vietnamese chicken noodle soup (pho)

 Vietnamese chicken noodle soup (pho)

That I love Asian noodles I think is probably a given. A Vietnamese-style pho (pronounced "fuh") is one of my favourite meals, especially if I have any leftover roast meat to use up. So if you're thinking ahead to Sunday's roast chicken lunch, think how good Monday's supper will be (particularly if you use the carcass to make a stock).

turkish-style cucumber and tomato soup

turkish-style cucumber and tomato soup

So much for the expected heatwave. Oh well, I love this simple soup, which is slightly tart and refreshing on a hot day (rain or not and rather nice at the end of summer too. Don't be deceived by its somewhat sludgy appearence!

mul naengmyun: korean cold buckwheat noodle soup with beef

korean cold buckwheat noodle soup with beef (mul naengmyun)

Years ago, working in New York I loved the fact that my office in Manhattan was within toddling distance of Koreatown and lots of interesting places to have lunch or dinner. I was intrigued by the fact that many of the restaurants would have displays of fake plastic food in the windows so you could tell what kind of food they sold. As somone who has always adored kitsch, it was often difficult me to leave these restaurants without a piece of plastic food as a souvenir.

fragrant and soothing: thai coconut chicken soup (tom kha gai)

Thai coconut chicken soup (tom kha gai)

Tom kha gai is a rich coconut broth infused with galangal (kha), lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, topped with chicken (gai) and seasoned with fish sauce, tart with lime juice.

a witches brew soup

a witches brew soup

Of all the food I cooked at Borough Market's demonstration kitchen suitable for a children's Halloween party, the one that got the most visceral reaction was my Witches Brew soup. Unfortunately that reaction was a unanimous "ugh". Where, oh where did it all go wrong? I suspect I was a victim of my own making.

in memory of my father: seafood laksa lemak (malaysian spicy coconut noodle soup)

seafood laksa lemak (malaysian spicy coconut noodle soup)

If you are regular reader of this blog, you will know that I often talk about my father, Henry, a larger-than-life character who taught me so much about how to eat and enjoy food, although not about how to cook. (Frankly Henry's cooking skills generally served as a warning to others).

caldo verde: portuguese pork, potato and kale soup

caldo verde
(Portuguese pork, potato and kale soup)

I feel as if I am working with a northern-accented voiceover at the moment: "Day 35 in the Marmaduke Scarlet house. Rachel is in the kitchen making soup again." You get the picture. I am continuing to make soup for my friend Chris. Things seem to be going quite well; Chris seems healthy and he certainly hasn't lost his appetite; well at least not for soup.

a winter warmer: felicity cloake's perfect borscht

borscht soup

In a bizarre reversal of the Goldilocks story, a couple in Siberia, spending a night in their holiday cottage, were disturbed by the sounds of breaking glass and the pitter-patter of enormous clawed feet. A bear was breaking and entering, encouraged by the smell of a pan of borscht that had been left on the stove to cool.

seafood chowder

seafood chowder

For the foreseeable future I shall be cooking for a friend of mine who is quite unwell. But while Chris is poorly, he hasn't lost his appetite at all; just his usual ease in swallowing. Feeling a bit helpless, I offered to make him soup and his eyes lit up. Poor old Chris had been living off baked beans and scrambled eggs, so he welcomed my intervention.

This arrangement is brilliant for both of us: Chris gets healthy, strengthening soups and I get to try out old favourites and make new discoveries. One of my first discoveries is that I don't hate seafood chowder at all.

jerusalem artichoke soup with smoked oyster gremolata

jerusalem artichoke soup with smoked oyster gremolata

If you haven't planned on your Christmas menu, than you there is still time to rush and buy some Jerusalem artichokes. How can you not love the Jerusalem artichoke, which is neither from Jerusalem nor is an artichoke? Well if those reasons aren't thrilling enough, they are said to have all sorts of wonderful health benefits too (which may not be what you're thinking about at this time of the year, but you may well thank me later!

roasted beetroot soup with curry spices and coconut

beetroot rasam

In trying to overcome my childhood trauma of my father’s favourite sandwich (pickled beetroot and piccalilli), I have spent years trying to love beetroot. To my horrified taste buds, much maligned beetroot tasted of sweet mud. Yet I have hated feeling as if I have been missing out on something, so I decided to persist. It's been a very long time in coming!

pumpkin and parmesan soup revisited

pumpkin and parmesan soup

When I don't post a recipe on this blog, it is highly unlikely that it is ever because I am not eating. Heaven forbid! It is simply because much of the time I fall back on recipes that I have blogged about before. OK, sometimes it is because I actually forget to photograph things in the feeding frenzy. On other occasions I have cooked, but the photograph I have taken looks so unappealing that even our voracious and undiscerning young foxes would turn up their noses.

a cooling summer courgette soup

a cooling summer courgette soup

A cooling summer soup is a welcome way to use up a summer glut of courgettes. This vegetable's beautiful delicate flavour is perfect in a chilled soup and I thought would be a really good way of cooling down on a baking hot day. I've read somewhere that you can cool yourself down by not just drinking cool drinks but eating cold food. I think this may be right - well it certainly worked for me!

green again! wild leek soup

wild leek soup

I'm feeling a little bit green again, It is partly to do with the fact that I have been doing a bit of less-than-intrepid foraging in my back garden for the past month or so, but also because of the unseasonably damp weather conditions here in England.

I mean to say - a hail storm in May? Monsoon conditions in London again? Just like last year, it has started to rain; this does not bode well for the summer. But at least I can take my mind off things and ease my sustainable conscience (as well as reducing food miles), by making a thrifty soup from a deliciously dark home-made and very wobbly chicken stock (made from last Sunday's roast chicken carcass) and my foraged wild leeks. 

hallelujah! nigel slater's chicken pho soup and bit of a roast chicken revelation!

Nigel Slater's chicken pho soup

You may have been aware of my recent tribulations when my taste buds took a bit of an involuntary sabbatical. I was beside myself, they hadn't even left a forwarding address. I'm not entirely sure where they went nor what they did. Curses!

I can only hope that they had better have enjoyed themselves and that it was all worth it; (perhaps with the taste bud equivalent of louche living and dancing on the tables) because god knows I was miserable without them!

from ennui to delight: ottolenghi's hot and sour mushroom soup

Yotam Ottolenghi's hot and sour
mushroom soup

I associate a loss of appetite with Victorian invalid food. Blimey, a diet of bread and milk, beef tea and calves foot jelly would have been less likely to allow me to develop an "interesting" condition and more likely to have me fighting fit in a trice; anything to avoid having to eat such nastiness. That's not to say that I don't agree with Mrs Beeton's assertion that "gruel served in a tumbler is more appetising than when served in a basin or cup and saucer". What she fails to mention is that the tumbler should be empty and the gruel should be nowhere in sight!

jerusalem artichoke soup with hazelnut pesto and serrano ham and blue cheese toasts

jerusalem artichoke soup with hazelnut pesto
and serrano ham and blue cheese toasts

If you have only ever topped your soup with a just few croutons, a swirl of cream and a dusting of herbs, then perhaps you might consider a nut topping. If you have only used a nut pesto with pasta or on crostini or bruschetta, again I would suggest you might like to think again, because I think I have just the soup for you and just the nut topping!

a winter-warming broccoli and blue cheese soup

broccoli and blue cheese soup

Spring may well be around the corner, but London skies are resolutely grey and there is a damp chill in the air. I need to eat something comforting; something that will warm me up on a cold day. Which makes it a soup day and if I could just wait another few weeks I would be able to harvest the rampant wild leeks in my back garden. But I can't wait. I want soup and I want it now. And it needs to be green!

Beautiful cruciferous broccoli isn't just a vegetable to be served as a side dish. It's bitter-sweet intensely green flavour works beautifully in soup. Broccoli also has an affinity for strong salty flavours, so adding blue cheese is a marriage made in soup heaven! 

winter warming pea and parsnip soup with bacon

pea and parsnip soup

I have mentioned before, that while I adore parsnips, I am not always convinced by parsnip soups awash with curry spices, although Nigel Slater's spicy parsnip soup is one of my absolute favourites. I was on a mission to create a parsnip soup recipe that didn't include the usual suspects.

Did you know that peas and parsnips are kissing cousins in the world of flavour compounds? No me neither. But it turns out that they both contain one of those completely unpronounceable compounds, which accounts for their affinity with each other. (OK, its 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine - aren't you glad you asked!)

beauty and the beast: celeriac and pear soup with bacon

beauty and the beast soup:
celeriac, pear and bacon

I have always liked a good fairytale and Beauty and the Beast was always one of my favourites, particularly illustrated by Anne Anderson. I thought the name was a perfect description for a celeriac, pear and bacon soup that contains, as I have mentioned before, one of the ugliest of all vegetables (the grotesque celeriac). Beauty and the Beast perfectly describes a soup where the flavours marry beautifully even if it isn't that pretty.