The well-loved cookbook challenge #6

Hearty winter soups to keep out the cold

For the benefit of new subscribers who are unfamiliar with the well-loved cookbook challenge it’s about revisiting the bespattered books on our shelves, the ones we go back to time after time.

It stems from one of my most popular posts where everyone piled in to share the books they loved most and prompted the idea of cooking a recipe each month from a book that’s 10 years old or older.

It’s a regular free feature on the website but it you’d like my exclusive weekly food and wine tips as well as other exclusive content you can sign up for as little as £5.

This month’s subject is soup - a few days later than usual but I’m sure it’s in your current repertoire considering the chilly weather we’ve been having

You might think ‘why soup?’ though when it’s one of the easiest things to buy off the shelf. Because it never tastes a fraction as good as the homemade version is the answer. And won’t be anything like as healthy, especially if you make your own stock as a base. Or as economical - you can run up a soup from almost any stray leftovers.

When I first started to cook, I remember, it was all about smooth soups. I regularly made watercress soup, leek and potato soup and carrot and artichoke soup (an excellent recipe of Delia’s and one of the few ways to serve Jerusalem artichokes without a concomitant outbreak of farting.)

But pleasant though they were they weren’t wildly exciting, a swirl of cream being more common than attention-grabbing toppings in those days. And based more commonly on classic English and French recipes than the satisfyingly adventurous soups we have now like laksa, ramen and tom yum.

Bisques and Provençal fish soup aside I’m not sure I don’t prefer chunky soups to smooth ones, not least because they constitute a meal. How about you? Are you in the smooth or chunky camp or does it. depend on the time of year?

Do you even need to consult a dedicated soup book? The trouble with this compendium approach it that it’s fairly easy for a soup to be included purely on the grounds of being different rather than being a great recipe. And there’s almost too much choice.

That said I am very fond of my copy of Hannah Wright’s Soups which was first published in 1985 and edited by the admirable Jill Norman. It’s written by an author who started off as a chef, a career tragically cut-off when she went blind but who admirably reinvented herself as a cookery writer.

It’s exceptionally well written and helpfully divided up by ingredient with loads of suggestions for variations. There are some intriguing recipes for, for example, cabbage soup with a meat crust and Potage de Père Tranquil (purée of lettuce with sour cream) “a delicately flavoured soup which would be wasted on palates dulled by too much alcohol or nicotine” as she rather nicely puts it. There’s also a recipe for a soup I’ve always wanted to make - Italian wedding soup. (Have you?) You can buy Hannah’s book from Abe Books from £3.15.

You could also of course go to a cookery writer you like and make one of their soup recipes, particularly if they have a chapter dedicated to soup which demonstrates genuine enthusiasm for the subject

For example there’s a great chapter on winter and summer soups in Caroline Conran’s marvellous Sud de France which won the André Simon Award in 2012 including a chickpea and spinach soup I really like the look of and a crab soup with fennel and saffron.

If you’re more veg-inclined Anna Jones second book A Modern Way to Eat (2014) has a chapter called ‘A bowl of broth, soup or stew’ which includes a hugely useful matrix of how to create a soup (One Soup, 1000 variations). The recipes which include walnut miso broth with udon noodles, lemony lentil and crispy kale soup and restorative coconut broth look delicious too. (I sometimes wonder why I have so many cookery books I never cook from … You too?)

From my own book An Appetite for Ale which you can currently buy second hand from Oxfam for just £1.99 you could pick my mushroom and mustard soup (even though it’s a smooth soup) and my clever stepdaughter’s carrot borscht (see top photo) which adds a welcome note of roundness and sweetness to the beetroot classic. Both online on my website matchingfoodandwine.com.

You don’t get much in the way of soups in restaurants these days so it makes sense to make them yourself.

What are your favourite soup recipes and which well-loved books do you get your soup inspo from?

And do let me know what you make ….

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