Traditional meals in South-West France often start with a soup, made from stock and left-over vegetables, bulked up with yesterday’s bread. They are surprisingly good and just the thing to whet the appetite for the main course. I assumed that la soupe au fromage / cheese soup would be one such. I heated some duck fat in a frying pan and added chopped onions and leeks and cooked slowly until soft. Meanwhile, I lined the base of an earthenware dish with slices of bread (a type called a croustilot), and covered with slices of Cantal, a local cheese. I covered this with the onions and leeks and topped with another layer of bread and cheese. I added some seasoned homemade stock to cover and cooked, uncovered, in the oven for an hour. The result was fabulous – all the delicious liquid had been absorbed by the bread which was soft and tasty, and the cheese was melted and stringy. With seconds (of course!), this turned out to be a one course meal.

La soupe de vendredi saint / Good Friday soup is traditionally eaten at the end of the Lenten fast. It is made from basic ingredients: I soaked dried chick peas for 24 hours, then drained and rinsed them. I cooked these in salted water for a couple of hours until tender. I heated duck fat in a pan and fried chopped onion and garlic until just starting to colour. I liquidised everything in a blender, then reheated, adding some salt and pepper. The result was a very thick soup which I thinned with a little stock and served with fried bread cubes. This dish might be frugal and appropriate to the season, but it was also very good to eat.

Le potage Rouergat / the Rouergue soup is an old-fashioned, winter soup from the Rouergue, a former province of France corresponding roughly with the the modern department of Aveyron. I soaked some dried haricot beans overnight, and boiled them the next day. Meanwhile I fried chopped onion in goose fat, then added chicken stock and chopped potatoes, and simmered till cooked. I liquidised this mixture, returned to the pan, and added the drained beans and more potato (diced). I simmered for another 30 minutes. The result was a filling soup – a meal in itself!

I cooked this recipe – le potage aux courgettes / courgette soup – at the end of the summer. It’s very similar to the recipe for courgette soup in Goose Fat & Garlic and equally good. I washed some courgettes (one kilo) and cut them into small cubes. I heated butter and sunflower oil in a large casserole, and sweated some chopped onions. I added the courgettes with a little salt and let them soften too. Then I poured in chicken stock (made with a stock cube this time for convenience!) and simmered, covered, for 20 minutes. I blended the mixture until it was creamy. I finished the soup by stirring in some crème fraîche, seasoning with salt and pepper, and drizzling with a little walnut oil. This is easy to make, perfect for a summer’s day, and uses up a glut of courgettes.

This is not a soup in the old-fashioned sense, nor a potage; the style is familiar to those who buy already-prepared soups in the shops, but none of those will taste as good as this.

Jeanne Strang in Magrets & Mushrooms

Butternut squash was bred in Massachusetts in the USA in the mid 1940s, and so is a relative newcomer to French markets. It’s a thin skinned variety, with a sweet, nutty, buttery flesh. To make the recipe for le velouté de butternut mamie Odile / mamie Odile’s butternut squash soup, I peeled the squash and cut it into cubes. I placed these in a pan along with a chopped onion and a chicken stock cube. I covered with water, brought to the boil and simmered for 20 minutes. I added some crème fraiche and salt and pepper, then blended in a liquidiser. Simple to make, better than bought, and half the price!

Autumn has arrived in a rush. It wasn’t so long ago that the sky was blue but, now, it is grey, and the nights are drawing in. I feel like eating soup again. So, for my first recipe from Jeanne Strang’s new collection, I have chosen la soupe de potiron Elke / Elke’s pumpkin soup. This recipe was collected by a German friend, hence the name, and is rather different from the more traditional pumpkin soup I cooked before. It starts with simple, easy-to-grow or buy, ingredients: pumpkin (I used butternut squash), carrots, leeks, potatoes, onions and garlic, coarsely chopped and fried in a little duck fat, then cooked gently in chicken stock (a cube is now a suggested option!). But, the innovation comes with liquidising the mixture and adding spices: curry powder and raz-el-hanout, the latter a North African medley of fragrant spices used in tagines. The soup is finished with cream and chopped coriander, and the result is a thick, earthy, silky-smooth bowl of goodness, with hints of warmth .

There’s a fine patch of nettles growing in a neighbour’s garden, and as these much maligned plants are full of vitamins and minerals, I thought I would take advantage and make le potage aux orties / nettle and potato soup again. This time I started by sautéing shallots in butter for a few minutes, then adding a diced potato and stock and simmering until softened. I plunged a couple of handfuls of chopped mesclun into the hot liquid and left for five minutes. I poured this mixture into a blender and added an equivalent amount of blanched nettle leaves. I blended the liquid thoroughly and then poured it through a wide meshed sieve into a pan to remove any fibrous bits. I reheated gently, adding seasoning and a little crème fraîche to finish. The result was a delicate, slightly earthy soup, both delicious and very healthy. Note: I used mesclun, a mix of young salad leaves, instead of the traditional watercress as I couldn’t source the latter in the market or shops. While there is plenty of wild watercress growing locally, I didn’t want to use this as I have read that it can be contaminated with parasitic liver fluke.

Beautiful, glossy, green courgettes are available now and so it is the perfect time to have another go at la crème de courgettes à l’huile de noix / courgette soup with walnut oil. This is an easy dish to prepare – diced courgettes and onions are softened in butter and oil, then cooked in chicken stock for 20 minutes and blended till smooth. The soup is finished by stirring in some crème fraîche, seasoning with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, and drizzling a little walnut oil over each serving. However, the result will depend on the quality of the ingredients, especially the stock and the oil. For the main course I had made a lovely chicken pie which involved poaching a whole chicken with asparagus and leeks, and so I used this delicious stock in my soup. My walnut oil came from the market from a small local producer, and complemented the courgettes perfectly.