Mindful Soup

I was raised on soup. I guess most weeks there would be at least one pot of soup made. So I guess I’ve always loved soup as much as I have taken it for granted. It’s just soup, no biggy. I suppose it’s no surprise that my family were big into soup. My parents grew up in post-war Edinburgh in low income families. It takes almost no effort to get my Dad talking about how he didn’t have a banana until he was nine. He makes light of it and we all joke about it but between rationing and not much money, there is truth behind his own particular version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Every culture has its cucina povera. The Italians made pasta, the French ate snails, oysters were the food of the poor until Tabasco was invented and, in northern climes, you had to boil the backside off lots of generally unpalatable vegetables or bits of animals that no one else wanted. Growing up, our wee flat would too often smell of cooking tripe. You don’t eat that unless you have to. But, of course, growing up, my Dad ate it a lot so he learned to love it, somehow. The Scots address the haggis in a way that suggests that it is something far greater than the sum of its humble povera ingredients. And so it is with soup. Some uninteresting veg and pulses are elevated to a far higher purpose. Imagine being the first person to ever dig up a turnip and break a tooth on it. If civilisation began with the ability to create fire it is because it allowed you to boil stuff into submission. And this is why we have soup. If you can throw in an otherwise pointless piece of meat like a ham hough then you start to get something special, borne of necessity or not.

I don’t exactly remember the first time I made soup but I think it may have been when I first had my own house and lived on my own for a while. It started with cauliflower soup. Chop up the cauliflower, boil it with some stock and garlic, blend it et voila - bloody hell that’s edible. That’s the joy of soup. You feel like you’re cooking. You start with actual ingredients and make something entirely new and it feels like a triumph despite there being almost no skill involved. Having no discernible flair for cooking, this is a big deal.

There were many fallow soup making years - still eating soup but buying it from a shop like a gentrified heathen. Big plate of someone else’s soup, lump of bread, glass of milk. Lovely.

Lockdown happened and I was working from home. It made practical sense to have a pot of soup on the go as I couldn’t always guarantee to get long for my lunch and, with five of us in the house, it was never going to go to waste. Thus I caught the soup-making bug again. And something unexpected happened. I found it very relaxing.

Like everyone, I was probably suffering from some level of pandemic-driven unease. That said, being able to work from home made it fairly easy for me compared to many. Not least because of all the lovely soup.

A few years ago, I did a course in work in which we learnt about the limbic system and para/sympathetic nervous system and how, specifically, you can use breathing to influence how it behaves. I was fascinated by it and, although I never quite got into meditation in my regular life, I can still use the techniques if I ever need to. That was the thing I noticed about making soup. The relaxation in making soup was quite a mindful experience. So, here it is the seven mindful phases of soup making.

Phase 1 - Selection

Picking which soup to make isn’t, in itself, particularly mindful but it is instructive about your state of mind. Some soups have a homely, cuddly warmth full of reminiscence. Other soups are fresh and zesty or punchy and spicy. Which one you decide on will tell you a lot about how you are feeling. Soup is a weather vane pointing to what you need. A window into the soul.

Phase 2 - Shopping

Most soups will be based on a range of fresh or healthy looking ingredients. As you swoop with grace round the supermarket, you will pick up the vegetables, pulses and altogether healthy looking things feeling increasingly virtuous. You will arrive at the checkout with the basket of the immortals, a low fat, high protein smorgasbord that will make you feel high on life.?

Phase 3 - Before We Cook

Before we get into the actual cooking we need to get the ambience right. We need good cooking music. The formula for this is very simple. Only play music that is very familiar. Songs that have been with you all your life. Something that might make you sing along, have a wee dance even. Songs that are old friends. We don’t have time for discovery now. We don’t want to think. We just want to lie back in a big comfy bed of reminiscence, an aural cuddle. For anyone of my vintage, it’s usually all about the 80’s.

Phase 4 - Chopping

There are very few soups that don’t require chopping. Onions, carrot, the oddly ubiquitous celery. They’re all there, full of freshness and chop-ability. Things start to get mindful now. The repetition, the focus on not losing a finger. You begin to imaging you are a TV chef. Then you remember your knife is rubbish and your sawing at a carrot. Please, please tell me now, is there something I should know? Yes, you should buy good knives. But they are scary, like Japanese mandolins. That can’t be mindful. Terror rarely is. Lots of chopping, lots of lovely colours, lots of freshness. Maybe I am a chef. Chop, chop, chop. Chef, chef, chef.

Phase 5 - Cooking

Oil in the pot, lets go browning. Sizzle and shake. Stirring, round and round. Sizzle and shake. The veg starts to soften. Caramelisation. The posh word for burning stuff. Maybe I am a chef. You say to yourself “This is how you build the flavour profile”. For a flourish you? twist in some salt. You weren’t supposed to. It just feels cheffy. And that feels good. Stock goes in, big sizzle. You imagine the flames rising from the burning brandy. Now for the big flourishes, other ingredients, spices, garlic, just crushed - that’s what chefs do - other ingredients, maybe pulses. It’s all so healthy. You and I are gonna live forever. Stirring and stirring, hubble, bubble, no toil, no trouble. When shall we three eat this soup? Not long now. The water bubbles, the colours drift. Now we simmer, now we wait.

Phase 6 - Achieving Equilibrium

The world is chaos. We seek peace. Peace is equilibrium. When the soup is cooked we must bring it to balance - with a blender. This is the best bit, the coup de grace de soup. All the craziness of the world sits there before you in a pot, every pain, every toil, every loud moment represented in those bits floating in a broth. Now they must find peace in the equilibrium of the vortex. Stare into the vortex. Empty your mind. Peace is coming. Round and round, weather systems form, the colour of the new sky is starting to emerge. Round and round. Where once was chaos there is now only uniformity, simplicity. As your cloudy mind clears, a pot of mindful soup appears. With a few more cheffy twists, you are done.

Phase 7 - Eating

I made this. And it isn’t terrible. Maybe I am a chef. All those ingredients, chopped by me, boiled by me, blended by me into this warming calm. At the bottom of the bowl lies peace.

Maybe I should learn to make my own bread to dunk in it. Think that might be a bit of a faff though.