Soup

Welcome spring with this Sardinian greens-loaded soup that comes together quickly with canned beans, but packs a special punch when you use dried: the cooking liquid’s starches add body to the broth.

Imagine, for a moment, a tomato soup that needs no blender to produce an impossibly creamy result, all without a drop of dairy; a lentil soup vibrant and gorgeous enough to grace the cover of a cookbook yet humble enough to eat alone at your kitchen counter for a Tuesday lunch. Seasonally agnostic (canned tomatoes here!), this soup thrives in winter with the best of your pantry staples. Once this soup comes together, you may forget there are lentils in here at all. They magically melt into the pot, nearly disappearing (that’s the idea), giving you creamy texture and luscious body: tomato (and lentil) soup utopia.

You will have a hard time finding two Mexican households that agree on how to make this beloved pork and chili soup. Cumin? No cumin? Whole onion or chopped? Two things everyone knows, though, is that it’s always worth the effort, and it always tastes better the next day.

After making and enjoying this soup just once, you won’t even need a recipe for it. The addition of Chinese five-spice, with its combination of star anise, fennel seed, Szechuan pepper, clove and cinnamon, really enhances the humble carrot and apple combination, giving it a well-rounded flavour complexity with minimal effort.