Souper Trooper

'Frog' soup with marmite-glazed baking powder biscuits. Oh yes!

Lights are gonna find me... well, the kids certainly will if I'm making one of their favourite dishes - soup! I have to set my stall out here, I am not a soup lover. Maybe it's the fact that when my family hit hard times financially back in the 80s it felt like all we ate was soup, pork ribs we got free from my grandfather - a Danish bacon employee - and thrifty mince dishes. God bless my mum, she tried her best to vary things and to ensure we got a healthy balanced diet. But being a typical child, I didn't understand that she was cooking out of necessity, so I just got on with the business of practising my best eye-rolling, face-pulling expressions ready for when she produced yet another bowl of soup. Not so bad if it was tomato and rice, but ye gads, she tried to feed us vegetable soups too, imagine! ('_^)
Well now, as a penny-pinching mum myself, I get it. From a frugal and health standpoint, you don't get much better than soup. Here's why:

1) You can use as many or as few ingredients as you like. This was a dish that originated as a way of stretching dear ingredients such as meat, or using-up ingredients that would've gone to waste, such as worm-eaten turnip. One of my all-time favourite cookbooks is a little A5-sized paperback called 'The Cost-Concious Cook' by Maggie Brogan. I bought it about twelve years ago for a pound in one of those miscellaneous shops that sell everything from shoelaces to lava lamps, alongside a Mafia revenge novel set in the porn industry. No prizes for guessing which was the better book. One of the soup recipes in this book calls for only three ingredients - red lentils, potatoes and stock. That's it. But boy oh boy, what a soup! On the flipside, I love making minestrone soup, because it's a great fridge-clearer for any veg that's looking a little tired, and the proliferation of pasta, beans and vegetables it features guarantees you a hearty, main-meal soup. Especially if you pair it with...

2) Bread. There are few couplings in the food world as perfect as a bowl of hot soup with a hunk of warm crusty bread. And homemade bread beats shop-bought hands down in this category, making for an even cheaper meal! You can make sandwiches if you want to be fancy and ensure everyones stuffed when they get up from the table, or you can slice it and grate a little cheeze on top before grilling for a few minutes to melt it down. But really, it doesn't matter cos basically, it's all about having something chewy, fragrant and carby to dunk into something hot, wet and delicious. Did you know that the word 'soup' is derived from the word 'sop' which means to soak-up?

3) It makes a GREAT packed lunch. My seven-year old is adorably petite, but with that lean limber frame and pointy pixie face comes a bird-like appetite. A sandwich is too much, especially if I've inadvertently produced a denser loaf than usual. Much as I would love to pack her a daily bento with a tantalising array of vegan treats formed into an adorable scene from a 'Hello Kitty' story, I HAVE TO SLEEP AT SOME POINT. So soup fits the bill perfectly. Much lighter than a sarnie, I can send her to school with a thermos containing a couple of ladles of soup with pasta or rice or her current favourite grain, barley, in it, slap a wafer-thin slice of marmite bread on the side and top up with fruit, dried fruit and a sweet baked treat and I know she'll at least eat all the soup and cake! She spent all of her first year fighting other kids off with her spoon, as the aroma of her homemade soup invariably drew her classmates over Bisto-kids style. Better than a flaccid cheese or ham sandwich on sweaty white bread, kids? You betcha! Plus SVD loves soup too, and is happy to take it to work as long as he had some couscous or bread or veggies and hummus to go on-side, so it takes the time out of preparing lunches for my brood in the mornings.

4) You can make lots of it in one go. And if you don't need to make packed lunches, you can be ultra-organised and freeze the leftovers because...

5) Soup freezes beautifully. If it contains soya milk, it may curdle upon defrosting, but as long as you're not bothered, neither am I. Just remember to leave a couple of inches free at the top of the container to allow for expansion as your soup freezes.

6) You can make it out of leftovers and disasters. Burnt the tarka dhal cos you were on the phone not paying attention? Got a few cups of creamy mashed potatoes leftover from your evening meal? I can sense a soup coming on, just blend the two together (excluding any black shards of dhal, obviously!) with a can of chopped tomatoes, a carton of passata, a cup of soya milk, a few tablespoons of boullion powder and a couple drops liquid smoke and you have a smoky, tangy delicious tomato soup perfect for adding rice or vermicelli too. Just like that. Soup in seconds and no food waste - that's gotta be good!

7) Did I mention it's healthy? Primarily water and tons of vegetables, this is just brilliant, warming, energy-giving, nutritious food. You can add hemp seed oil, toasted hemp or pumpkin seeds or nooch before serving to boost nutritional uptake, you can add a grain or some pasta to fill it out and provide energy-giving carbs and if you cook it in a pressure cooker, you're subjecting the veggies to heat for a much shorter time, so you're retaining more nutrients than if you used the traditional hob-top method. Get a pressure cooker. As a vegan, it's your right!
So this sounds like I've compiled a soup manifesto, right? Well no. I'm just setting out why I cook such a helluva lotta soup myself, despite not being so keen on it personally.
Our current soup is what the kids like to call 'Frog Soup' due to its luminous green colour. As soups go, this one is pretty good. You can try it for yourselves and see what you think. And as with most soups, the possible variations are infinite!
Over and out...

Frog Soup, Makes 12 generous portions

1 celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 bag spinach, rinsed
2 medium onions - any kind
3 medium potatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cup yellow split peas, rinsed and picked over
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp garam masala - homemade is best for extra pungency
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric
3 tbsp veg boullion powder or 3 veg stock cubes
Water - I do this by eye but I reckon anywhere between 1200-1500ml should be enough
1 cup soya milk

Method: This is the hard bit - throw all your ingredients in a large heavy based saucepan or your pressure cooker (that you will have bought by now because of all my banging on about it!), bring to the boil over a high heat before turning down to a simmer, covering and leaving to cook until all your vegetables are tender and your split peas are soft - I'm guessing 40-50 mins? Or - for us pressure cooker owners -bring to full pressure before turning heat down, cooking for ten minutes and releasing the pressure slowly. Then blitz through a blender till perfectly smooth - remember to cover the jug spout and any other open bits with a teatowel if you're doing this with hot liquids or I guarantee you're going to be washing your ceiling tonight! - and serve. Yummy, peppery, spicy and favoured by all. That's frog soup.