A really very good cabbage soup

The leaves are definitely turning and the sun is noticeably lower in the sky: this is autumn.  And so, not even the mild battering I received from the wind yesterday could stop me from gathering together the ingredients for a big, chunky soup.  The curly kale is just beginning to fill up the shelves, so ribollita was an obvious choice.

I’ve wanted to make ribollita for quite a while.  Every cookbook I open, I see a recipe for the soup.  Food From Plenty, the Acorn House Cookbook, they’ve all got one.  Not to mention the Hugh and Nigel recipes in the guardian over the past couple of months.  So I has to make it, simply because I couldn’t quite understand what there was to love so much about a cabbage soup.  I mean, I love cabbage in a soup, but, there’s something in me that always wants to add a bit of pig.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s bacon, sausage, chorizo or ham hock, more often than not, when I ’m using cabbage, I crave a bit of pork.  But, living with a vegetarian, I don’t think things would go well if I slipped a little pancetta into my sofrito, so I don’t.  But I just wanted to say, if I could, even with this big and delicious ribollita, I would.

Another reason I decided on ribollita is because I had a bread baking date with a girl who lives in my block, and although most recipes call for stale bread, or ciabatta, I didn’t think we could really go wrong with bread fresh from the oven, and it was really very good.

So, with all my ingredients and the garden in shadow unthinkably early, I set about soup making.  I understand theat ribollita literally means ‘reboiled’ but I rarely have the foresight to make something for the next day, so I just made as much as I could fit in my pot, and cooked it very, very, very slowely. We’ll reboil the leftovers today, so that’s when we’ll eat proper ribollita, but for now, well, it’s a very delicious cabbage soup, I guess.

Ribollita

For four

Two leeks, chopped

Four carrots, chopped

Three sticks of celery, chopped

Three cloves of garlic, finely chopped

One tin of chopped tomatoes

One tin of cannellini beans

500ml vegetable stock

400g kale

Parsley leaves and stalks, separate, but finely chopped

In a big pan, over a low heat, warm some olive oil and cook the leeks, carrots and celery very gently for about 20 minutes.  Turn the heat up slightly until there’s some very, very gentle caramalisation and cook for another 15-20 minutes.

Add the garlic and chopped parsley stalks and let them all cook for about ten minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes, vegetable stock, kale and beans and cook for another 20 minutes.

Place a slice of bread, toasted or not (depending on desired sogginess) in the bottom of a bowl and ladle some soup on top.

Serve with parsley and a glug of olive oil.

Work in Progress

It’s always when you are doing something banal that you have your revelations, I think.  Well, not revelations, perhaps just the realisation of something you should’ve known all along.  Whatever those moments are called, I have them most frequently when I am knitting.  Although knitting isn’t really banal.  I’m just short on words that describe the way it makes me feel.  I enjoy it, it does not bore me, but it is repetitive, and doesn’t require a huge amount of thought.  I like it because your brain is working at some low level, which leaves you to think about other things.  The point that I am trying to convey is that when I was knitting just the other day, something clicked in me, and it was a very exciting thing to realise, but thinking about it now, it’s actually common sense.

Nonetheless, I will tell you about it.  I would like to be a really good cook.  I'd like to sit down one day and just think ‘what would I like to eat?’ and then produce something delicious.  I would like to feel confident enough to go food shopping without a shopping list, seeing what looks good, and then making it really, really good in the kitchen.  I was frustrated that I couldn’t do it.  When I’m planning what to eat, I always end up referring to some cookbook, or some recipe.  Of course I adapt and change them to suit what I want to eat, but I that’s not the same feeling as just sitting down and creating something.  Whilst I was knitting, though, I realised that I’m just not a really good cook yet, just as I am not a really good knitter yet, but the point is that I am always learning.  I like learning, and learning about food is one of my favourite hobbies.  All the recipes I’m cooking now, I am learning what I like to eat with what, what I think works together, and what kind of foods make me feel certain ways.  So, overall, what I learnt is that cooking is a project for me, and what makes me excited is that I’m always going to have to eat, and I am always going to be cooking, so there’s nothing I can do but carry on learning, and improving, until one day, I’m a really good cook.

deciding what's for supper

And you know what, I'm really excited about having this little blog on which to record these improvements, and look back on them.

Well, you probably all knew that already.  So here’s a recipe for a soup that can be remade many a time, with so many different ingredients I don’t know whether to really call it a recipe.  It’s more a blueprint for whatever you fancy, whenever you fancy it.  But the recipe as displayed below is the one I make when I am tired, ill or unhappy, and it will cure any ills.  We ate it on our laps, after an incredibly hectic week, and watched Bad Lieutenant, and the next day I honestly can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling so refreshed.  Magic soup.

Soup with whatever you fancy

for two

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2-3 shallots, finely chopped

2-3 stalks lemongrass, sliced

1 small chilli, deseeded and sliced

some noodles

enough vegetable or chicken stock to fill two soup bowls

nam pla

big pinch of sugar

star anise

a really big handful of mint

a smaller handful of basil

100g chestnut mushrooms

juice of one lime

Cook the garlic and onions in a medium hot pan, add the lemon grass, chili and mushrooms and cook for 5-10 minutes.

Then add the stock, star anise, sugar and a splash of nam pla, a bit of salt and some pepper.

Cook the noodles, put them in a soup bowl with the torn basil and finely shredded mint.

Ladle the soup over the noodles, finish with the lime juice, and eat.