Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (7 page)

Unpublished, pre-1975

WATERCRESS SOUP

This is a cheap, quick and wonderfully refreshing soup for the times when you have 1 litre or a bit more (a couple of pints) of good clear chicken or meat broth in the larder.

Other ingredients are 2 bunches of watercress, 1 tablespoon of butter, 3 of grated Parmesan, the yolks of 2 eggs.

Rinse the watercress and put it, stalks and all, in a saucepan with the butter. Let it simmer a few minutes until it has melted. It will reduce down like spinach. Now remove the watercress with a draining spoon, leaving the liquid in the pan. Chop the watercress as finely as possible. Return to the pan, add the broth and, when hot, stir in the cheese.

Have the beaten yolks ready in a bowl. Mix a little of the hot soup with the eggs, stir, then pour the mixture back into the saucepan and heat up again, stirring all the time. Don’t let the soup boil, or the eggs will curdle.

The soup should be no thicker than cream.

Unpublished, pre-1975

PASTENAK AND CRESS CREAM

This is a lovely soup, a welcome change from the routine watercress and potato soup. Pastenak is the medieval English word for parsnip, a corruption of the Latin
pastinaca
. In Italy, parsnips are still
pastinache
, a prettier name than parsnip, to me forever associated with a character created by the immortal Beachcomber.

Ingredients for the soup – a French one in origin – are 500 g (1 lb) of youthful parsnips (there should be six; don’t buy large
horny old roots. They are both wasteful and disagreeable in flavour), 600 ml (1 pint) of thin clear chicken stock, 1 little punnet of mustard-and-cress, 1 level teaspoon of rice starch (
crème de riz
) or fine ground rice, or potato starch (
fécule
), or arrowroot, salt, 60–90 ml (2–3 fl oz) of cream. To serve with the soup, a bowl of little croûtons fried in clarified butter.

Scrub the parsnips. With a small sharp knife or a potato parer prise out the hard little pieces of core from the crowns.

Put the parsnips in a saucepan with cold water just to cover. No salt at this stage. Boil them until they are soft – about 25 minutes. Remove them with a perforated spoon and leave them on a dish to cool. Keep the cooking water remaining in the saucepan. There will be about 300 ml (½ pint), a valuable addition to the soup.

When the parsnips are cool enough to handle, the skins can be rubbed off, although personally I don’t find this necessary. In the process of sieving, or puréeing in a blender or food processor, all skin will be smoothly incorporated. Advice often given to discard the central cores of parsnips is presumably intended to apply only to the above-mentioned ancient and horny roots, the cores being so woody that I doubt if even the sharp-bladed food processors of these days could chew them up. The cores of parsnips in their prime, however, are soft as bone marrow, and have a sweet flavour and buttery texture, which are important to this soup.

Having, then, sieved the parsnips through a stainless steel wire sieve or whirled them in a blender, turn the resulting purée into a clean saucepan, stir in the reserved cooking water and the stock, adding a seasoning of salt – 2 or 3 level teaspoons should be enough, but taste as you go.

Put the teaspoon of whichever starch you are using in a small bowl, ladle in a little of the warmed soup, stir to a smooth paste, return this to the saucepan and stir well until the starch has done its work of binding the vegetable matter and the liquid content to a smooth but slightly thickened cream.

When the soup is hot cut off the leafy tops of the cress with scissors, chop them small, stir them into the soup. Finally add the cream.

Have the croûtons already fried in clarified butter and drained on kitchen paper. Serve them separately in a warmed bowl.

There will be enough soup for five big cups.

Notes

1. If the soup is made the day before you intend to eat it, it will thicken again on the second reheating, so have a little extra stock or milk ready to thin it down again. The soup shouldn’t be thicker than pouring cream.

2. Watercress is an alternative to ordinary cress, but in this soup the latter is preferable.

3. Rice starch,
crème de riz
, is also labelled ground rice, although it is much finer than the slightly gritty product we used to know under that name. Rice starch and potato starch,
fécule de pommes de terre
in French, are both useful for binding soups and, occasionally, a custard or other sweet sauce. Both are used in very small quantities, so a packet lasts for years.

Unpublished,
c
.1980

SPICED LENTIL SOUP

An interesting soup, oriental in flavour, very easy to make, cheap and a comforting standby on which many variations can be made.

Basic ingredients are 125 g (4 oz) of ordinary red lentils and 2 celery stalks. Others, which can be varied, are 1 small onion, 2 large or 4 small cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons of cumin seed (either whole or ground), 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, olive oil or butter, water or stock, lemon juice, parsley or dried mint, salt.

In a soup pot, saucepan or casserole of not less than 3-litre (5-pint) capacity, warm about 6 tablespoons of clarified butter, ghee, or light olive oil or 45 g (1½ oz) of butter. In this melt the chopped onion. Stir in the spices. Let them warm thoroughly before adding the crushed garlic cloves and then the lentils – it is not necessary to soak them – and the celery, cleaned and cut into 5-cm (2-in) chunks.

Let the lentils soak up the oil or butter before pouring over them 1.5 litres (2½ pints) of water or stock, which could be made from lamb, veal, pork, beef, chicken, turkey or duck. No salt at this stage. Cover the pot and let the lentils cook steadily, but not at a gallop, for 30 minutes. Now throw in 2 teaspoons of salt or to taste and cook for another 15 minutes.

By this time the lentils should be completely soft. It will be a matter of moments to sieve them through the mouli or purée them in the blender. I prefer the former method.

Return the soup to a clean saucepan, and when it is reheated, taste for seasoning – it may need a little extra ground cumin and perhaps a sprinkling of cayenne pepper – stir in a tablespoon or two of chopped parsley, or a little dried mint. Lastly, a good squeeze of lemon juice.

SPICED LENTIL SOUP
(2)

As above, but instead of cinnamon and cumin use 1 teaspoon of the garam masala mixture given on
page 97
, and 1 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds. (The cardamom in the garam masala mixture makes the whole difference to the flavour.) For those who do not mind a rough soup, it is not even necessary to sieve the lentils or whizz them in a blender. Just beat them to a purée with a wooden spoon or a whisk. In this case, it is best to cook the lentils with 900 ml (1½ pints) water only and to add broth when they are cooked and reduced to a purée.

Unpublished, 1973

BARLEY CREAM SOUP AND BARLEY SALAD

A dual-purpose recipe which produces a soothing, untaxing soup and an excellently original salad, all in one cooking operation, seems to provide an answer, and a sound one, to the question of how best to utilise the stock made from turkey or chicken carcases.

Into about 2.4 litres (4 pints) of turkey stock put 125–180 g (4–6 oz) pearl barley, and some flavouring vegetables such as carrots, an onion, celery and a halved grilled tomato or two (for colour). Cook extremely slowly, in a covered pot, in the oven if you like, for at least 2 hours. Strain off the liquid and sieve a little of the barley and the carrots and celery into it – just enough to make a thin cream soup, to which, when you heat it up, you add a little fresh cream, lemon juice and a few drops of sherry or Madeira.

The rest of the barley cooked in the soup is strained off, turned into a bowl, and while still warm, seasoned with salt, pepper and nutmeg, dressed with 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil and one of lemon juice or tarragon vinegar. Into the salad mix a few cubes of green or yellow honey dew melon (in the summer use cucumber) and, if you like, a few orange segments.

The idea for this salad stems from a Boulestin recipe which, on a first reading, sounded freakish. Boiled barley and oranges… Boulestin, however, is a writer in whose taste one has faith, no matter how odd his recipes may occasionally sound. He gives, in this instance, no quantities and no method. Last year I tried out the idea, cooking the barley as explained above. I served the salad with cold tongue and chicken. It was most delicate and attractive – better, I thought, than the well-known rice salad made on similar lines.

Wine & Food
, Winter 1964

TUSCAN BEAN SOUP

Put 250 g (½ lb) of the white haricots known as cannellini beans, or of pink borlotti beans, to soak in cold water. Leave them overnight.

Next day put the drained beans into a
fagiolara
(a flask-shaped Tuscan earthenware bean jar –
see
above) or into a tall soup marmite or stock-pot. Cover them with approximately 1.8 litres
(3 pints) of fresh cold water. Add 3 or 4 bay leaves, a teaspoon of dried savory or basil leaves (Tuscan cooks use sage. I find it too overpowering), 3 tablespoons of fruity olive oil.

Cook the beans, covered, over moderate heat for about 2 hours. Add a tablespoon of salt and continue cooking for another 20 to 30 minutes, until the beans are quite soft.

Now sieve half the beans only, with about half the liquid, through the mouli-légumes (or purée them in the electric blender, but not for long enough to get an unattractive electric-mixer-foam on the top); mix the purée with the rest of the beans, add a good fistful of parsley, coarsely chopped with a clove or two of garlic, and reheat the soup. Before serving, stir in a ladleful of fruity olive oil and the juice of a lemon.

In each soup plate or bowl have ready a slice of coarse country bread – or the nearest you can get to such a commodity – rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with olive oil.

This amount of beans should make enough soup for four.

Dried Herbs, Aromatics and Condiments
, 1967

LEILAH’S YOGURT SOUP

Yogurt soup is well known in all Middle Eastern countries. Every region – probably every family – has a slightly different version. This one came to me from a Turkish source. Quantities given should make 4 ample helpings.

For 750 ml (1½ pints) of clear chicken stock, the other ingredients are 30 g (1 oz) of butter, 2 level tablespoons of flour, 1 whole egg, the juice of half a lemon, salt, cinnamon, cumin and dried mint, 300 ml (½ pint) of yogurt.

In a heavy saucepan melt the butter. Add the flour. Stir over gentle heat until the mixture is smooth. Add, gradually, the warmed stock, and cook until all trace of the floury taste has disappeared. Should the mixture turn lumpy, sieve it and return it to the rinsed-out saucepan. Let it get really hot.

Whisk together the egg and lemon juice. Add a little of the hot soup, whisk again, then incorporate this into the soup. Now add the yogurt. Keep the pan over the lowest possible heat – it must not boil – add salt if necessary, and a sprinkling of powdered cinnamon and cumin. Whisk once more. Lastly stir in the dried mint – about a tablespoon.

A good method of keeping egg-thickened soups hot without boiling is to transfer the saucepan, once the soup has reached the necessary temperature, to one of those electric hot plates made especially for keeping coffee hot without boiling. It takes up little space and is invaluable for keeping sauces as well as soups hot for a short time.

Unpublished, April 1973

Yogurt

You don’t need electrical gadgets and you don’t need ‘special’ cultures to make yogurt. You don’t need padded boxes or those incredibly complicated do-it-yourself incubator tea-cosy things that people used to advocate. I’d never have been capable of making one, so I’m thankful that insulated food jars have taken their place. I have those in the house anyway for ice and picnic food, and I have a beautiful old dairy thermometer with its own wooden case. And I have a very large, old and thick saucepan to boil the milk in. So I’ve never bought any special equipment, and I’d find it a bore to use an electrical machine for yogurt, as well as a nuisance to have to house it.

The most effective insulated jars are the kind made by Thermos, called ‘the super food flask’, but Insulex also make very satisfactory ones. Both brands are stocked by department stores and plenty of other shops. Junket thermometers can be bought in kitchen shops, and it’s a measure of the present popularity of yogurt that the correct temperature is now marked on them. Brannan’s have also brought out a cheap yogurt thermometer.

I’d advise beginners to start with just one or two half-litre/ pint-size jars and buy more as needed.

Personally, I use rich, creamy Jersey milk for my yogurt, but many people prefer skim milk. It’s a question of whether or not you’re on a low-fat diet.