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It’s getting cold. This last week on the east coast of Australia hasn’t been too bad, but the week before that, holy dooley. Welcome to winter. Even up here in sunny Queensland we were closing the windows and packing the fan away, the heater switching on for possibly the first time. I know that everyone thinks Brisbane is paradise, a warm escape from the cold, hard realities of winter. The type of winter that seeps into your bones and sits damp under your eyelids. Single pane glass affording both the momentary glimpses of sunshine and an unimaginably threatening draft. It is a winter for beanies in bed, specific neck warming bed jumpers through the night and hot water bottles. I did ten winters on the trot in London, all cold. All bitterly cold. The final one through Covid was particularly menacing, wreaking havoc with record snowfall two weeks into Spring… Brisbane throughout the winter is comparably paradise, 20 degrees and sunny outside.
Inside peoples houses though, it’s a different story. I’ll remind you, broadly speaking, there are two types of houses in Brisbane: those that would fall into the category of ‘Old Queenslander’, made of wood with lots of air and no insulation, and then there are the ‘Concrete Coolers’ - those with concrete and tiles at times inhospitably dark to keep everything nice and cool. These houses are not engineered for the cold. I think of it like camping in a tipi, it’s beautiful to look at and to stand outside of in the sun but when it gets dark and the sun runs away that tipi becomes drafty and far too far away from central heating. Down south you can get cosy, rug up, turn the heating on and enjoy the fact that it’s cold outside. In Brisbane we convince ourselves that winter is awful even when it’s 18 degrees and sunny outside.
So we make soup. This is a quick recipe drop of two soups that have seen me through many London winters. Easy, tasty, warming and full of comfort. Both are pitched in these words as vegetarian and are made with powdered stock (vegan) or stock cubes.If you substitute the yoghurt for oat yoghurt it can become vegan. You can use chicken broth instead if you it takes your fancy, and beef or veal bone broth for the chestnuts as well, if you so choose.
These are easy, rough, country soups.
CHESTNUT SOUP
Feeds 4 people
It’s a winter soup but a solid winter soup. Fast, easy and full of flavour. Five stars on all accounts. Chop the veg as roughly as you like, it doesn’t have to be fine or even, it is all getting blended up in the end.
Try to find precooked chestnuts in a packet at the super market. Something like this works.
Ingredients
Soup:
3 stems of celery roughly chopped
1 medium sized brown onion roughly chopped
3 carrots roughly chopped
30 ml Extra Virgin Oil
200gr Pre cooked chestnuts (1 packet)
200gr red lentils
2.5 litres of stock (powdered or not)
Urfa chilli flakes
Greek yoghurt
Celeriac:
Celeriac x 1
Maldon salt x 10gr
Oil 30ml
Method
To start pre heat the oven to 160°.
Clean the celeriac and chop the brain off the bottom. Drizzle completely with oil and rub with salt all over, as if rubbing sand off your legs post beach swim, rough and heavy.
Roast for 2 hours, remove from the oven and slice into wedges.
Meanwhile, cook the vegetables over a low to medium heat until they begin to become translucent. You are sweating out the sweetness and earthiness of these ingredients, cook them until they are translucent and soft.
Add the chestnuts and the lentils and the stock and bring to the boil over medium heat. Reduce to a low heat and simmer for 10 min.
Blitz and allow to simmer for a further 10 minutes. If the soup is too thick, think it out with extra stock or water 50ml at a time.
To serve, fry some wedges of celeriac in oil until they become, charred, dark, and sticky.
In a bowl add some soup, a dollop of yoghurt, some urfa chilli and a couple of celeriac wedges.
Eat.
CAULI SOUP
Feeds 4 people with leftovers
I have no story about this recipe. It’s good. It’s healthy. If you like cauliflower and you like soup you will like it. Generally ,this is a good way to make vegetable soups. Make a base in the pot, ensuring not to burn it -add some water as you cook to slow it down if it’s cooking too hot and you are worried about it burning -, roast up some veg, add it to your base with some stock and then blitz. Often times because I'm a fiend ill also add a knob of butter but while it makes everything taste better it isn’t to everyone’s taste.
Ingredients
2 cauliflower, chopped rough
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
2 yellow onions diced fine
2 celery stalk diced fine
2 garlic minced
2 litres of stock (or more if necessary)
Butter or EVOO to finish
Method
Pre heat the oven to 210°
Toss the cauliflower in oil with salt and pepper and bake at 210° for 15 min
In a medium sized pot, add the oil over medium heat.
Add the onions and celery with a pinch of salt.
Cook over medium heat until the onions start to brown and the celery begins to soften - if they are cooking too fast, add some water to cool the pan.
Lower heat to low and add the garlic. Stirring, cook until soft and fragrant.
Remove the cauliflower from the oven.
Add the cauliflower and stock to the pot. Make sure you add enough stock to just cover all of the ingredients.
Bring to the boil over medium heat, reduce the heat and simmer for 15min.
Hit with immersion blender. Blend.
Eat with a knob or butter or a good glug of EVOO, add a crack of pepper and some Maldon salt.
Words by Daniel Wilson
Daniel has a Masters in Food Culture from The University of Gastronomic Science in Pollenzo, Italy. He is a writer, a chef, and a recovering restaurateur.
The picture is taken from the My FoodBook blog and can be found here.