Pressure Cooking the Books 4

Including a book giveaway and a discount code....

Hello everyone,

I hope this is an uplifting post to end the week on, but before I get onto it, a reminder that I am demoing at the beautiful Omved Gardens on 12th October. Omved have kindly given me a discount code to share with you all. Follow the link here and enter the code CATHERINE20 at checkout. The demo is predominately plant based - lots of tasters throughout the session - and there is an option to book lunch too. It really is a spectacular setting, worth coming for the view alone. And advance copies of Everyday Pressure Cooking will be available to buy too, almost a month ahead of publication. Hope to see some of you there!

Now, onto today’s review. We are now properly into soup season (mourning the truncated Indian Summer here, I was so looking forward to the light) and what better way to celebrate it than a book devoted to the subject. And if the book is a charitable endeavour, with all profits being poured back into the community to help with food insecurity, hardship and social isolation, so much the better.

Soup for Good is a collection of recipes from Cook for Good - a social enterprise set up by Karen Mattison and Robinne Collie, and based on a housing estate near King’s Cross. It started out as a food pantry, a scheme by which members of the community can be referred to access vastly discounted food - a £3.50 subscription gives food to the value of around £35. This is usually a mixture of surpluses from local businesses which is supplemented by food bought through fundraising. The emphasis is very much on food that needs cooking/prep rather than the processed foods which provide the bulk of most food bank parcels. The food pantry close to me takes surplus from local allotments too. (I add these links just in case anyone is feeling particularly charitable and would like to make a donation).

The Cook for Good pantry led to the development of a community kitchen which now offers a range of useful cookery classes, training programmes and food based clubs. As is often the case with enterprises such as this, it is so much more than the sum of its parts, with the kitchen becoming a warm, non judgmental and welcoming space where people are able to shop, cook, eat together, form friendships, get support and advice….and eat soup. Because the sharing of a thermos flask soup eventually led to the creation of a soup cafe, always with two on offer because “choice is the bedrock of dignity.”

you know how much I love a thermos flask….

So Soup for Good is a celebration of Cook for Good, but also, of course, the comforting and nourishing nature of soup. This means that most of the recipes are eminently pressure cookable - every soup recipe bar a single chilled soup can be sped up considerably. The book offers an eclectic mix of recipes from a range of contributors - Nigella Lawson is a supporter and offers her classic Yellow Split Pea and Frankfurter soup. Karan Gokani, gives a recipe for curried butternut squash soup. Most of the rest of the recipes are community favourites - by which I mean they are soups which have been approved by the cafe regulars - from politicians (Gordon Brown), local food businesses and organisations who support the enterprise, volunteers and community workers.

I really like the way it is organised. There’s a chapter devoted to a world of chicken soup, another titled “Two Ways With” based on one of their cookery courses, which takes a main ingredient (cauliflower, mushroom, lentil…) and offers two soups for each. There is a chapter of flexible recipes based around using up ingredients, great for cooks who aren’t yet confident about improvising in the kitchen (and pertinently, who don’t want to risk messing it up). And a chapter on main meal soups which veer almost into stew territory.

As there was a frost first thing and the mist did its best to seep into my bones on my morning walk, I chose a proper wintery soup to cook today - beef shin and barley - from the main meal chapter. Beef shin traditionally needs long, slow cooking so I cooked it with the root vegetables in the recipe for 30 minutes at high pressure. At that point I let it drop pressure naturally, removed it from the cooker and shredded it. The vegetables were pureed lightly with the stock so some of them were very lightly broken up, then I put the meat back in the pressure cooker (along with the mashed up marrow which had fallen out of the shin bone) with the green vegetables and leeks and the barley, brought it up to pressure again, removed it from the heat and left it to drop for 2 minutes before releasing the remaining pressure. I just used up a few odds and ends with the greens - a bit of curly kale, some green cabbage and leaves from a romanesco cauliflower.

The barley I cooked separately as per the recipe - normally I would cook it all together but as some of the soup was to be pureed I thought best not. Of course, while writing this it occurred to me that I could have easily cooked it all in one as the vegetables were soft enough that I could have just squashed them on the side of the pan, leaving the barley intact. I have no idea why I didn’t think of this when I was cooking.

Anyway, a very satisfying soup, savoury and slightly gelatinous from the dissolved connective tissue. On a really cold day I might be tempted to add suet dumplings too. There are lots of a similar ilk - I have bought lamb for an Algerian lamb, pea and artichoke soup - the peas from the freezer and the artichokes from a tin.

There is another aspect to the book - the recipes are interspersed with portraits of some of the people who have found Cook for Good. It ranges from those who were in dire straits and needed help, to others who volunteer there - and there is a big overlap between the two groups. Some of the stories will break your heart, but at the same time illustrate perfectly how life changing organisations such as this can be, especially when there are many individuals involved who will always go the extra mile to help others.

I have a copy of Soup for Good to give away to a good home. All I would like in return is to know what your favourite winter soup is. Please try to remember to drop your comment on the actual post, rather than emailing me direct! I’ll select a winner on Sunday evening, 6pm BST.

Thank you for reading! This is a free post, so please do share it with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber, if you aren’t already, it allows me to devote more time to these posts. Thank you again!