On a cold day, there’s nothing better than a hot bowl of soup.  Thick with a variety of colourful vegetables and, ribollita is just the sort of soup I had in mind when the weather took a chilly turn last week.

Ribollita is a traditional (peasant) Tuscan soup whose name translates as ‘reboiled’.  As it sits on the stove for a few days, being reheated and dipped into whenever one is hungry, it develops amazing flavour.  True Tuscan ribollita goes through several stages: the soupy first stage, a starchier second stage where the soup is layered with some stale bread and then it turns into almost a hash.  This is documented beautifully over at Hedonia, complete with gorgeous photographs, for the curious amongst you.

As much as I love a good culinary adventure, I just wanted soup.  No, I wanted very good soup, so I elected to follow Skye Gyngell’s recipe which replaces the bread element of the soup with farro.  Except that I couldn’t find farro, even after making a special trip to Waitrose—no hardship, I got to pick up some of their new cupcakes—so I substituted another ancient grain: spelt.  And as I had a bag of dried borlotti beans kicking around the larder, I used those instead of buying a bag of cannellini beans.  Channelling my inner peasant-girl!

Incidentally, if you have difficulty cooking dried beans, then soak them for up to 24 hours, rather than just overnight.  I know, I know… forward planning is required, but if your beans are a bit on the elderly side (alas the expiry date on the package is next to useless where pulses are concerned) then they’ll need an extra-long soak to enable them to cook all the way through.  I have not-so-fond memories of spending hours boiling chickpeas, only for them to remain horribly hard and mealy in the centre.  After trying the bicarb trick, the flour-paste trick, and cooking them in bottled water (in case my tap water was too hard) I soaked the beans for a full 24 hours and, voila!  Perfectly cooked chickpeas.

But back to the soup.  Straight after cooking had finished it was good.  After sitting for a few hours and being snacked on, it was great.  Reheated the next afternoon for lunch it was absolutely divine.  Intensely savoury, rich, filling and just bloody gorgeous, really.  It still tasted fresh and wholesome, which is quite remarkable after such a long cooking time.

It vastly amuses me that an old and thrifty Tuscan peasant soup is now so fashionable.  But I guess bold flavours will never go out of fashion, and now that I’ve discovered it, I’d never want to be without this soup…

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Despite the unpredictable weather we’ve had this summer, there have been some truly glorious berries and fruit available. Succulent strawberries have been a particular favourite with us and this strawberry soup, inspired by Aran’s recipe, is a great way to showcase them.

I love the purity of the soup as Aran served it, but I wanted to gently spice it to further enhance the flavour. Not enough to be able to pick out the flavours of the individual spices, but enough to give a hint of the Orient with each spoonful.

The soup is endlessly versatile. Reduced, it makes a fantastic sauce for ice-cream sundaes or other plated desserts. You can add some gelatine and create beautiful summer-berry jellies, or go all Heston and create tiny cubes of strawberry jelly to scatter over salads with some gorgonzola. I’ve played with textures a little and added a sprinkle of crunchy strawberry granita for a bit of contrast.

This is the perfect dinner party dessert. Everything is prepared in advance and all you have to do is tumble a few berries into deep soup plates, add a scoop of frozen yoghurt, sprinkle granita on top, and then pour the ruby red soup around.

Beautiful.

This post is my entry for this month’s Waiter, There’s Something… event, hosted by Jeanne. The theme is Berried Treasure.

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It’s always a good sign when the very first recipe in a cookbook has me champing at the bit to get into the kitchen.

Rachel Allen is Ireland’s answer (or indeed antidote) to Nigella Lawson. She’s fresh, natural and engaging onscreen and is quite clearly passionate about her food (which is a good thing, since she married into the famous Irish Allen food-dynasty). Yes, she has an enviable lifestyle with a fabulous house—presuming that that they do indeed film in her real house and not a staged set in a warehouse as The Times revealed about Nigella Express—and what appears to be very much the perfect family, but somehow it doesn’t grate on me. Naturally, opinions are divided on her, as is the case with Nigella these days. My only further comment on the matter is that it’s much easier to relate to someone who cooks whilst wearing jeans and dog-eared trainers than someone who is baking a bread pudding at midnight whilst wearing a designer party dress!

The hallmarks of Rachel’s Favourite Food For Living are: straightforward recipes, bold flavours—although there are some more refined and delicate dishes which I’m keen to try—well-illustrated—I’ve only found one unillustrated recipe in the book—and well-written recipes. Unlike some other big-name British authors, Rachel has actually specified the appropriate size of baking tin (or other vessel) to use in recipes and doesn’t simply say “a knob” of ginger. She actually gives the rough size that it should be. While this isn’t a big deal for more experienced cooks, beginners and novices need this sort of information otherwise they’re left wide open to recipe failures and then throwing up their hands in dismay and never bothering again.

The food styling is a little n the twee side of things but that seems to work in its favour making the recipes seem achievable and the book as a whole welcoming and cosy. I’d have to say that the production values of Rachel’s books have come a long way from her first book which felt dated almost as soon as it was published.

Those of you who are watching your weight will be pleased to hear that there is a chapter full of low(er) fat recipes and to be perfectly honest, you can easily slash the oil and butter content in the majority of the savoury recipes without feeling at all deprived.

Many of the recipes come with suggestions for variations and handy hints if the recipe features an uncommon preparation or cooking method. As a little bonus, there are a few essays scattered through the book on subjects such as choosing wine; chocolate; the perfect cup of tea, and others. I thought that this was a nice little touch, and it makes the book eminently suitable for bed-time reading.

My must make recipe list includes:

• Carpaccio of Fish with Peppers and Herbs
• Chocolate and Hazelnut Caramel Bars
• Asian Chicken Salad
• Arabian Spiced Rack of Lamb with Couscous
• Stacked Chocolate Fudge Squares with White Chocolate and Raspberries
• Roast Loin of Pork stuffed with Prunes and Apples with a Calvados Sauce

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I remember a time when carrot and coriander soup used to be considered almost exotic. Sure, Brits made carrot soup, but coriander? Now that was fancy. These days, carrot and coriander suffers from being commonplace and supermarket shelves and chillers groan under the weight of bland and boring cartons of soup. Frankly, it’s embarrassing for the carrots.

It seems to be a case of extremes–either the flavour of the carrot is dulled by copious amounts of cream or all salt has been omitted in the name of virtuous health. Where has the happy medium gone? Where is my delicious soup? I want my tastebuds to sit up and pay attention when I eat a bowl of soup, not sigh sadly.

As the old axiom says, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” So I did. Twice, in fact, as it was so good. And even better than that, my recipe is zero points on the Weight Watchers programme, which is a very good thing since Dave and I are guzzling it like little piggie-wiggies.

This is a triple-coriander soup–I used ground coriander, coriander stalks and finished off with a handful of chopped leaves. This wasn’t just an exercise in frugality–the stalks add a certain je ne sais quoi to the soup. Still a coriander flavour, but different somehow. I used ground cumin because my old flatmate in Glasgow always threw it in, and it really is a perfect partner for coriander anyway. Garlic because… well, what is soup without garlic? The ginger brings out the natural sweetness of the carrots and the chilli just kicks it up a notch.

Finally, carrot and coriander is exotic again!

PS For more vegetable–not necessarily vegetarian, though–soups, visit Soup’s On! at A Veggie Venture.

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Despite the slightly twee name, this soup really does lift the spirits. Well, it has that effect on Nigella and myself; I can’t guarantee that it will cheer anyone else up though! The soup is very quick and simple to prepare – the recipe can be found here.

Next time I’d reduce the oil to two and a bit tablespoons – as you can see from the picture, it was a little too oily. It did taste wonderful though! The courgette flavour came through nicely and was enhanced by the rice studded lemon and chicken broth. All in all, this was a great lunch and there’s plenty left over for snacking…

This is my belated contribution to Alberto’s proposal for a blog cooking day – sorry Alberto! I dreamt up this soup a few years ago out of sheer necessity (i.e. the cupboards were bare) and liked it so much that I’ve made it a few times since.

Its quite a thick soup, although easily thinned down with chicken stock to suit individual tastes), and has a lovely velvety texture created by the pureed beans and leeks which is broken up nicely by the reserved beans. As an added bonus, its quite healthy too! The soup can be made with either chicken or vegetable stock – chicken stock does give a much richer flavour and seems to create a nicer texture too.

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Its been very grey and dismal recently. I’ve been waking up each morning to find that its pouring with rain. Perfect weather for making soup, really. I decided to be ultra-healthy and make a red lentil and vegetable soup from Sue Kreitzman’s “The Quick After-Work Low-Fat Cookbook”. As Sue doesn’t use added fat when cooking, this recipe is a bit more fiddly than a normal soup recipe. It makes up for it by being one of the most virtuous recipes I’ve ever come across.

The soup comes out a very orangey-red which was very cheerful indeed and whilst it needed quite a bit of extra seasoning to bring back the flavours of the spices it was really rather nice. Very, very filling though – definitely a soup to be made on hungry days. Note that this makes an absolutely huge amount of soup so ensure that you’ll have plenty of hungry people around to eat it!!!

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