Chilled Hedgerow Soup

It’s a time of year I associate with Sylvia Plath’s poem Blackberrying. A lament about a summer gone. It’s one of my favourite poems – albeit lacerated with allusions and symbolism that would have given Freud a nervous breakdown.

BLACKBERRYING – Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

This is my favourite time of year. The air is clear. The humidity has gone. The warmth of the summer is still floating around. Apples are weighing down branches like Christmas shoppers staggering home with gift. And one of the most hostile bullies in the hedgerow suddenly turns friendly for a few weeks offering inky berries as a peace offering for the bicycle punctures, scratches and bleeding they’ve caused throughout the rest of the year.

Our first forage of the year was on Tooting Common which turned into 5 jars of beautiful Blackberry jam. I’m slapping it all over my toast and will keep a jar back for an Autumn Mess at some point soon.

Our second forage was a more industrious affair. Me, Sarah and my mother in law collected about 4kg of blackberries and a similar amount of elderberries from the winding lanes of deepest darkest Somerset. We came back home blanketed in midge bites, needled by nettles and tortured by thorns. But it was worth it for the amount of inky treasure we brought home.

We found it curious that the best elders grow near telegraph poles. We came up with various explanations about why this was the case. Was it the electromagnetic field of the wires? Was it the Creosote? Was it the extra moisture that drips down the pole? No. It’s because when the hedges are cut the tractors avoid chopping down the telegraph poles and the elder survives. So if you are looking for elder, telegraph poles are your friends.

At our wedding we had a Swedish inspired pre-dessert of chilled fruit soup served in coffee cups. Tom (AKA the Flavoursmith) made it from a range of dark summer fruits including blackberries and blackcurrants. We’ve been keen to make something similar ourselves, but just using the spoils of our hedgerow plunder.









Without really following a recipe we stripped off the elderberries using the tines of a fork, rinsed all the fruit and then added it to a massive cauldron with one litre of water and about a dozen large apples that had fallen off the tree to give it some body. We let it simmer away for a few hours on a low heat until all the berries had given up their juice.



It looked like an experimental Ribena laboratory. And smelled amazingly of autumn. Although elder berries don’t taste that strong, they did give the flavor and extra layer of complexity and an extraordinary colour of pure purple.



We then strained the soup through a large sieve to remove the large pips. And then passed it all through jelly bags which took ages! But it was worth it for the purity of the liquor and the absence of pesky pips.

We then returned the liquid to the cleaned out cauldron and added enough sugar to take the sour edge off and then cooled. It’s a labour of love. But it’s worth it.

Chill and serve in espresso cups. Allow about 100-150ml per person. And if you have any left over it is great as a cordial with fizzy water. Or better still as the base to an ice cream. We've got an enormous vat of it in the freezer which we keep dipping into for midnight snacks.

Mark Hix’s Vivid Soups

With my mind wondering down a Swedish memory lane, I remembered a couple of vivid soups I made from Mark Hix’s Oyster and Chop House cookbook during the fleeting but magical Gothenburg summer.

The book itself is a beauty to look, charming to fondle, fun to read but frustratingly dilute when it came to the subject of the Chop House part of the idea. Sure, the meat was beautifully photographed and well annotated with interesting commentary and the odd recipe, but where it could have been a seminal T-Bone, it seemed bashed out like a minute steak. If you want a masterclass in meat and generally chop-housery, opt instead for HFW’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Hawksmoor At Home or the Ginger Pig Meatbook. But then again, maybe Hix thought it had been done already.

Rather perversely, Mark Hix’s book comes into its own in the less meaty sections. His chicken livers on toast recipe is a beauty and his fennel salad dressed with orange juice and vinegar is very good too if you ease off on the rape seed oil. And his fish with peas and leaks is delicious.







But, the best two things I’ve cooked from his book are a couple of punchy soups which seem to capture his bold, mischievous and blokey personality to a soupy T.

The first was golden beetroot soup, which captured my attention as it was supposed to, because the golden coloured beetroot was intended to trick your dinner guests. This bright yellow soup looked like butternut squash, or possibly a saffron spiked courgette soup, but tasted earthily of the very essence of beetroot. Arguably even more so than if it was red. I've since sown some golden beetroot seeds and hope to recreate this soup back in London with my own vegetables.

The second was for a horseradish soup which almost blew my head off as I grated the fresh root in my Magimix. Even with a topping of walnut floaters and a dab of goats’ cheese it was explosive.

If you like your soup to be vibrant, exciting and a conversational hand grenade, this one is for you. But if you like your potage to be further towards the potato or broccoli end of the spectrum you may want to give this one a wide birth and go for the golden beetroot version. Soupifying the horseradish only seems to make it even more psychopathically strong – and using golden beets seems to make them even more beetrooty.

Chilled Golden Beetroot Soup:

Ingredients:

400g golden beetroot
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 litre of vegetable stock

Method:

Mark Hix suggests boiling the beetroot. But I much prefer to bake them in salt as they seem to emerge sweeter. Allow to cool and then peel and chop them into chunks.





Sweat the onion in the hot oil in a large saucepan. Once softened, add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Then add the chopped beetroot and remove from the heat.





Blend it until smooth. Pass it through a sieve to make it super silky.

Chill.

Either serve on its own. Or with some goats' cheese or curd floating on top. Or a swirl of cream. Or if you are feeling a bit Swedish, with some grated horseradish on top.






Horseradish Soup:

Ingredients:

50g butter
1 chopped onion
1 chopped leek
1 tablespoon of flour
1.5 litres of vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
100g grated horseradish
1-2 tablespoons of double cream

Method:

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Sweat the onion and lieek and cook without colouring for a few minutes. Stir in the flour to make a roux and add the stock gradually. Season and simmer for 30 minutes.

Next do the fun part. Grate your horseradish using the grater attachment on your Magimix. Or just do it by hand. The hit of horseradish is one of the most intense experiences I've ever had whilst cooking. So watch out!



Add the grated horseradish to the soup and simmer for 5 or 10 minutes. Take off the heat and then blend until smooth. Pass it through a sieve for extra smoothness.

Check for seasoning add the cream, heat up and serve.

Mussel Soup - Cooked in a Coffee Machine

I’ve had some surreal experiences whilst writing this blog – from having the most disturbing massage of all time in India, to eating ortolan to cooking in a bathtub. And I can now add my afternoon cooking mussel soup in a coffee pot in Lysekill to the list!

The team who had organised the Mussel Safari had arranged for me and my new Swedish food blogger friends to compete in a live cook off in front of the whole town of Lysekill and on local radio. It was far bigger deal than I was expecting involving a gospel choir and some very groovy dancing to get people in the mood before we took to the stage!







I was very fortuitously paired with Katja who has just been crowned Sweden’s top food blogger for her quirky cooking in a coffee pot! Given my penchant for lateral cooking methods we were a like kindred spirits as we set about cooking mussel and seafood soup in Katja’s very own coffee pot. Given that coffee pot cooking normally involves 3 or 4 hour cooking times, we had our work cut out.





Ingredients

6 lovely Lysekil mussels
One percolator style coffee maker
One Katja
Tomato puree
2 langoustines
200g of monkfish
6 mussels
100ml of cream
1 finely chopped onion
1 clove of finely minced garlic
300ml of water
3 glasses of white wine
Sliced peppers
Parsley
Dill
Salt and pepper

Method

Given the time constraints we had to move very quickly so compromised on frying off the onions properly. If we had more time we would have gently sautéed them in the glass pot on the hot plate. But we concentrated instead on getting the water hot and using that as our cooking method instead.



Place 6 mussels and some dill in the filter compartment and boil the water in the tank so it percolates through the mussels. In the glass pot add the finely chopped onion, garlic and whole langoustines. The water should pass though the dill and mussels in about 4 or 5 minutes and then mingle together into a fishy fug.



Squirt some tomato puree into the pot and then add the lumps of monkfish. Add one glass of wine to yourself and one to the pot and then stand back and watch your coffee pot do the work whilst everyone else is busy chopping, frying, reducing and generally cooking properly.

After 20 minutes strain the contents into another vessel and then return to the glass pot. Discard the onion and garlic pieces. And remove the langoustines and mussel meat from their respective shells. Add them to the glass pot along with a slug of cream, the cooked monkfish pieces and some seasoning and return to the hot plate to heat through.


Serve in a polystyrene cup to rain soaked, highly bemused onlookers and reflect on what a bizarre, but brilliant experience the whole thing has been.





The soup itself was surprisingly good. What it lacked in depth of flavour it more than made up for in terms of personality and flair. The members of the audience and judges certainly enjoyed it.



If you’ve been even remotely as inspired as I have been by this surreal episode then you must check out Katja’s awesome cooking blog. And also have a look at her balloon blog and her boyfriend’s monster drawings. They’re both truly inspirational and I’m looking forward to our next lateral cooking adventure. Thanks you Katja and Dan for a few of the photos as well.

Celery and Cauliflower Soup with Honey Glazed Walnut Croutons

The Flavour Thesaurus is fast becoming my favourite cookery book. When I looked in my fridge and saw half a head of celery and a cauliflower I was about as inspired as a fax machine. Feeling hungry and glum I flicked through Niki Segnit’s book and my mind itched with possibilities. Reading the book was like smoking a joint. It helped to connect disparate ideas. The last entry in the cauliflower section suggested an affinity with walnuts. Inspired by this I thought of Waldorf Salads and dived into the section that explains the affinity between walnuts and celery and got very excited when I saw that walnuts have a “magical” relationship with chicken stock.

So it all became very simple. I had no option. I had to make cauliflower and celery soup with a chicken stock base and walnut croutons.

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower
1 head of celery chopped
1 finely chopped onion
1 clove of garlic
2 litres of chicken stock
4 small potatoes
Olive oil
Butter
Cream
Salt
Pepper
Skinned and chopped walnuts
Honey

Method:

Saute the onion until beginning to soften in olive oil and butter. Add the celery and garlic and continue cooking for a few minutes. Then add the cauliflower and potatoes and fill the pan with chicken stock.

Simmer for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Liquidise and season with salt and pepper and return to the pan to reduce to your desired consistency.

Whilst reducing, heat a frying pan and add the walnuts. Then when they are getting toasty spoon over some runny honey. The nuts should become sticky and crunchy.

Serve the soup with a dash of cream and a topping of walnut croutons. What it lacks in vivid colours it makes up for super savoury flavours. Without the sweet and crispy walnuts this would have been a shadow - they added texture, sweetness and a golden thread to marry the celery and cauliflower together.

Wild Garlic and Nettle Soup

At this time of year the gnarled and dappled roads of Somerset become a multisensory treat. The shadows become tinged with iridescent blue and speckled with bursts of pristine white. And the air becomes fragrant with the smell of sweet wild garlic. In Cowie’s parents’ garden the apple blossom is readying itself like confetti at a wedding and the leaves all around are fluttering into life. I don’t think there is a time of the year more imbued with positivity.

After harrowing a field and helping with a bonfire I just had to cook “spring”. This is a slightly odd thing to say, but like the psychopath in Perfume, I was overtaken with an urge to capture the essence of spring in Somerset. So I walked into the hedgerow wearing some gloves (I wasn’t naked by the way), carrying a plastic bag and started harvesting nettle tips and wild garlic like a hyperactive tea picker. A few stings later and my carrier bag was overflowing with greenery and dainty, milk white flours.





I didn’t bother with a recipe and just let the bundle of greenery guide me and was rewarded with a vivacious green soup that cost virtually nothing to make but tasted luxuriously of spring itself. Use your judgement with the quantities.

Ingredients:

1 carrier bag full of nettles
Half a carrier bag of wild garlic leaves and flowers
1 diced potato
Knob of butter or olive oil
1 sliced onion
Chicken stock
Crème fraiche
Parmesan
Salt and pepper

Method:

Wash the nettles and wild garlic thoroughly. You’ll find all sorts of creatures in your soup otherwise! Then sweat your onion and potato in a large cast iron saucepan until the onion is beginning to turn golden and the potato is softening. Then add in your chopped wild garlic leaves. The kitchen will be overwhelmed with the sweet aroma of garlic at this point. Then add your nettles and watch them wilt like grown up spinach. After a minute or two add your stock and simmer for 10 minutes until the leaves have turned soft and the liquid is looking like soylent green.

Once you are happy that the vegetation is cooked remove from the heat and blend to a smooth, green consistency. Allow to cool for a bit then pass it through a grinder in order to take away any graininess. If you haven’t got one don’t worry, this step is not strictly necessary, but does improve the texture.

When you are ready to serve simply reheat, season aggressively with both salt and pepper. Serve with a dollop of crème fraiche, a dusting of Parmesan cheese and most importantly a scattering of wild garlic flowers which add a gentle garlic burst to this soulful bowlful of spring.



It’s one of my favourite soups and is well worth every single sting! Some warm bread, slathered in cold, salty butter would top this off a treat. As would a crouton anointed with early season goats cheese. Robert McIntosh (Thirst for Wine and Wine Conversation) suggests washing this down with "something like a Vinho Verde or a spritely Chenin Blanc."

Further reading:

Mark Hix on Nettle and Wild Garlic Soup in The Independent
Hugh F-W on Nettle and Wild Garlic Soup in The Guardian
Nigel Slater's Nettle and Wild Garlic recipes in The Guardian
Just Cook It on Nettles

Irish Lobster Bisque

Dingle is a seafood lover’s very soggy dream. Lobsters abound. Mackerel is everywhere. And Pollack is plentiful. We picked up a few of lobsters as a very indulgent treat in Dingle and somehow managed to drive them home without the dogs eating them in the boot!



We cooked them simply by boiling them with some carrots, celery and seasoning before serving them with homemade mayonnaise. But the indulgence didn’t end there.





I then spent the next three days making lobster bisque with the carcasses and stock. You may think this is excessive. And it probably is. But it produced 2009’s tastiest mug of food.

After we had finished our lobsters I put them all in a roasting tray and blasted them in a hot oven for 20 minutes having splashed them with cognac. The smell that exploded out of the oven when they emerged transported me to Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant.

I reduced the lobster stock and then added the carcasses along with several bay leaves, some chopped onions, a splash of Worcesershire sauce, a dash of Tobasco, carrots and celery. I wasn’t following a recipe, so it was all done by feel. This bubbled away for several hours. And the longer it cooked the darker the liquid became. I let it cool over night and rest for a day in the fridge before straining it to create a fine stock and bringing back to a simmer. By the time it had burbled away for a further 6 hours it had turned brick red and was smelling very sophisticated. Playing scrabble with a soundscape of bubbling bisque and the waft of lobster is one of my favourite food memories of the year. But I’m still furious that “zion” on a triple word score got blocked.

With half an hour to go before dinner, I added two tubes of tomato paste, a pint of double cream and a glass of Martini. After a further 20 minutes of simmering it looked like proper bisque. I checked the seasoning and then served in mugs to 10 people with a swirl of double cream, some finely chopped parsley and a drizzle of lemon juice.



The photos don’t really do it justice. I don’t think anything could. There was something very fin de siècle about the way we guzzled it from a range of erratic, rustic mugs, like you would do with a tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato. Who needs rouille, croutons and gruyere when the base bisque is so good?

Somerset Nettle Soup

I remember my Mum once told me that nettles with flowers on them don't sting. So when I had a friend around I remember showing off and jumping into a vast clump of flowering nettles in my shorts and t-shirt to prove to them that nettles in bloom don't sting.

That was a lesson well learnt at an early age. What Mum had failed to mention was that she meant that nettles with white flowers don't sting. The ones with evil purple flowers prime time stingers!

So with trepidation, some very fetching gloves and 2 whippets Cowie and I went out nettle hunting... 4 cowpats later we had a Waitrose bag full to the brim with the tips of our nettles, ready to be sweated down and enjoyed.

We rinsed them, and removed any grass and grit. Meanwhile we sweated down and onion, a potato in some oil and butter and then added the nettles which wilted rather like spinach, albeit more slowly. When they were soft and gooey we added some chicken stock and left it all to simmer away.



David put the mixture in the blender and then passed it through a strange mangle like contraption that is designed for taking the pips out of jam and creating baby food which left us with very smooth nettle soup.



A dash of cream and some agressive seasoning yielded a very fine late spring soup.



Now I know why the Romans brought nettles with them from Italy!

Eat, Chicken Pot Soup

Feeling a bit bored of tinned soups now... so I went for Eat's "Big Bold" option of the day... a chicken pot soup.

It was a slurry of chicken stock and root vegetables with a little bit of soggy pastry on top. Definitely not worth the £3 they charged me for it. It's all about tins...

Heinz Farmers' Market Lamb and Vegetable Soup

Tall thin can. Supposed to make you think it's classy and therefore pay a bit more for it. Do the ingredients come from farmers' markets? I doubt it. But I bought the lamb version anyway because it was the most intersting tinned soup on the shelf.

In fairness it was very tasty. Full of meat. Good depth of flavour. And was helped by giving it a healthy amount of seasoning. What I will say is that it is very explosive in the microwave. I spent several minutes wiping it clean which gave the soup a chance to cool down to a temperature that only just burnt my mouth.

Would I buy it again? Only infrequently.

Gilly's thoughts on M&S Tinned Soup

"the chorizo and tomato soup from M&S (tinned) needs alot of attention...far too bland ...shed loads of salt/pepper and some tabasco help...but my advice is don't buy it
so dissapointing as it sounds delicious". Robert Gillon.

Sounds like a case of over promising and under-delivering. Which has been the opposite experience for me over the past few weeks of soup eating.

Baxter's French Onion Soup

Having lived off soup at work 2 weeks now I am becoming a bit of a Soupaphile. And I love the tinned stuff. It's cheaper. Doesn't need a fridge and tastes great. Cartons of soup seem a bit of a waste of time.

My Baxter's French Onion soup was good. But not in the same league as its Waitrose cousin which was sweeter, smoother and less harsh. The Baxter's version was fine, but had a slightly artificial taste.



Would I have it again? Yes. But I'd always grab the Waitrose version if I could.

Baxter's Flame Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

The penultimate tin of soup in my collection. I will have to go and buy a fresh batch of tins! Or better still find time to make my own.

This Baxter's soup is thick, bright orange and reasurringly full of chunks of rich red pepper. It's got good depth with a kick of spice. But then again that may have come from the pepper and Tabasco I dumped into it! Great with a torn off lump of granary baguette.

Not my absolute favourite. Whilst I could just about taste the flame roasted peppers, it would have been great for them to dominate the soup. I love the transformation of peppers from crunchy and a bit dull, to smoky, sweet and soft when you pop them in the flames of the stove for a bit. Great smell. Even better taste.

Waitrose French Onion Soup

The Covent Garden soup was good. Particularly the Winter Vegetable. But the French Onion soup from Waitrose in a very plain tin was fantastic. I added a few blobs of brie and dipped a few morsels of crunch French bread in for good measure.

It was sweet, deep, well textured and excellent value. Skip on past the chilled soup cabinet and tuck into the tinned stuff. It's great.

Baxter's Lobster Bisque

Today's soup de jour was Baxter's Lobster Bisque. Opening the tin certainly got everyone talking as the deep fishy smell spread around the office.

It was deep red, thick and laden with flavour with mini little chunks of lobster meat sitting at the bottom of the bowl. With a good grind of pepper it really came to life.

For about a quid it's not bad at all really! What would make it even better would be a little dab or rouille... mmm. Tomorrow brings French onion soup.

Covent Garden Soups

January is a bleak month at the best of times. It's even worse when you've shelled out for a skiing holiday as well. So it's a time to watch the pennies and shed some Christmas blubber. At the moment I'm feeling a bit like Rick Waller in Ricky Gervais' pork scratching joke!

So it's a time to cut back and try to get my bank balance and waist back into shape.

I've bought my week's worth of soup already and am making life more interesting by not eating sandwiches and just concentrating on soup. I'm going to make sure I note which ones are best in order to force myself into not buying extra food during the day. It's all too easy to spend a fiver a day on sandwiches and then even more money on supper. But not this month!

Soup 1



Covent Garden Toulouse Sausage and Puy Lentils

Good thick soup. Ed's immediate comment was that it looked like a tin of Heinz blognese sauce. He got it spot on. It's not an attractive soup to look at. Dull brown with a hint of grey!

It's got a deep, meaty flavour and is thickened well by the lentils. However, if you blindfolded me and fed it to me there is no way on earth that I would have guessed what it was. That said it was enjoyable. It kept my hunger away, along with a bread roll, till about 8pm whereupon I felt like I was about to die from hunger pangs!

Soup 2



Covent Garden Winter Vegetable

Now this is a proper soup. No messing around with dodgy Gallic sausage soups. This is a proper English puppy. Full of rich golden colour and thick with goodness, this soup is a winner. It tasted even better when accompanied by chewy chunks of le pain quotidien baguette.

Our only complaints were:

1. It took forever for our microwave to cook it

2. Are peas winter vegetables?

Nonetheless, great soup. Has kept hunger at bay until supper time too.