Soup

[Cold Meat Platter]

Red lentils can get to fuck—it's all about yellow split peas.

GET ABSOLUTELY FUCKED YOU CUNT AAAAARGHH SHIT YOURSELF INSIDE OUT YOU PAEDOPHILE

[Jittlebags]

As recommended by Jane Jissolm Cunt

https://pulses.org/recipes/recipe/339-mung-bean-soup

[Gurke and Hare]

Completely ruins it if you use 338 or 340 mung beans.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Completely ruins it if you use 338 or 340 mung beans.

"they found out you can be really excessive about something as long as you get the quantity absolutely right"

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Is there a country on earth that doesn't eat soup? It seems to be a universal constant that everybody likes a nice bit of soup.

[amateur]

I like soup but it's got to be thick. Ideally, you can stand a spoon up in it.

Fuck broth is what I'm saying. May as well have a drink instead.

[holyzombiejesus]

This is the best red lentil soup.

150g shallots, peeled and thin-sliced

2 tbsp of light oil such as groundnut

40g ginger, knobbly bits trimmed off

2 lemongrass stalks

1 or 2 red chillis, diced

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

200g red lentils

½ tin of coconut milk, shaken

Lime and coriander for serving

Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a medium-sized heavy-based pan and gently fry the shallots. Wash your ginger and chop it up very finely.

Peel off the tough outer leaves from the lemongrass and cut off the fatter bottom quarter - the soft, fresher part. Slice these into quarters lengthways, and chop as thinly as you can.

When the shallots are soft and smelling sweet, chuck in the chillis, garlic and lemongrass. Turn the heat down, give it a good stir and stick a lid on it.

Cut the remaining stalks of lemongrass in half and tie them together with string. Add to your pan, stir and cover again. You want all these bits to soften but not colour so keep checking and stirring.

Stick the kettle on. After about five minutes stir in the lentils and give them a roll and a coat. Pour in 500ml of hot water and half a tin of coconut milk.

Turn the heat up to medium-high and stir every now and then for the 20 or so minutes the lentils take to cook.

Once they have gone mushy, season, if necessary add more hot water, pick out the lemongrass stalks and serve with lime and a sprig of coriander.

I use a whole tin of coconut milk and extra lentils.

[Fr.Bigley]

Oxtail, French onion, concentrated chicken n mushroom. That's soup. Rest shite. Get fucked.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Oxtail, French onion, concentrated chicken n mushroom. That's soup. Rest shite. Get fucked.

Thank you Karl fucking Pilkington

[flotemysost]

I had some Tom Yum soup from my local Asian supermarket earlier, I know you're not usually meant to have it as a standalone thing but it was delicious, though I can't tell if it's going to be great or disastrous on the stomach. To paraphrase another Tom who's passed through many a digestive tract in the Southern hemisphere, tomorrow may or may not be a good day.

[beanheadmcginty]

If I want to make my soup a bit more substantial and filling without really affecting the flavour, I just crack a couple of eggs in it as I'm heating it up. You can then either stir them in or leave them to turn into a couple of lovely runny poachies.

[TrenterPercenter]

I've got some proper chicken soup boiling away on the hob right now; it's quite substantial this recipe which verges on a stew.

Dead simple though; chicken (you can use cheapo higher welfare wings for this; they work a treat), celery, carrots, onion, bay leaf, peppercorns and salt - that is all there is too it.

Take the chicken out after a couple of hours simmering; strain the soup; recover the meat and put some fresh carrot "batons" in then make some dumplings.

[Dex Sawash]

Wife makes a weird garlic soup with egg and parmesan strirred in it that is very chicken soup like. Sometimes puts wide noodles celery and carrot in, sometimes load kale or spinach.

[Fr.Bigley]

Miso soup is decent, but I count things with the viscosity of water as broth. Any noodle shite swimming in thun spicy liquid is a winner.

Soup though, I think I've made my point clear in previous pilkinton posts.

[TrenterPercenter]

Chicken Soup with carrots and cabbage (yes with big fuck off dumplings! what of it eh?!)

[Fr.Bigley]

Chicken Soup with carrots and cabbage (yes with big fuck off dumplings! what of it eh?!)

To be fairs trents, that looks banging.

[TrenterPercenter]

Top drawer this stuff; recipe is from some old "Supercook" book from the 60s my mum has got. 

Been eating this since I was a pup; it's very cheap to make; I reckon putting aside having upfront bay leaves (you can nick em of someones topiary) and peppercorns (swipe em from a restaurant) then you can make enough for 10 servings for about £2.50

[Fr.Bigley]

Does look remarkably like me old nans dumpling soup. I think I might have to make this shit for the ca.ling trip were embarking on the weekend. Got a right big food thermos and that will hit the spot half way to Morar. Sexy stuff and cheap!

[Brian Freeze]

Please add your dumpling recipe and I will be making some of this thanks cheers ta.

[TrenterPercenter]

Please add your dumpling recipe and I will be making some of this thanks cheers ta.

Dumplings are just 2 to 1 self-raising flour to suet and salt to taste - then I added some freshly chopped parsley.

This recipe is pretty much identical and has all the steps https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/dumplings

For the soup just buy a pack of chicken wings I'd say about half a pack for 2.5 litres of water (so either make a big batch and double everything or split and freeze the rest); boil the onions (2 decent size), 4-5 celery stalks (part with the leaves is best), and 4 carrots, 10 peppercorns, 3 bay leafs and half a teaspoon of white pepper, I'd add a chicken stock cube too just to help it on it's way (Kallo ones are good!).  Bring to the boil; chuck your chicken in; simmer for 2 hrs.  Fish out the chicken put aside; strain everything so you are left with the broth; put the broth back in the pot; when the chicken has cooled pull it apart with your hands and put it back in the pot.  cut some carrots into batons (or other small shapes if you can be arsed) and slice some cabbage; all back in the pot with the dumplings cover and simmer for another 20 mins.  If you are feeling really fancy you can put the pot in the oven for the last bit so you get crispy tops on your dumplings.

Bon Appetit'

[Fr.Bigley]

Trent saves the day yet again. A soupy hero.

[TrenterPercenter]

I'll go one better;

So do everything as described above but swap half the onion for spring onions, half the peppercorns for allspice berries (pimento berries) and stick some thyme in there and optionally a scotch bonnet (whole don't chop it - you'll need to fish this out after an hour or it will disintegrate - up to you just means it will be hotter) or a good glug of habanero/scotch bonnet based hot sauce.  When you are I'd say about a 1hr 50 in do all the straining, chicken gubbins, but this time put some chunky chopped yam/sweet potato (or normal potato), and again chunky bits of something called chayote or cho-cho (you've seen these before in Caribbean and South Asian shops but probably thought they look complicated to use; they are not and they are incredible (and cheap!)

they look like this...


simmer this all with your dumplings (I'd leave the parsley out this time) for another 30 minutes and voila you've pretty much got a Jamaican Chicken Soup


EDIT: If I was going whole hog here than I would make a base soup using pumpkin or butternut squash - which is great to leads to a much thicker soup - the way above is more like a broth which can be more refreshing if not as filling.

[Brian Freeze]

All good this Trenter, thankyou. Was going to say I have a tendency to use a recipe as a starting point so that new version sounds good, if not a bit spicy for the nippers.

I am banned from making broccoli and stilton soup after putting butter beans in it once many many years ago.

Never forgive, never forget apparently.

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

O(c)h aye. Had an amazing cullen skink in St Andrews a few years ago. 

Was it at the Victoria - I had it there for lunch a few years back and it was really good.

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

One Austrian soup speciality is a Fritattensuppe, which in its most basic form is just a beef consommé with chopped pancakes in it. Learned to love it as my son will eat it (he is a very picky eater) without fail. Only downside is that it is often overly salty.

[thenoise]

If you're really poor or can't be fucked to shop then red lentils cooked in a tin of chopped tomatoes is just about acceptable as soup. A few spiced and/or herbs is good if you have any lying about, put some onions and veg in if you must, but that does mean washing up the chopping board and at least one knife.

I was still eating this once a day during the last week of every month when my pay packet ran out in my late twenties. What a fucking disgrace.

[Dex Sawash]

Best soup anecdote on CaB

Dear friends,

I wrote the underneath a couple of years ago when Neil suffered a temporary bout of insanity and allowed people to post regretful, personal stories under a blazer of anonymity.  I haven't posted anything for a while due to an ongoing cockroach war in my house which is getting increasingly more futile and violent and is in my own little way a tribute to the Battle of the Somme and her war dead in this most auspicious of years.  And also because I have for whatever reason some type of writing block where the only new idea I've had in the last six months is to alphabetise my fridge.  I feel, creatively, a bit like a windsock on a still day.  This is an attempt to keep my hand in.  I have also recently realised, because of Brexit, the academisation of state schools and Channel 4's Naked Attraction, that I will never again return to live in South Wales, except perhaps to die, which may amount to the same thing.  Therefore any legal or career ramifications of silly behaviour no longer matter because I will always live outside the reach of British law.  And also because I will never have a career.  Moral implications don't trouble me for a similar reason.

It has lived in the inbox of the esteemed Doomy Dwyer ever since.  I sent it to him because I wanted him to like it and because I want to write like him or be like him, whichever is easiest.  I also sent it to young, absent Thomas in the hope he would copy my mistakes and a drug addiction could be a new and interesting character development for him.

I know it's long.

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The following is a life event that even I'm ashamed of and I have only a meniscus of shame left.  I start sweating cold milk every time I think of it and the potential horrific and life-altering consequences there could have been if not for Lucy Luck.  A slice of fortune I certainly did not deserve.  I know it will sound unbelievable, even for my usual self-aggrandising egomania, but it happened and is probably the closest I came to the Bukowski levels of down and out self-destruction I was searching for.  Of all my post party, birds-waking-up anecdotes it's the only one my girlfriend instructs me not to tell people and the only one for which she is truly disappointed in me.

I had been stumbling around the world for a year and was still utterly bereft after having my fragile little heart wrung to fuck.  I had drank every day for around 18 months partly as some kind of spiritual experiment and partly because I had no choice, and had latterly developed other, more exotic breakfast addictions.  In the new spirit of anonymous sincerity I should probably say that I had originally left home with the idea of drinking myself til death in the sun like the heartbroken selfish cunt I aspired to be.  A bronzed, limp statue to the death of love.  There were a few occasions throughout the venture when I thought I was about to die but I'll save those for the next time Neil forgets to take his pills.  I only made it alive that far into the year due to a caeser's salad of fortune, fortitude and the compassion of various women.  The dog end of which saw me arrive to the States having spent or lost the entirety of my life savings, where I had a fortnight left to either find an amusing way to kill myself or, much worse, think about how I would possibly cope with life back home.  An incomprehensible steel umbrella that I had ignored for the best part of a year.  No job, no house, no money, no woman.  I know this sounds like an underperforming but grammatically competent wannabe Kerouac twat hungering for the bright burning truth of the road, man, but there we are.  It's how I felt or thought I felt.  This is the green screen to which subsequent events must be viewed, but not justified.  I was a dangerous physical and emotional mess and not to be encouraged.

After watching Obama get elected and thinking that yes, we all could, I drove down Mexico way despite not having a piece of paper saying I could drive, because I couldn't really drive.  It was with a temporary woman, a Canadian Pole who sang like Janis and presided over two of the most impressive tits I've ever seen.  She eventually left like women do and I came to, shipwrecked in San Francisco, the Brighton of America.  Alone again, I shared a room but not a bed with this English rose who, before leaving, gave me a business card with a website on and nothing else, urging me to check it out.  She could give me no details, but she put upon it a lot of import and I trust heavily in pale women.  I went to an internet cafe, told mum I wasn't dead and set about following the clues.  After solving a few riddles, just enough to test my patience, the site gave me a phone number to ring so I did.  My very own film noir (black film) and I'm both the lead actor and its only audience.  A man answered, gave me an appointment time, an address and a password and then hung up before I could tell him whether or not I had understood him.  Again like people do in films.  I could hear some jazz in the background and was curious enough to spend my final night going there.  V San Fran. 

The address, or as the Americans pronounce it, the address, was in some anonymous building in the rough downtown area quite a way out from the tourist friendly city centre with its bars and liberalism and electricity.  I tentatively knocked a big brass handle.  A guy opened the door on a chain.  He was dressed like Bugsy Malone and gave me the once over.  I told him the password and, with the all the professionalism of an out of work actor, he looked up and down the street to see if I was being followed before coldly beckoning me inside.  Inside to my own aesthetic heaven.  Of how I would draw utopia.  Wall to wall gin and skirts and hairgel.  My very own Tracey Island.  Greta Garbo brushes past and keeps saying everything 'is a gas'.  Gatsby is slumped in the corner with a beautiful silver cigarette case full of cocaine resting in his delicate hands.  Noel Coward will arrive soon and satirise the wine list.  It really was dizzying.  Flapper girls, barmen with those brass rings round their elbows, cocktails, architectural consideration and swing.  It was a speakeasy and the closest I'll ever get to living in the past, the place where I'm happiest.  It is worth remembering that this was 2008 and consequently the concept of hipster was still, for me at least, an unknown abhorrence, an unassuming mole where cancer sleeps.  For someone so preoccupied with my own demise I was densely happy for half an hour until they threw me out on to the street and I stepped out into stark 21st century reality.  From a warm bath of the golden age to a gritty HBO drama in a hotstep.  Modern life couldn't compete, not even with a black president.  A bad night never started so good.

I was drunk but not drunk enough to forget about my flight home the next day.  This wouldn't do, and I'd have to accelerate things.  I started walking aimlessly, one of my favourite things to do, and before time ended up in some kind of homeless citadel under a bridge.  I had never seen anything like it in my life.  Stateside, as twats say, is a place where everything is done on much larger scale than necessary.  The cars, the houses, the people.  Everything's just so big.  That's why they've never paid any mind to town planning or have a concept of design or space.  This bigness goes too for social disparity, and the poverty and homelessness there is breathtaking and certainly worth remembering when complaining about some of the endemic problems in British society.  Modern life this side of the Atlantic, by comparison, looks like a watercolour of a croquet lawn in the Long Edwardian Summer, sleeping in a forgotten drawing room.  If the Americans are the best of us, or the loudest of us at least, then humanity really is fucked.  I was walking though hundreds of make-do houses and corrugated iron shants, faceless eyes staring at me from beyond the cardboard, needles everywhere.  I was being cat-called and, I suspect, followed, but it was too late to turn back as I hate to lose face.  Streets abandoned by the government, society and the light.  A Hogarthian disgrace.  It would be a good place to buy some drugs, I thought.

Anything to block out the pressing terror of the clock.  So I went up to a guy sitting on one of those stoops they have there and made him a proposition.  I don't want to judge someone superficially but if he had a house, or even rented one, I'd be pleasantly surprised.  I have never seen a black man so grey.  In both colour and demeanour.  After introducing myself and going through various accents of the British Isles until we found one he understood, we got to work.  You get them, I'll pay for it, we'll share it.  Not only would we get high but I'd also introduce the concept of socialism to the Americas.  Like Wimbledon FC of the early 90s, everyone was playing to their strengths and, although it wouldn't be pretty, we would grind out results.  The Crazy Gang rides again.  Book your tickets for the reunion tour.  Also an integral but unspoken part of the deal was that he was to protect me if anyone has a lunge for me or asks to see my bum.  I could only see him by the dim light of a fire in a bin, but he seemed to have a kind face, albeit one almost entirely destroyed by years of hard drug abuse.  I bet he knew the best places to score, and if he didn't then he had no business being a homeless drug addict.

I was ideally after a smoke to delay relentless reality for a bit and make the walk home seem a little more like that Mr Soft advert.  I only had about $30 on me so we traipsed around the city's ripped backside at midnight trying to get a good deal.  It turns out most homeless drug addicts aren't much in the market for a relaxing spliff while discussing the merits or otherwise of John Cale's solo work, and did in fact want something much harder to obliviate the complete apathy life shows them.  We had an absurd conversation where he tried to increase the severity and illegality of what we would buy, real top shelf stuff, and I tried to haggle him down to coke.  We walked around for hours, sipping whisky from my hipflask and having a polite but distant chat about our two admittedly very different lives.  He'd leave me outside some derelict hotel fuck knows where, while he went inside with the last money I had in the world for 20 minutes at a time.  I'd be stood on some corner looking like the whitest boy in the west as this hoard of societal debris drifted past.  It was like The Wire but without all of the boring bits.  I was petrified and didn't give a fuck at the same time.  When you got nothing you got nothing to lose.

He was, for a habitual drug user, really shit at buying drugs and he would, without exception, come of whatever derelict building he had entered saying they've all run out.  That it wasn't on the menu tonight.  The locals have gone off the stuff.  They actually find it quite brackish.  I now realise he was probably gradually spending my money whilst up the on little bumps for himself, as he was quite right to do.  I was starting to lose my confidence in the whole affair and was sobering up enough to realise how shit an idea this was.  Not to mention how incredibly dangerous it was getting.  I was rehearsing my break up speech to him, working out exactly how much of the money I should leave with him, when this giant, shoeless woman came bowling down the street with a shopping trolley.  This sounds like a scene a first year college student would write about inner-city ghetto life but it did in fact happen and I can't change it to make it seem less like of a cliche.  'Got vials, got ya vials!' she screeched, and the zombies descended.  I have never seen such wanton capitalism and greed.  She was like a big, black Gordon Gecko.  There was a speedy bit of business that I couldn't keep up with.  She was doing five transactions with two hands.  Arguing, selling, and laughing in a flurry of sass I couldn't understand.  Like Billingsgate but with heroin instead of hake.  It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  It's great to see someone who is truly talented in their natural environment, whatever it is.  That's why I watch Ronnie O'Sullivan even though I hate every inch of snooker.  Someone complained that she had bought them cheaper up the road and was charging too much commission.  She actually, really actually, said the phrase 'Did y'all go up there and get them yourself?  No, y'all didn't.  I did.  Buy for one, sell for two motherfuck'.

The story's only true hero, our homeless guy who's name I couldn't remember, if he did indeed tell me which I doubt, did both me and himself really proud and tussled, fought and scratched his way to the front of the trolley and got what he, and we (but mostly he), wanted.  Well, almost.  He had, the big loon, bought crack despite me explicitly telling him not to do so.  Actually he didn't know if it was crack or crystal meth and said we'd have to find out the old fashioned way by tasting it.  I was forced to give him a written warning about his conduct there and then.  And that was that.  Business over.  All sold out.  The cupboards are bare.  A supermarket trolley half full of class A life enhancer had disappeared in 5 minutes fast following a tsunami of the desperate.  They shuffled off down alleyways to unwrap their presents and she boundered down the road her trolley like the kid in The fucking Road.

I was too far gone to back out now, so we went in search of a nice cosy spot in some shop doorway.  We sat down, about 3 hours after our noble quest began, and he sparked up the pipe and gave it all he got.  He offered it to me and, in a wilful desire to hit rock bottom so I might one day come up again, I huffed it all down into my tummy.  You really do bring out the very worst in me, homeless guy.  Then the final, incredulous denouement.  Probably the worst minute of my life, and that includes that time I saw a colleague wipe her fanny with a Greggs paper bag after having a piss in the street.  Sitting back in my shameful fog, staring into a numb space and feeling a bit like the fuzz between two channels on an analogue TV, looking into nothing, or thinking about the immortality of the crab, as the Spanish might say.  About 12 seconds into this wonderful absence a cop car pulled up not five feet in front of us, waiting at a red light, and stared the living fuck out of me.  A 40 year old black hobo and a 23 year old blond Lonely Planet twat with too many bracelets and a crackpipe hidden in his hand, a million miles from home and a million miles from happiness.  The original odd couple. A right pair of likely lads.  Some mothers do 'ave 'em.  My heart prolapsed.  I wanted to run for it, using my innate knowledge of the back streets of San Francisco, but my legs wouldn't work.  The cop was now boring into my soul, I suppose trying to work out whether or not I had been kidnapped.  The longest however-long of my life.  Long enough to contemplate American jail, the phone call home, the missed flight, the criminal record, the embarrassment at being caught with such a tacky drug.  Our friend whispered kind, reassuring words.  Stay still and they'll go, man.  Don't move, don't look away, or they'll get out.  It is quite difficult to maintain eye contact with an American police officer, trying to not look confrontational or scared, 30 seconds after smoking crack for the first time in your young life.  To look like you belong here, at 4am, on the street corner, when really you don't belong anywhere.  But you should always trust professionals.  He knew his business.  The lights changed, they slowly pulled away and my heart did the boogaloo.

My lesson finally learnt, I decided to get out of there and walk off this terrible high.  I did, after all, have to either die or get on a 12 hour flight in a few hours (a comedown locked in a metal tube ten thousand feet in the sky will really teach you a lot about your mental strengths and weaknesses, incidentally).  We weren't a million miles away from where I was staying by now and, just before we parted ways with a handshake, mine cricket, his baseball, I said the stupidest, naive, most Church of England thing I've ever said.  (Brief context:  A few days before I had made some Welsh cawl for that Canadian girl to try and fool her into thinking the Welsh had retained some kind of distinct culture.  I had some left over in ziplock bag).  What came next was probably a lower moment than the decision to inhale.  Before you go, mate, oh, and keep the change and all that, yeah?  Think of it as a finder's fee.  Before you go, do you want some traditional soup from my country I made?  There's loads of it and I'll be damned if I'll finish it all myself.  It's cold and it's a few days old and in a bag, but it's still good.'

He stared at me, a look of bewilderment and utter disdain on his face, and said in a very jivey way

'Motherfucker, you just seen me smoke crack.  The fuck I'm gonna do with some god damned soup from Ireland or wherever the fuck you're from?  Fucking soup!'

And with that we parted.  Our night time affair drawn to a close.  Dawn coming up now, the pale sunlight making the last six hours feel almost tawdry.  He walked away, shaking his head from side to side and mumbling 'white boy offering me soup'.

[Jockice]

Nah, not as good as the one about me vomiting into a bowl of tomato soup in front of my parents when I was 18 because I was hungover after a school disco.

[TrenterPercenter]

More tales from the cauldron (I made some more soup).

Watercress and Pea.  Absolutely banging.  Traditional folk tend to put mint in it (people pair peas and mint far too often) but I think I've created a better version.  It's not the cheapest soup due to watercress being swanky now for some reason but still about 10 portions for about 35p a go isn't terrible.  Pretty great on the health side of things too.



Recipe:
1 onion choppedish
100g Watercress
350g frozen peas (petit pois or whatever but just remember you'll get the flavour of that pea)
a normal sized potato cut into chunks (I used 4 small new potatoes)
2 bay leafs
a big handful of fresh parsley (or a teaspoon of dried).
half a teaspoon of white pepper
2 stock cubes
1.2l of water (from the kettle boiling speeds thinks up).
salt and black pepper to taste

In a big pot fry the onion in some butter (or olive oil) for 5 minutes.  Put everything else, apart from the salt and blackpepper into the pot, boil for 30 minutes.  remember to take out the bayleaves!! blitz.  taste, season with salt and blackpepper if needed and serve (and put some crumbled up feta and chopped parsley on top on top if you want to a be an arse like me).

You'll be surprised how great this soup is trust me.

If you haven't got a hand blender/blender then use a potato masher to break everything up a bit and have it posh-italian broth style which is nice also - I like it blitzed though because it looks like a melted Grotbags

[TrenterPercenter]

Just incase people are put off by the amount of water to potato here - this is best as a lightish soup, a lot of recipes will have no potato in them at; it just needs enough to make it velvety (in fact you could call it watercress/cresson de fontaine velouté and charge £8 for it in a posh restaurant) as there is quite a lot of starch in the peas also.

Ok going to shut up about soup now.