Chicken and other broths
Vegetable soups
Savoury tarts
Salads and dressings
Pan-grilling and pan-frying
Roasting
Casserole-roasting
Baked fish
Green vegetables
Roots and alliums
Potatoes
Rice
Pulses – beans, peas and lentils
Simple soda breads
Sweet essentials
Fruit fools, compotes and salads
Biscuits
Ice creams, sorbets and granitas
Meringues
Warm puddings
Cold puddings
A few cakes
‘The first stage of the cooking is the ‘sweating’ of the potato and onion base. This technique starts to soften the potato and removes the harshness from the onion, creating a base that will both flavour and thicken the soup, but still allow the primary ingredient to stand out.’
I love soups. There are so many options to choose from. You could eat a different soup every day of the year and still not come near exhausting the possible options. Soups can be an ambrosial smooth purée. They can be as thin as water and sparklingly clear, with just a few jewel-like ingredients, or so thick you can almost stand a spoon up in them. They can be a great collection of ingredients, with beans and pulses rubbing shoulders with vegetables which are all in a tangle of noodles or spaghetti, topped off with a blob of some oily, herby relish. The possibilities are endless and perhaps that is where some of the problems start. There is a notion that a soup can be made from the leftover and sometimes tired remains of the vegetable rack. Tired ingredients will yield an exhausted soup.
The most beautiful soups can be made from the minimum amount of ingredients. Potatoes and onions, with the addition of a good stock and some seasoning, can produce a finely flavoured, textured and coloured soup. The other side of the coin are the soups with a long list of ingredients, where layers of flavours and textures are skilfully worked together to give a complex and multi-dimensional result. All the different types of soup have their merits and can be, with care, placed in any balanced menu, or of course can just be eaten on their own with perhaps a little bread to accompany.
The onion and potato base should be tender, but still holding its shape
Keys to success
Prepare all the vegetables before you start cooking. Cut the onion and potatoes for the base of the soup into neat 1cm dice. A neat dice of vegetables will cook evenly and will be less likely to burn.
Prepare the green vegetable as appropriate. Leaf vegetables such as cabbage, spinach and chard should have the stalks removed, and in this case discarded (save them and cook them as a vegetable if the particular stalks are tender), and the leaves cut into neat 2cm dice. Radish or wild garlic leaves should be finely sliced across the grain and then cut into 2cm pieces. Leeks should be very finely sliced across the grain. The master recipe can also be made with cucumbers and courgettes as the green addition. They are left unpeeled and cut into 2cm dice. The carefully diced or sliced vegetables will cook quickly and evenly, yielding a fresher-tasting and greener soup.
The first stage of the cooking is the ‘sweating’ of the potato and onion base. This technique starts to soften the potato and removes the harshness from the onion, creating a base that will both flavour and thicken the soup, but still allow the primary ingredient, in this case a green vegetable, to stand out. Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan which is appropriate in size to the quantity of soup being made. The butter should gently foam, and then the potato and onion dice are added. A seasoning of salt and pepper is added and the vegetables are turned and coated in the butter with a wooden spoon.
Cover the vegetables with a disc of greaseproof paper and then the tight-fitting saucepan lid. The paper and saucepan lid are there to trap in any steam that is created as the saucepan heats up. This base is then cooked over a very low heat. Use a heat diffuser mat if necessary. Remember, there is no liquid so far, so you are relying on the steam to prevent the vegetables from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan. This steam should keep enough moisture in the saucepan to prevent the vegetables from burning.
The sweating of the onion and potato takes about 10 minutes. Lift the lid and have a look. If a large plume of steam comes out, you know you have successfully trapped in the steam. The potatoes will be just starting to soften at the edges but with no colour, and the onions will be softening, also without colour. If you are doubling the recipe and so on it will take longer.
Now add the stock, which if you are in a hurry to get the soup cooked could be already at simmering point. Stir the bottom of the saucepan to be certain that the potato and onion base has not stuck. Replace the saucepan lid and bring to a simmer for a further 10 minutes. By then the potatoes and onions should be tender.
This is the base for your soup. This can be made up early in the day, put to one side, and you can finish the soup closer to the time of serving. That way you are assured of a brilliant green colour when serving the soup. You can of course continue on and finish it immediately, to eat it there and then or to reheat later.
Regardless of when the green vegetable is added, the base must be simmering and, very importantly, the lid of the saucepan must be removed. If you replace the lid when the green vegetable is in the saucepan, it will spoil the colour of the soup.
The type of green vegetable you are using will determine the cooking time. Radish, lettuce or wild garlic leaves will cook in a matter of 3–5 minutes. Spinach or chard leaves will take longer, 6–7 minutes for the summer varieties and 10–12 minutes for the winter ones. Leek greens can take 20 minutes to soften. Peas and courgettes will take around 10 minutes, and courgettes around 15 minutes.
When the green vegetable appears cooked, taste a little to be certain that it is indeed tender.
Purée the soup immediately with a hand-held blender or in a liquidizer. This prompt blending sets the colour and gives the soup a silky consistency. When you think it is suitably smooth, keep going for another 30 seconds to ensure an even smoother result.
Taste the soup and correct the seasoning.
The consistency should be like pouring cream, so if it is too thick, add a little more hot chicken stock or a splash of creamy milk (half cream and half milk, mixed). If it is too thin, you are having thin soup.
If I am not serving the soup until later, I like to decant it into a large wide bowl to speed up the cooling time. Do not cover the soup until it is completely cold again, to retain the lovely colour. The cold soup can then be covered and refrigerated.
Serve the soup in hot bowls, with an appropriate garnish.
Year-round green vegetable soup
In this master recipe we are aiming to achieve a smooth and silky soup, packed full of flavour and nourishment and bright green in colour. This recipe can be seen as a year-round formula for the various vegetables that come and go as the seasons change. By varying the green ingredient, you need never tire of this recipe. The green vegetables that can be used here are many, but we have to choose one to get us going, so my choice is spinach.
Choose strong, handsome and really fresh-looking leaves and the results will be dazzlingly green.
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