sometimes the simplist is the best - butternut squash soup, with E5 bakery's sourdough bread

Twice lately I have had the best taste reward with just a simple soup.

At the end of August I again was asked by Young Lewisham to cook for them at the 'Dawn to Dusk' 24 hour enduro high in the Breacon Beacons. A ridiculous event for even more ridiculous off road riders and marshaled by a fine bunch of people from as far and wide as Brockley Rise and Perry Vale to the Yorkshire Moors.

Cooking is always tough and pleasing this diverse bunch is a balancing act not far removed from negotiating the wooded trails at 2am, though I don't get that muddy in the mess tent, at least not this year. Sunday is always a dinner of slow cooked beef and mash but for lunch I went for a straight forward, and I have to say, simple, Onion Soup. That is onions and not a lot else beyond water.

Funny how people raved about it, an onion soup? I heard several comments that shocked me into thinking that sometimes the simplest may be the best. I heard mention Welsh Onion Soup and french onion soup and even had a young guy eating seconds after insisting on chips (yeh right, try McDonalds 30 miles back off the mountain). I don't think he likened it to anything he had ever tasted before, welsh, french or Lewisham.

This so called recipe is for tonight's treat, Butternut soup. It is not really a recipe at all, it is far too simple in my book.

Take a squash, trim and dice, fry with loads of onions until soft with a touch of cracked pepper to taste. When done mix in some full cream milk and blend.

The taste was fantastic. The milk was Hinxden Dairy full milk, the best I have tasted for some time and bought from my local shop. The squash from Aldi, two extremes in source. The onions I grew myself at the Communigrow plot. Even better was the sourdough loaf from E5 Bakery that I bartered for half dozen eggs and a few onions at the Jubilee Primary schools farmer's market in Stoke Newington.

 

If you don't know E5 Bakery take a train to Dalston and nip in for a peek. Last time I was there was with two of my all time heroes of permaculture, Angus Soutar and George Sobol and as with all such meetings it ended with the world a much better place than it seems, which of course it is.