"Soup is an amazing food - happiness-inducing liquid warmth in a bowl which comforts, nourishes and sustains." From the heart of Scotland's Edinburgh Center sits the Union of Genius, a popular new soup café' that is rumored to have some of the finest soup in Scotland. Invented this December by owner Elaine Mason, this recipe for Christmas Dinner Soup has arrived just in time for this Holiday Season. So save all those leftovers this weekend, stoke up the fire and enjoy bowl of Genius in the comfort of one's own home.

Genius Christmas Dinner Soup

Serves 5-6

(approximate conversion)

3 cups (600g) potato
1 cup (400g) onion
1 leek
5 cloves garlic
2 oz (50g) smoked bacon lardons, cooked till crisp
1 pound (500g)  turkey thigh meat, cooked and shredded
6.76 oz (200ml) full-fat milk
Ham stock
Turkey stock
Dessertspoon of cranberry sauce
Good handful of dried cranberries
Sage
Allspice
Nutmeg
Salt
Pepper
Dessertspoon of goose fat

Roughly chop all veg and sauté in the goose fat. Then add the milk and around 2 litres (aprx 8 cups) of the ham and turkey stocks. Add 2 pinches sage and simmer for 30 mins. Blend the soup, then add the cranberry sauce, the dried cranberries, the bacon, turkey, a pinch of ground allspice and a grate or two of nutmeg. Season with pepper. Leave for around an hour for the cranberries to swell and the flavours to meld. Adjust seasoning, adding salt, pepper, cranberries and sage if required. 

The soup should be creamy, deeply savoury with a topnote of fragrant spice and an undercurrent of sage. The cranberries give a sweetness while the sage and onion echoes traditional turkey stuffing.  The ham stock and bacon picks up on the fabulous 'pigs in blankets', without which no British Christmas dinner is complete.  Elaine Mason

www.unionofgenius.com