Jeremy Vincent’s best soup tips and recipes to get you winter ready
As the weather slides towards winter, here are all the tips and recipes you need to make delicious, comforting soup.
FOR warming meals during these chilly days of autumn, soups are just the dishes to serve.
And the best sort of soup for a family get-together is the one-dish meal. It’s perfect after a weekend in the garden.
The Americans do it well with their hearty fish-based chowders — a word that originates from the French “chaudiere”, meaning kettle or cauldron. But the word “chowder” can also apply to vegetable or meat mixtures made with milk and eaten with crusty bread like any filling stew.
This week I picked up a couple of salmon fillets from the supermarket and they helped create this delicious seafood dish. It’s not too up-market to serve the family, but it can easily hold its own when guests come round for something special.
The dash of cognac or brandy is an extra special finish if you want to go that one step further.
SALMON CHOWDER WITH A DASH OF COGNAC
Total decadence — so intense, so aromatic, so beautiful in the dish — and a downright aphrodisiac with all that fennel. Why complicate it with anything more than salad, bread, and a fruit dessert?
Serves 4
4 tbsp butter
1 large onion, cut into medium dice
1 large fennel bulb, cut into medium dice
4 garlic cloves, cut into chunks
12 mushrooms, thickly sliced
4 tbsp flour
5 cups stock (preferably fish, but a light chicken stock will do)
2-3 salmon fillets, skin removed (with one smooth slice of a sharp knife while you’re holding one end of the skin) and cut into bite-size pieces
3 cups cream (or ½ cream, ½ milk)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tbsp cognac (optional)
Chopped parsley or fennel fronds, for garnish
Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir in the onion, fennel and garlic, cover, and sweat the vegetables for 5 minutes. Turn up the heat to medium and add the mushrooms, frying them for about 5 more minutes.
Reduce the heat and stir in the flour (adding more butter, if necessary, to dissolve the flour). Cook for a minute or two to lose the rawness of the flour. Stir in the stock. It may look as though you will end up with the floury ball, but the mixture will thin as the stock blends in.
Let the soup thicken a bit, then add the salmon pieces, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the cream and bring just to a boil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Hold it on simmer until ready to serve.
When ready to serve, stir in the cognac (if using), ladle into large bowls and serve. Garnish with chopped parsley or fennel fronds.
WAYS TO A GOOD SOUP
THE basis of just about any hearty soup is a stock. You can clean out the fridge and make homemade stock. Just fill a large pot with water and add vegetables — for instance, chopped celery, carrots and a whole onion with the skin on. If you have some chicken left over from last night’s dinner, add it to the pot, along with garlic cloves, salt, peppercorns and parsley stalks. Cook for an hour to an hour and a half, then remove from the stove and strain the stock. The result is a rich, wonderful stock, good for just about anything.
YOU can use pastas in soup, for instance, linguine noodles, or you could try rice noodles or tortellini. Whichever protein or carbohydrate you choose, you will find that it is a great way beef-up your soup.
VEGETABLES added to a soup taste better if you saute them in a little butter first.
DID you know that lettuce loves fat? Fat can be removed from hot soup by floating a large lettuce leaf on the surface.
NEVER boil soups once cream or milk has been added.
TO THICKEN a thin soup, grate a small peeled potato, using the coarse grater. Add it to the soup at once or it will discolour, and cook the soup for another 5-7 minutes before serving. Add more grated potato if needed.
TO THIN a thick soup, blending the soup will have the effect of thinning it slightly. Otherwise simply add more liquid (milk, water, stock), or remove some of the solids from the soup.
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