An Elizabeth David book in the reserve collection? Yes, really! This was a Christmas present a few years ago, and I confess I’d forgotten I had it, so I pounced on it with a cry of delight. It was actually published posthumously; in her preface her editor Jill Norman says they’d discussed the concept off and on for years, but it never came to anything, so after Elizabeth’s death she was surprised to find a box with a pile of notes and clippings for the book, and even an introduction. So she pulled the material together and published it.

Many of the recipes are from ED’s other books, but it’s nice to have all these seasonal recipes in one place. Not that ED was much of a fan of the traditional British Christmas. She got bombarded with calls from friends and family asking how long to to cook the turkey or the pudding, or saying they’d lost the recipe for Cumberland sauce so could she give it them again — to the point where she printed a pamphlet of the most popular recipes and handed it out to them. Classic ED:

If I had my way — and I shan’t — my Christmas Day eating and drinking would consist of an omelette and cold ham and a nice bottle of wine at lunchtime, and a smoked salmon sandwich with a glass of champagne on a tray in bed in the evening.

What frenetic cook preparing for a family Christmas can’t empathise with that in the days leading up to “the Great Too Long”? It certainly makes a refreshing change from other Christmas cookbooks.

That being said, although there are token recipes for traditional Christmas food like mincemeat and Christmas pudding, much of the focus of this book is on simple but impressive small dishes that can be prepared ahead, pâtés and terrines that can be kept in the fridge for nibbling, and better-than-average ways of using leftovers (including one of my all-time favourite leftover dishes, émincé de volaille au fromage). And like all of ED’s books it is designed to be read for pleasure, not just to cook from. I happily spent an afternoon lounging on the sofa by the fire reading it while my untended bread dough bubbled over the edge of the pan.

Happily, the organic veg box provided all I needed for a simple soup of tomato, leek and celery. She writes “This is one of the most subtly flavoured of all these vegetable soups … a good soup with which to start the Christmas dinner.” It was indeed. Celery is something I don’t like as a vegetable, but as a herb it adds a nice peppery edge to soups and stews. My tail-end-of-season tomatoes weren’t the best, but they did the job — if I make it again at Christmas I’ll use tinned ones in preference to tasteless fresh ones (one day I’m going to start a campaign to ban the sale of fresh tomatoes between October and May).

Unfortunately, the box also contained parsnips, for the third week in a row. So I decided to give her cream of parsnips and ginger with eggs a go. I got as far as cooking and mouli-ing the parsnips and adding the ginger, and the result tasted so unutterably foul that I almost threw it straight in the bin. We just had soup and cheese and biscuits that evening. I don’t think I can blame Elizabeth David for this though — I just don’t like parsnips, and somehow mashing them makes them taste more parsnippy than just roasting would.

This book will definitely stay in my collection. And it’s a good Christmas gift for foodies as well, a reminder of how truly good food writing is impervious to fashion. So much so that the modish soft-focus photos that the publishers obviously felt had to be in any modern cookbook are entirely superfluous. Elizabeth David’s words are enough

Potato, tomato and celery soup

4-5 sticks of celery (the outside ones if you have a whole head to use)
2 large leeks, trimmed
2 large potatoes, peeled
250 g ripe tomatoes, or a tin of tomatoes, drained
60 g butter
1 litre water (not stock!)
salt
1 tsp sugar
2 egg yolks
parsley or lemon thyme

Clean and cut the vegetables into dice, and slice the tomatoes if using fresh ones. Melt the butter in a large pan, add the celery and leeks, and cook very gently for about 10 minutes, until the leek is getting soft. Do not let them brown, even if the phone rings while you are doing it. Add the potatoes and tomatoes, cover the pan, and cook very gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add the water, salt, and sugar. Don’t be tempted to use stock, because the whole point of this soup is the pure taste of the vegetables. Cook for about half an hour, cool slightly and put through a mouli. You can liquidise it if you want, but in my opinion soup containing tomato skins and/or celery benefits greatly from a mouli, which strains out the fibres, unlike a blender or food processor.

You can correct the seasoning and eat this just as it is, and it will be fine. But Elizabeth David suggests beating together the egg yolks and some of the hot soup in a bowl. Reheat the rest of the soup, stir in the egg mixture, and heat gently without boiling, until it has a rich, velvety texture. Garnish with chopped herbs to serve.

Following my last post about neglected cookbooks, I’m feeling a bit daunted by my reserve collection — I’ve just counted them, and there are 70 of them! I wouldn’t say Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book is “neglected” exactly — it sits on the living room shelves, not in the reserve collection — but it tends to only get pulled out when I need ideas for the contents of the weekly organic veggie box. Also I think it has been overshadowed by the plethora of TV chef books like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Every Day. While I’m sure they are excellent, Jane Grigson has stood the test of time and her books are still true classics. As I’m fond of repeating, she is a calm and reassuring kitchen companion whose recipes have the air of trusted family favourites. Most of them are not fancy, they rarely use exotic, hard-to-find, expensive ingredients, and they are generally easy to do. Jane isn’t really the place to go for exotic; most of her recipes are European, with particular emphasis on French and British cooking, along with a few Middle Eastern recipes.

The reason I got the book out today is because there were parsnips in my veggie box. I’m not a great fan of parsnips, and happily they are rarely seen in France. They are considered to be pig food, so you don’t see them in shops, and when you do they are referred to as légumes oubliés, with the implication that they are best forgotten. But I suddenly remembered Jane Grigson’s curried parsnip soup, which was all the rage in the 1970s. I haven’t cooked it for literally decades, but it is well worth reviving. Even parsnip-haters like me like it.

This book is ideal if you have a vegetable box delivered, or you grow your own, because it’s organised by vegetable, in alphabetical order from artichokes to yams. Simply flip it open to the one you’re having difficulty using up. Each chapter starts with a pretty line drawing of the vegetable in question (no fancy photos, this was the 1970s!) and a short discussion of its provenance, history and use. There are so many interesting snippets of information here, although parsnips were evidently a challenge to make interesting, since we learn here that Boris Pasternak’s name means “parsnip”.

Then there’s a “How to choose and prepare” section that gives general advice. And finally a selection of recipes. The parsnip chapter is one of the more limited chapters — buttered parsnips, creamed parsnips, the famous soup, a couple of gratins, and a soufflé — but for more versatile vegetables you are spoilt for choice. She often gives a few variations or other ideas — for example at the end of the leek chapter she suggests preparing small ones in the same way as cauliflower à la grecque, which I duly did, and very nice they were too. With all these resources, I rarely fail to find something that at least gives me an idea for a dish, even if I don’t follow her recipe exactly. It’s not a vegetarian book, but meat plays a very minor role here.

At the end, there’s an appendix, which I’d actually never looked at until today. It tells you how to prepare various classic French vegetable mixtures such as mirepoix and julienne, and also includes a whole raft of classic sauces, from the common (bechamel, mayonnaise) to the more unusual (skordalia, Balkan walnut and garlic sauce). Then there are a few recipes for stuffing, a pancake batter recipe, and, oddly, a recipe for pitta bread on the grounds that they can be stuffed with vegetables. So it really is a compendium of vegetable cookery, for anyone from a beginner to an expert, and a great companion for any frugal cook.

Her Fruit Book is arranged along the same lines and is equally wonderful, if not more so, since it includes the recipe for Best British Pudding Ever, Springfield pear cake. It’s no coincidence that reviews of Jane’s books on Amazon always include at least a couple saying “I bought this because my old copy fell apart from constant use”.

And finally, my version of that 70s dinner party classic, curried parsnip soup. I reckon you could use other sweet root vegetables such as celeriac or turnips for this. But for me it’s primarily a way of making parsnips much more palatable.

either 1/2-1 tbs curry powder, or the following spices:
1 tbs whole coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp turmeric
1 dried chilli, or 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 large or 2 smaller parsnips, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 oz butter
1 tbs flour
1 litre hot stock of your choice (beef, chicken, or of course vegetable if you are vegetarian)
150 ml yoghurt, crème fraîche, or sour cream
chives, to garnish (optional)

If you’re using the spice mixture, pound all 5 spices together in a mortar, or whiz them in a coffee grinder. You’ll end up with more than you need; keep the rest in a jar for another dish.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the onions, garlic, and parsnips. Cover and cook very gently for 10 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time. Don’t let them brown. Then add the flour and, to start with, about half a tablespoon of your spice mixture or curry powder. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to stop it sticking. Add about half of the stock, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan until the liquid thickens slightly. Then add the rest of the stock, taste and add some more spices if it’s not spicy enough for you. Simmer gently till the parsnip is really soft — this will take about 20 minutes. Liquidise, taste, and adjust flavour and consistency with a little water if necessary, bearing in mind that the cream or yoghurt will soften the flavour. Reheat without boiling, adding cream or yoghurt to taste, and serve with fried croutons and a scattering of chives.

It was Eliza who inspired me to try the vintage feast idea in the first place, so I don’t know why I’ve waited so long. The official “challenge” is over, but I like these old cookbooks so much that I have decided to continue an occasional series.

The book I have is an old Penguin, The Best of Eliza Acton, published in 1968, edited by Elizabeth Ray and with a foreword by … who else? Elizabeth David. You can’t read much Elizabeth David without discovering that she and Eliza are kindred spirits. Jane Grigson drew on Acton heavily for her English Food, and both she and David clearly thought more highly of Eliza than of the better-known Mrs Beeton.

Modern Cookery for Private Families was published in 1845, when Eliza was 46, and stayed in print for over 50 years. This 350-page paperback holds only a fraction of the hundreds of brief, precise recipes the original book must have contained. Her crisp prose, sharp asides, and succinct instructions that assume the reader is already a competent cook cannot fail to recall Elizabeth David, so it’s hardly surprising the latter admired her so much : “Over and over again,” she writes, “I have marvelled at the illuminating and decisive qualities of Miss Acton’s recipes.” Discussing the fact that Acton was eclipsed by later inferior writers, David suggests that it was because she was “a child of the eighteenth century …. living in the manner and writing of a style of English domestic life already doomed.” And she concludes, “Temporary eclipse has often been the fate of great innovators. In a way it is posterity’s compliment to genius.” And similarly, when the Jamies and Nigellas of this world have been and gone, Elizabeth David will still be with us.

So after all that, what about the food? I was spoilt for choice here. All sorts of things tempted me: fried potato ribbons, which sound very much like rather fantastical potato crisps, cut in long spirals; jumbles; cheesecake with no cheese in it; the famous cabinet pudding. In the end I went for a very simple menu.

To start: carrot soup. Eliza has two basic recipes for this, but follows them with a recipe for a variation: “Buchanan carrot soup (Excellent)”. With that recommendation, how could I not try it? It was delicious, deep orange with a zing from the curry powder, making it much more successful than Ruth Lowinsky’s bland 20th-century version. My only criticism was that I don’t particularly like the texture of cooked rice in my soup; when I reheated the leftovers for lunch, I liquidised it. Next up: Chicken Burdwan, which with a few adjustments could well become a regular standby for using up leftover roast chicken, and is an “Indian” dish that would certainly appeal to French people. It’s a feast of 18th-century flavours.

For dessert, I found the potato pudding irresistible. Years ago we were served a dessert of tiny dishes of impossibly smooth potato puree flavoured with vanilla at my then-favourite restaurant, Les Feuillants in Céret (sadly now gone). It was fantastic, and potatoes are my favourite vegetable, so I was certainly prepared to try another potato dessert. Of course it was nothing like that creamy dish at les Feuillants, but it did seem strangely familiar. After a couple of spoonfuls I realised it was very like the bottom part of a Queen of Puddings. So next time I want to make Q of P and don’t have any stale bread, I might use potatoes instead.

All of these were dishes I’d happily make again, so this is the best vintage feast so far. My adapted recipes for all three follow.

Buchanan carrot soup
600 g carrots
30 g butter
1 litre chicken or beef stock
1 heaped tsp curry powder (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
60 g cooked rice

Scrape the carrots and cut into thick slices. Melt the butter in a large pan and add the carrots; then cover and cook really slowly for an hour, shaking the pan from time to time. The carrots should not brown or stick. In true 19th-century fashion I did this on top of the woodburner.

Add the stock and simmer for another half hour. Liquidise till smooth. Then add the curry powder and cooked rice, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Liquidise again if, like me, you don’t like the texture of the rice. Taste, adjust seasoning, and serve.

Chicken Burdwan
Lefotver roast chicken (I used about half a small chicken)
1 small onion or a large shallot, finely chopped
25 g butter
1 tsp flour
pinch cayenne (I used pimentón picante as that’s what I have these days)
1 tbsp anchovy essence, or a couple of tinned anchovies, very finely chopped
1 wineglass of Madeira (I used some sweet Pedro Ximenez sherry, another magic Spanish ingredient)
1 tsp chilli sherry (Eliza says a tablespoon, but my Scotch Bonnet chilli sherry is so strong I didn’t dare)
black pepper
Juice of 1 lime or 1/2 lemon (optional)

Cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces, removing skin. Melt the butter and gently soften the onion or shallot. Then add the flour and stir for a minute to blend before adding the anchovies and a wineglass of water. Bring to the boil, stirring, then simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in the Madeira/PX and chilli sherry, then add the chicken and heat gently just long enough to warm it through. Taste it and add black pepper and/or lemon juice to taste. Serve with rice pilaff and chutney.

Potato pudding

This is served hot with whatever jam or preserve you have; I used some home-made apricot jam. Eliza says you can serve it on its own cold as a cake, but I’m not sure I’d like that; it’s a bit stodgy and would be rather dull without the jam, which complements it really well.

500 g floury potatoes
75 g butter
120 g sugar
5 small eggs
pinch salt
grated zest of 1 lemon
good-quality not-too-sweet jam, e.g. redcurrant, apricot, greengage

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Boil the potatoes till soft and drain them very well. They need to be mashed very thoroughly but lightly while hot; I put them through the potato ricer, which is perfect for this. Beat in all the other ingredients except the jam. Pour into a well-buttered soufflé dish or cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, till the cake is set in the centre. Turn out of the tin or dish, cut into wedges, and serve with the jam. Or use it as the basis of a Queen of Puddings (in which case you’d use only the yolks of the eggs, saving the whites for the meringue, and reduce the other quantities by about half).

The ingredients list looks long and daunting. But almost all of them are storecupboard ingredients or basics you are likely to have on hand anyway. And it’s an excellent idea to make it in advance. I cooked it completely several hours beforehand, then left it to sit and mature before liquidising part of it and reheating. The rouille, a spicy form of mayonnaise, takes minutes if you have a stick blender.

This recipe is from Nadine Abensur’s excellent Cranks Bible. If you remember the ghastly wholemeal stodge Crank’s used to serve in the 1970s, it’s nothing like that. As this recipe demonstrates, the recipes are imaginative and heavily influenced by Abensur’s French and North African background. If you like Ottolenghi’s Plenty, you’ll like this, and I highly recommend it if you are vegetarian, cook for vegetarians, or just fancy meatless meals every now and then. You’ll probably have to search for a second-hand copy, but it’s worth seeking out.

Dried orange peel from half an orange (see below)
3 tbs olive oil
1 small leek or a small onion, sliced
1 small carrot, diced
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 small red pepper, diced
1/2 tbsp fennel seeds
a few threads of saffron
1 tsp tomato puree, or a couple of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp soft brown sugar
1 medium celeriac, peeled and chopped into pieces about 1 cm square
1 litre vegetable stock (or chicken, if you are not vegetarian)
125 ml white wine or dry vermouth
3tbs chopped parsley

To serve: thin slices of baguette, lightly toasted
2 oz gruyere cheese, finely grated

Rouille:
2-3 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp tomato puree
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp paprika or pimentón dulce
1 small roasted pepper (from a jar), chopped
1/2 tbs lemon juice
pinch cayenne pepper or pimentón picante
1 egg yolk
pinch sea salt
225 ml olive oil (not too strong-tasting)

To dry orange peel, peel strips of it as thinly as possible (I use a vegetable peeler) )and leave it in a low oven for about 40 minutes; store in an airtight tin.

Heat half the olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan over a moderate heat, and gently cook the leeks for a few minutes. Then add the garlic, carrot, and red pepper and continue to cook gently for 10 minutes or so till the vegetables soften. Add the spices, orange peel, brown sugar, tomato puree, and celeriac and saute for 5 minutes, turning the celeriac to coat it nicely in the aromatics.

Add the hot stock and another spoonful of olive oil, season with black pepper, and cook at a lively simmer for about half an hour. Add the wine and the chopped parsley and cook for another 10 minutes. The celeriac should be nice and soft by now — if it isn’t, cook it some more. At this point you can set it aside.

Make the rouille: this is absurdly easy if you have a stick blender. Just put all the ingredients except the oil in the beaker and whiz to blend. Then pour in the oil bit by bit, whizzing constantly and pulling the blender up through the mixture to pull the oil in gradually. It will thicken as it emulsifies. Taste and adjust the seasoning (adding more salt or lemon juice, for example, or cayenne if you think it isn’t sharp enough. It should have a good kick without being chilli-hot, remember we are in France). Note: this is the minimum quantity you can make, but leftovers will keep for a week covered in the fridge.

When you want to serve, remove about a quarter to a third of the soup (depending on how chunky you want it to be) and liquidise it thoroughly before returning it to the pan. The original recipe says to liquidise almost all of it, but I decided I wanted it to look more like bouillabaisse than plain fish soup, with actual chunks in it, and flecks of red pepper. Reheat, check seasoning and correct as necessary. Toast the slices of baguette.

Serve in wide bowls with toast, a pot of rouille, and the grated cheese; each person tops the toasts with rouille and cheese, floating them in the soup.

Our veggie box had two huge chunks of bright orange pumpkin in it this week. I don’t particularly like pumpkin, but one thing I do know about squash is that the first thing you should do with it is cut it into chunks and roast it to get rid of most of the water. So into a 200C oven it went, and I used FoodBlogSearch to search for “roasted squash”. Lots of ideas, but this recipe fitted perfectly with the ingredients I had to hand. “Almost vegetarian” is a good description of me too.

Wow! It tasted wonderful — on the basis of this recipe alone I might buy the book it came from, The Flexitarian Table: Inspired, Flexible Meals for Vegetarians, Meat Lovers, and Everyone in Between by Peter Berley, despite the stupid title. The flavour was warm, sweet and spicy, perfect for a chilly autumn evening, it was a lovely deep brick-red, and the blob of spiced cream added a nice contrast. It is one of the best soups I have ever made.

Assuming you have roasted squash on hand it’s easy to make, but even if you don’t, you can put the squash in the oven while you get on with other preparation; I cooked the onions and made an apple crumble for pudding while it was roasting.

I adjusted the recipe slightly; I’m not keen on sage or cloves, so I left them out and used a bay leaf and 4-épices instead. I had some excellent chicken stock from the weekend roast chicken, so I used that, but of course vegetable stock can be used instead.

about 1 kg winter squash
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
2 medium onions, chopped
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
a pinch of 4-épices or allspice
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 litre stock
200 ml dry cider

Bouquet garni made of a few celery leaves, bay leaf, cinnamon stick — just tie them together with string if you don’t have any muslin

Spiced crème fraîche
100 ml crème fraîche or sour cream
freshly grated nutmeg
black pepper
salt
ground cinnamon, for sprinkling
chopped parsley, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 200C. Cut the squash into large chunks, remove the peel (I find this easier to do after I’ve chopped the squash into pieces), then cut the chunks again if necessary to end up with pieces of about 5 cm. Put them on a large, rimmed baking sheet, pour over half the olive oil, sprinkle with the salt, then turn with your hands to coat in the oil, ending up with a single layer of pieces. Roast for 25-30 minutes, turning occasionally, till soft and beginning to brown at the edges. Vast quantities of steam came off while I was doing this, showing just how much water there was in it.

While the squash is roasting, melt the rest of the oil in a large, heavy casserole (I used an enamelled cast-iron one) over medium heat. Add the onions and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. Stir in the ginger and garlic, cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook gently for 15 minutes, stirring once or twice and lowering the heat if necessary to keep the vegetables from browning, until the onions are soft.

Add the stock and cider, and use a slotted spoon to add the roasted squash to the soup. Add the bouquet garni and the 4-épices and raise the heat to bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the crème fraîche with 5 or 6 gratings of nutmeg, several grinds of black pepper, and a pinch of salt.

Discard the bouquet garni. Liquidise or mouli the soup. At this point I made sure I put all the large chunks of squash in the blender, but left some of the onion and liquid unliquidised to give the soup a bit of texture. I think next time I might reserve some of the cooked squash and cut it into small dice to add to the liquidised soup. Season with salt and pepper. Reheat if necessary.

Garnish each bowl of soup with a spoonful of spiced crème fraîche, a dash of cinnamon, and a sprinkling of parsley.

I had to take a break from Taste & Create over the summer, because I knew I just wouldn’t have time for it. Now I’m back, paired with Carol of No Reason Needed. Carol likes lemons, so is obviously a kindred spirit. But in the end, I decided to skip over the many lemon-based recipes and go for a simple, homely soup, in order to use some of the veg from our organic box. As the weather is getting a bit cooler, it made a nice supper with some good bread, followed by plum crumble and custard.

I made a few slight tweaks to Carol’s recipe. It makes a lot of soup — enough for at least 6-8 servings — so there’s plenty left to freeze for later in the winter. Thickening soup with rice is a first for me — it worked well, but actually I like the taste and texture of potato in soup so much that I think I’d go back to potato next time. I only used half the specified amount of rice, because I’d nearly run out of rice, but the soup was still quite thick. And I added some spices.

2 tbsp olive oil or butter
2 medium leeks, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
4 medium carrots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp mixed black/white mustard seed
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp each salt, pepper and thyme
100 ml dry white wine
1.5 litres vegetable or chicken stock
50 ml long grain rice
1 cup each broccoli and cauliflower florets (I used 1/4 of a cauliflower and the same quantity of broccoli)
1 bay leaf
fresh chopped parsley to garnish

Crush the mustard and coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar. In a large saucepan, heat oil or butter over medium high heat; sweat leeks, celery, carrots, garlic, mustard, salt, pepper and thyme until vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Stir in white wine, scraping any bits from bottom of pan. Cook until wine is reduced by half. Add the rest of the vegetables, the rice, the stock, and the bay leaf. Simmer until rice and vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Puree the soup in batches, return to pan to reheat, taste and adjust seasoning. I felt it needed the extra warmth of the coriander (not called for in the original recipe) to make it more interesting.

Serve in warmed soup bowls, garnished with chopped parsley..

For the crumble, I used reines claudes (greengages) simply stoned and quartered and sprinkled with a couple of tablespoons of demerara sugar. Then I added a finely diced knob of preserved ginger and drizzled over about a tablespoon of the syrup from the ginger jar. I used a classic crumble mix, but it would be nice with this almond crumble mix too. Served with home-made custard, but stem ginger or vanilla ice cream would be good too.

Taste & Create beckons once more! This time I am paired with Sweatha of TastyCurryLeaf. I hastened directly to her blog hoping to find something I could cook for dinner that evening and was immediately rewarded.

Her blog is very interesting; it’s clear that her background is Indian (so lots of yummy-looking Indian recipes) but she lives in the US so the Indian food is interspersed with an eclectic mix of American, Italian, and other cuisines — she seems very adventurous in her cooking. In addition, although she doesn’t specifically mention it, she’s clearly vegetarian, so that made it attractive too. Even on a quick glance I could see there were plenty of good candidates. But for that evening I kept it simple: roasted red bell pepper soup, using easily available ingredients. I love the flavour of roasted red peppers so it looked worth a try.

I don’t make soup as often as I should, given how good home-made soup is, and this was a reminder of how quickly you can whip up something good. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly; Sweatha says to thicken it with cornstarch, but I felt this was unnecessary and would affect the fresh flavour, so I left it out. I also didn’t use coriander leaves, because a) I don’t like them, they taste of soap to me and b) they are nearly impossible to find here anyway. I used ground coriander seeds instead. For added spice I used my infamous Scotch Bonnet-infused chilli sherry. This lives in the larder, well away from the drinks cabinet and with a large warning notice affixed to it. A teaspoon is enough to add pizazz to anything. And finally I used crème fraîche instead of ordinary cream, because it tastes nice!

This is not the only recipe I’ll try from her blog, since this T&C runs for two months — I might even try some of her simple Indian dishes. I love good Indian food, and when I was a student in London I often cooked Indian meals — it was easy to get the ingredients there, and it lends itself to cheap but excellent vegetarian feasts. Now I never cook it, because I think you need to do it regularly to get it right, and it is more difficult to find the ingredients you need here. So I just have to wait for visits to the UK to pig out in Indian restaurants!

2 red peppers
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
25 g butter
1/2 tbs tomato paste
2 tbs crème fraîche
250 ml water or vegetable stock
salt and pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
chilli flakes or chilli sherry to taste
any other herbs or spices that take your fancy
croûtons, to serve

The original recipe instructs you to cut the peppers in half before grilling. But I really like the syrupy juices that come out of roast pepper, so I left them whole. Preheat the grill to high and put the peppers on a baking tray as close as they will go to the heat. Grill for 15-20 minutes, turning a couple of times so that all sides are blistered and blackening. Put them into a bowl and cover with a lid or plate to cool (this makes them easier to peel).

While the peppers are cooling, melt the butter in a heavy pan and add the onions and garlic. Saute over a moderate heat to soften and turn transparent. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel off the burnt skin and cut them in half, catching the juices that run out in the bowl. Remove the seeds and white ribs, and cut the flesh into dice. Then add the chopped pepper, tomato paste, saved pepper juices, and water or stock to the pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Stir in spices and season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for a few more minutes. Stir in cream and let it heat through. Cool the soup for a few minutes and then blend in batches using a blender or food processor. Reheat if necessary and serve. I added croûtons made from homemade bread; just toss cubes of day-old bread in olive oil and garlic or other seasoning, spread out on a baking tray, and put in a hot oven for 10 minutes, turning a couple of times till crisp on all sides.

to this:

This bold experiment is the result of a discussion about what to do with left-over dressed salad. Normally it just gets thrown away, but I remembered reading about someone using it to make gazpacho. I though this sounded disgusting. But last night we had 14 people for dinner, and we made a huge fattoush salad: lettuce, onions, yellow pepper, tomatoes, cucumber, and mint, with toasted diced pitta bread thrown in at the last minute.There was so much I didn’t have a bowl big enough, so I made it in my huge stockpot, and although we ate a lot there was a lot left over.

Given that it was in the stockpot, why not try it? So here is … left-over salad soup!

I debated whether to remove the pitta bread, but hey, gazpacho has bread in it. So I left it in. The dressing was just lemon juice and my best olive oil, so I just put the pot on the heat and sauted the salad gently for a few minutes.

Then I added some Marigold bouillon powder and water and brought it to the boil.

Looks disgusting, doesn’t it? It looked even worse in the blender after I’d simmered it for 20 minutes.

The colour of the end result was a bit disappointing — it was kind of … beige. But it tasted surprisingly good; if you served it to someone without telling them what it was, I don’t think they’d guess. Unfortunately now I have about 5 litres of the stuff. But next time you have a lot of left-over salad, it’s worth a try!

I expect there are as many versions of the Tuscan soup ribollita (reheated soup) as there are cooks. This is based on Ursula Ferrigno’s recipe in Bringing Italy Home, and I like it because it’s vegetarian. If you are a confirmed carnivore, you could easily add a ham hock or some bacon. As the name suggests, it’s best reheated the day after you make it.

Vegetables can be varied according to taste and availability. I’m sure in Tuscany it always has cavolo nero in it, but you can’t get that here, so I always use dark green Savoy cabbage.

Oil: you must use the best you can get for drizzling over the top; you can get away with slightly less good for the cooking, but it should be extra-virgin.

175 g dried canellini beans, soaked overnight
1 large onion, sliced
2-3 carrots, chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped
2 leeks, washed, trimmed, and sliced
250 g cavolo nero or Savoy cabbage, sliced
4 tomatoes, peeled if you can be bothered, and chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
other vegetables if wanted: maybe diced fennel or courgettes
dried chilli flakes
stock or water
salt and pepper
fresh herbs (rosemary, bay, parsley)
olive oil
day-old pain de campagne or baguette, sliced

Heat some olive oil in a large casserole and sweat the onion for a few minutes before adding the carrots, celery, leeks, cabbage, and tomatoes (and any other veg) along with the chilli and half the garlic. Continue to saute gently for 10 minutes.

Add the drained, rinsed beans and stir. Cover with stock or water, then simmer slowly for one and a half to two hours, till the beans are soft. Scoop out around a quarter of the soup and either liquidise or mouli before returning to the pot.

In a small frying pan heat some more oil and gently fry the herbs and remaining garlic for a few minutes to release the scent. Stir into the soup, taste and season. At this point you can set it aside for 24 hours.

To serve, put a slice of bread in each bowl and ladle over the soup. Drizzle liberally with good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and parsley..

1 onion
1 clove garlic
1 inch piece of fresh root ginger
3 lb pumpkin
2 tart apples
1 tbsp curry powder
2 tbsp oil
2-3 pints of chicken stock
salt and pepper

Peel the onion, garlic, and ginger and chop them. Remove the rind from the pumpkin and cut into large dice. Peel and slice the apples.

Heat the oil in a large soup pot. Add onion, garlic, ginger, and curry powder, and stir for 3 minutes. Add the pumpkin and apples, salt and pepper, stir for another 3 minutes. Add the stock, bring to the boil, cover and simmer gently for about 40 minutes.

Remove from the heat, allow to cool slightly, and liquidise (or put through a mouli-légumes). Reheat and serve with a dollop of crème fraîche in each serving, with croutons or fried diced bacon.