21 August 2011 by Jennifer
A rudimentary recipe.
But it is of course a recipe of such extreme simplicity that the “cooking” aspect is also almost nul ::haha::
The recipe
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Put some soup in a pan and begin to heat it.
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Get any leftover cooked veg from the fridge and add it to the soup.
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Add any other oddments that seem suitable, e.g. leftover cooked pasta or rice.
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If the soup was from a tin, swirl a tiny bit of clean water round the tin. This water can go into the pan as well, so as not to waste that last dreg of soup. Then swirl the tin more clean and put it in the recycling.
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Heat the mixture till it’s a nice temperature for eating. As you stir it, use the spoon to chop any big bits a bit smaller.
That’s it :-)
The soup can either be home-made from a previous meal, or from a can. I find Heinz Lentil Wholesoup works well. The veg can be pretty much anything – I often have carrots, cauliflower and/or broccoli, or brussel sprouts when they’re in season. If the left-over veg supply is puny, you can supplement it with a few frozen peas.
Bread and butter or toast and butter goes well with this. Sometimes I’ll also have a few olives.
Things I like about this soup
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It’s easy!
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The leftovers are always a bit different, so the result is always a bit different.
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Canned soups tend to be on the salty side for me, and adding something else dilutes the salt, resulting in a flavour more to my liking.
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It uses up the leftovers so they don’t get wasted.
The name
I’d been making this for a while without it having a name, but the memory of a quote had begun to hang around in my thoughts, and eventually I named it “officially”.
The quote is from Dorothy L Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, in which our hero Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover in an advertising agency, working as a copywriter.
Bredon (a.k.a. Wimsey):
“… I’ve been trying to get out a name for Twentyman’s shilling tea. As far as I can make Hankin out, it has no qualities except cheapness to recommend it, and is chiefly made of odds and ends of other teas. The name must suggest solid worth and respectability.”
Ingleby, a fellow copywriter, suggests in response:
“Why not call it ‘Domestic Blend’? Nothing could sound more reliable and obviously nothing could suggest so much dreary economy.”
This soup is of course a meal “chiefly made of odds and ends of other meals” :-)