Soup art

So there I was, about to attempt a fancy, swirly sourcream pattern in some beetroot soup when I realised that the blobs had shaped themselves into a cute Scottie dog - or should that be a West Highland terrier? Hmmm, I thought. You can get coffee art, so why not (accidental) soup art? I've invented soup art!

Then I remembered that soup art already exists - in restaurants. That's what they do.

Oh well, it was still extremely tasty and a rather vibrant pinky-purple to boot.

And there's a sneaky, hidden ingredient to make this a proper winter warmer... vodka! Only a teeny bit, mind - 2 teaspoons per serving. Just enough to give a little kick.

But, seeing as I'd like to enter this recipe for the Weekend Herb Blogging event (hosted by Kalyn's Kitchen), let's concentrate on the beetroot and what it can do for you, as I think we all know what the vodka does in large enough quantities. And how.

After rummaging through a couple of books*, I found out that:

• Beetroots are an excellent source of folic acid and a very good source of manganese and potassium.


• However, don't throw away those beet greens - they're even more nutritious because they're richer in calcium, iron and vitamins A and C, as well as containing magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin B6.


• Beetroots have long been used for medicinal purposes, mostly to treat liver disorders, because they stimulate the liver's detoxification process (bringing us back to that vodka...).


• The amazing colour comes from a pigment called betacyanin, which is apparently a powerful cancer-fighting agent.


• Beet fibre has been shown to have 'a favourable effect on bowel function' (such a lovely way of describing it).


• Those last two points mean that beetroot is thought to help protect against colon cancer.

So there you go. Beetroot - an all-round winner in the 'good for you' stakes, as well as being pretty to look at (once cooked, admittedly) and a pleasure to eat. What more could you possibly want?

Tipsy beetroot soup from A Paradiso Year (Autumn and Winter Cooking) by Dennis Cotter

Serves 6 to 8 people

You'll need:

800g beetroot
3 onions
6 cloves garlic
half a bulb fennel or 1 stick celery
olive oil
100g potato
1,500ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon fresh dill, fennel or lovage
large pinch cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to season
vodka
sourcream to serve

1. Cook the beetroot in boiling water until tender, then peel under cold running water and chop coarsely.

2. Meanwhile, chop the onions, garlic and fennel or celery, heat some olive oil in a pot and cook them until the onions are soft.

3. Chop the potato and add it to the onions, along with the beetroot, the stock and your chosen herb. Bring this to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, or until the potato starts to break down. Add the cayenne pepper and the balsamic vinegar. Blend the soup to a smooth purée, season well with salt and pepper.

4. Pour the soup into the bowls and put a teaspoon or two of vodka into each serving. Then drizzle a little bit of sourcream over the top and serve.

Cook's notes

I'd maybe double the amount of potato suggested but that's just because I like a really thick soup.

Vodka - I tried the soup both with and without it, and it works both ways. So if you don't want alcohol in your lunchtime soup, don't worry, it's still delicious.

*The fantastic beetroot facts came from The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods by Dr Michael Murray and Dr Joseph Pizzorno, with Laura Pizzorno.

Camera class 101

Note to self: please, please, please remember to check the settings on the camera before taking any pics. Otherwise you'll end up with slightly blurry pics of your very last cup of fennel soup and will be left with no other choice but to post it on your blog because the recipe's so darn good it can't possibly wait for another day. Nnnnnrgh!

Fennel and almond soup from Little Red Gooseberries by Daphne Lambert

Serves 4

You'll need:

4 fennel bulbs
1 leek
50g butter
1.2 litres (2 pints) vegetable stock
4 tablespoons ground almonds
Salt and pepper

1. Cut the fennel leaves from the bulb and save for decoration. Remove the tough outer layers of the fennel bulb and chop the remaining bulb into small pieces. Remove the outer leaves from the leek and slice into rounds.

2. Melt the butter in a thick-bottomed pan and stir in the fennel and leek. Sweat gently for 5 minutes. Add the stock and bring to to boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Add the ground almonds and cook uncovered for a further 10 minutes.

3. Cool slightly then blend the soup until smooth. Heat through and divide between 4 bowls.

4. Serve garnished with the chopped fennel leaves (although I used some lovely purple watercress I found in the farmers market last weekend).

Cook's notes

As per usual, there was something I tinkered with or, in this case, left out because I didn't have it :-) The recipe specifies that 2 teaspoons of pastis should be added at step 3. So if you like a stronger aniseedy flavour, go for it. However, although I love fennel both raw and cooked, I dislike stronger aniseed flavours like liquorice, so I was perfectly happy with my non-pastis version of this soup.

I'm sure it's possible to cut the butter down for this recipe but it does add a gorgeous rounded-out flavour that complements the fennel and almonds rather well, so I'm loathe to mess with it.

Eat your destiny

Time to use up some of that produce I dragged home from the Temple Bar Food Market the other day…

First up is some lovely-looking kale from McNally’s Farm, North Co. Dublin. The lady at the stall suggested that all I needed to do to keep the kale fresh was trim the stalk ends and plonk the lot in a jam jar of water - no need to bother with the fridge.


And she was right. The kale was a bit limp after the trip home but perked up when I gave it the recommended treatment. That's osmosis at work, folks.

Unusually for me, there was no dithering over what to do with this bunch of kale. It was always destined to become soup.

A couple of weeks ago, we were in Limerick to visit some good friends, M. and S.. S. is also a keen cook, so talk inevitably turned to favourite recipes, new cookbook finds and what we'd both been making recently. Unsurpisingly, I raved about Dorie Greenspan at great length. When I finally stopped to draw breath, S. took the chance to recommend an excellent recipe from The Soup Kitchen, a book we'd both picked up for a song in the bookshop bargain section. No idea why it was going so cheap as it's a great book, full of interesting recipes - ranging from the simple and comforting to the ridiculously complicated/slightly intimidating... Oh... Maybe that's it.

Anyhoo, colcannon soup has been on my hitlist ever since that chat with S.. It's one of the easier recipes from the book - much more my style. But simple doesn't mean that it isn't good. And it makes the perfect lunchtime meal to combat the chillier weather that's creeping in.

Sometimes less messing around leads to better results.

Colcannon soup - recipe donated by Darina Allen to The Soup Kitchen, edited by Annabel Buckingham and Thomasina Miers

(Serves 4 to 6)

For the soup, you'll need:

55g butter
450g floury potatoes (I used Roosters), peeled and diced
120g onions diced
salt and pepper to taste
1.1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
130ml creamy milk

For the buttered cabbage/kale, you'll need:

450g Savoy cabbage/kale
40g butter

1. Melt the 55g of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. When it foams, add the potatoe and onion and toss in the butter until well coated. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and sweat on a gentle heat for 6 to 10 minutes. Add the stock, increase the heat and cook until the vegetables are soft.

2. Meanwhile, make the buttered cabbage/kale. Remove any tough stalks or leave and then cut into fine shreds. Put 2 to 3 tablespoons of water into a wide saucepan with 20g of butter and a pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, add the cabbage/kale and toss constantly over a high heat, then cover for a few minutes. Toss again, add salt and pepper as needed and then stir in the remaining butter.

3. Purée the potato and onion mixture in a food processor/blender and return to a clean pan. Add the cooked cabbage/kale to the soup. Taste and adjust for seasoning. Thin with milk to the required consistency.

Cook's notes

OK, I did mess with it a little bit. Colcannon is traditionally a creamy mashed potato dish with cooked cabbage mixed in. Kale is sometimes substituted but cabbage seems to be more usual.

And, when I weighed the kale, it turned out I only had about 250g rather than the 450g specified. Oh well, I could always bulk out the greens with some spinach that only had a couple of days left before it started going mushy. But it turned out that I wouldn't need it. Although the kale cooked down, it was still pretty bulky and filled the soup nicely (see pic above). So I'm not sure what 450g would look like. Maybe it would be more cabbage/kale with a bit of soup at the bottom of the bowl.

There's a lot of butter in the recipe. I balked at just how much to start with but then shrugged my shoulders and thought,'Try it this way first, then adjust later (and go for a run in the meantime)...' So if I work out a way of reducing the fat without compromising the buttery flavour, I'll update this post.

A cup full of sunshine

Actually, I think it looks more like an egg yolk surrounded by the white of the mug in the above picture. But that's a loooong post title.

A weekend trip to York for a christening meant we only returned to Ireland very, very late last night. After sleeping in and still feeling groggy, a trudge to the shops for supplies wasn't really on the cards, so I had to russle something up for lunch from whatever I could find lying around - preferably something that didn't require a lot of effort.

Which led to...

Garlicky butternut squash soup, adapted from Soup Kitchen

You'll need:

1 butternut squash

2 or more unpeeled cloves of garlic (I used 5, but it depends how garlicky you want to go)

Some olive oil

1 pint of veggie stock

Salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/ gas mark 6. Slice the butternut squash into segments and place them in a roasting tin, along with at least two cloves of garlic (or more to taste.)

2. Toss the squash and garlic with some olive oil and then put the tin in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the squash is soft and browned around the edges.

3. Remove from the oven and allow to cool a bit.

4. Scoop out the squash flesh, pop the garlic cloves out of their skins and add them to a blender, along with the pint of veggie stock. Blitz.

5. Adjust the seasoning to taste and reheat the soup if necessary.

6. Serve.