Souperism by another name
And taking stock of my mental block
Coming to you not live at all from a laundromat next to Platz der Luftbrücke, the most liminal of spaces to be engaging in putting words together. Currently watching my two machines spin asynchronously and lamenting my broken washing machine at home. At least I am bundled up in the perfect amount of layerage and possess a book, which, let’s be real, I will not touch.
Flavour of the month: anraith
The whole soup thing started over a year ago, when I entered the Great Soup Debate, a mass polling of my mate’s Instagram followers to determine what peoples average soups made per month (SMPM) was. At the time, my SMPM over the year was probably 0.2, maybe increasing to 0.5 over the course of the winter. The results of the poll showed that people make more soup than I thought, and I was in the lower quartile of the soup data set. This was bad news - I enjoy being a median mouse at a minimum. This October, I had to borrow a friend’s stick blender to host the accidental inaugural soup night (we’ll get to it) and had my little rodent brain fully blown open. I ordered my own stick blender the next day and the rest is blitzzstory (sorry). I’ve hosted twelve soup nights since October, and as we head into the other side of the fashion calendar, I wanted to do a look back on all the soups that Autumn-Winter provided, plus their respective side and movie pairings. I can proudly say my SMPM has shot up to 1.8 over the last six months (yes, there are secret soups that I shan’t be telling you about) and I will continue to blend vegetables to my heart’s content until beefsteak tomatoes adorn my bread and I don’t have to supplement happiness by means of Vitamin D tablets.
Roast Tomato
Coming back to the aforementioned accidental inaugural soup night - there’s a secret underground soup club in Templehof-Schöneberg, run by me and attended by a handful of fellow rats. In actuality, it’s supposed to be a Willem Dafoe and Nicholas Cage film club, though soup has been ladled into the mix and remained a liquid fixture - such that I’m researching cold soups for when this spills over into the summer. This roast tomato soup was the first one I made for soup night, served with a mountain of herby garlic bread and enjoyed while watching Face Off.
Potato and Leek
I will take almost any opportunity to bug my mother for a recipe, and potato and leek remains a forever favourite that hits such a nostalgic itch. This is when I discovered adding buttermilk to any soup drastically improves its texture and adds a mild cheesyness, similar to having a parm rind in. As with any of my best cooking tips, this is straight from the teachings of J Kenji López-Alt. I served this one with herby stuffing and globs of blue cheese because sometimes a soup should more resemble a vat of butter than blended vegetables, and soup nights are for friendship, not health. Stuffing might just surpass bread or croutons for a soup topping, I managed to devour half the tray before it made it to the plate.
Roast Squash, Carrot, and Coconut
The theme for this one was “anything orange I could get my hands on” and it delivered flavour and colour in spades. I had acquired some squash from a veg box that was so cartoonishly cute that I spent a good while researching if this type of gourd was edible or just for deco, White Woman’s Instagram style. In the end I chopped it and cooked it with the skin still on, and carried a mild melancholy until about 40 minutes later when I tasted the thing and decreed that my little squash buddy had not died in vain. I served this one with homemade focaccia and watched Wild at Heart, a movie that continues to confound me.
Pea Thai Green Curry
Ah Sunday supermarket shutdowns. Thank you Germany. I specifically ended up buying boxes of peas at 10pm on a Saturday to avoid Sonntagsruhe woes. - Dear German government, I do not have TIME to Ruhe am Sonntag, I have soup to make.- My mental grumble was not heeded as the Thoughts Department of the Bundesregierung were actually already observing Samstagsruhe and so I trudged my soggy peas to a bar, bought them a glass of dry riesling, and nestled them safely in the freezer come 2am. When Sunday’s Soup Day rolled around, they were churned with lots of herbs, thai green curry paste, onions, ginger and a couple of spuds to make my Magnum Soupus. I think about this dish a lot. Largely because one of the evening’s guests kindly gifted the soup congregation some Sauerkraut juice to accompany it, which was… memorable. The roti and Con Air we had as actual sides were perfect pairings, and the whole experience bears repeating.
Broccoli Cheddar
You like Huey Lewis and the Soups? I fear I tried to do too much this night in particular, trying to make one version of the recipe that was keto, and one that was vegan, accidentally oversalting both and wishing I had just kept to one thing. However, the recipes were still good, execution aside, and I wholeheartedly recommend them. We did add a práta and a bunch of dill to each pot to eat up some of the salt, which worked measurably well. Like 17% well. This was paired with a couple of sourdough loaves from Keit and American Psycho, and the learning that less is actually more.
Roast Tom II (the re-roastening)
Not much to say here other than there was repeat soup (though subbing cream for our good pal, buttermilk) and perhaps fewer guests than expected, which turned into a wonderful evening of The Life Aquatic and too many biccies. I enjoyed not having to herd so many people around the kitchen, where anyone usually manages to stand in front of the exact spot I need to get to, over and over in perpetuity until I shoo everyone into the lounge.
Carrot and Parsnip
And now we veer into fancy territory for our next couple of blended bowls, having been recommended some unctuous goodness by one of the culinary enlightened (a dear friend who has a Mob subscription). For anyone else who’s cautious when it comes to parsnip, never fear, this soup slaps. In fact, anyone who attended that evening is still talking about it. It was so off-piste that the whole Nicholas Cage/Willem Dafoe conceit was abandoned and we watched the OG What We Do in the Shadows, though perhaps the jug of margarita we had as a starter had something to do with it. This recipe is topped with caramelised pumpkin seeds, which I believe would go well with just about every blended soup; nutty, sweet, crunchy and perfect.
Roast Celeriac
I am celery averse, and would consider it one of the worst things I could put in my mouth, so I was hesitant to try a celeriac soup. Turns out I was being a Big Cautious Baby because the Mob Kitchen recipe is hearty and yummy and only mildly floral. Topped with some crunchy hazelnuts and crispy sage, it’s like potato and leek’s private school cousin. She’s blonde, she’s elegant, she’s performatively vegan, but she’s also warm and nice when you get to know her. After a bike-ride-to-a-lake’s worth of consultation, I decided to roast the celeriac the second time around, and serve it with the secondary Pride of the South and have Southland cheese rolls with it (unpictured here due to them being duly devoured). To the uninitiated, these look pretty unappetising, though their cheesy, oniony funk had everyone going back for thirds while we watched Shadow of the Vampire.
The Bottom Line
As much as I have followed recipes for many of these soups, I’ve come to have a mental formula for any given blended soup that allows me to sidestep ever having veg languishing in my fridge;
Roast whatever-it-is with olive oil and garlic
Fry off some onions and spices
Add your veg, 2 bay leaves and 1500ml (chicken) stock
Finish with 500ml buttermilk and blend
Ladle into a thrifted dish that is neither plate nor bowl, and watch a little movie.
The question of the hour; IS this about the soup?! Certainly not. Shared with friends and my freezer, the soup is an allegory for giving, gifting, hosting, holding space and revelling in good times in abundance. The real soup actually IS the friends we made along the way, who insist on bringing Pringles and sour sweets and doing the dishes for me. The friends that dump their stuff on the sofa as soon as they arrive and proceed to tell me their work drama - yes I am invested, tell me everything. Soup and an ear in exchange for a warm house full of chatter, I will take it every time. The pals who ask to hold the stick blender, bravely suggest something other than soup to a chorus of “jambalaya is NOT a soup, Andrew!”, and graciously accept me banishing them to the hallway when the kitchen is too crowded. Those same folks who bashfully lean against the doorway and offer a helping hand, knowing that I will neither accept, nor fault them for not doing it.
I was at a house party on the weekend and discovered that my soupy reputation precedes me when not one, not two, but THREE of the guests said “oh you’re the soup girl right?”. Yes, yes I am.
The Jammy Yolk
The heart of the egg box. A little sphere of the innermost goo in my brain. Mildly cooked for your enjoyment.
Thought Knot
I can’t get out the thoughts Need to get on a plane Take myself to the sea Fall in love again Or fall out instead Phone an old friend (God forbid) have a brush with Elysium plains Sit alone in a room Where Decisions were made Chant covered in mud Danu enter my brain Swim into a flood Of rum, of cocaine I’m wanting, I’m wishing For hurt, rationed pain Do I lie, do I cheat Is manufacturing vain? Or to rest in the moment - And accept this mind’s wane
Til next time! Your wee pal,
C x
Somehow this read invigorated me from perusing Substack in my bed to bouncing my way down to the shops and stocking up on vegetables for the winter week ahead ❤️