Soups are essential in winter, because they’re warming, nourishing and rarely expensive. Spanish white soup is more often served chilled in summer, but it can also be great cold-weather comfort food. The garlic is roasted, and is a completely different creature from fresh garlic, because the flavour is tamed and softened to a creamy richness (I’ve even been known to eat it spread on toast.) Jerusalem artichokes, meanwhile, aren’t around for long, so use them while you can. When fried, as here, they work brilliantly in a migas with some earthy mushrooms. Like many rural Spanish dishes, migas was developed out of hard times and the need not to waste anything, and are a great way to create a sexy, crunchy crumb seasoning; if you’re feeling adventurous, jazz them up by adding some crisp fried chorizo or morcilla, too.
