Soups

Soups are almost unfashionable now, or at least they seem to be when you scan restaurant menus. I’m not thinking so much of the chic consommés with a thousand and one bits and pieces floating round in them, but rather of the more traditional soups, thick and substantial.

Not that I’ve got anything against a superb consommé – I serve them on special occasions, as an elegant prelude to a large celebratory meal, such as New Year’s Eve. They can be great fun to make, too, with little quenelles poached in the soup, tiny ravioli maybe, miniature spheres of carrot and potato, and the other frivolities that leap to mind. But, by and large, most of the soups made at The Carved Angel are really quite old-fashioned in style, with a preponderance of vegetable ones.