Roasted Red Pepper and Carrot Soup

I just realised that all the soups I've blogged so far this year have been vegetarian recipes (assuming you use veggie stock, although I sometimes cheat and use chicken just to give it that extra bit of flavour)  This wasn't an intentional thing, so far this year I've made soups based purely on what is lurking in the vegetable drawer of the fridge.  Although I'm *still* not sure what that green slimy stuff is - possibly lettuce left over from last summer.  Best not dwell on that too much hey?

Today's soup is a variation on one of the ll time classics - carrot and coriander.  Although we are dropping the coriander and adding some red peppers.  When these bits are roasted in a bit of oil, they are transformed from a vaguely uninspiring bunch of brightly coloured veggies into a fragrant, tasty, sweet and delicious sensation.  Yes, the humble carrot, that thing you are bound to have a few of lurking in your kitchen right now, looking forlorn and lonely.  So my advice to you would be to grab a few, get some peppers in and start making this soup right now! You won't regret it...

Ingredients
350g Carrots
3 Red Peppers
2 Onions
1 Chilli Pepper
2 Garlic Cloves
900ml Vegetable Stock
Oil
Salt and Pepper

Method.
1.  Heat the over to 200ºc.  Peel and roughly chop the carrots.  De-seed the peppers and cut into strips then peel and slice the onion.

2.  Place the vegetables in a roasting dish, toss in vegetable oil until they are covered, then place in the oven.  Roast the vegetables for 45 minutes.  They should be starting to go golden and brown on the edges.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool

3.  Put the vegetables in your soup pan, add the garlic and chilli - both finely chopped - and the stock.  Bring the soup to the boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

4.  Blend the soup until smooth, reheat, adjust seasoning to taste and serve with a swirl of fresh yoghurt.  Enjoy!

Zupa Koperkowa - Polish Dill Soup

I had some friends who went on holiday to various East European countries, and when they returned, the brought back tales of culinary horror.  Not only was it nigh-on impossible to get a decent vegetarian meal in Latvia, but in Poland - horror of horrors - they put dill on EVERYTHING.  And my friends REALLY couldn't stand dill. Now I can't vouch for the veracity of these stories, but I'm pretty sure my friends would hate this soup...

This is a really simple soup that is really all about the dill, although it is really filling and creamy and would be good as a winter warmer, or as a summer soup.  Of course, the recipe I really wanted to do this week was a Polish Tripe soup, but the supermarket seems to have stopped stocking cow's stomach linings, so I will have to take a trip to Leeds Market to procure some.  You have been warned...

Ingredients
1 Carrot
1 Potato
2 Parsnips
250ml Sour Cream
150g White Rice
1.5l Chicken Stock
1 Bunch of Fresh Dill
2 Bay Leaves
Salt and Pepper

Method
1. In a large pan, heat your chicken stock.  Add the bay leaves and the carrot, potato and parsnip, all peeled and cubed.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes

2. After 20 Minutes, add the rice and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes, until the rice is cooked and the vegetables are soft.

3.  Finely chop the dill and add to the pan, along with the sour cream. Heat through

4.  Adjust seasoning to taste and serve with some extra dill for garnish.  Enjoy!

Krupnik - Polish Barley Soup

So, because I like to have themes on the blog (mainly as it's a good way to get inspiration for new soup recipes), welcome to Polish Month on Soup Tuesday!

I used to live down the road from a rather brilliant Polish restaurant - the food was cheap and cheerful, but blimey it was filling, and I think that's where I first got addicted to Polish cuisine.  The owner / waiter was always helpful in pointing out what was the special of the day and they did some killer pirogi, but one thing I never tried was the soup - being equally as addicted to dumplings as I am to soup, I always went for them first - and occasionally, the restaurant did serve tripe soup (which will be coming to the blog shortly...)

Since starting this blog, I've done a number of East European soups, and they have always been brilliant.  This one is no exception.  Krupnik is a sort of Polish minestrone, it seems - with various recipes adding or subtracting different elements - you could always try it without the mean - but the constant is the pearl barley.  Its a chunky soup that works well (as you would imagine) on a cold night.

Krupnik is not to be confused with the honey sweetened alcoholic drink of the same name, but I'm pretty sure it would go well with this soup too!  Also, the dried mushrooms I used in this recipe were given to me as part of a foodie pen pals parcel ages ago and I'd never used them until now, but they gave a nice meaty edge to the soup.



Ingredients
250g Chicken Breasts
150g Pearl Barley
1 Large Onion
2 Cloves Garlic
2 Carrots
2 Potatoes
1 Leek
1 Stalk Celery
2 Bay leaves
25g Butter
15g Dried Mushrooms
1/2tsp Ground Allspice
1.5l Chicken Stock
Fresh Dill

Method
1. In your soup pan, heat the stock, bringing it to the boil.  Cut the chicken breasts into small cubes, then put them in the stock, poaching them for 3 minutes until the meat is cooked.  Skim any scum from the stock as you do this.  Remove the chicken from the stock and set aside.  Take the stock off the heat for the moment

2. Heat the butter in a large frying pan.  Into this add the finely chopped onion and celery.  Cook until the veg starts to soften, then add the garlic, cubed carrot and leek, cook for another few minutes and then add the cubed potato.  Cook for another few minutes until all the veg is softened.

3.  Add the vegetables to the stock with the pearl barley, allspice and bay leaves.  Wash the dried mushrooms to remove any grit and then add these to the pan also. Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. 

4.  Check the mushrooms and barley are cooked and soft, then add the chicken back into the pan and heat through.

5.  Adjust seasoning to taste and then serve.  Garnish the bowls with plenty of finely chopped fresh dill.  Enjoy!

Ciorba de Perisoare - Romanian Meatball Soup

Running a soup blog, I invariably get asked the question "What is your favourite soup?".  Its a really difficult question to answer, obviously.  That's like asking "Which is your favourite child" and I wouldn't want any of my soups to feel like they were second best. However, after several years of making and eating soups from around the world, I'm beginning to think that my favourite soups are those from Eastern Europe.

The reason for this is that I think they get the flavour combinations right - often using lemon juice, or vinegar to add a sour note that works really well.  They are often pretty simple recipes, and (oh yes) often incorporate either dumplings or meatballs.  And regular readers will know how I feel about those two...

So my round-the-world soupstravaganza hits Romania, which is undoubtedly most well known as the place where Dracula lives.  I'm pretty sure some other stuff must have happened there, but really nothing of importance from the time Peter Cushing killed Vlad until the present time*

They did, however, come up with lots and lots of exiting soups, many of them with that slightly sour taste that I love so much.  And this one has meatballs, so I just had to give it a go.  The addition of rice to the meatballs makes the meat stretch that little bit further, and although it's a simple soup to put together, the end results are so tasty...

* This may not have happened

Ingredients
300g Minced Beef
50g Long Grain Rice
2 Carrots
2 Onions
2 Celery Stalks
1 Green Pepper
1 Lemon
3tbsp Tomato Puree
1.5l Beef Stock

Method
1.  Peel the carrots and parsnip, cut them into small cubes.

2. De-seed the green pepper and cut finely, as well as one of the onions and the celery stalks

3.  Heat some oil in your soup pan and gently fry the vegetables until soft but not starting to colour

4.  Add the stock to the pan, as well as the tomato puree, lemon juice and bring to the boil.  Cover the pan and simmer for 30 minuted

5.  In a mixing bowl, combine the minced beef, washed rice and then grate the other onion and add this to the mixture, along with 1tsp of salt and some black pepper.

6.  Form the mixture into balls about an inch across.

7.  Add these to the soup after 30 minutes and continue to simmer gently for another 10-15 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked.  You will be able to tell when they are cooked as they will float to the surface of the soup.

8.  Adjust seasoning to taste and then serve.  Enjoy!

Spicy Morrocan Carrot Soup

Guess which jars annoy me...

When I first started cooking properly, back when I was a student, three things were the backbones of any dish, in various combinations.  A huge plastic generic container of 'mixed herbs', another of 'curry powder' and a jar of Chili Powder.  Like a Picasso of the palate, I could mix these few flavourings with any other foodstuff - usually Netto tinned casseroles, chicken soup or just some good old tinned tomatoes - to produce erm, well, something that was at least edible enough to be slapped on top of some pasta to give me enough sustenance to soak up the huge quantities of booze that I would invariably drink at the local nasty nightclub (It was called 'Spiders' in Hull, where cocktails came by the pint, dodgy goths lurked in darkened corners and the music ran the whole gamut from bad to awful... ah, good days...)

Fast forward some years and my spice collection has grown a little bit more elaborate.  In fact it seems like I'm getting a little obsessive about them now.  I started buying them in large bags and putting them into old coffee jars, and now it annoys me unless ALL THE JARS ARE THE SAME SIZE, so when we go to the supermarket, I have to buy the exact brand of coffee to get the jars.

And I have also started labelling the jars using a Dymo Brand™ label maker so all the jars ARE LABELLED EXACTLY THE SAME.  If you, like me suffer from borderline OCD, I highly recommend getting a Dymo Brand™label maker.  Not only do they keep a uniform appearance to all your jars of various brown powders (and before I got my Dymo Brand™label maker, you have no idea how many times I got my corianders and cumins mixed up) but they also give your jars a lovely and satisfying retro look, like something from a Victorian scientist's lab, but without the formaldehyde or eyeballs

Just to prove it's not just my spices that are obsessively orgainised, here is (some of) my book collection.  And yes, they are alphabetized by author and then arragnged by publication date. Problem? Me?

The point of all this rhapsodising about my Dymo Brand™ label maker is that, ummm, oh yeah, having a large and properly labelled spice collection enables you to take any old ingredient and turn it into a delicious soup.  Take for example this Moroccan carrot soup, which is nothing more than a few carrots and an onion, plus some spices.  'Simples' as the annoying rat on the telly says.  And it's all thanks to my Dymo Brand™label maker.

[The post was not, by the way, sponsored by Dymo Brand™label makers]

Ingredients

600g Carrots
1 Onion
1.2l Chicken Stock
4 Cloves Garlic
1tbsp Ginger Puree
1tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1tbsp Cumin Seeds
1tsp Caraway Seeds
1tsp Cinnamon
Sprigs of Thyme
Juice of 1/2 Lemon

Method
1.  Heat the oven to 180ºc.  Peel the carrots and cut into chunks.

2.  Put the carrots in an oven proof dish, along with some oil, salt, pepper, thyme and balsamic vinegar, then add the cumin and caraway seeds.  Toss them all together so the carrots get covered in the oil and the seeds.

3.  Put the dish in the oven and roast for 30 minutes, until the carrots are starting to caramelise and brown at the edges.  Once this is happening, take them out of the oven and leave to cool.,

4.  Finely slice the onion and fry in your soup pan for 5 minutes, until they start to soften.  The add the garlic and ginger, fry for another 2 minutes, until they are both cooked and then add the cinnamon, stir and then add the stock.

5.  Put the carrots and seeds into the soup pan and bring to the boil.  Cover and simmer and then cook for 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat and leave to cool

6.  Blend the soup until smooth, then re-heat, adjust seasoning to taste and add the lemon juice.  Serve and enjoy!

Celeriac and Chard Soup

We are all about the vegetables over at Soup Towers this month.  For reasons that are now shrouded in the mists of time, it seemed like a good idea to go meat free for a month, so the next few soup recipes will all be veggie.  When I told my Mum I was dropping the meat, there was an amazing look of horror and disbelief on her face, and a I half expect her to come round with a care package of bacon and black puddings before the month is out.

But the truth is, like a lot of people these days, it's actually not that much of a shift to go vegetarian as about half of the meals I cook are meat-free anyway, and a quick glance down the recent blog posts here show that the vegetable soup recipes are at least as many as ones with bits of dead animal floating in them.

So after a weekend that was a veritable orgy of meat (at least one huge mixed grill, a chunky gammon steak and a hilariously long hot-dog smothered in chili) I commenced, starting with this soup.

After the last recipe, which was made entirely of items found in anyone's cupboard, this soup is a riot of fresh veg, and rather brilliant for it - in fact it used up about half of our veg box for this week - and it's also a lot like Ribollita, but without the bread to thicken it, and chard instead of cavolo nero.  However, you could pretty much chuck in whatever vegetables you have to hand and it would still be amazing...

Ingredients
1 Large Onion
1 Celeriac
2 Stalks Celery
1 Large Carrot
Chard
1 Can Haricot Beans
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
900ml Stock
4 Cloves Garlic
1tsp Thyme
1tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Butter

Method
1. Peel the celeriac and cut into 1cm cubes.  Peel and chop the carrot and onion, slice the celery thinly.

2.  Heat some butter in your soup pan and  then gently cook the vegetables for about 5 minutes, until they start to soften.  Add the finely chopped garlic and cook for another 2 minutes.

3.  Add the stock, tomatoes, beans, thyme and balsamic vinegar and then bring the soup to the boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

4.  Wash the chard, remove any tough stalks and then shred.

5.  Add the chard to the soup, adjust seasoning to taste and then cook until the chard has wilted.

6.  Serve with grated Parmesan and fresh bread.  Enjoy!

Shchi - Russian Cabbage Soup

Some soups are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them.  Some soups, just by their very name conjure up visions of exotic countries, opulence or comfort. 

And then there is cabbage soup.

When I think of cabbage soup, I think of three things -

1) Poverty.  Like Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who's family were so poverty stricken that cabbage soup was all they could afford, this poor soup seemed to be a byword for cheap, bland food.

2) Communist Russia.  Connected to the first point really, when I think of Communist Russia, visions of flat capped men in grey concrete tower blocks drinking potato vodka and eating bowls of cabbage soup spring to mind.

3) Vile diets.  Think of slimming plans where you have to suffer the awful fate of eating just cabbage soup in order to lose a few pounds.  It tastes awful but hey, you'll look good in a bikini come the summer.

With all this in mind, imagine my horror when I checked the soup ingredients pantry to find that pretty much all we had to create this week' recipe from was (yes) cabbage.  And not the fun, exotic kind, but common or garden white cabbage, like the kind that used to be served boiled to death next to school dinners.  Oh the humanity.

But, what do you know, with a few choice additions, you can actually make a nice cabbage soup - leave it to those crafty Ruskies to come up with a good way of doing it (I assume the Russians we are talking about are the good ones, like Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October and not those guys that killed Patrick Swayze in Red Dawn)

This soup was another that I made, then kept in the fridge for 8 hours to see if the flavour intensified, and what do you know, it really did!

The stars of this soup aren't the cabbage itself, but the extras, like the caraway and dill with white wine (A typically Eastern European flavour combination I may have fallen a little bit in love with), but don't take my word for it how good this soup is.  Grab a cabbage and give it a go yourself.  I promise, comrade, that you won't be disappointed. So until next time, dos vedanya tovarisch!

Ingredients
350g White Cabbage
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Large Potato
1 Carrot
1 Onion
1 Leek
30g Butter
2 Bay Leaves
1tsp Black Pepper
1tsp Caraway Seeds
1tbsp White Wine Vinegar
2tbsp Tomato Puree
1.2l Beef Stock
Fresh Dill
Sour Cream

Method
1.  Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage and the core, then finely shred the rest.  Peel the potato then cut into small cubes, remove the green parts of the leek and cut into slices, finely chop the onion and grate the carrot.

2.  Heat the butter in a large pan and then gently cook the vegetables, along with the garlic, for 10 minutes, into everything starts to soften.

3.  Add the caraway, bay, pepper, tomato puree, stock and vinegar, then bring the soup to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes, until everything is cooked.

4.  Serve with a spoonful of sour cream and lots of fresh dill.  Enjoy

Curried Leek & Potato Soup

So, after a slight break in service whilst we dismantled the entire Soup Lab, moved it about 500 meters and rebuilt it in a top secret location, I'm back.  That's right, I moved house to somewhere much nicer and without all the flights of stairs to climb with heavy shopping.  As a consequence of this, I've been a little too busy over the last few weeks to put up any posts.  I now have a fully functioning kitchen again, so here goes a quick one.

This was a veg box recipe, as in the veg box delivery we get every week provided all the ingredients.  Initially, it was going to be a straight leek, potato and blue cheese soup, but then an accident with the blue cheese (we ate it on Friday) plus the realisation that I'd done something very similar on the blog before made me change my mind.

So we have Curried Leek and Potato soup, which I have to admit to adding way too much chilli to, rendering it unedible to those members of Team Soup who have a lower tolerence to hot foods than I do, and also lack the asbestos tongue that I gained when I was bitten by a radioactive... No, wait, that was Spider-man, wasn't it?

Anyway, be careful when adding the chilli to this recipe, unless you want to have to make cheese on toast for your significant other, despite slaving over a hot soup all afternoon.  (This isn't the first time this has happened either, the infamous Tom Yum incident of 2011 still sends hot, burning shivers down my spine...

Ingredients
6 Leeks
1 Onion
1 Medium Carrot
2 Medium Potatoes
3 Garlic Cloves
Small Piece of Fresh ginger
1.2l Chicken Stock
1tsp Coriander
1tsp Cumin
1tsp Turmeric
1tsp Mustard Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
Pinch Chili Flakes
Salt and Pepper

Method

1.  Remove the tough green part of the leeks and then thinly slice the rest.  Finely chop the onion and carrot

2.  Heat some oil in a large pan.  Gently sweat the leeks, onions and carrot for 5 minutes, until they soften. Add the garlic, grated fresh ginger and spices and sweat for another 2-3 minutes, so the vegetables get covered in the spices.

3.  Add the stock, bring the soup to the boil and then cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Check seasoning and adjust to taste.

4.  Whilst the soup is simmering, peel the potatoes and cut into small (less than 1cm) cubes.  Heat some oil in a frying pan.  Over a gentle heat, fry the potato cubes until they brown and are ccoked through - this should take about 10 minutes.  Throw the cumin seeds in a few minutes before the potatoes are done

5.  Serve the soup topped with a handful of the potato cubes.  Garnish with some fresh coriander and serve.  Enjoy!

Ezogelin / Ezo The Bride Soup

A break this week from the Postcrossing adventure, but still an exotic soup.  The reason this one has popped up today is due to a number of factors.  Firstly Mrs Soup got sent some bulgur wheat as part of a Foodie Pen Pals package.  After staring at the package for some time, I realised that I'd never cooked with that, so away I went to Google and found a curiously named soup - Ezo The Bride Soup.

Now I'm a sucker for foodstuffs with odd names - hence Snert last week, and many others scattered around the blog - after all, it's a good a reason as any for trying something new and it appeals to my childish nature.

Ezo The Bride soup is a Turkish recipe, which apparently is given to Brides on the night before their wedding, and is named for a woman who apparently was married several times, kidnapped, had 9 children and died of Typhus.  I can only assume that this is a cautionary tale told to would-be brides to make their own impending nuptuals seem more enjoyable by comparison.  If any Turkish readers can enlighten me further then I'd be glad to hear the story - the wikipedia page contains scanty details, although apparently there was a film made of the story!

Also, due to the weather this week (you may have noticed a dusting of snow) this soup is brilliant as it's solid, warming and hearty, whether you are getting married or not...

Ingredients
1 Large Carrot
1 Large Onion
3 Cloves Garlic
3 Tomatoes
100g Red Lentils
75g Bulgur Wheat
50g Wholegrain Rice
1.5l Vegetable Stock
1tbsp Paprika
2tbsp Dried Mint
1tsp Cumin Seeds
1/2tsp Cayenne Pepper
A Pinch of Chili Flakes
Fresh Mint and Lemon Slices
 

Method
1.  Finely chop the onion and carrot.  Heat some oil in your soup pan, then cook the vegetables over a medium heat for 5 minutes, to soften them

2.  Chop the tomatoes and garlic finely, and add them to the pan, along with the paprika, chili flakes, paprika and cumin seeds.  Still them in and let them cook for another 3 minutes

3.  Add the lentils, rice and bulgur wheat, stir them into the vegetables and spices, and then add the stock, dried mint and some seasoning.  Bring the soup to the boil and then cover.  Simmer for 40 minutes, until all the grains are soft and cooked through.

4.  Transfer half of the soup to a food blender and blitz until it's smooth, then return to the pan

5.  Serve with fresh mint as a garnish and slices of lemon to squeeze over the soup.  Enjoy

Snert : Dutch Pea Soup

Today's soup entry is sort of a cheat, as eagle-eyed readers will remember that I've made it before.  Last time it appeared, it was called Erwtensoep, but the recipe is also known as Snert, so by cleverly changing the name, I'm hoping to throw people off the scent.

The reasons for repeating myself are threefold.  1 is that as part of my Postcrossing recipe experiment, a nice Dutchman suggested I make it, as Erwtensoep is a Dutch recipe, plus he made me a hand-drawn postcard, so how could I refuse. 2 is the fact that it's cold and pea and ham soup in any form is a brilliant cold weather recipe, and finally reason 3 is that I found out I could swap the ham hock for pig's trotters, and I've always wanted to make a soup with pig's trotters in it.

Oh, and it's called 'Snert'  How could I resist...

However, there was one slight problem with the pig's trotters.  After putting them in the soup, then fishing them out to strip the meat off (See recipe below) I found out, much to my horror, that there appeared to be no actual meat on them anywhere.  Now, never having used trotters before, I have no idea whether this is normal, or have I been sold a couple of duff pigs feet?

If you can't get trotters, or just plain don't want to use them, I suggest swapping a small ham hock or knuckle.  I wasn't too disappointed in the lack of trotter meat, as just their presence in the soup added a wonderfully meaty flavour to the stock.

Ingredients
300g Split Peas
1.5l Chicken Stock
2 Pigs Trotters
100g Smoked Bacon
2 Carrots
1 Large Onion
3 Leeks
1 Stalk Celery
Small Bunch Flat Leaf Parsely
300g Smoked Sausage 

Method
1.  Roughly chop the carrot, celery and onion.  Remove the green parts of the leeks and chop those too, but put the white parts aside for later as well as half the carrot.

2.  Put the chopped vegetables in the soup pan, along with the  trotters, stock, bacon and split peas.  Bring the pan to the boil, cover and simmer for 2 hours, until the peas have softened and the trotters are fully cooked through.

3.  Take the pan off the heat, remove the trotters and allow everything to cool. Blend the soup until it is smooth

4.  Remove the meat from the trotters.  Add this back to the pan, along with the finely sliced white parts of the leek and the remaining carrot, and simmer for another 15 minutes, until the leek is soft.

5.  Slice the smoked sauasage and add this to the pan, letting it heat through for about 5 minutes

6.  Serve in warm bowls, garnished with parsley and slices of sausage.  Enjoy!

Fazolová Polévka : Czech Bean Soup

This is the second recipe suggested by the lovely people who have been sending me postcards via the rather wonderful Post Crossing website.  Today's soup is a Czech recipe and was suggested by Anna (Who also sent me a postcard with a picture of the Bohemian forest on it, but not a rhapsody to be seen, I'm afraid...)

One problem I encountered when putting this recipe together was that during the research phase - it's like NASA round here when I get on a soup tip - that most of the websites I looked at for inspiration were in Czech.  Now, in the 21st Century, you wouldn't think that this would be a problem.  Except that Google Translate, whilst being pretty amazing, can sometimes throw up some weird things.  For instance, does adding basil to a recipe reduce flatulence?  Or did the original Czech mean something entirely different.  And what exactly is White Bone Stock?  (I suspect this may be a real thing, as I've come across recipes for Bone Soup before)

So after some struggling, I came up with this approximation of Czech Bean Soup, with added smoked sausage that I initially bought for another soup, the making of which was thwarted by the fact Morrisons butchery department has stopped stocking pig's trotters (Can the fact that Morrisons plc just published lower than expected sales figures be in some way related to the vanishing pigs feet?)

However, fear not, as a trip to Leeds Market will hopefully furnish me with the required bits for next week.  In the meantime, enjoy this simple but delicious soup, which is probably great for all those of you on a post xmas diet (especially if you leave out the sour cream, or substitute some natural yogurt instead)

Ingredients
2 Tins of Cannellini Beans  
1 Small Onion
1 Carrot
2 Stalks of Celery 
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Bay Leaf
Chicken Stock
6 Sage Leaves
Olive Oil Smoked Sausage
250ml Sour Cream
Salt
Black Pepper 

Method
1.  Finely chop the onion, carrot, celery and garlic.

2.  Heat some olive oil in a pan.  Add the vegetables and cook gently for 5-7 minutes, until they start to go soft.

3. Add the stock.  Rinse the beans and add them too, as well as the bay leaf and sage.  Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes, until the beans have gone soft.  Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool for 15 minutes.

4.  Blend the soup until smooth, then return to the pan.  Adjust seasoning and then reheat gently.  Stir in the sour cream at this point, but don't let the soup boil.

5.  Grill or fry some thin slices of smoked sausage.  Pour the soup into warm bowls and then garnish with the slices of sausage.  Serve with crusty bread.  Enjoy!

Kartoffelsuppe : German Potato Soup

Happy new year everyone! Hope your hang-over has subsided and that you are looking forward to the new year as much as I am.  I've got some exciting things planned for the blog this year, starting with today's recipe.

It's often hard for me to come up with inspiration for soups - either using whatever is at hand, or when that elusive soupy muse strikes.  The easiest inspiration is when someone else suggests it, but where could I find a willing source of people around the world to tell me what kind of soups they like?

I happened to stumble across a website called Post Crossing, which is a postcard exchange site (And if you are looking for something to do in the new year, you could do worse than sign up - it's fun getting snail mail from all over the planet!)  Anyway, I set up a profile and asked for people who were sending me a postcard to include their favourite soup recipe from their home country.  And today's soup is the first result - a humble but hearty potato soup recipe from Germany. 

I used nice waxy potatoes, and was quite happy with the consistency - potato soups can have a tendency to get quite thick and glue-y.  If yours is going that way, add a bit more stock after blending.  Also, substituting some sausage for the bacon would work brilliantly.  So thanks to donnerkugel from Germany via Postcrossing for suggesting it!

Ingredients
750g Potatoes
1 Large Onion
1 Carrot
150g Smoked Bacon
1.2l Beef Stock
200ml Sour Cream
1tsp Thyme
Grated Nutmeg
20g Butter
Salt
Pepper

Method.
1.  Heat up the butter in a soup pan.  Fry the cubed bacon until it browns.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the bacon and set aside

2.  Thinly slice the onion. Fry them in the butter and bacon fat until they start to go golden.

3. Peel and cube the onions and carrots.  Add these to the onions in the pan, along with the thyme and nutmeg.  Allow them to cook for 4-5 minutes in the butter along with the onions, until they start to colour slightly.

4.  Add the stock to the pan, bring to the boil, cover and then simmer for 40 minutes, until the potatoes are just starting to break up.  Take the pan off the heat and leave to stand for 15 minutes.

5.  Using a stick blender, blend 2/3 of the soup and then return to the pan, stirring well.  You could alternatively use a potato masher to break up the vegetables - or use a mixture of the two.  As long as you don't have too many large chunks of vegetable floating round in the pan.

6.  Return the pan to the heat, adjusting seasoning, and heat through.  Just before serving, stir in the sour cream.  Ladle into heated bowls and garnish with the bacon that you set aside earlier.  (I warmed my bacon through under a hot grill for a few minutes before serving too)  Enjoy!

Chicken Waterzooi

As promised last time, today we have the first of a few Belgian soup recipes, inspired by my recent visit to Brugge.  Sadly, as we were only there for one night, we didn't have time to sample a huge array of Belgian foodstuffs - Flemish Rabbit Stew, Frites and deep fried gravy were about the limit of what we had time for (and the obligatory waffles, chocolates and beers, of course...) but everywhere we went in the city (and we did go ALL over...) there were little restaurants selling wonderful food.

Other things we saw on menus all over were Moules (mussels) and Waterzooi.  Waterzooi is a stew or soup (Ahhh the age old question - when does something stop being a stew and start being a soup...) which can be made with chicken, mussels or other fish.

Like a lot of Belgian food, it's very rich and creamy and totally delicious. It's a sort of Flemish Cock-a-leekie, with a lot of recipes recommending using a whole chicken, although I have just stuck to using thighs which are both cheap and really tasty.  I tend to substitute them for breast in almost every recipe I cook, but you could use breast or chicken quarters in the soup.

If you have never been before, I highly reccomend a visit to Brugge - it's a beautiful place, and we had a brilliant tour round by a local gentleman who told us (amongst other things) that one ruler of the city was called Baldwin Iron Arm, who scared a bear to death*, and that they chopped off the head of a finance minister who raised taxes after promising not to (A strategy I think many people would be in favour of re-introducing...)

* This may not be entirely true - it was cold and I was tired so I may have mis-heard...

Ingredients
6 Chicken Thighs
2 Carrots
2 Leeks
2 Stalks of Celery
1 Onion
1 Sprig Thyme
2 Bay leaves
Chicken Stock
20g Butter
250ml Double Cream
2 Egg Yolks
Pinch of Nutmeg

Method
1.  Peel and chop the onion, leek, celery and carrots.  Heat the butter in your soup pan and then gently sweat the vegetables for 5 minutes, until they start to soften

2. Add the stock, thyme, bay leaves and chicken thighs.  Bring the soup to a gentle simmer and then cook for 10-15 minutes, until the chicken poaches. Check that the chicken is cooked through and there is no pink left in the meat, then removed the chicken from the soup and set aside.  Let the soup cool for 10 minutes.

3.  Strip the meat from the bones and remove the skin, then cut the chicken into small pieces and return to the pan.

4.  In a bowl, mix the cream and egg yolks thoroughly, then put this in the soup pan over a gentle heat, stirring quickly, so that the mixture thickens the soup. Be careful that th egg and cream mixture doesn't cook too quickly or scramble! Taste and adjust seasoning, adding a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg, then serve with crusty white bread.  Enjoy!

Carrot and Coriander Soup

Ahhhhhh!  That was the sound of panic when the doorbell rang this morning at 7.15.  Not because I was still in bed and there was someone at the door, but because the person at the door was our lovely veg box man.  Don't mis-understand me - there was nothing actually wrong with the veg box, nor the hour of its arrival (although a more fashionably late hour would suit me better)

No, the cause of my outburst was that there was meant to be parsnips in the box this week, which were going to form the basis for this weeks soup, Curried Parsnip.  Only, now bereft of parsnip, what is a boy to do?  Well, what is that I spied in the veg box, nestled under some cabbage and next to the potatoes?  Carrots?  Still covered in mud you say?  Well that gives me an idea...

I told you all a while ago about the first ever soup I made, minestrone as part of a home economics class when I was 12? Well today I'm going to tell you about the first soup I ever cooked to impress a girl...  Carrot and coriander soup.  This soup seems to be a bit of a student classic, probably because it's cheap and easy to make, healthy and quick, and there are hundreds of ways to do it.

Some people add lentils, some tomatoes, cream, sour cream, coconut milk.  It is, in a nutshell, what is brilliant about soup - it's tasty and it's very hard to mess it up.  So I thought it would be perfect for impressing a girl that I invited to come round for a meal.  It was the first time I'd ever cooked to impress, so needless to say, I was worried.

The soup simmered away, with vegetable stock as she was a vegetarian, not too much chili as she didn't like her food too spicy. The ginger and lemon a sharp counterpoint to the earthy carrots sweet tomatoes and spices.  It was perfect...

She turned up, the lights were low, the music was soft, the chat was small, and then I dished up the soup and... she loved it, was very impressed - in fact, it was the best carrot and coriander soup she'd ever tasted - even better than her friend who worked in a vegan cafe made (which was previously the pinnacle of soupy perfection for her)

I could hardly believe my luck.  Maybe there was something in this cooking malarkey after all.  And then I served the main dish - tandoori salmon, choked on a fish bone and spent the next three hours retching and coughing like a cat coughing up a hair-ball...  The girl left rather quickly after that...

Ingredients
500g Carrots
10 Medium Tomatoes
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 Lemon (Juice Only)
750ml Chicken Stock
1 Tin Coconut Milk
1tsp Grated Ginger
1tbsp Coriander Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
1tsp Chili Flakes Oregano


Balsamic Vinegar
Bunch of fresh Coriander
Olive Oil
Salt and Black Pepper

Method

1.  Heat the oven to 200ºc.  Cut the tomatoes in half and de-seed.  Put them in an oven dish and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle on a pinch of dried oregano and a splash of balsamic vinegar, then a pinch of salt and pepper.  Put the dish in the oven and roast the tomatoes for 35-40 minutes, until they have started to brown.  Remove from the oven and set aside.

2.  In a dry frying pan, heat the coriander and cumin seeds over a moderate heat for 2 minutes, until the seeds start to pop.  Transfer them to a mortar and grind.

3.  Slice the onion and fry gently in a little oil.  Add the  garlic and ginger and fry for another 2 minutes, then add the ground cumin and coriander seeds, as well as the chili flakes and stir until everything is coated in the spices

4.  Add the tomatoes, stock and peeled sliced carrots.  Bring the soup to the boil and then cover, simmering and cooking for 30 minutes, until the carrots are cooked through

5.  Blend the soup until it's smooth and then return to the pan.  Gently heat through.

6.  Stir in the coconut milk, chopped fresh coriander and the juice of a lemon.

7.  Garnish with a few coriander leaves.  Serve and enjoy!

Tuscan Chicken Soup With Orzo

I remember the first soup I ever learned to make, when I was about 12 in Home Economics lessons at school.  The teacher didn't actually teach us how to make it, but let us all cook one thing that we ate at home.

Pretty much every Friday thoughout the winter months, dinner was either Macaroni Cheese or Minestrone - made from scratch by my mother, and I did love the minestrone soup, so that was the dish that I decided to cook in school.  I badgered my mum for the recipe and then got all the ingredients, turnied up in the classroom and started to cook.  And suddenly, lo-and-behold, there was soup!  I felt like an alchemist, I had combined vegetables, pasta and meat, and with the judicious application of fire, the end result was soup, and it even tasted pretty good!

And from then on, I realised I could cook (although I didn't actually cook much for another six or seven years when I went away to University)   and I loved the buzz I got from being able to do that.. It's something that hasn't ever gone away.

Which brings us, in a very round about way to today's soup.  Although I'm not making Minestrone (and I still pronounce it Mine Strone in my head...) this soup is very similar, using as it does lots of vegetables, a bit of meat and a rich tomato-y stock.  And it also uses Orzo, which I love - it's pasta that thinks it is rice!  Crazy!

If you can't get orzo, any small pasta shells will do - I was over-joyed when I first found it in a small corner shop, and immediately bought some for Mrs Soup, as she had never been able to find it in this country before, for which I won brownie points, and gained a nice ingredient for soups, stews and casseroles.

Ingredients
3 Chicken Thighs
1 Large Onion
3 Carrots
2 Stalks of Celery
1 Medium Potato
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Tin Tomatoes
1.2l Chicken Stock
75g Orzo (Pasta Rice)
Fresh Basil
Fresh Thyme
Salt and Pepper

Method
1.  Heat some oil in your soup pan. Fry the chicken thighs until they are golden and cooked through.  Remove the chicken and set aside to cool.

2. Finely chop the onion and garlic.  In the same oil that you fried the chicken in, soften and brown the onions and garlic (add some more oil if there isn't enough left)

3.  Add the chopped carrot, potato and celery and let them soften over a low heat for 3-5 minutes, then add the stock, cooked chicken and tomatoes.  To this add the thyme, salt and pepper, simmer and cover, then let cook for 25 minutes.

4.  Add the orzo to the soup and let simmer for another 10 minute, until the pasta is cooked through.  Check seasoning and then serve, garnished with fresh basil.  Enjoy!

Scotch Broth

Another cold day, another warming soup for you!  This one involves the left-overs from a rather lovely Sunday lunch (well, the meaty / gravy parts anyway) and is an old favourite of mine.  If you don't have any left over lamb, you could just get a lamb chop and use the meat from that, it will work just as well.

This is a slight adaptation of Scotch Broth, with the mint and balsamic vinegar being my own additions, as I think both flavours go particularly well with lamb, and help to cut through the fatty taste that you can sometimes get with that meat.  If you want to be more traditional, leave those two ingredients out (and don't write me emails saying I got the recipe wrong, please...)

Also included in this recipe is some pearl barley, which I think in another brilliant but under-rated ingredient, although it does show up quite a bit in Scottish recipes.  It makes a brilliant risotto instead of rice, and can be used in countless stews and soups - indeed, I suspect that as the nights grow darker, more and more people will be reaching for the pearl barley as well as their favourite stew recipes.

Ingredients
2 Large Carrots
1 Small Turnip
1 Large Onion
1 Small Leek
1 Medium Potato
50g Pearl Barley
250g Lamb
2l Stock
3 Cloves Garlic
1tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
Handful fresh chopped mint leaves

Method
1. Cut the carrot, turnip, potato and lamb into small cubes. Finely chop the onion, leek and garlic.

2.  Heat your stock in a soup pan.  Throw in any left-over gravy from Sunday lunch at this point too, and add the balsamic vinegar.

3.  Bring the stock to the boil, put in the vegetables and lamb then cover and bring to a simmer.  Cook the soup for 2-3 hours on a low heat.

4.  30 Minutes before serving, add the pearl barley.

5.  Check seasoning, adding plenty of black pepper before serving and garnish with a handful of chopped fresh mint leaves.  Enjoy!

Venison Soup with Bilberry Relish

Everything seems upside down this week - after a long spell at work with irregular breaks, I don't know what day it is - I'm assuming it's a Tuesday because I'm making soup.  Also, it really feels like autumn is just around the corner - where has the summer gone?  As such, I'm making a sort of autumnal game soup this week.  It also features a tangy and fruity bilberry relish, but you could use red or black currants if you don't have bilberries.

The ingredients for this soup came from a variety of sources.  The venison mince came from a stall at Kirkstall Deli Market, the Bilberries were picked on The Chevin, shallots from a friend's garden, onions, celery and carrots from a veg box and the stock from Essential Cuisine (okay - they sent me a few trial pots after reading the blog, which are rather brilliant and you can get you hands on them from their website)

As a measure of how my brain has seemingly stopped functioning, I had made some stock from scratch to use in this soup before a) I remembered the stock I was sent, and b) I made chicken stock when this soup needed Beef stock...  Maybe I should just go back to bed and wake up when my head is back to normal eh?

Recipe after the jump...

Sopa Paraguaya and Bori Bori Soup -Olympic Food Challenge : Paraguay

Aaaaand... they are off! Both the women's football teams and the small army of insane food bloggers who signed up the the Olympic Food Challenge (We have our own hashtag for you twitter users (I refuse to say 'tweeps') which is #olympicfoodchallenge)

This is the first of the 19 dishes over 19 days that we will be blogging as part of the Olympic Food Challenge, and as we are Soup Tuesday, the first dish is from Paraguay and is, yes, you've guessed it, a soup... and something that sounds like a soup, but isn't...

Paraguay have a grand total of 8 Olympians competing in 6 sports, and have won a grand total of 1 medal in their Olympic history to date (A silver in the football in 2004, fact fans...)

You can keep an eye on Paraguay's progress here, and you can keep an eye on us as we attempt to cook our dishes without losing our minds here, don't forget to check back soon and see what we've been up to!

Chakalaka Soup with Boerewors Meatballs

I went away to the wilds of Wales for the weekend, and after a weekend of drink, cheap burgers and white-water rafting, I really needed something healthy, not to mention the fact that I'm coming down with (another) cold, but this time I'm blaming it on the cold water from the rainy mountains of Bala (or the fact I was screaming like a girl when I went down the rapids...)

That's me, in the front, on the right of the picture, thinking about soup...

I may have mentioned before that Mrs Soup hails from South Africa, and so I thought I would make a signature South African soup, so I asked her what I should make, and she suggested this.  Now apparently, proper Chaklaka (another soup name, like Albondiga, that makes you smile whilst saying it!) is a sort of stew, although some variations of it seem to be more like relish, but I know for sure that Knorr (vendors of packet soups) make a Chakalaka Soup, as I've seen it in the dinky little shop that sells South African stuff in Leeds market, which is where I also got the Boerewors from.

So without further ado, here is Chakalaka soup, which, by the way, makes a good vegetarian soup, if you skip the meatballs and use vegetable stock.  You could also swap the canelini beans for a tin of baked beans (which I understand is a little more traditional, but as I can't stand baked beans, then I swapped them out)

Ingredients
For the Soup
2 Carrots
1 Red Pepper
1 Green Pepper
2 Onions
1 Red Chili
1tsp Minced Garlic
2tsp Minced Ginger
3 Tomatoes (Peeled)
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
1 Tin Canellini Beans
1.2l Stock
2tbsp Tomato Puree
1tsp Curry Powder
1tsp Cumin
Handful of Chopped Fresh Coriander


For the Meatballs
250g Boerewors Sausage
1 Onion
1tsp Cayenne Pepper
1tsp Turmeric

Method 

1. Make the meatballs.  Chop the onion very finely and combine with the de-skinned boerewors (Or you could use another type of sausage if you can't get the proper stuff).  Add the spices and mix everything together and then roll out into small balls, about 3cm across.  Put these in an airtight container and then refrigerate for about an hour

2. Slice the onion, red and green pepper, carrot and chili.

3.  In your soup pan, heat some oil, then add the vegetables, as well as the curry powder, cumin, ginger and garlic.  Fry for 5 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften and are thoroughly coated with the spices

4.  Add the tinned tomatoes, beans, puree and stock then bring to the boil and simmer for 30  minutes

5.  After 20 minutes, heat some oil in a frying pan and then cook the meatballs until they are nice and brown.

6.  Add these, as well as the skinned chopped fresh tomatoes to the soup and cook for 5 minutes, then serve.

7.  Garnish with a handful of chopped coriander or flat leaf parsley

Lucy's Italian Bean Soup

For the next few weeks, I'll be in my top secret soup laboratory (In a hollowed out volcano, obviously) working on a very special project, which I'm sure I will bore you all senseless with in good time, but to fill the gap, I have some lovely guest posts lined up.  Please say nice things about them and also you can follow them on twitter.

First up we have Lucy who you can find on twitter as @LucyNeuburger, but we will let her introduce herself...

Hello, my name is Lucy and I am a 23-year-old Masters student currently residing in small but lively city of Leeds.  Anytime I am not devoting to ‘bettering myself’ (yes Dad, I do listen to you) I can be found reading cookbooks, cooking blogs, and cooking websites…. I am an avid follower of anything and everything food related and my dream job would be anything involving food writing.  I am first and foremost a baker, but I also like to cook all manner of other dishes for friends and myself.  At my age, I should probably be out partying, but I would far rather have you round for dinner and a bottle of wine (maybe 2).

Soup is a word that most students associate with a garishly orange, thick liquid that empties out of a tin marked ‘HEINZ’.  Most of the time this is because they go through body numbingly cold winters in damp, unheated houses blissfully unaware of how simple (and rewarding) it is to make your own.  I am fortunate enough to come from a family where my Mum always encouraged me to cook and eat well.   I have often forgone nights out in order to afford better food…. Yes that may make me a terrible student, but after four years, I have yet to contract scurvy and my liver still feels like it is part of my body!  I must be on to something….

The recipe I would like to share with you is one passed on to me from my Mum, which she often makes it for me when I go home.   We will sit with a bowl each, and by the time we are finished, the world has been put to rights and sometimes, it has even stopped raining!  The association with home is probably why I like it so much…. That and the fact it is a meal in itself and can be freely adapted as well according to what you have in the cupboard.  It is also excellent in providing a use for those onions that have started sprouting green shoots!  A bowl of this soup I believe has the power to melt away your stress, cure the common cold and pretty much anything in between.   It has seen me through many difficult times in many barely habitable houses…. Fellow unwashed, tired, stressed students, this one is for you via my Mum! Enjoy!

Ingredients

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion (finely chopped)
1 carrot (finely chopped)
1 stick of celery (finely chopped)
2 garlic cloves (finely chopped)
50g pancetta (if you wish to splash out, but normal bacon/lardons are absolutely fine!)
1 tin of cannellini beans (or borlotti beans or butter beans or go wild and add several different sorts of bean…. At pence per tin, you have no reason not to try some different ones!)
1 tin of tomatoes
1 vegetable or chicken stock cube
1 squeeze tomato puree (not essential)
1 large pinch of dried chilies (this can also be omitted but I find adds warmth and slight kick!)

To serve:

Chopped basil/parsley
Grated Parmesan/cheddar
Black pepper
Crusty bread

Method:

    •    In a pan, fry off the pancetta until crispy and put to one side.
    •    In the same pan, add the olive oil, onions, garlic, carrot and celery and sweat until the onion starts to appear translucent – transfer to a pot or large saucepan.
    •    Re introduce the pancetta and add the tin of tomatoes, tomato puree and chilies (if using) and stir well.
    •    In a jug, add half a litre of boiling water to a stock cube and stir until the stock cube dissolves.
    •    Add the liquid to the saucepan and bring to the boil before reducing the heat so the soup is just simmering – simmer for 20 minutes to give flavours a chance to combine.
    •    Before serving the soup, add your chosen beans, stir and allow to cook through for a couple of minutes.
    •     Serve in big bowls with chopped herbs, some grated cheese and as much black pepper as you can handle!