On Soup & Sanity

Here we are in the Long Dark Autumn of the Soul, and I am once again making soup. 

Before I could cook I thought that soup was some ancient sort of magic, an alchemy of flavours and textures that only the chosen few could possibly create. I think perhaps I thought you had to cook it down for a really long time in order for it to become soup, and it would eventually just sort of lose its form and become liquid. Now I know the truth: simply gather some things, chuck them into a pot, and add some liquid and some heat, and then blend it all together. Now you have soup. Sometimes people ask me for recipes for things that I have made; if that’s what you came here for, I am sorry to tell you I do not have recipes. I just chuck some things into a pot. Mostly it turns out ok in the end. 

Chorizo and black bean. Black beans to me are the king of beans, and I always have a bit of chorizo somewhere in the fridge because it keeps so long and stretches so far. Chorizo and black beans is my versatile go-to for a stew or a soup. The fat in the chorizo renders down, giving the results a smoky depth of flavour while only using a relatively small amount of meat. It’s forgiving enough to take almost any sad old leftover veg, particularly roots, greens, and peppers, and robust enough to handle a good heft of spice if you’re in the mood. Sometimes I make it vaguely mexican in style (not in a Great British Bake Off way, I promise!), with ground coriander and cumin, a good squeeze of lime, and some sour cream, fresh coriander and jalapenos to garnish. Sometimes I do it US baked beans style, with brown sugar or maple syrup, barbecue sauce, and a bit of mustard and vinegar. Mostly I do it like brazilian feijoada; slow-cooked until tender so that the beans meld with the pork, with lots of garlic and a pinch of chilli flakes. Always, but always, I do it with a heavy helping of smoked paprika. 

If there were one kitchen gadget I would recommend buying, it’s a hand blender. If there were two, it’s a hand blender and a pestle & mortar, because having a pestle & mortar makes you feel like a cool hedgewitch and whole peppercorns keep much better than ground. 

Now that I understand the secret of soup, which is that there isn’t one, it’s something I turn to as soon as the leaves start to turn; even this year, which remained stubbornly 21 degrees C until the end of October. The garden is confused by the weather, and so am I. It’s November, and the roses are still in bloom. The blackberries fruited back in June. The long heatwave in the summer and its accompanying drought meant it was late in the season before seeds got any water; now I have tomatoes and potatoes and a butternut squash coming up. They won’t bear fruit, but I was glad to see them anyway after months of scorched ground. 

Spicy roast butternut. I don’t often bother roasting vegetables before I put them into the soup pot, because I’m quite lazy, but if you have the extra time and inclination then it’s worth it. Roasting vegetables helps to bring out their natural sugars, so you’ll end up with a sweeter, smoky depth of flavour that suits the season. If you don’t have the time and inclination then don’t; it’ll still be tasty. I roasted butternut squash and red onions here then went a bit Ottolenghi on its ass with fermented lemon, sumac and smoked paprika, plus fresh parsley and goats cheese to garnish. Plenty of black pepper.

(If you’ve never made fermented lemons, and I’m aware that fermenting your own lemons sounds very wanky, it’s pretty easy and gives you an off-the-shelf way to add a deep, dark, citrussy twist to tagines, soups and salad dressings. It’s also great blitzed then mixed into mayonnaise as a fancy dip. Once you’ve got a big jar on the go you can just top it up as it depletes. When life gives you lemons….put them in salt.)

My mental health has been a bit all over the shop lately, and I say that as someone who’s mental health is rarely even in the shop. My mental health is more one for occasionally glancing into the shop and then absolutely nopeing the fuck out of there. My mental health is on my sofa ordering supermarket delivery because it can’t handle the shop. My mental health is standing in the drinks aisle having just dropped and smashed a bottle of wine because it was trying to carry two of them at the same time as a lot of snacks because it was feeling sad and now everybody is staring and I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to pay for something I haven’t yet bought but have now broken and the shop assistants don’t seem sure either although they do certainly seem irritated. 

Italian courgette and parmesan. This is a family favourite to use up a glut of courgettes or marrows, and one of the few things in life I do follow a recipe for. It sounds simple, but the end result is far greater than the sum of its parts: garlic, cream, chicken stock, courgettes, basil, parmesan, white pepper. The pepper always has to be white; don’t be tempted to sub in black pepper here. I have a friend from higher up the class ladder than me who says he would never touch white pepper, but he is wrong; to my mind it is particularly good friends with white beans and light greens (your cannellinis, your butterbeans, your haricots; your broccoli, your spinach, your courgette). Do make sure to use about a third more parmesan than the recipe suggests. Life is short, and so is the daylight. 

I think a lot of us who have dealt on-and-off with depression and its kin have a similar approach to the dark times; which is to say, we do what we can, when we can do it. Ella Risbridger’s recent blog post on Broccoli Gnoccholi really resonated with me on this; like her, I have a list of ways to try and stay on the right side of sane when things are getting a bit hairy. These are all things that I am terrible at sticking to doing, but that I know make a difference (not a lot of difference – but just about enough, as long as I stay lucky) when I do them. Going for a silly little daily walk. Watering the plants, who are dependent upon me but ask for very little. Cold water showers. Taking my meds (Team Citalopam). Doing meditation. Attempting yoga. Peddling on the exercise bike while listening to Radio 4. Reading. Lifting weights so that my knees feel stronger and less shaky. Keeping my space tidy when I can. Crunching about in the woods, naming the plants and the mushrooms as I go and gathering some of them sometimes to eat. Trying to go into the office one day a week, to remind myself that I am a capable adult human with a job that I am in fact mostly not terrible at. 

Roast chestnut, apple and carrot with bacon and thyme. Chestnuts and apples both love pork, so I did this with bacon and pork stock. I put greek yoghurt in to give it some creaminess, because that’s what I had in the fridge, but actual cream would be better here. The carrots don’t have to be carrots; they could be sweet potato, or butternut squash, or even pumpkin if you have some flesh left from hallowe’en. Acorn squash or delicata would be the ideals here, for a little more earthiness, but basically as long as it’s orange then you’re golden. Bay leaves. Shallot. Black pepper. Thyme. I added a good splash of apple cider vinegar to cut through the sweetness and brighten things up a bit (“your dish needs acid”). This soup gets extra Autumn points because I foraged the chestnuts myself, and because I fried some chestnut crumbles up in the bacon fat as makeshift croutons in a move I can only describe as “inspired”.

Cooking is the other thing that I do to stay broadly on the right side of sane. Again, partly I think it makes me feel like a competent human adult: “Look, I can make a sustaining and reasonably tasty meal to keep myself alive!” It reminds me of the colour and variety of life at times when I’ve lost track of it a bit; the bright, popping red of tomatoes, the sour fragrance of lemongrass, the glug of olive oil from a glass bottle. Mixing and matching ingredients lets me feel like I have some sense of creativity and control, even if it’s only within the four walls of my very small kitchen. Two walls, really; it’s a galley kitchen. 

Above all, it’s meditative; the actions are repetitive and familiar. And soup is, I think, one of the most meditative meals to make: stripping the brown skin from an onion to expose the white pearl within, chopping and dicing the vegetables, grinding and grating, stirring, stirring, stirring. It takes effort, but it’s a relatively easy and low-energy kind of effort, and it takes time, but it doesn’t take too much time. You don’t have to use your brain much, you just have to gather some things, and chuck them into the pot, and add some liquid and some heat, and then blend it all together. Now you have soup. You may not have sanity, but at least you have soup.