family or guests to come up with an enthusiastic "Mamma mia!", or other complimentary Italian phrases.

Of the earth, earthy - lentil and mushroom soup

In 2006, straight after I finished my PhD, I took off for France with a friend. Harvey had already decided he wouldn't travel to Europe again, but it was a book he bought that inspired me to go: Stephanie Alexander's magnificent Cooking and Travelling in South-West France.

We stayed at a farm estate five minutes outside Sarlat-le Caneda, about four hours from Bordeaux. Every morning Madame would tell us what her son was cooking that night, so we could decide if we would be in for dinner. Duck was often the centrepiece. Everything was "bio" (organic) - not because it was "green", she told us, but because it just tasted better. Over our seven-night stay we managed to eat there five times, and it was consistently the best food experience I've ever had.

It was early summer, so we didn't have anything like this rich dark soup, but in winter I'm sure something very like it would have appeared. Stephanie Alexander says that although it's her own invention, "I feel sure it would be welcomed by any resident of the south-west".

Lentil and mushroom soup (serves 6-8)

300g Puy lentils (the French grey-green ones)
2 cups chicken stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 large black mushrooms

2 Tbsp rendered duck fat or olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 large potato, peeled and diced

* Rinse lentils under cold water and drain. Put in a large saucepan and add 1.5 litres (6 cups) of water. Simmer gently for 20-30 minutes until tender.

* Make a fricassee: Chop mushrooms (including stems) into small pieces. Heat duck fat or oil in a wide ffrying pan and saute onion for 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, potato and mushrooms, cover, and sweat for a few minutes. Lift lid and stir well. Saute until potato is tender, mushrooms have started to colour, and there is a bit of a sizzle going on.

* When lentils are tender, tip the fricassee into the lentil pot and add the stock. Bring to a simmer and season to taste. Simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool until warm, then blend in a food processor or blender (do not overfill - you may need to do this in batches). Reheat and serve very hot, garnished with a few fresh herbs and/or a little cream.

I found this turned out to be a little too thick, so I thinned it down slightly with a bit more stock and water. I was worried that it might be just too earthy and rich for my dinner guests, but they loved it. And it froze and reheated beautifully for a later lunch.

Simply soup

It hasn't been all that cold in Wellington this week, but it's been depressingly damp and gray. Time to go back to basics. The very first thing I ever made from Mastering the Art of French Cooking was leek and potato soup. It's probably the simplest recipe in the whole two volumes.

Potage Parmentier (sounds much more impressive, doesn't it)
Peel and dice enough potatoes - preferably Agria - to get 450g.
Remove the tough outer skin of fresh, not too gigantic leeks. Slice the tender pale lower parts into thin rounds. Remove the remaining tough darker green leaves near the top, and slice the inner tender light green parts thinly. You want the same weight of leeks as of potatoes, 450g.

Put the veges into a large saucepan and add 1.5 litres of water and 1 dessertspoon of salt. Simmer, partially covered, for 40 minutes or more, until the veges are tender.

What you do next depends on how smooth you want the soup to be. Julia says you can mash the veges with a  fork or pass them through a moulinette. Or you can let everything cool and whizz it in a food processor or blender, though the resulting soup is considered too smooth and homogenous by some authorities.

Correct seasoning and leave aside, uncovered, until just before serving. Reheat to simmering point.

Either stir in, a spoonful at a time, 4-6 tablespoons of cream or softened butter, or swirl a little cream around the top of each bowl as you serve it. Scatter 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley or chives over the soup in a tureen, or put a little onto each bowlful. Or you could just eat it as it is. Leeks, potatoes, salt and water.

Pumpkin hurling and soup making

Pumpkin sounds, and looks, like something straight out of a fairy tale. But it’s one of the few foods I really dislike – except for pumpkin soup, with its beautiful thick smoothness and gorgeous orange colour.

       
Home-made soup must be just about the easiest, cheapest, healthiest and most enjoyable way to do what the nutritionists are always telling us – eat more veges.

One of the very best soup guides is home-made too: the invaluable Digby Law’s Soup Cookbook.  It was in its 2nd edition and 7th reprint by the time I bought it in 1995. Happily (and most unusually) you can still buy it, along with Law’s Vegetable Cookbook (which I use even more often) and his Pickle and Chutney Cookbook, because all three were republished in 2007, twenty years after their author’s passing. (The only section I never use is “Chilled Soups”. The dreadful, ubiquitous 1970s fashion - yes, I was guilty of it too - for these, mostly a very vague take on gazpacho, has mercifully ended and should never be revived.)

Good soup-making, wrote Digby, “is just as much an art as good bread or cake-making, meat cookery or vegetable cookery”. And soups have one great attraction for busy cooks: “they can usually be made well in advance”. His method for pumpkin soup (shown on the cover of the new edition, left) takes this a step further: the basic mix can be turned into lots of different soups. We don’t have much freezer space, so I make a smaller version producing about 1.5 litres. And I’ve come up with a much easier way of dealing with the pumpkin, which is also highly therapeutic.

Pumpkin Soup Base (adapted from Digby Law)
1 small pumpkin (or half a larger one)
1 large or 2 medium carrots
1 large potato
1 large or 2 medium onions
(The original recipe also had bacon rinds or bones, but I don’t think these are necessary. If you want a bacon flavour you can add it later.)

Find a patch of concrete or asphalt and hurl the pumpkin strongly to the ground, while picturing the person who annoys you the most and shouting “Take that, you so-and-so” (insert favourite term of abuse). The pumpkin will split into two or more pieces. If you get big ones, throw the pieces down again to break them up. Remove seeds and the soft fibrous flesh around them (or clean them off the concrete).

Wash the pieces and cut them into roughly even biggish chunks so they fit into a large microwaveable ceramic or glass dish. Add about ¼ cup of water, cover the dish loosely and microwave on high until the pumpkin is semi-soft, starting with 2 minutes and adding 1 minute at a time. (On my microwave I use the “fresh vegetables” setting.) When the chunks are cool enough to handle, peel them with a potato peeler and set aside.

Peel and chop the carrots, potato and onions. Put in a large saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer, covered, until they are semi-tender. Add the pumpkin and cook until all the veges are very tender. Drain, leave to cool and puree in a blender or food processor. Season well with salt and white pepper (so there are no little black specks).

This gives a thick mixture which can have various flavours added, and be thinned with milk, reduced white wine, various kinds of fresh juice, or stock (but watch out for the level of salt). My favourite flavourings (and “thinners”):
• Good curry powder, gently sweated with finely chopped onion/garlic/ginger before adding the base and thinning (milk, coconut milk)
• Tomato puree, passata or paste, with bacon if you like – chopped and fried gently in its own fat first (stock, white wine)
• Freshly grated orange zest, softened in a little butter, and a small spoonful of honey (orange juice)
• Cream or yoghurt stirred in just before serving
• Finely chopped herbs – parsley, coriander, chives, lovage

The cleverly named SoupSong website is entirely devoted to soup. It’s just morphed into a blog, but its recipe backlist has an unusual, really good Turkish pumpkin soup, with the wonderful name of Balkabagi Corbasi. It uses a leek, is flavoured with garlic, allspice, cinnamon and honey, and has a spoonful of thick plain yoghurt stirred into each plateful just before serving. But you could use the base above and just add the flavourings.