I’m a bit back to front when it comes to soup.
Until recently (by which I mean in the last 10 years or so) I refused to understand the consumption of hot soup. There are so many things one can cook and eat when the weather is cold, or grey, or overcast, or baltic, that hot soup finds itself quite a way down the list.
I carry scars too. Early-adulthood years of office kitchenettes, filled to bursting with sweet (but culinarily stunted) colleagues, have left me with a lifelong aversion to the sort of soup that might come in a microwaveable plastic pot from Sainsbury's or Tesco Metro.
I can still conjure up the cloying smell of a Covent Garden Soup Company ‘Tomato and Basil’ or ‘Lentil and Smoked Bacon’ soup being eviscerated in the communal microwave; it makes my chest tighten and my thighs wince; I’m plagued by thoughts of blue chinos, shiny across the rump where they’ve been buffed by hours in the desk chair; I’m still paralysed by the thought of ironing TM Lewin shirts on a Sunday night. I was not cut out for office work, I was not cut out for chinos and poorly pressed slim-fit shirts. Bad hot soup brings it all back.
A corner was turned about twelve years ago with a superlative spiced brown butter, cauliflower and yoghurt soup, but until then, hot soup was a sworn enemy. I’ve softened my position, of course. I’m evangelical about veg boxes, which means I’m devoted now to the cooking of soup - I will not let that veg go to waste. I do still feel the phantom of those troubling hot soups though.
Cold soup, on the other hand, is about the finest thing I can fathom. Especially on a melting London day.
My appetite, legendary in winter, is diminished in the oppressive heat of a London summer, the concrete swelling up at me, the sky pressing down. To know that the fridge is primed and ready with a bowl of something, the prospect of a fizzy water or a diet coke riding pillion, often a piece of stale bread toasted and swiped with some oil and garlic, just to give a bit of ballast; this is a scenario I live for through our brief English summers.
And so often no cooking is needed. A whiz around the market or the shops for some tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and herbs; we can salad, we can soup, either way, we will wind up sated and cooled.
If you’re tempted by the cold soup life, you should probably secure access to a blender or a food processor. There’s a bucolic charm to the idea of pestle and mortaring an Ajo Blanco or Gazpacho. Until that is, you’re four minutes into crushing 200g of almonds and you’ve already clubbed yourself on the thumb twice and your arm courses with lactic acid, your grip on the pestle loosed as sweat and olive oil combine to a slick lube in your palm. At that moment any quaint yearning for the honest pleasure of toiling for your lunch is lost. You’ll want a Nutribullet, and you won’t care a jot if Jeff Bezos is the devil incarnate, his little online shop says it’s available for same-day delivery and the credit card has a little headroom, so you’re shopping. Secure yourself a blender of some description, if you get my gist.
In a week that has been as hot as the chaffing thighs of a long-distance runner, I am four for five on cold soups. Gazpacho gave way to Ajo Blanco, after a day off for a Nicoise salad I treated myself to an Iced Vichysoisse, and today (Friday), as my back sweat forces me into yet another t-shirt change, Lettuce and Dill soup brings brief but euphoric respite.
This might have been our one standout week of weather, and if so, apologies for jinxing the rest of summer, but if this good weather returns, or if you find yourself somewhere hot for some reason or other, do consider one of the soups below.
Gazpacho
It has always baffled me that a good proportion of gazpacho recipes that are touted about seem to eschew good fresh tomatoes for tinned or for tomato juice. I appreciate that we have a short tomato season here in the UK, but we do have a tomato season (an increasingly lengthy one at that thanks to our poor management of global warming). So wait. Be patient. Treat yourself to gazpacho during these heady days of tomato season, and then revert back to something else for the rest of the year.
For occasional cravings when tomatoes are not at their peak, I must confess to a mild addiction to this Brindisa gazpacho, which does take some beating, but this recipe below certainly has a way about it.
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