If I were to ask you, “what is soup?” you might say “it’s what I used to be in when I didn’t do my school homework or when I hit my little sister over the head with a model train.” You might also say that it was a kind of wettish stuff you slurp out of a bowl with a spoon. “Yes but what kind of wettish stuff?” I might then ask. “Oh it could be tomato, chicken, oxtail, vegetable, whatever” you’d say.
I thought so. In our house in Northern Ireland (in the 1960s) there was only one kind of soup, and that was Soup. For quite a long time I didn’t know there was any other kind, and coming face-to-face with a bowl of tomato soup in someone’s house, was liable to say “”Gosh, how clever – what a lovely-looking red. But I thought you said you were making Soup!”
Whether or not you were familiar with other soups, in Northern Ireland just about everyone made Soup, and still does. My grandmother (“Nana”, who lived with us and did most of the cooking) would use whatever stock she had extracted from Sunday dinner along with any meat scraps she had, boiling them up with a carrot, a parsnip, a handful of dried barley, chopped parsley, soup celery and scallions (“spring onions”). Perhaps a red lentil or two. Known as “lentils”, incidentally. I didn’t meet any other colour until well into adulthood.
If you’re wondering what “soup celery” is, it’s red celery and the leaves were as important as its thin stalks. Good luck with finding any colour of celery leaves. Here on Gabriola I asked where the leaves of the naked-looking celery had got to and was told they cut them off. And they don’t even give them to the pigs, or to their local impoverished writers. They throw them away! I’m thinking of a little local skip diving here once the shock wears off and the weather picks up.
Nana didn’t buy the fresh ingredients separately, but like most other shoppers, just asked for “soup veg.”
“Half a stone of your Kerr’s Pinks please, Billy, and a parcel of soup veg.” The parcel would be a prepared bundle of 1 carrot, 1 parsnip, a little celery, etc. wrapped up in newspaper.
Soup-with-a-capital-“S” was said to restore appetite and health to the ailing. When I was 10 and in hospital after having my tonsils out, I was groggy and refusing all hospital food (probably showing early good judgment). I woke up one day to see a strange wooden face staring at me from my hospital locker. It was a huge lentil bearing a… no it wasn’t, I blinked again. It was a small gonk with orange, fuzzy hair that my mother had brought me. The gonk seemed to be accompanied by Aunty Margaret, and she had brought her usual beaming smile and a flask of her home-made Soup. I immediately named the gonk “William”, devoured every drop of the Soup and from then on ate everything in front of me from that wasn’t tied down. Since William didn’t go on to exhibit any outstanding nursing skills, I think we can safely put my recovery down to Aunty Margaret’s wonderful Soup.
This tasty Soup comes out looking pretty green due to the parsley and scallions. But then the carrots make it orange too. With just a dash of red from the celery, you could say that politically, it’s a particularly well-balanced Northern Irish soup.
Bon appetit!
The Blethering Ant 