Sweet and Sour Cardamom & Winter Squash Soup
A simple, aromatic soup which celebrates the squash and opens up the possibilities of cardamom as a savoury spice. And might remind you of Kosher pickled herring.
This month here on ingredient we’re focusing on Green Cardamom: a sultry, aromatic and uniquely perfumed spice perfect for infusing the scent of elsewhere into dinners, desserts and bakes. It also happens to be my all-time favourite spice.
You can already find the recipe for my make-ahead friendly Cardamom Panna Cotta with Clementine Jelly which balances creamy perfume with acidic, zesty zip for the perfect pudding (if I may say so myself!) here, and my recipe for Cardamom Slice and Bake Cookies here. Do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function.
I own a brilliant food book with recipes (note that I’m not calling it a cookbook) by Sybil Kapoor called Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste, Sound: A New Way To Cook which yes has recipes, but the recipes in the book whilst good are not just about making your next meal: they’re about learning how all these elements make good cooking, teaching you something important about each element after we, the reader have had their importance and significance carefully explained to us.
I firmly believe that some recipes are not just about the end result: they’re about the journey of making them and what they teach you. Whilst I’m hitting send on this on a Friday, this newsletter was the very last thing I wrote before finishing for the holidays, and dinner tonight (tonight being on December 15th, rather than today) needs to be started at 3:30pm: Olia Hercules’ White Ragu of Genoa, Naples and Odesa (pg 108) from her book Home Food: Recipes to Comfort and Connect1 - I’ve made loads of different ragu recipes before, so why did I choose this one? Because the ingredient list to ‘Serve 4 (at least twice)’ called for ‘1kg onions (yes, this much)’. Olia is right: that is a lot of onions, and I’ve never made a slow cooked beef and pork ragu like this one, with or without tomato, which has contained this many onions. I think it is going to add a melting richness to the dish, but I don’t know. That’s the point of my making it for dinner tonight to serve alongside something fancy, Italian and white from the wine rack. Yes I’m excited to eat it, but I’m also excited to add yet another facet to my culinary knowledge.
I firmly believe that today’s soup is one of those recipes teaching you two important lessons: how cardamom behaves in a savoury context, and my favourite trick for balancing out a soup that’s just that little bit too sweet.
We’ll start with that balancing trick, and leave the cardamom until last because that’s what we’re all here for, after all. It’s a simple one you might already know, but I think it is worth sharing in case you don’t: add a splash of vinegar. Vinegar is a wonderful ingredient with infinite different variations and flavours, and when sparingly stirred into a smooth, blended soup right at the end it both lifts something a little too creamy (think: potato, celeriac, parsnip) and adds essential acidity and balance to something which you have not sweetened, but has a lot of natural sweetness (think: squash, sweet potato, carrot). Pair the vinegar to the flavours in your soup - rice wine vinegar if you’ve used Asian-inspired flavours as a base, red wine or sherry vinegar in a creamy bean soup - you get the general idea. It does the same thing as where some of my recipes demand serving it with citrus wedges to serve over the top (as in my Carrot, Cumin & Lentil Soup with Hazelnut Dukkah, or the Sweet Potato Miso Soup on pg 144 of One Pan Pescatarian) but to every spoonful of soup, rather than just a select few.
As promised, before we get to the recipe proper we’ll talk about cardamom’s starring role in this soup. I’ve chosen it as the teaching aid for my taster session on ‘Cardamom as a Savoury Spice’ as here it can stand alone (well, alone alongside dried chilli flakes and fresh ginger, but in this context they’re flavours you can’t taste alone, but you’d miss if they were removed from the whole picture) rather than being paired as it so often is with cinnamon and other spices as in pilafs and curries.
Unlike in my biscuits and the panna cotta I’ve already shared this month, I think as well as adding it’s signature perfume of elsewhere, the cardamom in the soup adds a soft roundness to naturally sweet winter squash (we’re going for the electric orange of Crown Prince today) giving a flavour that is redolent of highly aromatic dishes, without being too much. Take a spoonful and savour it, and the savoury possibilities of cardamom will hopefully open up before you.
Sweet and Sour Cardamom & Winter Squash Soup
Serves: 3-4, Preparation time: 10 minutes, plus overnight chilling time, Cooking time: 20 minutes
This is going to sound strange, but if you like Jewish-style pickled herring (not the astringent - yet still lovely - Scandinavian stuff, but the slightly sweet, sour and mildly spiced Kosher-style that either come in cubes or rollmops in a jar of brine) this soup is for you. Cardamom adds a very subtle spicing to this vibrant soup, the natural sweetness of the squash adds sugared notes, and a splash of sherry vinegar added at the end creates that lovely sweet and sour effect that yes, reminds me of eating pickled herring.
Finish each bowl with a few generous dollops of sour cream to round things out further (and how did I choose the dairy to finish this soup with, might you ask? Well, I tend to eat my herrings on hearty sourdough with a dollop of sour cream!) and you’ve got a hearty bowlful perfect for a very, very cold day.