One of my favourite casual meals is the one I make at home in the middle of the day. As breakfast is unlikely to have been more than a piece of toast with coffee, the snack is substantial.

If it is not a bowl of pasta, it will almost certainly be soup, perhaps with a sandwich; the subject of my next two columns then – soup today and sandwiches in two weeks’ time.

A colleague once told me she thought ours would be the last generation to make stock and that instead, substitutes would be used such as vegetable or tomato juice, water left over from boiling potatoes, soaking dried mushrooms or cooking fish as well as sherry, wine, soy sauce, miso and, of course, stock cubes. To be fair, these are much improved in recent years, and those from Marigold and Kallo are very good, especially the low-salt vegetable ones.

All these, of course, have a place in soup-making, but if one were to do without stock altogether, cooking would be the poorer for it. Stock-making does take time, but not your time.

The ingredients in the pot need be nothing more than beef bones, a chicken carcass, a ham bone or some fish bones... then a bay leaf, a celery top and some peppercorns. You need to be around only until the stock comes to the boil. You can skim the scum from the surface, but then you can disappear, a couple of hours or more for the chicken, for the whole day if you’re making beef or veal stock, but no more than 20 to 30 minutes for fish stock. Naturally, the usual safety precautions need to be taken.

A main course of soup makes for an ideal casual supper

Then, with the beautiful stock you have produced, the whole world of soup-making expands even further. A few slices of Parma ham, a piece of pâté, some smoked lampuki and cucumber salad or other simple starter, a baked apple or poached figs to finish. A main course of soup makes for an ideal casual supper that will not make a big hole in the housekeeping budget.

My soup recipes come from different culinary cultures, some developed in my own kitchen, some collected on my travels. In Andalucia, I have eaten a very good soup called, sopa de puchero. Made from broth, rice, pieces of ham and eggs, it is a good way of using leftover stock and other bits and pieces. I like it very much as a supper dish. Traditionally, the broth is made from chicken and beef. One or the other will do, as will pork, ham or veal stock, or a mixture.

The recipe for tortilla soup is inspired by the many soothing bowls I sampled in Texas. It is, apparently, a favourite of those suffering from jet lag. One of the best versions I tasted was in a tiny, family-run Mexican restaurant in the suburbs of San Antonio. Although it sounds exotic, it is not at all difficult to make, especially with tortillas being increasingly available in supermarkets.

In Colombia, ajiaco is an ambrosial soupy stew, a Sunday lunch favourite – everyone’s mamma makes the best version – in which the main ingredients are several kinds of potatoes, corn, a local herb called guascas and aji, or hot sauce. Traditionally, chicken is added, but in the past I have made entirely vegetable-based ajiaco, which is very good indeed. You cannot, I think, get guascas here, which is why I have always called my chicken version ajiaco sin guascas, but you can use watercress, mizuna or rocket for a similar effect.

The cauliflower soup is one I make every winter in Gozo when cauliflowers are at their most magnificent, some large enough to feed the whole street, it seems to me. And indeed, on more than one occasion, I have shared a cauliflower with one of my neighbours.

Tortilla soup

(Serves 6)

400-500g chicken breasts, raw
1.5l chicken stock made from the carcass
1 onion, peeled and sliced
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tbsps sunflower oil, plus extra for frying tortillas
400g can tomatoes, drained
Juice of a lime
2 fresh jalapeno, or other small hot green peppers, seeded and finely chopped
Gozo salt
Freshly ground black pepper
6 small/medium corn tortillas, halved, cut in one-centimetre strips
Fresh coriander, chopped

Simmer the chicken in the stock for 20 minutes or so and let it cool in the liquid. Put the stock to one side, discard bones and skin from the chicken and shred it finely.

Gently fry the onion and garlic in the oil until the onion is wilted. Add the coriander and tomatoes, and cook for 20 to 25 minutes.

Rub through a sieve or blend. Stir in the lime juice and chillies, and season lightly.

Fry the tortillas strips in batches until crisp and drain on crumpled paper towels. Add them and the chicken to the soup, bring to the boil for two to three minutes and serve in deep soup bowls, garnished with chopped coriander.

Ajiaco

(Serves 6-8)

1 chicken 1.5 to 2kg
2 large onions, peeled and quartered
A handful of coriander stalks
3l water
1kg soft cooking potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
1kg firm potatoes, peeled and sliced
500g small, waxy salad potatoes, scrubbed and halved, or left whole if small
Bunch of watercress or rocket, leaves only
3 or 4 sweetcorn (if fresh or frozen corn is not available, use chunks of pumpkin)
Fresh green or red chilli, or crushed dried chillies to taste
Gozo salt to taste
Fresh coriander leaves

Rinse and dry the chicken and remove any cavity fat. Put it in a large saucepan with the onion, coriander stalks and water. Add more water if necessary to cover the chicken. Bring to the boil, remove any scum from the surface, cover, and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Add the soft-cooking potatoes, and cook for a further 25 to 30 minutes. Remove the coriander and onion and discard. Take out the chicken and put to one side.

Put in the rest of the potatoes and cook for 15 to 20 minutes until the first batch is quite soft enough for you to break up with a fork and the other two kinds of potato are still firm but cooked.

Meanwhile, remove the meat from the chicken carcass. Add the chilli and watercress or rocket to the pan with the corn cobs, each cut into three or four pieces, and bring to the boil. Put in the chicken meat, and simmer for about five minutes until the corn is tender. Stir in the fresh coriander, ladle into deep soup bowls and serve very hot.

To accompany the ajiaco, in one bowl serve thick yoghurt or cream, capers in another, chopped parsley in a third and, finally, aji, the hot sauce, which is made by mixing finely chopped spring onion or leek, tomato, fresh chillies and fresh coriander leaves with lime or lemon juice or vinegar. Each person is also served half an avocado, peeled and sliced on to a side plate.

Spiced cauliflower soup with coconut cream, mint and cucumber raita

(Serves 4)

1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 to 2 tbsps mild or medium curry paste
1 medium cauliflower, separated into florets
2 tbsps flour
600ml vegetable or chicken stock
200ml coconut milk
½ a cucumber, roughly chopped
150ml plain yoghurt
Small green chilli, split and seeded (optional)
Small bunch mint, leaves only

Gently fry the onion in the oil until wilted and transparent. Stir in the curry paste and the cauliflower. When this is well coated, sprinkle with flour, stir until flour is absorbed and then add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer until the vegetables are soft.

Remove from the heat and put in a blender with the coconut milk. Blend until smooth and return the soup to the pan.

Reheat and add salt and pepper as necessary. Meanwhile, rinse the blender and in it blend the remaining ingredients to make the cucumber raita.

Serve the soup with a swirl of cucumber raita and hot naan or chapatis.

Sopa de puchero

(Serves 4)

1l stock
50g rice, long, or short grain
4 eggs
100g diced, or shredded ham

Cook the rice in the broth until tender. Meanwhile, boil the eggs, no more than three-and-a-half to four minutes. Cool the eggs under the running cold tap, and shell them.

Put one egg into each heated soup plate with a quarter of the ham. Pour the rice and broth over it, and serve immediately with a few fresh mint leaves stirred in.