Nigel Slater’s recipes for bean, cabbage and coconut-milk soup, and poached quinces
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A vivid spicy bean soup and slow-cooked quinces supply midwinter sweetness and sustenance. The year will start with soup. Soup has been the first meal of the year for as long as I can remember, eaten for lunch or maybe later in the day. Something hot in a deep bowl, to revive and restore.
![[Nigel Slater]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Nigel_Slater,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
This year, a soup of beans or lentils for good luck, with chillies for warmth, and turmeric or coconut milk to soothe. Nothing too taxing to make, save a few cardamom pods to crack and their seeds to grind; onions to slice and soften with coriander seeds and cumin and perhaps cabbage – or chard – leaves to shred.
![[Star quality: poached quinces.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/663d4bd6026dd692e42cfbf91f84885987505c50/0_71_4538_5672/master/4538.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The warm sweetness of the coconut milk will be welcome if you plan to toast the new year and stay up late. And a generous squirt of lime juice will bring the whole thing to life. There may be bread to dunk – I often make a loaf on the first day of the year. If not, I will bring a crust back to life in the toaster.
There are still quinces about if you are lucky enough to live near a Turkish grocery or a farmer’s market. If not, a comely Comice pear can be cooked in a similar fashion and will take a quarter of the time. For the new year I will poach the fruit in a syrup with stars of anise and a vanilla pod and offer them warm rather than chilled, when the fruit will be at its most fragrant. No cream this time, but perhaps some yoghurt to flow over the flushed pink cheeks of the quinces or pears in their glass dishes.
New Year’s Day is always plump with hope. It never feels like a new start (it isn’t); more like another chance to do everything I planned this time last year and have failed to get done. Although it has been a busy year, a full 12 months I have spent chasing my tail, somehow there is still a to-do list as long as my arm.
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