Don't Sweat the Aubergine by Nicholas Clee Read Free Book Online Page A

bowls.
    Skin 4 plump tomatoes ( see here ), cut them up, and add them to the browned garlic and oil; cook until the tomatoes go mushy; add a portion of stewed tomato to the bread before pouring hot stock over them.
    Spread a little olive oil over each side of the crustless bread, and bake in the oven until brown; or grill on a ridged pan.
    Pasta or noodles are an alternative starchy ingredient to the bread. Heat the stock and throw in (for 4) 150g small pasta shapes; divide between each bowl a tomato stew made as above; pour over the broth and cooked pasta.
    Flavour the stock with chopped chillies (as many as you like, with the pith removed if you don’t want the soup to be too fiery), a teaspoon of minced ginger, a couple of bashed-up stalks of lemon grass, and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic; add 200g to 250g cooked and drained noodles ( see here ) to warm through. (Noodles will make the soup very starchy if you cook them in the stock.)
    The deliciousness of these soups lies in the distinctive deliciousness of the ingredients. In leek and potato and related preparations, a bit more blending takes place.
LEEK AND POTATO SOUP
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4
    Stock or water
    30g butter
    1 onion, chopped
    2 leeks, tough green parts removed, sliced and washed
    3 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cut up
    Salt
    Heat the stock or water. 1 Melt the butter in a saucepan and soften the onion in it (thin it with a little olive or sunflower oil if it shows signs of catching, or add a little water to the pan – see here ). Cook until the onion starts to turn golden: about 10 to 15 minutes. Add the leek, and stew until it softens: about 5 more minutes. 2 Add the potatoes, and pour in the hot stock or water to come to the level of the vegetables at the top. Add salt to taste, 3 and simmer, uncovered, 4 until the potatoes are soft: about 15 to 20 minutes. Blend the soup by pushing it through a food mill, or mash it with a potato masher. 5 For a richer finish, swirl in a little butter away from the heat (in the hope that it won’t split – see here ), or some double cream (1 tbsp, say), or some sour cream.
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VARIATIONS
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    An even simpler version of this soup has the leeks and potatoes thrown into boiling, salted water, cooked, blended and enriched with butter. I prefer the aromatic base of butter-softened onion – a base that may underlie any number of vegetable soups.
    Soften an onion or two, and add whatever vegetables you like, with as much liquid as you like (I prefer thick soups). Add garlic to the onion base; I usually soften it for a minute in the butter or oil before adding the chopped onion ( see here ).
    Spices go with most vegetables, and in soup they complement the root vegetables particularly well, as Jane Grigson famously showed with her spiced parsnip soup (from her
Vegetable Book
). Carrot and coriander has become a ubiquitous combination: for a soup with four carrots, warm a teaspoon of coriander seeds in a dry saucepan until they give off a toasted aroma, grind them in an electric mill or with a pestle , and cook with the softened onion (and garlic) for a minute or two before adding the carrots and stock or water. A potato would give the soup a little more body. After blending, and just before serving, enrich the soup with a little cream, and add some fresh coriander leaves.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Add hot liquid . It’s in order to keep the simmering time short. As do stocks ( see here ), soups lose freshness of flavour if their ingredients are overcooked. Take the pan off the heat as soon as the vegetables are tender.
    2 • Sweating the alliums . It removes their harsh notes, sweetening them. You don’t have to sweat the leek, which is far less sulphurous than the onion; it will retain more of its raw character if you skip that phase. Some recipes insist that you turn the potatoes with the other vegetables, coating them in fat, before adding the liquid; I doubt if this procedure has any effect on