Garden Soup For The Soul

12 English months ago this was an exclusive reward for subscribers to my Patreon. Now this not-quite-recipe is out from behind the paywall (and the garden wall).

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Garden Soup For The Soul

First the garden. It was not a place for pleasure and relaxation. It was a kitchen garden, beds of vegetables, rows of fruit on canes, fruit trees about the edges. Near the house row after row of fragrant herbs, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, mint, chives, coriander, tarragon, a spherical bay tree lurking at the end.

Leeks and squash, as well as a few late potatoes grubbed up from the far end, those are the ingredients taken fresh and washed in the scullery. Then from the cellar comes up onions and garlic, and dried rosemary and chilli. There are other rarer spices that might improve the dish but everything comes from the garden.

Almost everything. The oil is from abroad, the peppery aroma bringing vision of warm Mediterranean hills.

The kitchen is a quiet place that should be loud, a dozen people ought to be working here, baking, cutting, washing, cooking. The leek may be a mistake. Everything else is roughly chopped and put in a large roasting tray, tossed in the oil. At the last minute the leek goes in as well.

They bake slowly and in the end the leek softens and has blackened bits but it is fine. The whole lot goes into the big soup kettle with water and is cooked for a little while. Then mashed and passed through a sieve. A little salt, then heated up so the steam raises and the surface just shivers.

And this is the mysterious part, for there is now soup for twenty but the house and garden are deserted and there is no one to eat it. So why did you cook it? Is it for me? Can a hungry ghost feed off garden soup?