Something New

It is always a pleasure to come across a new combination of ingredients, a new dish, that works, especially if it is simple. With a glut of broad beans from our allotment (no complaint there, just an observation) I was looking for a way to do something different with this vegetable that doesn't lend itself to all that many exotic uses. There are dips and hummuses (hummi?) that suit it well, but none met our needs on Friday. As so often the divine Hugh F-W offered a direction, if not the solution itself.

HFW suggests zapping the cooked older beans (once the grey and bitter skin has been removed) and mixing with a little garlic and a thrutch of ricotta. He may not have used the word thrutch. I had ricotta in the fridge, and am never without garlic, but as our beans are fresh and young making a puree of them didn't appeal, indeed it seemed just wrong, so I warmed six thinly sliced cloves of garlic (HFW suggested two) in a little butter and olive oil, added a heap of the jade gems, and stirred in half a container of ricotta (about 125g).

When the lot was well mixed and warmed through it was piled on a toasted flatbread and became the nearest thing we had to a main course that evening. All three of the ingredients (discounting the flatbread) married beautifully, the garlic was very present but not dominant, the texture moist and toothsome, and The Dear Leader (all hail our Dear Leader, ever vigilant guardian of the homeland) fulsome in her praise.

The combination was so good that to demonstrate it to the returning Sternest Critic I repeated the exercise and served the beans as an accompaniment to the customary fatted calf (thick steak) enjoyed when he is just back from university. He is not a big fan of the broad bean, but made short work of these.

Only one thing bothers me slightly about the dish, and that is the thought in the back of my mind that it is not a million miles from The Fast Show's cheesy peas.

Ten Facts About Soup and the EU Referendum

1. According to the Leave campaign, the EU soup lake now contains enough garlic consomme to fill 12,000,000,000 olympic sized swimming pools, and costs each British family (sorry, hard-working family) £4756 a year.
2. According to the Remain campaign, if we quit the EU our children will all be forcibly drowned in soup.
3. If we leave the EU the price of tomato soup will more than double overnight.
4. If we leave the EU we will be free to import cheap tomato soup from Peru, halving its price.
5. UKIP has pledged to make Brown Windsor Soup great again if we leave.
6. It was an accident during testing of the Euro-soup working party's proposed recipe that gave Nick Clegg his superhuman powers of shinniness.
7. The European Central Bank recently announced that the value of British stocks for soup would fall by at least 25 per cent in the event of Brexit.
8. Soup farmers reliant on EU subsidies predict leaving the EU will lead to envirnomental disaster, with soup fields left unpicked for generations to come.
9. France and Spain have both indicated that they will place an immediate ban on Cullen Skink in the event of Brexit.
10. Creme de Jacob Rees-Mogg or Veloute George Osborne. Can you spot the difference?

Ten Things They Don't Want You to Know About Soup

1. In the 1950s government instructions in case of nuclear attack included 'prepare some soup - soup makes everything feel better.'
2. The brief advertising career of Franz Kafka ended after he suggested the slogan 'Brotschka's soup - endless misery and pointless longing.'
3. In the 1930s engineer Dwayne Q. Snetterton devised a car engine that ran on chicken stock, clocking 2500mpg, but Big Oil murdered him and supressed his invention.
4. The Duke of Windsor believed he could cure his syphilis by dipping his gentleman's sausage in a bowl of piping hot cock-a-leekie. He was misinformed.
5. America lost the Vietnam War because their troops ran out of those little crackers they serve with soup for no obvious reason.
6. Shortly before Ronald Reagan was elected President the CIA is known to have carried out experiments on mind-altering soups. 
7. Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first soup back to England from the New World.
8. There is more potential energy in a litre of cabbage soup than a kilo of plutonium.
9. It is rumoured that Prince Charles has a man to blow on his soup for him.
10. It is rumoured that Prince Edward has a man to explain what soup is to him.

Ten Facts About Soup That Will Change Your Life

1. Jason Statham's favourite soup is Kalashnikov.
2. As an exercise before a university drama production Hugh Grant was asked to pretend to be a bowl of soup. It is feared nobody ever told him to stop.
3. Nigel Farage MEP is rumoured to be the secret architect of the groundbreaking European Directive on Tinned Soup (Safety in Transit Regulations - Interim Agreement 17.5 part 4(c)).  It has saved countless thousands of lives. 
4. During the reign of Henry VII a tax was imposed on ladles, but poor drafting meant that if used left-handed owners avoided the need to pay. A treasury team is still working on the re-draft.
5. After a five year programme of study researchers at an American University found that if spilt on exposed flesh boiling soup may cause burns.
6. For perfectly legitimate tax reasons David Cameron's father could only eat soup in Belize.
7. Only a few close friends of Boris Johnson are aware that his great-great-grandfather was a bowl of vegetable soup.
8. Elvis once had his private plane fly Heinz tomato soup, heated up by his chef in Graceland, to Las Vegas. It arrived cold, and he is thus credited with inventing gazpacho.
9. Tins of Scotch Broth more than four years past their sell-by-date are so explosive that they feature in the UN's list of items that may not be exported to North Korea.
10. It is estimated that House of Lords debates on soup cost UK taxpayers more than £12 million last year alone.

Ten Things You Should Know About Croutons

1. Edward VII's personal coat of arms included three croutons on a field of lobster bisque and a courtesan rampant.
2. Worldwide there are more than 500 deaths every year caused by poorly prepared croutons - if the poison sack is not carefully removed the residue is potentially fatal.
3. No two croutons are ever alike, thanks to their unique crystal structure.
4. Al Capone is once said to have killed a rival by bludgeoning him with a particularly large crouton.
5. If you are ever lost, and have a crouton on you, point it at the sun and the greasy side is due west.
6. During the Parliamentary expenses scandal three MPs were found to have claimed simultaneously for croutons in London and at their constituency addresses.
7. Crouton is derived from the Ancient Greek root Crotos, meaning soggy and pointless.
8. During the French Revolution loyalty to the King was secretly signalled by keeping a small crouton in ones ear.
9. A crouton was found by Howard Carter in King Tut's tomb, and it was still edible. But Carter was very hungry with all that digging.
10. It was once rumoured that the EU crouton mountain was so big and dense that Brussels reputedly feared creating a man-made black hole. But then some people will believe any rubbish they are told if it's brazen and bigoted enough.