You can use any vegetables except potatoes, which don’t freeze well. I have made suggestions for the proportions of the vegetables, but what you choose is entirely up to you. Parsnips are sweet, and leeks and kohlrabi will add rich flavor. If you can’t get fresh turmeric it’s okay – the carrots will provide a warm yellow color – but do NOT use turmeric powder. Your soups will then taste like curry. Trust me on this, unless you don’t care.

I make lots of Romanian ciorba, hence the usage of lovage and dill in my vegetable bouillon.

For a fast soup on cold evenings, all you need to do is pop one or two vegetable bouillon squares into the pot with water or stock, and add meatballs, dumplings or potatoes. If you feel like it, you can add extra vegetables. But when the temperature is minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4°F) I don’t want to muck around in the kitchen, I want something easy, hearty and comforting.

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Start with the basic yolks mashed with a little Dijon mustard and bought mayonnaise, and then pick a main additive. Think minced shrimp, tuna, gorgonzola cheese, mashed avocado and minced jalapeño, deviled ham (double deviled), minced crispy bacon, smoked salmon, pimento cheese.

Then coordinate spices, herbs and garnishes accordingly.

Perhaps a section of fresh fig and a piece of walnut with the gorgonzola.
Or crushed blue taco chips on the avocado. A tiny triangle of Swiss cheese and a strip of gherkin with the ham. A tiny slice of a tiny tomato and a shard of romaine lettuce with the bacon (for a BLT deviled egg). Salmon roe on the smoked salmon, or a diamond of pimento on the pimento cheese. Minced parsley or cilantro, snipped chives, shredded basil, sweet, hot or smoked paprika, a sprinkle of “Everything But the Bagel®,” Jane’s Crazy® salt — you get the idea, run with it.

The deviled part may go back to Ancient Rome, but in the late 18 th and early 19 th century.  “Deviled” food items usually implied that they were made with spicy (as in hot) ingredients. If they were ‘hot as hell’ well then the devil must be involved. The association with the devil was firmly embedded in the mind of the consumer when Underwood trademarked the little pitchfork wielding, pointy-tailed devil for their Underwood Deviled Ham® in 1870.

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Be sure to wear gloves for handling the hot peppers.  If you handle hot peppers often,  you will be okay with the heat on your hands but if you inadvertently touch other, more sensitive body parts, you may be in for an uncomfortable ride.  I have experienced habañero eyes more than once and it lasts for hours. You will not need to remove the skin or seeds from the tomatoes. It is much work and they will be strained out after cooking.

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To make this recipe, collect fresh cream or malai daily at home from the top of slow-boiled milk and store this collected cream in freezer. You can use readymade heavy cream too.

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