Autumn Salvation Soup

I wanted to write a little or a lotto about soup….. It’s the bedrock of almost every meal I eat at the moment and the love affair shows no sign of waning. It’s the 2nd of December and not nearly the dead of winter but the days are so short even when the sun does shine that by 4 o’clock I am dreaming of what warming nurture I can distract myself with. 

This soup came about after arriving at my sisters house of a dark and windy evening having been lost in Acton for 2 hours. I was a bit ratty and hungry but she’d said she would make soup and I was instantly calmed… the calm didn’t last long tho when she produced 3 onions, 1 enormous donkey carrot and a floppy leek and said that’s what we were working with. I was incredulous and instantly and silently rummaging in fridge draws and cupboards for lurking saviours.

 I found a droopy bunch of celery, 1 courgette and a jar of delicious cooked coco beans and just like that the sun was shining on us once more. We made this simple Autumn hued bean soup and with a crunch loaf of sourdough the 5 of us feasted till our hearts content.

Ingredients:

2 leeks

3 carrots peeled

1 courgette

1 small bunch of celery

4 garlic cloves, roughly crushed and peeled

1 jar of cooked coco beans (El Navaricco are the best)

Best quality extra virgin olive oil

1 tbs fennel seeds

1 tbs chilli flakes

2 fresh bay leaves

1 tbs white miso paste

1 tbs vegetable bouillon

-Start by slicing all the vegetables into roughly the same size. I like quite chunky slices on the diagonal

-Slowly fry the leeks for 10 mins or so in plenty of olive oil with the bay, fennel, chilli and garlic – try not to let it brown and let the leeks flop out of their little ringlets

- Once the are floppy and sticking to the bottom add the other vegetables and let them slowly fry together for about 10 mins, you may need to add a little more olive oil. This frying will help the soup to have a smoky depth of flavour as the vegetables caramelise, and if the courgettes brown a little so much the better (just not the garlic)

- Add enough water to cover the vegetables, add the miso & bouillon and bring to a fast simmer, prop a lid half on half off and turn down the heat letting it simmer for 15 mins

- Rinse the beans to get rid of most of the jellylike liquid around them although keep some as it’s an umami rich thickener for the soup.

- Add the beans and cook together for 5 mins until all is steamy and hot.

- I like mine best with crusty bread and the lots of extra olive oil and salt on the top

This soup will keep you warm and cosy for quite a few days. I had some leftovers tonight that I wilted some large leaf spinach from the garden in and topped with smoked mackerel…it was deeeelicious.

SUN SEEKER

Seeking the heat, the sun, the fire, Autumn has come and I, like a cat on a bonnet would like to bask. To let the sun dive deep into my bones and fill me with that soft low vibrational light force.

For now the fierce sting of a swim in the ever cooler ocean is there to bolster my heart beat and the lemons growing daily more yellow on their branches like a thousand rising suns keep me waking.

My ever hungry senses and a divine friend bringing me chillis from her garden found me doing what I am often to be found doing, which is doin doing pickling.

Its hardly a recipe, it’s a ritual perfect for a Sunday morning , doors wide open with the cool air of Autumn rendering you just a little bit uncomfortably cold but in total denial and unable to change circumstances unless you’d like your whole house to smell like sweet vinegar.

The slightly gelatinous slithers of chill make almost anything better – a topper for soup, daubed over slithers of  boiled ham or freckling your scrambled eggs. The liquid, in her own right is a thing of untold beauty giving fire to any salad dressing and setting your heart alight in a 4PM martini/ any AM Bloody Mary.

2 cups caster sugar

4 cups white wine vinegar

2 finely sliced garlic cloves

15 long red chillis

1tsp salt

•  Slice your chillis into long slithers on the diagonal or any way you would like them to look as you gaze at them in the jar.

• Put the chilli slithers and all the other ingredients into a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer, stirring so the sugar is dissolved.

• Once all is dissolved you can leave the pot to simmer for around 30/40 mins or until the chillis become a little translucent and you can see the liquid is a little syrupy.

• Leave to cool, then jar it up and reach for your cocktail shaker x

EASY PLEASY LABNEH BALLS

The shutters of Patiki came down for the last time (this year) on Sunday evening at the end of a real and true day of sunshine and togetherness. Wave after wave of people spilled in to be fed, brief pauses to come up for air before the next expectant tummies came to sit beside the sea with us.

It’s a pretty electric feeling to look out across the pass at the hum of happy humans eating together in the Autumn sunshine, the peaceful roar of the kitchen behind me, all the busy beauty being lovingly prepared. To stop for a moment and feel how lucky we all are to be here, those working and those dining, just to be sharing a moment of respite in the sea breeze.

In wild times we have had the solace of strangers coming to eat at our tables and the privileged distraction of each morning coming together in our little kitchen to prepare food for whoever comes to visit that day. I’m all-awash with excitement for my new found freedom and early onset nostalgia for the season we’ve just closed the doors on. 

Our fridges are a bit bulging still with surplus preserves that will sustain us through winter, pots of Summer to dip into: pickles for puckering winter meat, jams to sweeten the cold. This morning I untied the last udder of labneh hanging in the fridge, untouched by the final service and prime for the potting. Labneh is the work of a few moments in time, a teaspoon of salt mixed into a tub of natural yogurt, poured into a cloth and hung (like an udder) for about 24+ hours.

The yogurt becomes thick and sturdy, after a good 48 hours it’s the texture of soft clay and can be rolled into little ping pong balls, next rolled in dry herbs or spices (any that capture your imagination) and gently dropped into a jar then filled with olive oil to seal in. They will keep happily for weeks in your fridge, perfectly preserved by the olive oil and ready to be called on when you arrive home starving or friends come to lazily sip wine and munch little spoils of past labours in the form of perky little cheese balls and a fresh loaf of bread.

I did a little ‘how to’ video earlier this year which is in my Instagram Highlights under ‘labneh’ but here is a rough recipe, take whatever you like from it and make it your own……Yehaaaa

 INGREDIENTS

1k tub of natural whole fat yogurt

0.5 tsp sea salt

1 cup of za’atar spice

• Mix the yogurt and salt together

• Line a bowl with a tea towel and pour the yogurt mixture into the bowl

• Tie the two diagonally opposing corners of the towel in a simple knot, then the other opposing corners so you seal the mixture in the tea towel and make a kind of udder

• Hang the yogurt (by the knots) for a couple of days in your fridge or a cool corner of your house with a bowl below to catch the drips.

•  In this time the water content will drip through the cloth leaving you with a very thick clay like cheese. Creamy creamy delight.

• Make little ping pong sized balls of labneh by rolling them between your palms

• Scatter a clean plate in za’atar or dry herbs (I love the combination of thyme and black pepper) and roll the little cheese balls around to coat them.

• Carefully put the rolled balls in a jar and pour over plenty of olive oil to seal them in its preserving waters.

• They will keep for weeks and weeks in your fridge so long as the oil covers their little faces

 Well done you done done it…….

STORMY GRAPES

As the September storm clouds gather and burst, so too the grapes hang swollen and plumptious on the vine, miniature missiles raining down on parked cars, seated diners and passing goats. Huge majestic bunches in every hue from yellow to black form heavy weight canopies to shelter from the sun.

Too good to just be confined to a freezer and eaten as icy cold sugar bombas or snitched and eaten fresh from a passing bushel, I wanted to celebrate them in their roasted, caramelised glory; scattered in salt, sugar, red wine vinegar and olive oil and then roasted till they wrinkle slightly and give up a tangy molasses like juice.

I needed a fluffy tangy storm cloud to pair them with so hung a great udder of natural yogurt to make labneh. After just 24 hours mixed with a little salt and left to hang in a bundled muslin cloth, excess water dripping into a bowl beneath, the yogurt becomes like a chalky cream cheese. It develops a rich meaty umami, holding the same sway as feta in its intensity of flavour but its form is fluid, spreadable and welcoming to all who cross its path.

Use the back of your spoon to lift a great blob onto the centre of a small plate, press down on the centre and push round to the right until you’ve made a sea wall around the outside and a cavern in the centre. If you have a brightly coloured plate, this little window in the centre looks beautiful when you fill it with buttery olive oil.

I piled the roast grapes on the highlands of labneh, spooned its syrup into the central pond with some bright green oregano oil, a big spoonful of gravely dukka and a handful of lemon heavy dill. It’s a treat for the eyeballs and the taste buds and I suuuuurely hope you feel like hanging your very own udder of creamy dream one day soon.

ZHOUG

Last Sunday in the midst of a hazy post service slipstream (where I pull up a chair and plonk myself down at an unsuspecting table of friends enjoying the aftermath of their lunch), I was chatting to my pal Eddie; he was musing on the joys of cooking during lock down and the space it gave him and his waistline to indulge in the daily practice of cooking for pleasure. Hours in the day devoted to flavours of the exotica, exploring foreign climbs through the written word and the guiltless pleasure of standing over a slowly simmering pot, nostrils akimbo, nowhere else you would rather/ could rather be.

Eddies love and now total reliance on a jar of zhoug living bouncily at the forefront of his fridge and mind, lock down discovery and now life long companion, sparked a little Google mine of my own.

Zhoug is a spicy Middle Eastern salsa, a green and zesty taste-bud tickler with an underground warren of flavour. It’s a combination of fresh coriander, jalapeno chillis, cumin seeds, cardamom, garlic, salt, olive oil and lemon juice briefly blitzed and bottled; ready to be called on daily, and I had a calling….

The farmer in Santa Maria who supplies us with the very finest herbs I’ve ever known, by the grace of the lords grows coriander so I knew my foundation was strong, only a small margin for error with the smoothest take off in the world of ingredients. I whizzed up a batch first thing on a baking hot morning in the kitchen, the heat of the sun so low that it dives horizontally into the kitchen illuminating everything and sending their colours into a neighbouring strata-sphere - I too was in possession of an emerald green jar of flavour punch and man oh man it felt good.

 There had been a lot of chat surrounding the fruition of Jaimes aubergine plantlets so Id been wandering where to include them on the menu when the moment arrived. Being such fine sponges of flavour, I thought these timely aubergines and my introduction to zhoug was most likely fated, the two calling to be celebrated side by side as a dish.

I roasted and layered squishy roast aubergine with smears of labneh, slowly roast fennel laced plum tomatoes, and a sprinkle of toasted sesame, all married together with a river of Zhoug weaving in and around every inch of its cobbled together landscape. It seems love and reliance is now mine also…….

JUICY ENOUGH TO DRINK

Until you are under the cosh of the fiery heat of Summer, its quite hard to take your tummy brain to a place where you can totally understand the necessity of a salad so sweet and juicy you could almost drink it.  

As always, nature gives us exactly what we most desire, precisely when we do! The peaches growing on Jaime’s land are a deep shade of fuchsia, hanging so heavy on the tree that the fruit sits supported by the soil, the branch only serving as an aboulic life line, offering no facilitation of a dance in the breeze on a vaguely vertical branch.

The tiered land is swathed in citrus trees interspersed with peaches and highways of grape vines running like arteries across the slip of sun-drenched land that he tends. Arriving at his Olivar is to stumble across a paradise of peace and rural husbandry. Each orange tree is invisibly tended to perfection, the wisdoms of past generations played out across every branch. Between the trees sporadic pockets of vegetable plantlets live out their life, planted in loving harmony with the rhythm of the sun moon and stars.

After no more than 2 minutes of arriving I was dripping in the syrupy pink juices of the finest peach I’ve had the pleasure of tasting. The fruit so ripe you have to grapple with the flesh as it falls off the pip and down your hand, head ducking down to catch the juice, a tactic played out many a time to catch the molten waterfall of ice cream running down the outside of its cone.

 We meandered amongst vast carpets of wild carrot flowers, admiring every inch of growth and planning for the fruits of later in the season. Tomato and pepper plants shrouded in a thin film of sulphur powder grew bulbous and bursting beneath the vines, melons took shape underneath their adventurous sprawl of leaves and little aubergine plantlets giving growth everything they’ve got before the fruit grows heavy against its frame.

All the while, my peach pip growing sticky in my hand, thoughts travelling down the familiar road towards lunch and how to justify eating 50 more peaches before it was time to go to sleep.

The conclusion was a lightening fast assembly of icy cold shards of watermelon, over ripe peach and the mixed aromatics of purple and green basil, dill, mint and parsley - all heavily dressed and tumbled together in salt, olive oil and red wine vinegar – left to sit together for a minute or two, their juices melting into the oil, flavours mingling and sliding into one another, before layering with wafer thin slices of feta, fresh pickled onions and compulsory extra extra extra olive oil – eaten whilst dribbling, dripping and dunking fistfulls of charred sourdough.

REMOULLADE

Remoullade is a juicy, sludgy indulgent slaw of celeriac and thick mustard heavy mayonnaise. The taste of holidays and picnics past, it sits alongside and is for infinitum insperably combined with my first ever experience of riellette in Paris, another French expression of how mouth poppingly good food can be.  The insurmountable fatty melty pleasure of this duo piled high on fresh baguette with a view across a thousand romance heavy roof tops is deeply etched on my tummy and mind.

Chasing the thrill of Paris caught through the window of a real Parisienne home, we’d climbed an endless stairwell to a friends new apartment. The cool factor was as lofty as the sky line, not only did he actually LIVE in Paris but we’d popped up into an apartment setting straight from a Disney musical grand finale; sun setting peachy pink across every roof top, mercurial bannisters weaving their patterns horizontally across the front of all the achingly sophisticated French piede a terres, and there we were too dunking crusty doughy baguette into the colourless quagmires of remoullad and rillette. It was all the unctuous richesse of foreign shores, the thrill of a culinary ‘first time’ and fleeting glimpse at what

I’ve made a lighter crisper take on the remoulade of my Parisienne hay days, something juicy and textured to eat with the oily richness of hot smoked salmon, its a combination of all that lies below with whatever quantity adjustments make it sing loudest for you.

• Home made mayonnaise (see past post on its make up and ingredients), with a hearty douse of Dijon mustard

• Mung bean sprouts

• Granny Smith apple

• Currants

• Dill fronds and seed heads

• Oily rich hot smoked salmon

STEAMY CATCH OF THE DAY

BBQ’d fish is for the beach: a little sand caked, often overly charcoaled, congregation always anticipating perfection and reliably famished by the time it’s vaguely ready, a collective jig when the fish is successfully flipped with found sticks posturing as pincers and everyone’s overawed. Then we have the fish of holidays past in which we loose ourselves of a chilly February day dream: grilled on fiery hot coals amidst the maelstrom of a miniature caf clinging to the edge of a fraught fish market, heat sodden humidity holding the thick smell of woodsmoke fast to your ever inch - with 0 aplomb your whole and perfectly carbonated fish arrives in timely synchronicity with your collective heatstroke + olives, flat breads, harissa and a mountain of sweet oily chips - THATS what my dreams are made of.

Then there is a different sort of fish, a fish so fresh you cant even smell it as its wetness meets your nose. Dorset hake, right here right here, fresh as a babe and out the sea on a slightly stormy Spring morning.

The countryside is steaming, great weighty clouds emptying their gunnels onto the warm land, no sooner soaked than flooded with sunshine and left to steam as the green gets greener and all of plant life sighs and settles into its new found saturation.

Subconsciously inspired by this spectacle and the sweetness of baby vegetables flying on the wings of Spring, I decided to steam the hake atop a bed of gently simmered carrots, leeks and celery – a little salt and olive oil and a lid on slow simmer kind of thing - then plenty of parsley and the fish laid on top, lid on again on a low tide heat and then it was done. The flesh shines white as a Hollywood smile, the true essence of the fish is preserved and untampered, as delicate as the finest lady. Then comes a hearty dousing of loose, herb spiked mayonnaise, spoons, forks, crusty bread and our plates obediently mirroring the steam rising beyond the window.

PEA, MINT, FETA DIPPER

Fresh peas in their pod or freshly pulled out the freezer, both worth like a dream tho fresh are an all day dance party in celebration of Spring and all that grows from the soil we walk.

Sweet, starchy little orbs blanched and refreshed in icy water to hang on to their in pod un tampered youthfulness, no wrinkles or colour dampening for these babies - blended with feta, mint, lemon zest and lots of nutty olive oil.

Man cannot live on hummus alone, other dips need time to shine their bright green sunlight, so here is this guy. You could replace the feta with toasted almond flakes if you wanted to remove the dairy, or add them in as well as the feta for even more spangle – crisp dunker, bruschetta pile up or an honourable crudité accompaniment, this delicious mulch is a born beauty queen, you can take her anywhere.  

PEA, FETA, MINT DIP

600g frozen petit pois or fresh peas out of their pod

200g feta

1 unwaxed lemon

1 tsp salt

black pepper

2 cups olive oil

1 big bunch of mint

pinch of dry chilli flakes

1. Bring a pan of water to a fierce boil, add the peas and cook for about 5 mins. You do not want to cook them too much or they will loose their brilliant green 

2. Drain the peas and refresh under cold water to halt the cooking and stop them going wrinkly

3. Shake the peas dry, keep a handful to the side and add the rest to your magimix with the salt, pepper, chilli flakes, feta and zest of the lemon

4. With the blade running slowly add 1.5 cups of the olive oil (in the same way as you would when making mayonnaise), you may not need all of it

5. The mixture will start to become creamy, throw in the mint leaves and the juice of the lemon, blend just enough to incorporate and check if you need more salt or lemon juice.  I like to keep it quite course so would stop blending at this stage but you can keep going if you want a smoother dip.

6. Spread it out onto a plate with a well in the middle to fill with olive oil, scatter the peas you kept to the side on top, and sprinkle with sea salt/ bit more olive oil.

COOKIE DOUGH BALLS

Easiest peasiest raw vegan cookie dough balls, full to the brim with good fats and proteins, as squishy, doughy and sustaining as a great ball of cookie dough but without any of the refined sugar, butter or flour.

Rocket fuel for all the day through, (especially atop you’re ice cream Sunday), roll em the size of marbles, ping pong balls or a great chunky sausage to slice into with coffee - like one might their far more learned relation the Italian chocolate Salame.

This is just a basic guide, all the ingredients can be traded in for another of a similar ilk. Cashews are especially sweet and creamy but you can use any nut, pecans would be great - date syrup can be replaced with another - maple , coconut, rice, prune, and you can pimp them with dried fruits, spices or cacao nips for choc chip surrogate.

HEMP/ MACCA RAW VEGAN COOKIE DOUGH BALLS

1.5 cups coconut flour

1 cup rolled oats

3 tbs shelled hemp seeds

1tbs macca powder

1 tsp sea salt flakes

1 cup raw cashews

1tbs vanilla bean paste

300g date molasses

70g coconut oil

1.  In a Magimix, blend the oats to a fine flour

2.  Add the rest of the dry ingredients and blend till completely combined

3.  As the blade runs slowly pour in the vanilla paste, date syrup and coconut oil

4.  Keep the blade spinning for a few minutes until everything is completely smooth and comes together

5. Roll them out one by one in your palms

6. Keep them in a jar in your fridge or freezer for as long as you can resist them