Clancy - Just soup : everything you need in a bowl

Theres something comforting about tackling a meal with a spoon. For most of us it was the first utensil we held.

Its soup spoons specifically that Ive always had a thing for. As a child I rifled through the cutlery draw before breakfast and sought one out for cereal, the better to savour its pools of liquid. I used it for ice cream too, as well as for food that a fork might have been better suited to. I was in good company with my quirk. The food writer Bee Wilsons tool of choice was a teaspoon: as an eccentric and somewhat troubled teenager, for several years I ate all my food anything that didnt need cutting, at any rate with a teaspoon I remember how safe it made me feel, spooning up tiny morsels like an infant.

Perhaps the comfort of spoons has got something to do with the fact that when youre armed with one youre most likely eating from a bowl. You have a hand free to cradle that bowl, feel the warmth within, and a chance to really consider whats before you.

Its odd really that soup gets pigeon-holed as a cold-weather food, because its most prevalent in countries where the temperature seldom dips beneath that of the hottest day in an English August. Indias thick dals, Vietnams clear phos, Thailands coconut broths, Africas pulse-heavy stews, theyre all consumed in the sun. And yet in England we seem to have given ourselves an all too brief soup season that begins when leaves fall and ends as soon as we take our scarves off. If we were going to assign liquid food to any season, in fact, it would probably make more sense to give it to summer, where its high water content would keep us hydrated. This is precisely why soup is popular all over the world, and one of the many reasons it is the ultimate food of convalescence.

Nutritional fads may come and go but soup, imbued with the power to heal the sick and warm the soul, is a mainstay. As well as being a liquid and therefore a vehicle for easily digestible nutrients, soups made from slow-cooked bones also have anti-inflammatory properties. Chicken soup, sometimes referred to as Jewish penicillin, is probably the most revered and long-standing example, but there are others, from the rice congees of Chinese folklore to the ancient Ayurvedic soups of India. Of course you dont need to be sick to enjoy the benefits of soup. I believe a soup can be found for most occasions and will satiate most cravings rich and piquant broths to replenish salt levels after exercise, colourful and spicy curried soups to light up your eyes and stir your nostrils, and tangy sour soups to refresh and energise.

Soup offers health for everyone. At a time when people struggle to meet their five-a-day, soup can neatly smuggle the necessaries into a bowl. If you are given to dieting you could do much worse than live off soup three or four days a week and souping is certainly a far more gratifying and beneficial alternative to high-sugar juice diets. Soup provides nourishment while helping you lose weight. You can feel full as well as great. And because its easy to digest you are more likely after an evening bowl to have a restful nights sleep and wake with energy.

The recipes included in this book are not diet soups, but neither are they creamed or thickened with egg yolks techniques I feel are better suited to small portions, or starters, whereas all of the soups here will work as main meals.

A brisk, kineograph-style flick through its pages will show you I am not afraid of garnishes. They bring crunch, they help make a soup a meal and they are a great way of introducing contrasting flavours and raw ingredients. They also look good. The importance of having something beautiful to look at while you eat should never be underestimated.

Soups beginnings are humble it was a peasant food, a repository for the chopping boards odds and ends, but it soon evolved from being mere fuel and became a decadent course for those who could afford it, an agent for letting specific ingredients shine and be savoured. Soup is, perhaps, the most universal type of food there is, steeped in history and yet ripe for reinvention. I hope this book inspires you in your quest to do the latter.