Quick, Easy, Hot and Sour Soup

This vegan recipe is a store cupboard special – made almost entirely from things I have knocking about in my cupboard. It is so quick and easy to make and its spicy freshness makes it a perfect lunch dish.

A Sichuan classic, hot and sour soup can now be found on Chinese restaurant menus across the UK. The combination of heat from chilli oil and acidity from Chinkiang vinegar is compelling and addictive, while the calming, light flavour and silky texture of the tofu provides balance. I find many soups boring and regularly lose interest before I reach the bottom of the bowl. I often have second helpings of this one.

Hot and Sour Soup

1 pack of silken tofu. This tofu does not have to be kept in the fridge and has a long shelf life. It is always a good idea to have a packet or two in the cupboard.

1 tbsp high quality vegetable stock mixed with 600ml boiling water. I use this one… If you have fresh vegetable stock (or chicken if you are not vegetarian) feel free to use 600ml fresh stock instead.

Green part of a spring onion, chopped

1 tbsp chopped parsley or coriander (optional)

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/4 tsp ground pepper (I use black, but I think it is more correct to use white)

2 tsp vegetable oil

Large pinch of salt

2 tbsp cornflour mixed with 4 tbsp cold water

3 tbsp Chinkiang vinegar

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp chilli oil (I use laoganma)

1/4 tsp ground Sichuan peppercorns

These quantities will produce 2 big bowls of soup (or 4 small ones)

Drain the tofu and place in a bowl. Use a fork to crush it slightly so it begins to fray into pieces.

Place the stock, pepper, salt and vegetable oil in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the cornflour mixture to the pan, stirring slowly. This will thicken the texture of the broth and help stop the tofu from sinking to the bottom. Carefully place the tofu into the pan and heat gently until warmed up. Add herbs, if using.

Switch off the heat and season with the vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Divide the soup among your serving bowls, making sure the tofu is evenly distributed. Carefully dot the chilli oil over the surface of the soup and sprinkle with the spring onion greens.

Gorgeous Gazpacho

The subject of chilled soups can divide friends and families in the UK. I have heard raised voices on the subject – the usual theme of the argument is that British soup should be served hot. Cold soup is for foreigners.

Given that the temperature of the UK is generally low and the air damp, hot soups would appear to be a more sensible option. However, this summer has seen unusually high temperatures and a complete absence of rain – making hot soups seem peculiar in blazing, arid heat. Instead, Brits should guzzle a bowl of gorgeous Gazpacho -a sort of chilled, liquefied, summer salad – given texture by bread and enriched and brightened with delicious olive oil and sharp sherry vinegar.

As the name suggests, this is a “foreign” soup -originally from Andalusia in Spain. I have seen variations in recipes -some avoid onions altogether, some leave out the cucumber.  Once Gazpacho travels abroad, people do all sorts of awful things to it -adding almonds, olives, cumin seeds – missing the point of the dish entirely. This rustic soup was intended as a way of using up stale bread and making plentiful summer vegetables go further -it was never meant to be a luxurious recipe.

However -a good gazpacho won’t be that economical to make in the UK. In Spain, tomatoes are packed with flavour and are cheap; olive oil is not considered a “fancy” item.  In the UK you have to make bank to get a decent tomato with any sort of flavour and olive oil is a middle class opportunity for one-upmanship – not a peasant staple. So embrace your inner bourgeois:  shell out for some really pricey extra virgin olive oil, then buy tomatoes with fancy names and a good pedigree.

I personally cannot bear hot tomato soup -it reminds me of vile school dinners -that sweet, cloying scent filling the corridors as we queued at lunchtime;  the lurid orange liquid with a texture like milk, served in a plastic beaker along with a stale white roll.  Even the fanciest interpretations of tomato soup still fail to please me when hot -almost certainly a result of the trauma of disgusting school food. And yet, Gazpacho fills me with joy, both for its strange, slightly gritty texture and  its happy summery flavours. I guess that makes me foreign, then…

 

 

Gorgeous Gazpacho

500g of the smallest, most delicious  tomatoes you can get your hands on. The words “cherry” and “vine”  (preferably together) are your best bet for finding flavourful tomatoes in a UK supermarket. If you grow your own, then that is even better.

1/2 cucumber

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red pepper

2 spring onions

1 or 2 cloves garlic (I would go 2 every time)

The best olive oil you have

1 slice bread (ideally something white and rustic -not sourdough)

2 tbsps. sherry vinegar

 

Halve the tomatoes, remove and discard the seeds. Roughly chop the cucumber, deseed and chop the peppers., chop the spring onions and peel the garlic

Place all the vegetables and bread into a blender along with 2 tbsps. very good olive oil and 1 tbsp. sherry vinegar. Blitz until smooth. Taste and season with sea salt, then add more vinegar until you get a good balance of acidity. If the mixture is too thick, add a little water  (a tablespoon at a time). Add more olive oil to give richness. It won’t look like a bloody Mary, rather it will be fairly pink in colour -which is perfectly OK.

Chill the soup in the fridge -do not be tempted to add ice cubes as they dilute the flavour. I strongly disapprove of any garnishes on gazpacho -I have seen hideous recipes where the soup is hidden under what looks like an August compost heap of quartered tomatoes and onions and mint leaves, or great big slices of toasted bread and whole black olives. Leave it off –  simply pour the soup into bowls and add a final swirl of delicious olive oil.

The Eternal Sunshine Of The Shallow Mind

A real rats’ nest (now vacated)

Last night I dreamt I found a rats’ nest. As I opened the trap door which leads into the attic of my house, a squirming heap of startled rats scattered in different directions, before tumbling through the door into the room where I was standing. One rat fell directly onto my head, others used my shoulders as springboards to leap to the ground. As the rats fell, they died; and as they died, they turned onto their backs, revealing surprisingly clean and soft white bellies.

I dream regularly, fiercely and sometimes in colours which are brighter than the ones I see in real life. When I wake, the world looks pale and the morning light seems weak. I have frightening dreams, and happy dreams; my favourites are dreams where houses morph into other houses –where I walk through tunnels and appear in a tea room on Oxford High Street, then as I walk towards the kitchen, I find myself in a tree house in Thailand. When I wake from one of my more ‘imaginative’ dreams, the first thing I do is to reach for my computer and see what the internet has to say. So clearly, I googled the rat dream straight away.

 

The dream dictionary said conflicting things. One slightly disturbing suggestion was that an enemy was about to attack me. The other was (because the rats were dead) that I was ridding myself of people in my life who were no good for me. Another suggested that rats were a sign of good fortune. I decided to ignore the analyses* and instead to use the rats as inspiration for my next recipe

Last year, to combat the misery of winter and create a living metaphor for warmth and hope, I planted an entire packet of sunflower seeds in the sunniest spot in my garden. A large brown rat burrowed into the soil and ate the lot. I caught him sneaking along the wall, his fat, seed-filled belly dragging in the dirt.

I love sunflowers –they remind me of being a child and watching a seed grow into something taller than my father. I like the fields of sunflowers in France – especially for the few flowers which refuse to swivel their faces towards the sun and stand defiantly as their companions follow the sun’s path. If only sunflowers were delicious too! Sadly, sunflower seeds are rather boring and aside from sprinkling them on top of a vegetable gratin, I can’t really be doing with them. I always felt a little disappointed that sunflowers could not deliver a flavour as beautiful as their happy faces –that was, until I tasted Jerusalem artichoke for the first time.

Jerusalem artichoke

 

Okay so this vegetable doesn’t actually come from the sunflowers we cultivate,  but the Jerusalem artichoke (also known delightfully as the sun choke) is the tuber of a plant closely related to the sunflower. It is a knobbly round creation, about the size of a salad potato –a pain in the backside to peel, but worth the bother as despite growing in the ground, it tastes of pure sunlight.

When cooked, the texture of a Jerusalem artichoke is a bit like celeriac or swede –it goes from being completely firm to quite watery and squishy. It makes delicious mash, and is also quite wonderful peeled and roasted. The flavour is uncannily like that of a ‘real’ artichoke but without the enormous performance of preparing and eating one of those oversized thistles.

So, I decided to calm my rat infested mind with a sunflower-inspired soup. I wanted something light but filling to match this strange time of year, where sleet can fall one afternoon and the next morning early blossom is lit against a chilly blue sky.

I was so worried about stifling the beautiful and delicate flavour of the Jerusalem artichokes, I decided against using vegetable stock and spices. Instead, I seasoned with just a few whole mustard seeds and added some white burgundy for a gentle acidity. A few thinly sliced roasted hazelnuts make a delicious and crunchy topping, to give the soup some texture. Ridiculously simple, this is a perfect soup for March as it has the illusion of comfort food but is lighter on the stomach as Jerusalem artichokes are naturally low in starch. And of course- it tastes beautifully of the sun.

*I realised the true significance of the dream as the day progressed. My hairdresser had chastised me for my split ends the day before, grumbling because I had not been to see her for four months. My late mother often used to describe my hair as a ‘rats’ nest’ and the rats fell onto my head in the dream. Far from some deep and frightening omen, or a portent of happiness to come, this dream was actually a way of me saying ‘I don’t mind my hair, even if it is a rats’ nest’. I astonish myself sometimes with how shallow I actually am.

 

Sunlight Soup

1 pound Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and cut into chunks. The flesh discolours very quickly – so prepare just before you need them

1 long banana shallot finely chopped

1 tsp yellow mustard seeds

1 large glass of white Burgundy (as good as you can manage)

boiling water

Maldon salt and black pepper.

 

Place some good olive oil into the bottom of a heavy-based pan. Add the mustard seeds, stirring gently, until they begin to pop. Then add the shallot and fry until soft. Place the chopped Jerusalem artichoke into the pan and stir carefully for a couple of minutes. Add the wine, and bring to the boil, then add boiling water to cover the vegetables. Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover and cook for about 20 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

Meanwhile slice ten hazelnuts roughly into rounds, spread them on a baking tray and roast them under a hot grill, keeping a careful eye on them, until they start to smell delicious and toasted.

 

Blitz the soup to a smooth consistency in a blender, then return to the pan and season carefully with sea salt and pepper. Pour into bowls and garnish with the toasted hazelnut.

 

 

 

Creamy Knob Soup

‘What an interesting recipe title’  said Number Two Son. I am paraphrasing.

I am not being smutty when I talk about knobs- I am merely using an Olde English name for the main ingredient in this creamy soup:  ‘Knob Celery’ . Knob celery is also known by the more prissy name ‘Celeriac’ and it is a delicious root vegetable with a subtle taste of celery and a faint herbal back note.

Knob celery, (oh all right) celeriac, has always been popular across the Channel. The French love it grated in salads with a tangy mayonnaise dressing and all over France, smart delicatessens and market stalls peddle luxurious packages of hand-made ‘Celeri Remoulade’, while down-market supermarkets stock slightly watery pots of a manufactured version. Both are delicious.

Celeriac has grown in popularity in the UK over the last few years, perhaps because of its very low starch content. It can be used in a similar way to a potato: mashed, ‘dauphinoised’ or roasted, but with under 10g carbohydrate per 100g it makes a very good potato substitute for diabetics or people on restricted carbohydrate regimes. I don’t enjoy celeriac in these incarnations, as they make the root appear a bit of an ugly sister to the potato. I find celeriac’s strange herbal notes a little distracting and not a good match with any sort of dairy product. I think its delicate flavour is best appreciated in a soup, and the pleasant texture  of celeriac means it can be blended to a really smooth and pleasing consistency.

I promised you a soup containing almond milk -so here you are. Leaving out dairy means the subtle and fragrant aromas of the celeriac aren’t blotted out by a rich and heavy liquid, rather carried beautifully and enhanced. The nut milk is a perfect partner for celeriac, as the vegetable also has a slight nutty taste. All this soup needs to be perfect is a similar flavour palette to celeri remoulade: a touch of mustard, salt and pepper and some lemon. If you are feeling artistic, sprinkle a little chopped parsley before serving.

Creamy Knob Soup

1 celeriac, peeled and diced (the flesh discolours quickly, but don’t worry it won’t matter in soup)

1 onion finely chopped

1/3 pint almond milk

Juice of one lemon

1/2 tsp Colman’s mustard. I know I said ‘French’ flavours, but French mustard is so weak -this soup needs a bit of English to give it some punch.

salt and pepper

Pour a glug of very good olive oil into a saucepan. Fry the onions until translucent then add the celeriac. Turn the heat to low, cover the pan and let the vegetables sweat for about twenty minutes. You will need to keep a very close eye on them -the aim is to soften, but not have any brown edges.

Now add the lemon juice and stir well, then add the mustard and almond milk and cook until the celeriac is very soft indeed. It may not need too long.

Blend the soup in a blender until perfectly smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper, adding a little more mustard or lemon if it requires and perhaps a sprinkle of parsley.

Eclipse Soup

A solar eclipse is an exciting and terrifying thing. I tend to tune out when scientists explain exactly what is going on in the heavens, but as I understand things, the moon is essentially eating the sun.

In many cultures a solar eclipse is a portent of danger, a bad omen, a sign that the gods are angry. It’s a great opportunity for the superstitious or needy to make the happenings in the celestial realm all about them.

I am neither romantic nor superstitious. When I look up at the stars I feel thankful that I will never have to travel into space. Just the word ‘space’ makes the great dark void sound terribly dull and I would definitely be frightened to go to the moon in all its barren, rocky glory. I admire astronauts for their resilience and ability to find it interesting to observe ants and carry out science experiments in zero gravity, but feel no urge to join them on their mission. Although I would love to see the earth from space, I think it would make me feel sad and detached, rather than give me a beautiful sense of objectivity. Oh look -I just made space all about me! Well no one is perfect.

Two days before the eclipse and the vernal equinox and the oversized moon, an ominous event occurred: Colin our beautiful, enormous and sweet-natured rabbit tunnelled out of his run and disappeared. I have fought for the preservation of Colin’s male reproductive equipment for the six months we have had him, but cursed myself for it, when clearly he had burrowed out of our garden in search of a lady friend.

Twenty four hours after running away, Colin returned, slightly quieter than normal, quite grubby and very keen to be cuddled. I have no idea what he got up to. I am imagining a rabbit version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Anyway Colin’s escape was both our eclipse drama, and miracle.

In celebration of Colin’s return, I made a soup from sweet potatoes. I find sweet potatoes slightly irritating, as dull, health-obsessed people claim they are better for you,  than real potatoes. Well they are not. Proper potatoes are one of the finest foodstuffs on earth, and I am furious with the government and Mr Atkins and other carb-dodgers for shunning them. I tend to avoid sweet potatoes out of loyalty to the proper, pale, non-squishy variety.

I have had to change my attitude towards sweet potatoes after interviewing a chef who had made the most magnificent sweet potato dish I have ever eaten. Roasted in the oven and layered with a dressing of yuzu, queso fresco, crunchy jalapenos and thin crispy slices of radish, the sweet potato had transformed from sickly mush to delicious squish. I ate an entire one and disloyal as it may sound, found it to be far more delicious than a baked ‘normal’ potato. The combination of heat from the chillies and acidity from the yuzu lifted the sweetness and richness of the potato. It was (forgive me) heavenly.

I decided to steal my chef friend’s idea and create a soup using that combination of spice, acidity and sweetness. Sweet potato soups can be rather rich and sweet. I usually struggle to finish the bowl as my mouth just gets clogged and bored by the flavour. This soup starts spicy, becomes sweet then ends on a delightfully wicked sour note, (which sounds horrid, but actually leaves the palate ready for the next spoonful). Exactly how soup should be. When I photographed the soup, it looked just like the solar eclipse we had on Friday. Definitely a good omen.

Solar Eclipse Soup

6 smallish sweet potatoes

1/2 onion finely chopped

1 heaped teaspoon dried chilli flakes

3 cloves garlic

2 tbsps yuzu dressing (available in the ‘fancy’ section of supermarkets -I got mine from a medium sized Sainsbury’s)

A little rice wine/white wine

really good olive oil

sea salt and pepper

Roast the potatoes in the oven at 160 degrees until soft when palpated. Cut the end of each potato and squeeze, (like squeezing a huge zit) until all the orange flesh comes out (you can also peel them -but this is more fun) into a bowl. Break the potato flesh up with a fork so it is relatively smooth .

Put some very good quality olive oil into a saucepan and gently fry the onion until translucent. Add the garlic and stir for a minute or two followed by the chilli. Now add the sweet potato together with a dash of rice wine (or white wine), cook for a few seconds, then add about a mugful of boiling water, cover and simmer. After about ten minutes check that the onions are completely cooked through. If so, season and check. Add the yuzu, tasting until there is a perfect balance of sweet and sour. Blitz the soup in a blender, adding more water and a little more yuzu if required. The warming/refreshing balance makes this the perfect Spring soup!

Pimp My Pumpkin

Hot and Sour Pumpkin Soup

I have complained on more than one occasion about the saccharine nature of the pumpkin. Its flesh is a sweet, sickly mush, all too often over-spiced with cinnamon, then pureed to make that vile cloying liquid: Pumpkin Soup. Pumpkin Soup puts me off Halloween. I love Halloween, for perking up the dismal cold nights as autumn lurches towards winter, but all those well-meaning, sustainable, green, homebody-types blitzing up saucepans of orange-coloured, creamy, soupy muck, make me feel more trick than treat.

Worse still than boring and sweet pumpkin soup – the ubiquitous plat du jour of early November – is that utterly atrocious fine-dining habit some chefs have acquired of smearing a blob of pumpkin onto a plate and then plonking a bit of meat or even worse, fish, nearby. Those smeared squash-blobs always taste like pureed soggy cupcake. They cloud the palate with their sickly spiciness and make whatever else is on the plate into a fairly bland and irrelevant taste experience. Please, mighty Chefs, give it up! Put those palette knives down and stop smearing stuff. It’s hideous.

Yes pumpkin is truly horrible. No one really likes it. Pumpkin love can only be the result of one of those brainwashing conspiracies. When people say they like pumpkin I am suspicious of them. As I am when people begin liking really avant garde music ,or when young men wear those horrible Victorian beards. All these life choices I am sure, are the results of mass hysteria, rather than cool-headed judgment.

I considered a world without pumpkins, a world without their strange sprawling vines and gargantuan orange fruit, and I thought I would draw the line at suggesting we ban people from growing them. The world would be a poorer place visually without them. And everyone enjoys carving pumpkins up and making scary lanterns at Halloween.

I am a bit of a sustainable homebody (despite having being sneery about the practice in my first paragraph) and I do believe we shouldn’t waste things. So, after a lot of thought, and a lot of reading, I decided that the only way to redeem a pumpkin is to give it the Asian treatment.   Hot and sour soup is wonderful. It is bright, it wakes your taste buds. It has a kick, a freshness and some floral flavours delivered by my beloved kaffir lime leaves and magical lemongrass. Mixed with pumpkin, hot and sour flavours remove the squash’s horrible sweetness sedating qualities and balance the richness of the pumpkin flesh with some light citrus notes. This soup is refreshing and warming at the same time –perfect for the chillier weather.

Squash Redeemer

1 small ‘eating’ pumpkin (sigh –why do we even have to have carving pumpkins. Surely we should be able to eat all pumpkins. So wasteful!) peeled and cubed

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large glass dry white wine

300 ml vegetable stock

3 lemongrass stalks bashed around a bit with a rolling pin

3 small red chillis chopped (seeds removed if you are a baby sensitive to spice)

4 kaffir lime leaves

Juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon sugar

Preparation

Place the onion, garlic, and ginger into a pan with 1 tablespoon oil, Turn the heat to medium and cook until the onion becomes soft. Add the pumpkin and wine and boil, uncovered, until wine starts evaporating, then stir in the stock and simmer, covered, until the pumpkin is tender (about 20 minutes). In a frying pan, heat the remaining  oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then add the lemongrass and chillies  stirring, until lightly browned for about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Purée the pumpkin mixture and return to pot. Add the lemongrass mixture, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, and sugar to the liquid pumpkin and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Pour the soup through a sieve (which is actually a fairly major ball-ache, as the thick soup gets stuck in the mesh. So definitely do not pour it through the sieve too fast . Drip it through slowly. This requires (ugh) patience, but is worth it) then chuck away all the bits.The sour sweet liquid left will warm the blood and the heart.

Indian Summer Soup

Yesterday I went racing. It is my favourite thing in the world. Even when the wicked fen wind threatens to blow my dress inside out, as fat droplets of rain burst over my hair and run in icy streams down my face, leaving sooty trails of make up behind.

The weather yesterday was deeply unpleasant. People muttered about autumn: ‘That’s it for now’ and looked ahead, miserably, to the prospect of a bitter winter. Cheery stuff. But I had a wonderful day, saw some beautiful horses and spent time with lovely people. And then today, I woke up to perfect autumn sunshine -cool air and warm sun, and a sky you could sail a ship on.

Autumn is a funny time of year. I don’t like cold weather, so it is the season of fear for me. I cling on to the hope that the leaves will stay on the trees, that the skies won’t darken early. It’s probably some deeply primal fear of death, or a very shallow fear of aging. Although I am actually enjoying being old -I was a very reluctant thirty-something, I found it a tedious nothing-decade. My forties are more fun.

To combat the doom and misery of autumn and the looming sneer of winter, I made a soup. What is more, I made it out of parsnips, which I don’t really like. In this recipe, I drown their peculiar flavour in white wine and suffocate their sweetness with garam masala and fresh red chilli. I destroy their weird, stringy texture and make it go away, by pulverizing the parsnips in the blender. This soup is very satisfying to make and delicious to eat. Oh, and it also is very easy to make. I am too old for complicated nonsense.

Indian Summer Soup -serves four

4 large parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

1/3 bottle white wine

1 tbsp. garam masala

squeeze of lemon juice

1 whole red chilli

1 banana shallot, chopped

Place two tablespoons of olive oil into a pan along with the garam masala, and heat gently. Add the chopped shallot and fry for a few minutes until the scent of spices cooking fills your whole head. Add the parsnips, coat in the spice and onion mixture briefly, then add the wine. .. Cook for about 5 minutes on a high heat, then add 250 ml water and the whole chilli. Cover and simmer until the parsnips are soft. Remove the chilli and put in the bin. Add plenty of sea salt and a generous squeeze of lemon  to the mixture before blitzing in the blender to a smooth and fragrant liquid.

Mother’s Pride Soup

Number Two Son is very bad at Full Moon Parties. Last year his ‘drink was spiked’ and he fell asleep at midnight, waking when all the festivities were over. This year he made it to just after midnight, before some ruffian rugby-tackled him, he fell off a twenty foot platform and landed on a sharp light fitting.

‘I’ve just had twenty stitches in my leg. It just missed my femoral artery’ he said triumphantly down the phone to me, from a hospital in Koh Samui, where he had been speed-boated back along with a girl who had broken her arm. I was very grateful that he had not injured himself more seriously, but was cross with him for getting into a scrape.

When boys are eighteen – they think they are invincible and they are quite hard to discipline and manipulate into doing what a mother wants. I have  two large sons, two brothers and lots of male friends and think I am quite adept at ‘influencing’ men. I have found with younger ones, only two things work – two threats that will get them off their argumentative backsides and doing whatever it is that you want. These two things? Dancing and ‘talking street’.

I am very fond of Koh Samui, so I decided to take action. The only way to stop Number Two Son maiming himself again, would be to embarrass the life out of him. So I hopped on a plane and appeared at his guest house, where I found him, still covered in body paint and blood from the night before, seething and furious. ‘Why are you here’ he growled. ‘Why didn’t you just get me a plane ticket and bring me home. It’s so embarrassing having you here. I won’t be seen in public with you. You have just come here, but we aren’t together. I’m not going out in public with you’.

‘I was worried, darling’ I said. ‘You have hurt yourself and I wanted to see for myself what was going on’. His leg was completely hideous – a semicircle of stitches that looked like the doctor had been nipping at the morphine, and a large lip of flesh standing proud of the wound. Number Two Son graciously invited me to accompany him to the hospital to pay (so he could retrieve his passport), which we did, dodging the many cats that wove in between patients legs in the waiting room. We then went for dinner, where he ate like a wild man and expounded on how embarrassing it was having me there. ‘Look – people are staring’ he grumbled ‘They think you are my cougar’. ‘That’s the very reason I became a teenage mother’ I answered ‘So I could win glamorous granny competitions – you know that. It was never about children – I don’t really like children that much’.

The woman behind the reception desk gave me a wink as I checked in. She clearly thought I was doing awfully well with such a tall, handsome toyboy. I did nothing to disabuse her of the idea. She can’t have thought I was that lucky, as he had a face on him that was more ‘curdle milk’ than ‘adoring’ but then some people’s faces are like that all the time – think of Kanye West.

My finest hour came on the Saturday night, when after taking myself off to a beachside party, I bumped into my son and his friends in the Green Mango. His friends were delighted, as I plied them with drinks and gave them my views on Daft Punk. ‘You are not to dance’ said Number Two Son. ‘I will leave. You must go home and not dance’. His friends didn’t agree and within a small amount of time I was on a stage with nine teenage boys throwing my finest shapes. Number Two Son dragged me off the stage and my work was done.

In between embarrassing my child, I bought some very ‘Mutton’ clothes, spent time on the beautiful beach and stuffed myself with the most delicious Thai food. I honestly did not want to come home – I could live there forever. In honour of my beloved Koh Samui, here is a recipe for a delicious soup. It’s not the really famous one with shrimp –Tom Yum Goong – incidentally I think river shrimp are better than sea shrimp in that recipe, as their brains disperse so beautifully into the broth, leaving tiny creamy dots on the surface. This is a chicken soup. For veggies – use the firmest tofu you can find, cut into strips.

Tom Kaa Gai

Galangal and Kaffir lime leaves give this light, fresh soup a delicious fragrance. For a real flash-harry touch, add a couple of kaffir lime leaves just before you serve – so the scent as you put the soup in front of your guests is truly intense. It’s very easy too.

3 cups coconut milk

4 stalks lemongrass, bruised (as in wallop them with a rolling pin) and chopped

5-6 thin slices of galangal (it looks a bit like ginger. If you can’t find it – but here it comes in those ‘thai herb packs’ all the supermarkets carry, ginger will do at a pinch)

10 kaffir lime leaves torn in half

300g boneless chicken cut into strips OR firm tofu cut into strips

115g rice straw mushrooms (they are fleshy and a bit like little pudgy things. Any mushrooms will do if you can’t find these)

4 tablespoons lime juice

3 tablespoons (less if it’s not your thing so much) fish sauce

10 chopped hot chillies (again, if you are a baby about spice – don’t use as many – but this soup really is meant to be hot)

chopped spring onion and coriander leaves to garnish.

Heat the coconut milk in a saucepan until it comes to the boil. Add the lemongrass, galangal and half of the kaffir lime leaves. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for about ten minutes. Strain it and return the stock to the pan. Return to the heat, add the mushrooms and chicken or tofu. Cook for a further 5 -7 minutes until the chicken is nicely poached.

Stir in the lime juice, fish sauce and the rest of the kaffir lime leaves. season. Ganish with chillies, spring onions and coriander leaves.

Cicero’s Soup

Cicero was a very boring orator who droned on and on about awful legal things. He had a couple of natty tricks with language: making points in threes and inventing neologisms. It actually makes me feel slightly teenage and angry to think about it, because I loathed studying him at school. The most interesting thing I learned about him was that he was named Cicero, because his nose looked like a chickpea. (Cicer is Latin for chickpea).

I don’t believe anyone’s nose actually could look like a chickpea. Chickpeas are round with strange nodules. If I had to pick a body part to correspond with a chickpea, it would not be a nose. You  might have a facial wart like a chickpea (it would be awfully unfortunate, but possible). A belly button could look like a chickpea, just, if the midwife had been a bit ham-fisted. But noses, even darling little button ones, never look like chickpeas. They could look like a pear, or a mushroom or a rather malformed sausage. I think Cicero was one of those truly dreadful people who desperately wanted a nickname so he could sound popular and came up with something really stupid, off the top of his head.

I have made chickpeas into a very delicious soup, not very subtly adapted from Jamie Oliver’s early book.I have added white wine and lemon to the original recipe, simply because the soup was too mealy and Welsh without it. Leeks and pulses on their own are good and warming and filling, but they do make me feel like a sheep with a big soggy fleece, wandering about in the fog on the Brecon Beacons. The addition of a bit of vino and lemon makes the whole thing feel more Mediterranean and sunny. Cicero himself would approve

Cicero Soup

5 leeks

1 can chick peas rinsed and drained. Or cook them yourself from dried little pellets if you are insane.

A couple of cloves of garlic

2 tbps butter and 1 tbsp olive oil (replace the butter with equal amount olive oil for non-dairy)

1 huge glass white wine

4 cups of vegetable or chicken stock

The juice of 1 lemon

salt and pepper to taste

finely chopped parsley to sprinkle

Wash the leeks by slicing them lengthways and rinsing until all the sandy and gritty bits are gone. Slice into rounds. You are going to blitz this, so don’t worry too much about how the slices look. Cut them reasonably thinly though. Crush the garlic.

Melt butter with the oil in a large pan over a low heat. Add the leeks and garlic and fry gently until they smell lovely (about ten to fifteen minutes). Add the chickpeas and stir gently making sure they do not stick. Add the wine so it sizzles a bit, then add the stock, cover and turn down to a low simmer.  If you like a really thick soup, don’t put all the stock in. You can always water it down later. Cook for another ten minutes, turn off the heat and puree  the soup roughly in a blender.

Return to the pan, season and add the lemon and parsley. Reheat and serve

A Surprising Aphrodisiac

Today, I thought I would make a Halloween-themed pumpkin soup, so headed to the supermarket to buy one of the many pumpkins piled at the entrance to the vegetable section. But I have just been thwarted by genetic modification. ‘Carving’ pumpkins are hollow, useless, seed-filled, fleshless gourds that I am never going to be able to do anything with, other than carve a slightly wonky face into their skin.

Today is about turning unfortunate circumstances around. It would have been a rather yawny, predictable food-bloggery thing to do, to write a pumpkin soup recipe so close to Halloween. The internet is, quite literally, flooded with cinnamon- flavoured, creamy, orange horrors. I actually hate pumpkin soup – it’s too sweet and baby food. I am going to save it for when all my teeth fall out and my tongue is cracked and coated with the greasy film of age.

Even before I discovered the pumpkin was barren, empty and useless I wasn’t feeling that positive about it. When I cut the pumpkin lid out, it emitted a sour, slightly dead stench. Pumpkins are big, show off, bloated, ginger balls of foetid air. Give me a head of celery instead.

I found some interesting things out about celery, which should have men hot footing it to the greengrocers as soon as they have finished reading this. It contains androsterone, a pheromone released by men’s sweat glands that has arousing properties. I’ve always been a bit sceptical about pheromones – thinking them the province of people who consider rohypnol a good start to a first date, or soap dodging men making excuses for themselves. However – expert swordsman Casanova swore by celery to keep himself going and career femme fatale Madame de Pompadour took it daily to combat frigidity. Libido never seemed to be a problem for her really, given her job as a courtesan but then maybe, without celery, she would have been rather average at her work. I also read somewhere that celery is good for the nerves, as well as being an aphrodisiac. Like a vegetable version of champagne.

This soup is great in the summer. I don’t like chilled soups, they feel wrong , but a thick pulse based broth isn’t really the ticket either. I know it isn’t summer here now – but it is in Australia, so don’t be smart with me. It’s always summer somewhere.

Arousing Soup

1 onion, chopped

1 head of celery

2 small or one large potato, diced

1 vegetable stock cube made up with 400 ml boiling water or 400 ml home made stock if you are a saint

200 ml white wine or champagne (the latter will ensure ‘belt and braces’ full aphrodisiac effect)

½ teaspoon curry powder. There’s something rather beautiful about the union of celery and cumin.

Chop the whole head of celery – weird little leaves and all, discarding the root. Place a small amount of olive oil in a saucepan and briefly fry the curry powder until it starts to scent the kitchen. Add the onions and the celery, stir, cover and turn down the heat. The longer you sweat the celery before adding liquid, the better it will taste. At least fifteen minutes but nearer twenty five minutes would be ideal. Add the potatoes and fry briefly, add the wine and let it bubble, then finally add the stock. Cook until the potatoes are soft (about another fifteen to twenty minutes) remove from the heat and blend until smooth. It takes a lot of blending to get rid of the stringiness that celery can have. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Use protection.