Adams Kate - Magic soup: 100 recipes for health and happiness

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We are a chef (Nicole) and a writer (Kate), and we love soup. It takes us back to basics, to the essence of simple food for the body and soul. When you eat a really good bowl of soup, it puts you in a positive frame of mind, and you know youre nourishing your body, too. Making soup is like therapy: its relaxing, creative, and generous.

For both of us, eating is emotional, and we think thats a great thing. Food should be a source of passion, of delight. Nicole can tell how a person is feeling the moment she walks into their kitchen: whether theyre at one with their world or in need of a kitchen cleanse (in other words, their cupboards are cluttered with lots of delicious ingredients forgotten and left unseen and unused in the corners). We can feel it, too, when we get trapped in unhealthy eating patterns and need to make a new start. For us, the first step is usually making a fresh soup to rekindle our desire for health and happiness.

Our aim is to show that cooking at home is the simple, unscientific but real-life answer to healthy living. When you cook and eat from scratch, theres very little that isnt good for you in moderation; at the very least, every recipe and every meal can have a bit of magic in it. Depending on what we need and what we fancy, soup can be comforting, a quick lunchtime fix or a feast for the gods. As early as humans could build fires and make watertight pots, they made soups and stews with the ingredients they had at hand, and that tradition continues. Nicole will often make everything left in the refrigerator soup, her own version of hunter-gathering, or an ode to Scotland with the Hotch Potch soup. Chicken soup makes us feel better when were poorly, while Miso or Kitchari are the perfect start to a healthy cleanse.

Cooking gathers people together, over the stove or at the table. Its generous and giving, and sitting and chatting is as nourishing as the food itself. There is a beautiful Latvian proverb that says a smile is half the meal: there are times when cooking is a way to get back to the important things in life, whether youre taking a delicious, healthy lunch to work in a thermos or roasting a few vegetables with herbs or spices and making a simple soup for a busy week ahead.

Close your eyes and imagine everything you need for a good meal. Then make soup!

One day, Kate was telling Nicole how making soup had helped her start cooking at home more, as well as improving her health; she found soups fulfilling and delicious, and happened to lose weight at the same time. The first time she made Portuguese Chicken, Lemon and Mint soup she devoured it, wondering how she could have forgotten just how good soup can be. It wasnt a short-term fix either: years later, she still hasnt put the weight back on because she enjoyed the change and it had become a part of her lifestyle.

Nicole, meanwhile, has always been passionate about making people happy through food and inspiring them to cook. After cooking for the homeless and on Zen retreats, shes spent a lot of time thinking about how to get a whole days nutrition into one bowl of soup. She was also inspired during her time working for Anna Hansen and Yotam Ottolenghi at The Modern Pantry and Nopi restaurants in London. Both Anna and Yotam encouraged their staff to share food, to eat together, and cook together. For Nicole, the greatest compliment you can give her is your empty bowl.

When Kate was in Mauritiusan island of amazingly healthy peopleshe heard about Magic Soup, which was really just a brilliant way to describe a simple vegetable soup thats packed with goodness and spices, which women traditionally ate after having a baby. It would give them lots of nutrition while gently helping them get their figure back, too.

So together we planted the seed of an idea, which eventually grew into Magic Soup.

Weve had some real adventures while creating the soups in this book. Kate learned how to make soup with a whole chicken, and from having no idea what spice mixes like dukkah or zaatar were, she now cooks with them freely and easily. Nicole never thought she would like herbal tea until she created salmon poached in lemongrass tea. Thats the only rule we have: they just need to taste good. Were not interested in taking the joy of out food. What makes us happy is that each and every recipe has a little bit of magic in it, whether it will comfort you on a rainy day, make you eat too fast because its so delicious, or make you feel good about what you ate today. There are healing soups and New Year soups, chilled soups for hot summer days and warm, toasty soups for winter evenings. There are soups to cleanse the body and soothe the soul; some will take you to far off countries, while others will bring you home. We hope it rekindles your love of soup and gives you some ideas to inspire you, so that youll often be able to say: Oh, I know what well have tonight

Soup came into being about five millennia ago when human beings began to farm and cultivate food in addition to hunting and gathering, and it marked a crucial stage in their development. When people began to put different ingredients in a pot with water over the heat of the fire, they created broths, gruel, and stews. Before this, food had always been either roasted, fried, or baked separately. The discovery of boiling and simmering meant that a much greater variety of plants and grains could be combined and added to the diet, and meat could provide even more nutrition through boiling the bones.

The word soup most likely derives from the bread over which broth was poured, the sup or sop. The first restaurants, as we now think of them, appeared in Paris in the eighteenth century and served soups, which were usually meat consomms or bouillons that would help to restore a persons strength and vitality, or cure a hangover. Bone-based broths had been used for centuries and across cultures as healing remedies, and chicken soup is worthy of a book of its own.

In the nineteenth century the first packaged soups appeared, known as pocket soups. As transportation improved and travel became more possible, portable canned and dehydrated soups grew in popularity. The Campbells Soup Company opened its first factory in 1869 in Camden, New Jersey, and the first can of tomato soup was produced in 1895. These days, we like soups to taste as fresh as possible, and to offer seasonal specialities and super-healthy ingredientsbut sometimes this goes too far. The Cabbage Soup Diet became famous in the 1970s and was notorious for its lack of flavor and variety, and unfortunate side effects. Maybe thats why nobody has ever actually claimed to have invented the diet, despite the millions of people who tried it.