The dining companion

This story comes from a girl with whom I was having dinner. Like me, she was fond of her food. She told me of another experience she had had in a restaurant when she had quickly realised that not only did her dining companion have no interest in food but she had no interest in him.

She told me that when the waiter had come to take their order, he had said, "I'll have the soup and the chicken". Something, she pointed out to me, that did not require one even to read the menu, which she strongly suspected he had been reading upside down. Ever since hearing her tale, I have been looking without success for a restaurant menu where such a request would lead to a baffled look from the waiter and blushes from the orderer.

The Wonderful Soup Stone

"I swear you could taste
The Chicken and Tomato
And the Noodle and the Marrow bone.
But it really wasn't nothing
But some water and potatoes
And the wonderful, wonderful soup stone."

A song I recall from my childhood, by Dr Hook: simple, evocative and telling a story. The song goes on to reminisce about the singer's own childhood ("back in the hard time days") and his mama and, "whenever things got tight", production of the magical soup stone:

"Mama boiled up some water, put in the stone and said "Let's have some soup tonight!""

It is a somewhat less cynical version of the "Stone Soup" fairy tale which I also first read as a child. It concerns a wanderer who arrives at the hut of a man who, rather ungraciously, agrees to offer the traveller lodging for the night. The traveller has seen through a window that the hut owner has a larder full of food. But all he is offered is some dry bread. So he offers to make soup with his magic "soup stone". Delighted at the prospect of a free dinner, the man agrees and the traveller begins cooking. Presently, he suggests that some potatoes would be a good addition; and how about some chicken; and if the man happens to have any herbs, that really would make it not just a good soup but a superb soup. Eagerly, the man empties his cupboard and the soup is made. The following day, the traveller reluctantly agrees to sell his stone to the man in return for his gold hoard. There is another version of the story called "Nail broth".

Crockery

I suppose that the plates, bowls and mugs from which we eat food can be as significant in inducing memories as the food itself. If not more so. Food is transitory. Yet we can eat off the same plate day after day, year after year. I think, for instance, of the light blue crockery which we used at my first boarding school. Of the white china plates at my secondary school...and the reassuring thud they made against the rubber rubbish chute as the remains of the food went into the pig bin: did pigs ever get it? And of the grey pottery plates my parents used for dinner parties.

But to go back even further, the first bowl I recall using depicted a nursery. On the floor of the nursery was a red train engine. That engine became totemic and a battleground with my brother: which of us would have the privilege of eating from the red train bowl? When we were eating porridge, our mother skilfully persuaded us to eat it quickly to see, by uncovering the engine, who had secured the prized bowl. Now my nephew eats from it.

But the time swiftly came when bowls were for babies and instead, the grownupness of using "ordinary plates" - light pastel shades, used everyday - became much more attractive.

How does it all work now? I enjoy eating off fine white china if the meal is stunning. For food eaten by myself, I will almost certainly eat from a bowl rather than a plate, or, for soup, from a mug. Is it that the bowl and mug, being more enclosed and smaller, are more comforting than the wide expanse of plate? Or is it just that there is less chance of the food spilling onto the floor?

Pumpkin soup

I am particularly fond of the word pumpkin (two plosives plus diminutive kin). I also love the look of a pumpkin or, better still, a heap of pumpkins, like the one outside Hagrid's hut in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". To eat by itself, however, the pumpkin is a bland, slightly stringy, wet vegetable. To turn it from a sandy flavourless soup into a velvety soup worth eating on a cold night demands onion, curry powder, cream and time. There are probably those who would disagree, do without the curry powder or make a pumpkin pie instead.

Ingredients:
2 oz butter.
1 onion, finely-chopped.
2 tablespoons Bolst's Curry Powder (or whatever you prefer).
1 lb pumpkin, peeled, seeded and chopped into small dice.
3/4 lb potatoes, peeled and chopped.
1 tin chopped Italian tomatoes.
2 pints chicken stock.
1/2 pint double cream.
Salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Some chives and/or croutons if you have them.

Method:
1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan.
2. Add the onions and allow to soften for about 5 minutes.
3. Shortly afterwards, add the curry powder. Allow to cook slowly, without either burning.
4. Add the pumpkin and cook over a gentle heat for another 5 minutes.
5. Add the potatoes and stir on a low heat for about 15 minutes.
5. Add the tin of tomatoes, followed by the stock, the salt and FGBP.
6. Simmer until everything is tender (about one hour).
7. Allow to cool slightly then sieve or blend.
8. Return the soup to the pan (a few exciting scraps of unsieved soup left behind won't do any harm) and stir in the double cream.
9. Re-heat and eat. A few chives or croutons sprinkled on top are rather good.

Final thought: this is not soup to eat while watching "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch". I have, however, served this for a Halloween party. My friend Vicki Telling used the pumpkin shell to create a clever effect: my face amalgamated with Harry Potter's in a wizard's hat through which a lit candle shone. It was on the same occasion when her husband Richard Worth crept upstairs to change into his monk's outfit and came down in the dark bearing another candle. He caused quite a stir. A Tale Worth Telling.

This recipe is based on two taken from a little orange book called "Pumpkins, squashes and things......and how to cook them". Neither recipe has any curry powder to be seen. I am dedicating my version to my cousin Olivia Weiss who was born on 31 October!