Abra­ham Lincoln’s take on but­ter­nut squash soup

Before you get all scared, this pho­to­graph is not a soup of any kind, it’s the mac­a­roni and cheese I made as an anti­dote to the soup, which was odd. Wasn’t it Abra­ham Lin­coln who said, “If you like that kind of thing, it’s the kind of thing you’ll like”? If not, then I said it, because this homily per­fectly expresses the way I feel about the soup I invented today (vaguely inspired by a recipe in Hello! mag­a­zine, maybe that’s the root of the prob­lem). I think it was good, if only I liked that kind of thing. But I don’t. And nei­ther does John. So I passed it along to Becky, who is the sort of friend who will try some­thing you pref­ace with, “I didn’t really like it, so why don’t you have a go?” The jury is still out with their fam­ily, as I fear she may make every­one try it. The more taste­buds the better.

But before I go any fur­ther with that, my mac­a­roni and cheese turned out com­pletely won­der­ful, and I’m ashamed to say that in the run-up to din­ner, when Avery is meant to be in her bath, I should be doing the salad, John’s pay­ing bills online, in real­ity we are all snatch­ing lit­tle bites from the per­fect bub­bly sur­face. So all was not lost in my culi­nary day.

And the mem­o­ries of last night’s din­ner in Lon­don Bridge at Vincent’s house should have been enough, alone, to pro­pel one through a Sun­day after­noon. For a ton of peo­ple, includ­ing lots of chil­dren, on a cold, spitty, rainy Sat­ur­day night in Lon­don, the enor­mous pot of ragu he served (with penne and shaved parme­san) was the per­fect dish. Now do not be intim­i­dated by the num­ber of ingre­di­ents. For one thing, all the veg­eta­bles can be chopped in your food proces­sor. And any­way, this is the type of recipe that you put­ter at, while lis­ten­ing to Edward Pether­bridge read­ing “A Pre­sump­tion of Death.” Have you heard about Jill Paton Walsh’s stew­ard­ship of the Lord Peter Wim­sey legacy? Dorothy L. Say­ers left behind notes for sev­eral Wim­sey books, after her death, and Walsh has done a remark­able job with this one, recre­at­ing the char­ac­ters of “Busman’s Hon­ey­moon” per­fectly, but not as a par­ody. Any­way, with a great audio­book at your ears, you can tie on your apron and get cooking.

Spicy Party Ragu
(serves 8 easily)

1 pound minced lamb
1/2 pound each: minced beef, veal, pork, smoked streaky bacon (Amer­i­can style)
2 large chorizo sausages
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 pound mush­rooms, roughly chopped
1 each red, green, yel­low pep­pers, roughly chopped
1 medium aubergine (egg­plant), roughly chopped
4 fresh toma­toes, roughly chopped
2 soup-size tins peeled plum toma­toes
1/2 large bot­tle of tomato sauce
2 tbsp of tomato puree
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp each dried oregano, basil, thyme
chili flakes to taste (but don’t be a wimp!)
2 bay leaves
1 cup red wine
Hand­ful fresh oregano
Hand­ful fresh basil
Hand­ful fresh thyme
4 large cloves of gar­lic, minced

Optional:

3 cups frozen prawns
3 cups frozen oys­ters
3 cups chicken pieces cut into 1cm cubes

Put a large pot to the side of the stove. As you cook each batch of ingre­di­ents, place them in the large pot. In a large fry­ing pan, begin by cook­ing all the meat (In sep­a­rate batches, though you can com­bine veal and beef) until browned and sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste. Whizz the bacon in your food proces­sor till it is in 1 cm pieces. Cook until crispy, and be sure to add at least some of the ren­dered bacon fat
with the meat to the pot. Saute the chorizo last. When the sausages are done, set aside to cool. In a food proces­sor, pre­pare the vegetables.

With plenty of olive oil, start by saute­ing the onions in the same pan you cooked the meats in. When they are start­ing to brown, add the mush­rooms. When the mush­rooms have soft­ened a bit, add the aubergines and finally the pep­pers. When the veg­eta­bles are all done, add them to the pot with the meat. Whizz the cooled chorizo to the same size bits as the cooked ground meat you already have in the pot, and add to the pot. Add the fresh, tinned, pureed and pasted tomato to the pot along with the bay leaves and the red wine. Bring the mix to a roil­ing sim­mer and turn the heat down to a medium-low level. Add the rest of the dried herbs, chili and sugar. Cook for at least 2 hours (the longer the bet­ter), stir­ring from time to time. The sauce will ren­der quite a bit of liq­uid and look soupy for a while, and then as you con­tinue to sim­mer it, the liq­uid will boil away. Turn the heat down low and add the optional ingre­di­ents if you choose to use them. Just before serv­ing, add the chopped fresh herbs and the gar­lic. Taste for salt and pep­per, give it a good stir and leave it alone until you’re ready to serve. Serve over penne with shaved parmesan.

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This was sub­lime. Of course as well there was a beau­ti­ful salad with beet­root sprouts, a lux­u­ri­ous cheese­board and an enor­mous, mas­sive, lime-spiked cheese­cake for pud­ding. There with us were Vincent’s ele­gant French step­mother, two rather famous Eng­lish archi­tects and their beau­ti­ful blond chil­dren (I think we could fix up the lit­tle boy with Avery right now and save all that dat­ing non­sense later on), an Amer­i­can diplo­mat and his Ger­man wife, and a Niger­ian fash­ion designer. It was like eat­ing at the UN. And we stayed so late! I am so old now that I really feel it if I’ve been up late, plus I find I have to stay up for a cer­tain num­ber of hours after I get home, think­ing about what every­one said and did. So Sun­day found me rather lazily walk­ing around the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, try­ing to be inspired. Unfor­tu­nately what I was inspired to do was this soup, on which I wel­come com­ments, or bet­ter ver­sions. Was it too much orange?

But­ter­nut Squash Soup with Orange
(serves 6)

3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 but­ter­nut squash, seeded and peeled and cut in small cubes
juice and zest of 4 oranges
800 g chicken stock
2 tsps curry pow­der
1/2 tsp chili pow­der
salt to taste
1/2 cup creme fraiche
chives to garnish

In a medium saucepan, melt the but­ter and soften the gar­lic, then add squash and stir till coated with but­ter. Cover with stock, add juice and zest, and sim­mer until soft, then puree with a hand blender and run through a sieve if you like a finer tex­ture. Add spices and whisk in creme fraiche. Sim­mer until thick, and gar­nish with chopped chives.

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So what went wrong? I tasted it, John tasted it, we added more spices, more salt. It was tasty. But I didn’t like it, and nei­ther did he. So I packed it up and took it to Becky, who tasted it and at first she liked it, then she thought per­haps it had a bit­ter after­taste. Did I sim­mer it too long and the zest got nasty? Too much orange? I don’t know. I still think the con­cept is good, and it was cer­tainly very pretty and undoubt­edly nutritious.

But din­ner time saw us crouched hap­pily over our mac­a­roni and cheese, and bangers, and a huge salad of my favorite lamb’s let­tuce and rocket, with cucum­bers. Ah well, you exper­i­ment, some­times you suc­ceed, friends cook bril­liantly for you, and then you end up with the old favorites on a Sun­day evening. I’m sure there’s a moral in all that somewhere.

This will be rather an odd week, I think. Or at least toward the end. Avery’s school term ends on Thurs­day at noon, at which point she and her lit­tle friends will repair to Build-a-Bear in Covent Gar­den for beloved Anna’s birth­day party. Becky is a saint to host them there yet another time. Then a sleep­over, then Fri­day we drive Avery down to Sur­rey for three days and nights of… pony camp! At the coun­try out­post of Ross Nye Sta­bles, where she’ll sleep in some­thing called a yurt (?) and eat who knows what, and spend all the days muck­ing out stalls and rid­ing. She has never been away from home for more than a sin­gle night, and I don’t think she’s ever done any­thing that John and I have never done. Been some­where we’ve never been! What a mile­stone. I won­der what on earth John and I will find to do in her absence. Well, for one thing we’re going to spend the Fri­day night in a very sweet-sounding coun­try hotel, the Angel Post­ing House, near the camp. But then we’ll have the whole week­end on our own. I’m sure we can find some­thing to keep us out of trouble…