Forever Summer (5 page)

SPICED PINK SOUP

Chilled soups have more going for them than mere retro charm. Temperature-cooling, unfussy, as soothing for the cook as the eater, they make the perfect, light summer starter. The pink in this particular soup comes from beetroot, toned down with soured cream and further harmoniously soured by lime; the spices are ground cumin and coriander; the final, velvety emulsion is the purest puce. You don’t have to serve this, jugs alongside one another, with the pea and mint soup that follows, but the combination, a glowering take on fifties rose-and-eau-de-nil, is irresistible.

I agree that making vats of stock may not be quite the thing when having to cook for a large number of people in high summer, but believe me I am not suggesting you do any such thing. A good make of fresh chicken stock in a tub will do fine here, as would Benedicta’s Touch of Taste chicken bouillon concentrate or Marigold vegetable stock powder. The idea is anyway not to get you slaving over a hot stove right now. You know that song, Summertime, and the cooking is easy…

OK yes, beetroot takes a long time to roast properly, but they taste so good when intensified thus by the oven (not that you have to do anything to them while they cook), and that’s the extent of the cooking thereafter. In other words, this is a low-effort enterprise.

2 large or 3 medium raw beetroot

juice of 1 lime

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1.5 litres hot chicken or vegetable stock

salt and pepper

2 spring onions, halved lengthwise

250ml sour cream

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Wrap each beetroot in tin foil and bake for one and a half to two hours until tender. Unwrap partly and leave for a while until bearable to touch. And I’d put on washing up gloves for this, too, or you’ll have a touch of the Lady Macbeth’s about you after. Gingerly peel them – when they’re this well cooked the skin should rub off easily – and then cut them into chunks. Put them in the processor with the juice of the lime, the cumin and coriander and blitz to a pulp while pouring the stock down the funnel. You may want to wear an apron for this (or stand well back). Indeed, you may feel happier doing this in two batches. Taste for salt and pepper, blitz again and then pour into a large jug. Add the split spring onions and leave to cool before chilling, clingfilmed, in the fridge for up to three days.

Just before you want to eat this, pick out the spring onions and, to make for a desirably creamy base, blitz again while adding the sour cream (175ml first, then see if you want the rest). Decant back into the jug (for easier pouring) then duly pour into waiting teacups. If you’re using more capacious soup bowls in place of the cups, you may find you feed only six from this.

Serves 6–8.

CHILLED PEA AND MINT SOUP

This is such a lovely, fresh and soothing emulsion, that I am happy to keep a jug of it, for a solo-supper or between-meal refuelling, in the fridge at any time in summer. And while I quite see the sense in using new sugar-sweet peas while they’re about, most peas lounge about in shops quite long enough for their pearly sweetness to turn to starch, in which case you can use frozen peas without feeling you’re utterly devoid of the seasonal virtues. If you are, however, using fresh peas, drop the pods into the water at the steeping stage, and then boil it all up again for ten minutes, just to extract every last bit of flavour. It’ll mean you have to strain the liquid before adding it to the peas themselves, which isn’t exactly hard work, but, on top of the podding itself (though children seem to do this gladly, especially if watching
TV
at the same time) is still another procedure, should such factors hold any weight with you, as they often do with me.

Again, although I’ve stipulated vegetable stock, I mean nothing more troublesome than adding a tablespoon or so of Benedicta’s Touch of Taste vegetable bouillon concentrate or Marigold vegetable stock powder to water.

1.25 litres vegetable stock

stalks from a bunch fresh mint with the leaves saved

1 tablespoon dried mint

500g frozen petits pois (or 1.5 kilos of fresh peas, podded, pods reserved)

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 spring onions, finely chopped

salt and pepper

1 x 284ml carton sour cream

Pour the stock into a large jug or pan and add the fresh mint stalks and the dried mint and leave to steep for 20 minutes to half an hour. If you’re using fresh peas, pour the stock directly into a pan along with the mints and pods and boil for about 10–15 minutes and then strain into a jug.

Pour the oil into a large saucepan and warm over medium heat. Add the chopped spring onions and turn in the warm oil for a few minutes until slightly softened, but certainly not caught in any way and then tumble in the peas. If you’re using frozen ones, there is no need to defrost them first.

Cook these, stirring with a wooden spatula all the while, over a low to medium heat until the peas have softened a little. Fish out the mint stalks from the stock and pour into the pan, or use the strained pod stock. It’s impossible, really, to say exactly how long it will take for the peas to be sufficiently soft, but think around 20 minutes. Leave to cool, and then blitz, in batches, in a blender or processor. Season to taste. If you’re making this at all in advance, it’s best to keep the pea purée creamless in the fridge until serving, at which time you should ideally blend it again with the sour cream.

Pour into cups or bowls and sprinkle with the chopped, reserved mint leaves.

Serves 6–8, depending on whether you’re using cups or bowls.

RISI E BISI

This most Venetian of Venetian dishes, of the new season’s peas and rice, is somewhere between a soup and risotto. Traditionally, it is served for the first time each year, and ceremonially so, on April 25th. It’s actually part of Venetian history: on that day, St Mark’s Day, the Doge was given a dish of this prepared from the first new, sugar-sweet peas of the year. To tell the truth, at the risk of repeating myself, unless you are using the youngest, freshest, flower-fragrant peas possible then you might as well just use frozen. Once a pea has sat on a shelf and begun turning to starch, then its supposed freshness – and thus its edge – has gone.

If you have got the fresh peas, then you need to make a stock by simmering the pods for an hour or so (or until very tender) in some water in which you’ve also added salt, a stick of celery, a bay leaf and some sprigs of parsley. Strain this broth, measure out 1 litre, and push the cooked pods through a food mill back into the liquid.

1.5 litres water to make pea-stock (see above) or 1.5 litres hot chicken stock or vegetable stock (Marigold stock powder is all right)

1 kg fresh peas or 350g frozen petits pois, thawed

60g unsalted butter (30g if using fresh peas)

5 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan, plus more for serving

2 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin)

1 small onion, very finely chopped

3 tablespoons fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley

225g risotto rice, preferably Vialone or Carnaroli

salt and pepper

If you’re using frozen petits pois, put 15g butter in a small pan and over a gentle heat, sauté 100g of them until tender. Put in the processor, with another 15g butter and a tablespoon of parmesan and blitz to a purée.

In a heavy-bottomed wide saucepan, melt 30g butter together with the oil and gently cook the onion in it. After a couple of minutes add a tablespoon of the parsley and cook, still stirring, for another 3 or so minutes until the onion is beginning to soften. Add either the podded peas or the rest of the thawed frozen petits pois and turn in the buttery onion. Then stir in the rice until the grains are coated and fat-slicked, just as you would when starting off a risotto. But here’s the easy part: rather than adding the stock slowly and stirring all the while, with risi e bisi, you add all the stock at once. Stir everything together, add the petits pois purée, cover and leave to simmer for about 15 minutes or until the rice is cooked. Pour into a large warmed bowl, and stir in the remaining parmesan and sprinkle over the parsley. Season to taste. If you want to add a slightly Anglo-edge (utterly desirable here), add some chopped fresh mint along with the parsley. Eat out of shallow soup bowls.

Serves 4.

SUMMER MINESTRONE ALLA GENOVESE

It may seem surprising to suggest such a thick, substantial soup as a summer basic, but you won’t think so once you’ve tasted it. The sweetness of new potatoes, fresh peas, broad beans, the grassy herbalness of asparagus and then the uncompromisingly radiant sunniness of the basil, which is pounded or processed into a pine-nut-less pesto to drizzle over it all at the end, make you almost want to skip with summeriness. Frankly, this has all the comforting life-salving properties of a winter soup, without the bad weather. How bad can that be?

You know, I hope, that as ever I not only permit but invite the use of good stock concentrate rather than any actual carcass-boiling, and frozen in place of fresh pulses, should that make life easier. Actually it does in one major respect: you do need the broad beans to be shelled as well as podded, and this is easiest to do if you use frozen ones, which you’ve left to thaw. The skins can be just pinched away, leaving the tender, hyper-coloured greenness of the beans within to pop out without any trouble. If you want, you can add a handful or so of orzo pasta (so called because it resembles barley) or any other small soup pasta you like, ten to twelve minutes before the end of cooking, and this certainly makes the soup more filling as a supper in itself. But what isn’t optional is the temperature at which you serve it: this should be scarcely warm still. Tepid isn’t a word that buzzes with attractive, flavoursome connotations, but believe me, this is the way you want it.

You do need to stir a good bit of the pesto into the soup in the pan, before ladling it into bowls. I dollop some in and then pour the rest into a bowl for people to drizzle over for themselves as they eat. A block of parmesan and a grater on the table alongside are also necessary.

And it’s worth mentioning here that this pesto is wonderful, too, drizzled over cool, white, sliced mozzarella – that buffalo mozzarella that can scarcely seem to contain its milkiness – or indeed used as a dressing for a tomato and mozzarella salad.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 sticks celery, finely chopped

250g new potatoes, quartered

2 litres chicken or vegetable stock

150g fine green beans, topped, tailed and halved

150g baby asparagus, halved lengthwise, or larger asparagus cut into approx. 5cm lengths

1kg broad beans, podded and shelled, or 150g frozen

300g fresh peas, podded, or 100g frozen petits pois

3 courgettes, cut into small cubes

150g orzo pasta (optional)

salt

for the pesto:

2 cloves garlic

100g fresh basil, stalks removed

50g parmesan, freshly grated, plus more for serving

100ml olive oil

In a large wide saucepan, heat the oil and cook the onion, garlic, celery and potatoes together gently for about 10 minutes.

Add the stock to the pan and bring to the boil, then simmer for about 5 minutes before adding the green beans, asparagus, broad beans, peas and courgettes.

Bring the soup back to the boil and simmer until all the vegetables are cooked through, about 20 minutes. It’s around this time that you could add the pasta, though you could also put some salted water on to boil, and then cook the pasta in it and drain before adding to the vegetable-nubbly soup.

Meanwhile, to make the basil pesto, either use a pestle and mortar or a food processor. First combine all the ingredients except for the oil, bashing or blitzing, and then slowly drip in the oil, until you have a thick green oily emulsion.

Stir a tablespoon or so of the pesto through the soup, and then ladle into bowls, dolloping a teaspoonful more of the pesto into each bowlful, green on green, as you hand it out.

Serves 6–8.

HAPPINESS SOUP

Forgive the tweeness of the title, but this is a soup of such sunny, mood-enhancing yellowness that it overcomes even the most pervasively innate cynicism. To eat this is to feel cheered; even cooking it gives me a lift. It’s incredibly easy to make, but that’s not the clincher. This golden broth, rice-thickened and studded with a confetti dice of yellow courgettes and sprightly with lemon is pure joy. You only have to see it to believe it. And not surprisingly in some Middle-Eastern cultures, it is believed, in Claudia Roden’s words, that ‘eating yellow foods will result in laughter and happiness’. This, then, is a yellow soup to banish the blues.