Sophie Conran’s Root Soup with Cheese Scones! Loads of seasonal root vegetables - both roasted and sautéed - plus the most meltingly-delicious cheese scones on the side! I am rather partial to serving the soup in a teacup with the roughly broken-up scones alongside whilst everyone is opening parcels and enjoying the Christmas get together - while I do the last minute somewhat panicky procedure of the ‘main event’!

Sophie Conran’s blog is an absolute delight for anyone who likes to cook or find out more about seasonal ingredients and/or looking for inspiration for decorating your house at christmas - have a look! This lady has been in the frame well before blogs were invented but she still keeps coming up with brilliantly-fresh ideas!

Oops! Just one month to go before Christmas Eve! And… instead of concentrating on trees, presents, cards and the rest, I am (as ever) focusing on THE soup I might serve on Christmas Day! To my mind, this is a mighty important issue and has to be given much thought and much tasting and testing!

Generally speaking, there tends to be a mixed bag of people around a Christmas table (some young, some old, some vegetarian and/or vegan, some with intolerances to wheat, dairy, shellfish and the rest so the soup has to encompass just about everything - BUT - it has to be downright delicious - that’s not up for debate!

I am not sure how many people have come across Donna Hay’s books and her website but I am definitely a fan. She is from ‘down under’ and the weather at this time of the year is scarily-hot but she is unlikely to let that get in the way of creating beautiful soups so I am right there with her! Think warm, sunny, light, delicious and oh so pretty and this one could well be in the running!

I have still got a few more of Donna’s soups, a few others from my favourite soup bloggers and of course, my own concoctions to try and to compete with this one so I will keep you posted as the month progresses but the recipe testing and tasting will certainly be the name of the game!

Oh, and by the way ‘silverbeet’ is swiss chard!

Brian Wansink, a Cornell University professor who spends much of his career doing brilliantly-mischievous experiments based around the psychology of eating, wrote Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think which I highly recommend. Over the years, he has dreamed up endless experiments involving everything from different-sized plates and glasses to why we often lose track of how much we are eating when we are with friends and family but one which is particularly pertinent here is his Bottomless Soup Bowl Study.

Participants were seated at a table, four at a time to eat soup, but what they didn’t know was that two of the four bowls were attached to a tube underneath the table which very slowly and imperceptibly refilled the bowls! Those eating from the ‘bottomless’ bowls consumed an incredible 73 percent more soup than those eating from the other bowls AND estimated that they had consumed 140.5kcals fewer than they actually did! Wansink believes, and many of his experiments clearly indicate that we often eat with our eyes and not necessarily with our stomachs and he offers a wealth of clever tips and tricks on how we can redress the balance. It’s fascinating stuff!

But… however you play it … a really great soup is a bit of magic in a bowl and nutritionally rich in antioxidants and many disease-fighting protectors - BUT - perhaps the trick here is - don’t go ‘bottomless’ - particularly if you are trying to lose a few pounds!

Perhaps you might like to try my Black Bean Soup with Smoked Ham Hock? This one is so tasty and filling, more than one generous bowl is unlikely!

When I was a kid, in Scotland, we employed a big knobbly turnip/swede/neep/tumshie (how many names can a vegetable possibly have, you ask?) to make our scary halloween lanterns that we carried from door-to-door, rehearsing our little song, dance or poem along the way - you certainly didn’t get away with telling a lame joke back then! And, if you didn’t totally ‘freeze’ under the stare of a few overly-stern neighbours (who didn’t really get into the whole thing and only under peer pressure, opened their doors), there was a chance that you might get some sweets, a tangerine, a few monkey nuts and maybe even a sixpenny bit for your efforts!

DISCLOSURE: A few real ‘Scrooges’ were known to put all the lights out and went to bed around 6 rather than part with a few monkey nuts - yes, Mr and Mrs P at number 9 and Mrs F at number 18 - I mean you!

Anyways… it was a total relief to us Scots that we have generally accepted the American habit of using a pumpkin rather than a turnip as they were notoriously hard to scoop out and even worse to carve any kind of creative design, but we knew no better - all we knew was that Cinderella’s carriage turned into a pumpkin at midnight, not that it was some kind of massive and carvable vegetable!

And best of all, the pumpkin flesh and seeds we laboriously scoop out can be turned into loads of delicious food!

Here are 2 recipes you might want to make with all the pumpkin flesh that is cluttering your kitchen counters! I have to warn you that the squash/pumpkin and sage soup is a thing of complete and utter beauty and one bowl is never enough plus it’s very hard to say no to a generous helping of the pumpkin/squash and sage pasta which is a favourite at any time of the year.

UPDATE: me and the other kids on our road haven’t necessarily forgiven Mr and Mrs P from number 9 and Mrs F from number 18 but after around 15 years or so, we decided to let the whole ‘halloween thing’ go - grown-up or what?

Pumpkin/Squash & Sage Soup (click on the image for the recipe)

Pumpkin/Squash & Sage Pasta (click on the image for recipe)

POTAGE BONNE FEMME

I am unclear exactly when I came across the writings of Elizabeth David and her Book of Mediterranean Food! Must have been around 40 years ago and I simply could not get enough of her recipes using ingredients such as aubergines, basil, figs, garlic, olive oil and saffron, which at the time of her writing were scarcely available in Britain but were beginning to appear (if you knew where to look!)

As an art student who was spending rather more of my allowance on booze, 'pop' concerts and generally enjoying myself, there wasn't much left for food! But, I was a soup fanatic even then and at least once a week I made Elizabeth's Potage Bonne Femme - one of the least expensive soups to make, but also one of the most satisfying ... and ... it usually lasted me 3 days! I didn't have a mouli or a liquidiser but I just used a potato masher - perhaps not as smooth as hers but it did the trick!

A while later, having saved and saved and saved my wages as a very junior graphic artist, I took a job as a seriously-underpaid waitress in a hotel in the Swiss Alps (my father was none-too-pleased but hey, I got to see the incredible sunrise over the mountain every morning as we were serving breakfast at some ungodly hour and I got to ski the same beautiful mountain every afternoon!)

The hotel residents dined on the most fabulous Swiss food (oh the aromas coming out of the kitchen!) but the fare was god-awful for the staff - so the Potage Bonne Femme was again my saviour, cooked on the Swiss equivalent to a Prima stove! Sadly, there were no smart phones to take an image of my soup at the time but the stock photo above is not too far away from the reality!    

image: New Covent Gardens Soup Co.

I think this is a great idea! Most soup fans have a favourite 'go to' and we believe our own recipe is 'the best of the best' and do you know what? New Covent Garden Soups ain't daft! We give them our favourite recipe, they take the recipe and tailor it to the 'carton soup' market, they give us the kudos and maybe-even a small payment (probably not!) and everyone's happy - or are they?

I simply can't imagine that those recipes that I have slaved over and over and over until they totally hit the spot will taste the same - BUT no-one would ever accuse me of being a 'soup snob' SO I sort of like the idea that New Covent Garden are going out of their way to get us involved even if they will most likely be the ones to profit!

Have you 'gifted' a recipe? What was it and how did the whole process go?