The joy of soup

It's well and truly December. And I'm pining rather badly for something to which I'd become deeply attached: the New Covent Garden Food Co's November Soup of the Month, now sadly no longer available. I do wish I'd stockpiled. And I do hope they resurrect it as part of their standard range.

What was so special about November's Soup of the Month? It was Chilli Bean and Chocolate. Yes, chocolate!

Chocolate Soup. Was ever there a more perfect combination in the history of comfort eating?

The use of chocolate in savoury dishes still seems rather strange in the UK, although it's a workaday combination in Latin American countries. Speaking of which, if you haven't read Laura Esquivel's magical Mexican novel and/or seen the film Like Water for Chocolate, then you've missed an unforgettably sensual feast of food, passion and . . . chocolate.

The chilli/chocolate combo is also divinely available in Montezuma chocolate bar form. Taste it, think 'hmm, nice choc, but I wonder where the chillis have got to', and then, moments later - kerpow! Amazing stuff. And addictive. For some reason the Mersea Co-op stopped stocking it about a year ago, so now I have to travel off the island to get my fix, and I haven't had one of those for ages. It's about time I did.

Anyway, I am digressing from souply matters. On special offer at Tescos for a pound a carton, Chilli Bean and Chocolate became my almost daily lunchtime treat. And I miss it rather terribly.

Luckily, there are vast, soupy oceans of discovery out there which are almost as nice though not necessarily involving chocolate (which some might consider a huge point in their favour).




As the weather worsens and the days grow shorter, I find myself with soup increasingly on my mind (as well as dribbled across my workstation on occasion), and am often to be seen rummaging in fridges and cupboards, looking for that vital missing ingredient which will turn the contents of my bubbling cauldron miraculously from, for example, very runny mashed potato with aimlessly floating bits of leek, into Pure Culinary Magic.

Sometimes it happens. Sometimes, unfortunately, it doesn't quite get there. But it matters not, because although I have plenty of real recipes in real recipe books on my kitchen shelves, I do believe that the very best soup in the world is the kind which arises spontaneously, via some mysterious alchemy, from random leftovers and surplus vegetables, seasoned with much grinding of pepper mills, intemperate crushing of garlic and inventive combining of available herbs. The occasional misfiring might deter my long-suffering family, but it does not deter me!

Yesterday, it was potato, onion, leek and a suggestion of parsnip, with smoked bacon and rosemary. Quite usefully warming post-rugby fare for a frosty day, and a resounding success with three out of four soup-eaters who expressed a preference. (And since the fourth is notorious for not liking anything that isn't coco-pops, fruit pastilles or spiral pasta with pesto, her gastronomic opinion is rarely given credence.)

December's Soup of the Month from NCGSC, incidentally, is Chicken, Vegetable and Pearl Barley a charity fundraiser for the Salvation Army’s Resettlement Centre programme.

From Heinz Cream of Tomato to pheasant with sweet potato and juniper berries, I am heartily convinced that there's a soup to cure most of life's ills (with the notable exception of Jerusalem artichoke, which gave me the worst stomach ache I have ever, ever endured). And that's not only true on Planet Earth, either . . .

'He's had a Very Hard Day. What he needs is a Mug of Soup!'