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The First-time Cook
Sophie Grigson
Dedication
For Florrie and Sid, who may find this book useful one day.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Why Cook?
Techniques and General Tips
Chapter one Soups, Starters and Eggs
Chapter two Pasta, Pizza and Rice
Chapter three Meat and Poultry
Chapter four Stir-frying
Chapter five Fish
Chapter six Vegetables and Salads
Chapter seven Puddings, Cakes and Biscuits
Index
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
Why Cook?
Good question. Why should you learn to cook at all? You’ll get by just fine on takeaways, ready-meals, sandwiches, crisps and chocolate. Nobody needs to cook at all these days, as long as they own a microwave, a kettle and a toaster.
This is potentially a good thing, and certainly hugely liberating. Before you throw the book down in disgust, let me explain. Cooking should be and can be a thoroughly enjoyable life-enhancing task. There is such pleasure to be had from working with beautiful, fresh, natural produce, from combining ingredients to expose their finest, most enticing flavours, a kind of magic that is there to be discovered by every person who walks into a kitchen with appetite and hunger. All this before you even get to the climax of the whole endeavour – the eating itself.
How miserable then, when cooking becomes a tyranny, which it can when there is a day-in-day-out obligation to put a proper cooked meal on the table. So to me, the ideal is a balanced compromise between real cooking as often as possible, and convenience food as back-up for those days when work or play has sapped your energy. There’s nothing wrong with beans on toast every now and then.
There are considerable health benefits to be had from cooking your own food, too. This is not a book about nutrition, but the fundamental principles of healthy eating are straightforward: variety, moderation, loads of veg and fruit. With you as head honcho in the kitchen, you can make yours a healthy, delicious way of eating that allows for occasional indulgences without guilt.
To do that though, you will have to know how to cook. It’s really not at all difficult. It just takes a bit of practice and it will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life. Encapsulated in the recipes in this book are most of the basic techniques you will need to cook a myriad of dishes. It is not a ‘complete’ or ‘comprehensive’ course – that would be quite impossible. I’ve skipped over certain skills you can manage without for the time-being (e.g. making pastry). I have included a wide range of recipes covering both familiar foods and some that may be new to you, to get your culinary imagination in full working order.
And finally, a kitchen motto that has worked well for me, ever since the day when I moved into my first bedsit, and began the task of learning to cook for real: don’t panic. If the worst does come to the worst (we all have off days) and you bodge it up completely, bin it, and send out for a pizza!
Techniques and General Tips
How to Read a Recipe
Skip this if you want to; I know it sounds superfluous. Any fool can read a recipe, but do they know how to interpret what they read? Mostly it is common sense, just a list of instructions that you should follow in the right order to end up with something enjoyable to eat. It is, however, worth noting that these instructions are nothing more than guidelines, not hard and fast rules inscribed in granite.
For instance, I cannot tell you exactly how long to cook a sauce or a gratin; your pans and dishes are unlikely to be exactly the same size or style as mine; your stove will not be the same as mine; and your idea of a medium heat will not be identical to mine. But, assuming that you and I concur roughly on these three parameters, my suggested cooking times will be roughly right. So, treat them as estimates. Use your own senses to judge when dishes are perfectly cooked – check the look, the smell (a waft of burning cheese is a dead giveaway that you’ve massacred your cheese on toast), the taste, the feel (with cakes this is essential), and even the sound – sizzling is the best indicator of the heat of fat, for instance. The more you cook, the easier this all becomes.
When you decide to cook a particular recipe, read it through carefully before you even write your shopping list. Do you have all the right equipment (no good tackling a gratin if you don’t have a suitable shallow ovenproof dish)? If not, it may be worth adding what you lack to your list.
Do you understand the various cooking terms? If not, look them up in this book, or another reference book, or phone somebody who might be able to explain them to you. Don’t give up instantly if you are not quite clear – often something makes much more sense as you are preparing or cooking real ingredients, and it’s only by practising that you will become proficient. How long does it take to cook? Can you prepare some of it in advance?
It is worth noting that in a well-written recipe, the ingredients are usually listed in the order they are used. This can be useful when you are cooking. As a novice cook, it makes sense to measure and prepare all ingredients as described in the ingredients list before you actually start on the cooking proper. The exception to this is when one part of the recipe needs to be made in advance (you might need to marinate something for several hours before cooking and making the sauce), but if you’ve read your recipe carefully you’ll already be aware of this. As you gain experience and confidence you will know what has to be chopped or sliced initially, and what else can be done while the first batch of ingredients is sizzling away in the pan.
Weights and Measures
Recipes, as I’ve already said, are merely a set of guidelines and recommendations. This is as true of the ingredients list as of the method. As a beginner it is advisable to stick to the given quantities and suggested ingredients – as you become more familiar with a particular recipe, you can start to play around to a certain extent. In some instances it is fine to deviate slightly from given amounts where common sense dictates. Suppose, for instance, that a potato salad calls for 450g (1 lb) potatoes – there is no need to cut off a third of one new potato to get exactly the right amount; a tiny bit more or less will make little difference.
The standard advice is to stick with either metric or imperial measurements and not to mix the two. This is probably what you will do anyway, but in truth it won’t make much difference in most recipes if you do mix them up. And always taste as you cook; adjust seasonings and balance of flavours to suit your taste and your ingredients. The one area demanding strict accuracy is baking. Surprisingly small differences in the ratios of flour, fat, sugar, eggs and so on affect the way the cake turns out. So, no guess work, or slapdash weighing out here.
Spoon measurements Spoon measurements in this book are all rounded, unless otherwise indicated. I use a 5ml teaspoon, a 10ml dessertspoon and a 15ml tablespoon.
A sprig, a stem, a bunch or a handful? At first these terms will seem infuriatingly vague, but try to view them as opportunities to exploit your own personal tastes. If you really love the aroma of a certain herb, then make your sprig or handful big and generous. If it is new to you, you may prefer to err on the side of caution at first – reduce that sprig to a couple of inches, grab a petite handful. Soon the deliberate vagueness will become endearingly familiar.
Preparing Common Vegetables and Other Ingredients
Chopping Onions
The most important advice here is to make sure you have a sharp knife before you begin (see knives and knife sharpeners below). Chopping an onion is easy when the blade glides smoothly through the layers, a right pain when you have to push hard and saw your way through. As so many savoury recipes begin with chopping an onion, it will improve your kitchen life considerably if this basic operation is painless and swift.
1 First cut the onion in half, slicing from stalk to root (photo 1). Place one half flat on the chopping board and cut off the upper stalk end (photo 2). Now pick up the onion and peel the brown skins back towards the root, without ripping them right off – it isn’t disastrous if they do come right away, but left attached to the onion root, they act as a handle to grip hold of when chopping. So bend the skins back, away from the onion (photo 3).
2 Place your left hand (or right if you are left-handed) flat on top of the onion to hold it still, then slice it horizontally, stem end towards the root, but stopping just short of the root, so that the pieces stay together (photo 4).
3 Now, keeping the onion flat on the work surface, grasp the skin handle holding the onion steady, and make parallel vertical cuts, from root end towards the stalk end (photo 5).
4 Finally, make parallel cuts at right angles to the previous set of cuts, working your way from stem end back to the root.
And there you have it: a mound of perfectly chopped onion (photo 6).
Slicing Onions
Easy. Peel the onion completely, and trim ends. For rings, turn the onion on its side and slice downwards, thinly or thickly as you wish. Leave whole or separate into rings. For halfmoons, halve the peeled onion through its equator. Set cut-side down, and slice.
Peeling Garlic
Remove outer layers of papery skin from the head of garlic, then ease out as many cloves as you need for your recipe (photo 1). Store the rest of the head in a cool, dry place, but not in the fridge, where it may taint milk and eggs and other foods.
Slice off the base and the tip of the clove (photo 2). If you are going to chop or crush the garlic, the easiest way to get the skin off is to place the clove flat on the chopping board, then press the bowl of a wooden spoon down on it firmly, crushing it gently (photo 3). Now the skin will almost fall off.
If, on the other hand, you intend to slice the clove, or keep it whole, pull the skin away bit by bit with your fingers. Any skin that sticks can be loosened by running the blade of the knife, held at an angle to the clove, firmly down the skin.
Chopping Garlic
Garlic is chopped in much the same way as onion, but scaled down appropriately. If you’ve crushed it virtually flat when removing the skin, then you obviously won’t be able to slice it horizontally.
Crushing Garlic
A garlic crusher is quick but wasteful. A lot of good garlic gets left behind or stuck in the holes. A knife does the job more efficiently, though it takes a little practice.
Peel the garlic and chop it very roughly into three or four pieces. Sprinkle with a good pinch of salt (this diminishes slippage). Press the flat of the blade of the knife down on the pieces, crushing them, then drag the sharp end of the blade, at an angle to the board, over the smashed pieces. Push them all back together, and repeat the dragging and crushing until you have a smooth paste. The dismaying thing is how little you end up with, but don’t fear – the impact of the smoothly crushed garlic will be epic.
Chopping Herbs
Pile the leaves up together on the chopping board. Grab the biggest knife you own (but not a serrated knife). Hold the handle with your right hand, and the tip with your left (reverse this if you are left-handed). Hold the knife over the herbs, the tip in contact with the board close to one side of the heap. Now hold the tip steady on the board, and bring the knife firmly and quickly down on the herbs, again and again, swinging it backwards and forwards. Push the herbs back together in a pile, and repeat the whole operation. Keep doing this until the herbs are chopped as you want them. With practice this becomes an easy, quick and rhythmic operation.
This is also the method to use for fine chopping garlic or onion, once they have been roughly chopped in the usual way.
Skinning Tomatoes
Cut a small cross in each tomato, opposite the stalk end (photo 1). Place in a bowl and cover with boiling water (photo 2). Leave for a minute, then pick the tomatoes out of the water. The skin will now pull away from the tomato with ease (photo 3). If it doesn’t, repeat the process – the tomatoes must have been under-ripe.
Deseeding Tomatoes
Method 1 For tomatoes that are to be cooked in a sauce or stew or soup. Halve the tomatoes through the equator, i.e. cutting halfway between stalk end and base (photo 1). Squeeze each half over a bowl or bin, just as if you were squeezing out lemon juice (photo 2). The seeds will ooze out.
Method 2 For when you want perfect looking pieces of tomato. Halve the tomatoes as for method 1, then scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon (photo 3).
Deseeding Peppers
Begin by slicing off the stem end as if it were a lid. Turn the pepper upside down and tap the base firmly several times to loosen the seeds. Shake them out, and scrape out any malingerers with a knife. When you want to keep the pepper whole, perhaps for stuffing, or cut it into rings, you should also scrape out the white ribs (not 100% necessary, but it does improve the flavour a mite). For quartered peppers or long strips, cut the cup into four from one corner to the other, to give flattish pieces. This makes them easier to cut into strips, or grill. Remove the odd seed and cut away the white ribs if you haven’t already. Now cut into strips if required.
Handling Chillies
It is the capsaicin in chillies that makes them hot. When you handle chillies, capsaicin transfers itself to your fingers, so you need to be extremely careful that you don’t rub your eyes, or worse still, especially for men, go to the loo, before cleaning your hands thoroughly. The results can be painful. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, so you need to use a good deal of soap, or some alcohol-based cleanser to get rid of it all. Either that or wear rubber gloves when working with chillies, not a bad idea if you have sensitive skin. The plus side of this is that you absolutely need to drink some kind of alcohol with a hot curry, if you want to soothe your mouth and throat. Water just won’t do.
Deseeding Chillies
Halve the chillies lengthways and scrape out the seeds and cores with a knife. These are the hottest parts, although the flesh too is hot (as described above).
Chillies vary in heat, and there seems to be a correlation between size and heat – often the smallest chillies are the hottest!
Topping and Tailing Beans
Most fresh green beans need to be topped and tailed. This means cutting off the tips on both ends. I like to do them individually, as long as there is something interesting to listen to on the radio. When I have a huge pile to work through, I’m inclined to become more wasteful – taking a bunch of beans at a time, lining up the ends and then just slicing them all off in one fell swoop.
Grating Lemons
The zest of all citrus fruit contains aromatic oil, and this adds wonderful flavour to many dishes, along with the juice. Rub the surface of the (washed) fruit to and fro on the fine grid of a flat grater several times to remove the zest without any of the bitter white pith. Move around the fruit, covering different areas, until it is denuded. Only then squeeze the juice!
Recommended Kitchen Utensils
It is impossible to make one definitive list of the essential cooking implements and utensils you will need. Absolute basics are fairly obvious – with nothing but one sharp knife and a frying pan or saucepan, you could turn out a fair number of severely streamlined meals. After that, the list is dictated as much by what you like to cook as anything else.
View your ‘batterie de cuisine’ (cooking equipment) as a long-term collection that you will build up over the years. Sadly, the general rule is that the more you spend, the better the quality, and better quality often makes for easier, more enjoyable cooking. So, no long list but instead a few notes and recommendations on useful kitchen kit, and recommended buys.
Casserole Every home should have one (unless, of course, you loathe stews of any sort). Best bet is a flame- and heatproof casserole that can go both on the hob and in the oven. It should also look good enough to go straight from the oven to the table. It is better to buy a larger casserole dish than a smaller one, allowing plenty of room. After all, most stews improve in flavour if kept for a day or two in the fridge, or can be frozen if necessary, so making a big potful is a pretty sensible thing to do, even if you are just cooking for one or two.
Chopping Boards Hard to do without, so again, buy the best and biggest you can afford. It is far more useful to have one really big wooden chopping board, than several small book-sized ones. Chopping boards should be made of wood (which scientists now consider perfectly hygienic as long as you wash them after use) or plastic.
Food Processor You can manage very well without one, but your kitchen life will become a good deal easier with. Here, as so often, you should probably head for the best you can afford. Choose one with a relatively large capacity, and several different speed settings. Several models have small inner bowls that can be fitted to process small amounts – very useful for making curry pastes and spice rubs, amongst other things.
Frying Pan, Non-stick Another investment item. A really tip-top heavy-based non-stick frying pan does not come cheap, but is worth every penny. Choose one that is fairly large with high sides so that as well as frying, you can also cook a chicken stew and the like in it. Incidentally, modern non-stick surfaces are very tough, so it is usually all right to use metal implements in them.
Graters Don’t get too fancy. An old-fashioned box grater does the job very nicely. I like the modern Microplane graters, too, especially for orange and lemon zest, or Parmesan, or nutmeg.
Kitchen Tongs These do make turning practically anything in a frying pan or under the grill ten times easier and quicker.
Knives Buy the best you can afford (or ask some nice relative with more money than you to make a gift of them). A good knife will last you a lifetime. They’re not cheap, but since you will be using them constantly, knives should be seen as a major investment. You will need, at the very least, one fairly big chef’s knife (around 17.5–20cm/7–8in), one smaller 15cm (6in) knife and a bread knife. A smaller serrated knife (around 10cm/4in) is great for cutting tomatoes.
Knife Sharpener As essential as the knives. A small hand-held knife sharpener is easier.
Liquidiser If I had to choose, I’d say that a liquidiser is more essential than a processor and a darn sight cheaper, too. Liquidisers are important for making soup and smoothies amongst other things. For more on liquidisers, turn to page 17.
Pestle and Mortar Two most important characteristics: firstly, that the mortar needs to be heavy, so that it doesn’t slip and slide around on the table. Secondly, the interior must feel rough. If it is smooth it will make grinding and pounding hard work. Best pestles are rough at the wider end, rather than smooth.
Saucepans You’ll need one small one, one medium-sized one and one large. And no doubt you will add more over the years. When choosing your saucepans, look for solid, heavy bases that will conduct heat evenly.
Sieve I prefer metal, but modern nylon sieves are fine. More important than the material is the mesh size. This should be fairly large. If the mesh is too fine, then it can makes things like sieving a soup a complete nightmare. Never buy a sieve which doesn’t have one or two hooks on the rim opposite the handle, so that you can sit the sieve securely over a bowl or saucepan.
Weighing Scales Digital scales are far more accurate than most dial scales. Buy scales with a flat top, so that you can use any bowl or pan on them, resetting the display to zero before weighing out ingredients.
Cooking Terms
Baking and Roasting both refer to cooking in the oven, and the differences between them are not always clear. Generally, however, roasting is done at a high temperature without covering the food, so that it browns, while baking is undertaken at a slightly lower temperature and the food may sometimes be covered or not.
Frying means to cook something in hot fat, either in a shallow frying pan (sometimes also called pan-frying), or in a deep pan, half filled with oil, which is known as deep-frying.
Grilling means to cook food under a hot grill.
Sautéing is a form of frying. Unlike ordinary frying, which is verging on sedate, sautéing is an energetic business. The word ‘sauter’ is literally the French for ‘to jump’ and that describes the method well. When sautéing the idea is to keep all the pieces of food moving more or less constantly, so that they brown and cook evenly on all sides, and never have a chance to stick on the base of the pan.
Searing and Griddling Searing means cooking food with the minimal amount of fat, on a searingly hot flat surface – probably a heavy-based frying pan. Griddling is similar, but a ridged, heavy griddle pan is used instead.
Simmering means cooking something in simmering water, in other words water that is so hot that a few small bubbles are lazily making their way up to the surface, but not much more than that. The surface of the water will move and tremble gently. In most instances water is first brought up to the boil (i.e. when crowds of bubbles rise ebulliently to the surface), the item that is to be cooked is tipped in, which reduces the temperature of the water below simmering point, and then the whole lot is warmed up again until the water is simmering.
Sweating means cooking over a low heat, with a small amount of fat, the lid clamped on tightly.
Chapter one Soups, Starters and Eggs
Soups
I’m a great believer in soup. Here is a dish that fulfils a multitude of functions, the prime amongst them being that it satisfies the soul. Oh – and the stomach. A big steaming bowlful of soup can really hit the spot. It makes a good first course and it makes the heart of a handsome lunch or supper, eked out with loads of soft-centred, crisp-crusted bread, a big hunk of cheese, and healthy fruit or something more indulgent to follow. Make one big batch and it will feed a crowd, or just feed you on your own quickly and easily over several days.
Types of Soup
Soups divide, fundamentally, into three categories. The first is the puréed soup, with vegetables aplenty boiled up together, then liquidised to silky smoothness (or if you prefer, rustic chunkiness). The second is the bits and bobs, meal-in-a-bowl soup, where a pleasing medley of this and that is simmered in broth, which may or may not be thickened. The third is the incredibly elegant upmarket consommé – a beautiful limpid concoction, intensely flavoured, served in suitably small quantity with maybe a single oyster or whatever floating in its centre. This is restaurant soup, not impossible to make at home by any means, but a good deal of work. If you want a recipe for this type of soup, look elsewhere.
Tips and Techniques
Making soup is all about extracting the maximum flavour from a set of ingredients. Certain techniques, like sweating vegetables and thickening or thinning the soup, are essential to a good result, while others, like stock-making, can be circumnavigated but are worth learning because they have the potential to turn a pedestrian but acceptable soup into a first-rate one. If you want to get the best soup on to your table, read these tips and techniques before you get out the saucepan.
First, a word about the basic structure of a soup. Most soups start off with a group of base ingredients (e.g. onion, garlic, butter or olive oil) that give the soup a background flavour. The main ingredients are what give the soup its predominant flavour – carrots, perhaps, or parsnips, or a medley of vegetables and beans.
Aromatics are the complementary ingredients that scent or spice the soup – usually herbs and spices. The commonest of these is a ‘bouquet garni’ which is a bundle of different herbs, tied together with string so that it can be easily removed before liquidising or serving the soup (see page 20).
All soups need some sort of liquid otherwise they wouldn’t be soups at all! And then last, but not at all least, they need to be seasoned with salt and pepper, or maybe cayenne pepper for a dash of colour and heat combined.
Sweating without Perspiration
Most puréed soups and many meal-in-a-bowl soups start off with a spot of sweating. Not the sort that requires a cold shower, but sweating of the culinary sort. Foodie sweating means cooking vegetables and often herbs with a little fat, over a very low heat, with the lid clamped firmly on the saucepan. Once they are on the stove-top, you barely need to bother with them for a good 10–15 minutes, apart from giving them a quick stir once or twice, but no more. This process develops the full depth of flavour of the vegetables so don’t try to rush it. As long as the heat is low, they’ll produce enough liquid to prevent them sticking or burning.
Thick, Thicker, Thickest
Somewhere among the ingredients will usually be one that serves primarily as a thickener, to give body to the soup. Potatoes are the commonest, but rice, beans or lentils play a similar role. A few more starchy vegetables, e.g. parsnips, need no thickener, as they are quite capable of doing the job themselves.
Liquid Essentials
Obviously soups need some type of liquid to dilute the main ingredients. In certain cases, where there is already a considerable depth of flavour present, water may be quite adequate. Milk can sometimes be used too. The rest of the time you really need a decent stock. This is the backbone of the soup. You can’t taste it specifically, but it is what all the other ingredients rely on for support. An insipid or tasteless stock will produce an indifferent soup. An absolutely tip-top home-made stock will transform the soup into something outstanding.
Stock-cubes and powdered ‘bouillon’ are tolerable stand-bys though not half as good as the real McCoy. Make them up slightly weaker than suggested on the packet so that the factory-brewed overtones are not so evident. You can buy real liquid stocks in supermarkets (sold in small tubs, often stacked alongside the chilled meat) and they come in second best.
By far and away the best option, however, is to make stock yourself. Whenever you have had a roast chicken, say, or find a selection of odds and ends of vegetables hanging around in your veg drawer, knock some stock up, and then freeze it for another day.
Microwave Chicken Stock
This is the ideal list of ingredients, but as long as you have the chicken carcass (most butchers will sell off raw ones cheap, and they do the best job), the onion, the carrot and one or two of the herbs, you can turn out a fine stock. Remember not to add salt to a stock. Why? Just in case you want to boil it down to concentrate the flavour, or add it to other ingredients that are already salty.
1 chicken carcass, raw or cooked
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 carrot, peeled and quartered
1 leek, quartered
1 celery stalk, quartered
1 bay leaf
2 parsley stalks
1 thyme sprig
8 black peppercorns
1 Break the chicken carcass up roughly. Put all the ingredients into the largest microwaveable bowl you own. Pour over enough boiling water to cover everything.
2 Cover with a tight layer of clingfilm, and then microwave on full power for 25 minutes. Let the whole lot stand for a further 25 minutes, then strain.
Classic Chicken Stock
1 Use the same ingredients on page 15.
2 Pile them into a roomy saucepan, and add enough water to cover generously. Bring up to the boil, then turn the heat down low and simmer very gently – the water should just tremble – for 3 hours, adding more hot water every now and then as the liquid level falls.
3 Once cooked, strain.
Vegetable Stock
The greater the variety of vegetables you add, the better balanced the taste. Avoid potatoes (which make the stock cloudy) and globe artichokes (which make the stock bitter). The sulphurous scent of over-cooked brassicas, such as cabbage, broccoli or Brussels sprouts, is not too pleasant either, so leave them out. This is a good way of using up fresh vegetable trimmings and parings, as long as the vegetables were washed.
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 leek, roughly chopped
2 celery stalks, sliced
2 bay leaves
1 large thyme sprig
3 parsley sprigs
8 black peppercorns
whatever other vegetables you have to hand (e.g. green beans, runner beans, courgettes)
1 Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring up to the boil, and simmer very gently for 30 minutes.
2 Strain and chill or freeze.
need to know
STORING STOCK Stock will keep for two days in the fridge. If you want to keep it for longer than that, pour it into a wide, deep frying pan and boil down until reduced in volume by about two-thirds. Cool, and then pour carefully into ice-cube trays. Freeze, and then store your own home-made frozen stock cubes in an airtight container in the freezer. When you come to use them, melt and dilute with water to taste, to restore your stock to its original state.
Machinery
If you like smooth soups, then you will need to invest in some type of liquidiser. Jug liquidisers are surprisingly cheap and make a far smoother soup than a processor, which is far more expensive anyway. Hand-held wand liquidisers are also a bargain. Although it takes longer to liquidise a saucepanful of soup, you have a greater degree of control, so that if you wish you can vary the texture from rough and chunky to silky smooth.
Before liquidising, let the soup cool a little, so that odd splashes won’t burn you. With a jug liquidiser, always make sure that the lid is firmly clamped on. Don’t over-fill – it is better to liquidise the soup in three or four batches, than to risk it squirting out all over the kitchen.
Even the toughest liquidiser can’t reduce absolutely everything to a smooth cream, so every now and then you will come across a soup that also needs sieving (such as the roast tomato and onion soup on page 24). The trick here is to make sure that you have a sieve with a comparatively loose mesh, i.e. with big enough holes to make sieving bearable. A sieve with a very tight mesh is fine for, say, sifting flour, but a nightmare when it comes to soups and sauces, as you have to work really, really hard for relatively small returns. So, go check your sieves and if necessary invest in a new, wide-meshed one as soon as possible. With that in hand, sieving a soup should be an easy enough matter. Use the largest wooden spoon you own to push the solids through the mesh of the sieve, scraping the puréed matter that clings to the underside off into the rest of the soup fairly frequently.
Alternatively, you could buy a mouli-légumes, or a food mill, which will do a similar job with efficiency.
Thinning Down
Once your soup is liquidised, you can assess the consistency properly. You may like it just as it is, but if you want to thin it down to a lighter consistency, stir in a little water if it needs only minor adjustment, or more stock, or perhaps some milk, if appropriate. Add a little at a time, stir in and then taste. Be careful not to overdo the extra liquid, or you will end up with a soup that tastes of precious little at all.
Dressing Up
An unadorned naked bowl of soup is a fine thing in itself, but there are times when all of us, soup included, benefit from a spot of dressing up. Some garnishes go particularly well with specific soups, whilst others are universally a good thing. Here is a list of some of the best, to be used on their own or in tandem with others
Fresh herbs Shredded basil leaves on any tomato-based soup; coriander leaves on soups with a hint of spice; chopped parsley or chives will give a lift to most soups; tarragon leaves bring a hint of aniseed – use your imagination.
Cream A drizzle or swirl of cream looks classy and enriches soup. It doesn’t matter a great deal whether it is single, whipping or double cream. Lightly whipped cream, seasoned with lime juice or herbs, floats on top of the soup, melting gently in the heat. Soured cream, crème fraîche and yoghurt (especially Greek-style yoghurt) need to be dolloped on gently. Yoghurt has a tendency to sink.
Croûtons The traditional croûton is a small, crisp golden cube of fried bread which adds a welcome contrast in texture to most soups. I find it easier to bake croûtons in the oven: toss cubed bread (crusts removed) with a little oil, turning well, then spread out on a baking sheet and bake at 190°C/375°F/Gas Mark 5, turning occasionally until golden brown, about 5–10 minutes. Although any decent loaf of bread will do, you can make extra-fancy croûtons with, say, olive bread or sun-dried tomato bread.
Croûtes Croûtes are larger versions of croûtons. Small slices of bread (either quarter large pieces, or use slices of a baguette) can either be toasted, or brushed with olive oil and baked in the oven until crisp (the best method, I think, see the croûtons section above). You could top each one with a smear of pesto (bought or home-made, see page 71), or tapenade (an olive and caper purée that can be bought in small jars from the deli). Or try a small swirl of crème fraîche, or you could pile some grated Gruyère cheese on top. Whatever you do, the idea is then to float it in the soup as it is served.
Cheese Grated or very finely diced cheese is a good garnish for chunky soups, such as the Italian vegetable and bean soup on page 26. Parmesan is wonderfully piquant, but grated mature Cheddar brings oodles of flavour, too. The sweetish, nutty taste of Gruyère is another winner.
Olive oil A drizzle of a really fruity extra virgin olive oil works well in many more Mediterranean soups, bringing a fresh, light richness that invigorates all the other flavours in the soup. For a powerful injection of energy, fry 1 or 2 chopped garlic cloves and a deseeded chopped red chilli in olive oil until the garlic is golden, then spoon over the surface of the soup, still hot and sizzling, just before serving.
Bacon Choose good-quality dry-cured streaky bacon (it crisps up better than back bacon), and cook in rashers until brown and crisp (see page 21).
Diced tomato, cucumber or pepper These add an appealing freshness to a soup, as well as a splash of colour. Deseed tomatoes and peppers, but don’t skin them, before dicing small. I really can’t see the point in deseeding cucumbers, but if you really want to, that’s fine. Diced celery can also work well, but a fair number of people aren’t so keen on it.
Good Vegetable Soup
This is a basic primer recipe for puréed vegetable soup. It’s ideal for using up the odds and ends of vegetables that gather in the bottom of the fridge or in the vegetable rack (as long as they are not too old and mouldering), but you can also use it to make a purer mono-veg soup, such as the curried parsnip soup below.
Serves 4–6
BASE INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons olive or sunflower oil, or 30g (1oz) butter
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
AROMATICS
1 bouquet garni (the classic one below)
and/or 1–2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and chopped
or 1 teaspoon or more curry paste or curry powder or spices, e.g. cumin, fennel seeds, cinnamon, etc.
MAIN INGREDIENTS
1 potato, or other thickener if needed, peeled and cut into chunks
500g (18oz) vegetables, prepared as appropriate (see page 27) and roughly chopped
LIQUID
1–1.5 litres (13/4– 23/4 pints) Vegetable or Chicken Stock (see pages 15–17), or vegetable cooking water, or a mixture of water and milk
SEASONINGS
salt and pepper
1 Heat the oil or butter gently in a large saucepan, then add the base ingredients, the aromatics and the main ingredients. Stir around to coat everything in the fat, then sweat very gently for 10–15 minutes.
2 Add the smaller amount of stock or other liquid, saving the rest for thinning down (if necessary), and season with salt and pepper. Bring up to the boil, then simmer gently for about 20 minutes until all the vegetables are tender.
3 Liquidise in several batches, and return to the pan. Thin down with the reserved stock, water or milk as required, and check the seasoning.
4 Reheat when needed, and eat.
need to know
BOUQUET GARNI This is a bundle of herbs, that gives flavour to stocks, soups and stews. Classically it is a bay leaf, a sprig of parsley and a sprig of thyme tied together with string. Other flavours can be added – leek leaves, alternative herbs or lemon zest.
Potato, Parsley and Garlic Soup
This yummy, comforting soup can be served as a first course, or in larger quantities whenever you are need of a bit of inner warmth. I love it with a touch of cheese and some crisp, salty bacon bits stirred in, but neither is utterly essential. You might just want to scatter over a few chopped chives instead, or spoon on some nuggets of golden-fried chopped garlic and chilli with a drizzle of olive oil.
Serves 4–6
BASE INGREDIENTS
1 onion, peeled and chopped
30g (1oz) butter
AROMATICS
1 bouquet garni (2 strips lemon zest, 1 bay leaf, 1 sprig thyme)
MAIN INGREDIENTS
leaves of 1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped
1kg (21/4lb) potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
1 whole garlic bulb, separated into cloves, peeled
LIQUID
1.2 litres (2 pints) Vegetable or Chicken Stock (see pages 15–17)
300ml (10fl oz) milk
SEASONINGS
salt and pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 lemon
DRESSING UP (OPTIONAL)
a handful of grated Gruyère cheese
4–6 rashers streaky bacon, cooked until crisp (see right), and crumbled
1 Follow the basic method opposite, adding the stock only, plus salt, pepper and nutmeg at stage 2. When liquidised, stir in the milk, and add a squeeze or two of lemon juice (this highlights flavours, but shouldn’t be so much that the soup tastes lemony).
2 Reheat, and serve with the cheese and bacon if you wish.
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