Beetroot, Lime and Wasabi Soup

Ahh, beetroot, stainer of shirts, pickled pink nemesis of salads, how maligned you are these days...

I'm a sucker for hard-luck vegetables - sprouts, parsnips and the humble swede, are, in my eyes every bit as wonderful as butternut squash, or whatever is the flavour de jour.  So here is a rather nice beetroot soup, which turns the rather ugly tuber into a thing of ruby red magnificence, a spicy and zippy little number that is almost as good as my sprout soup

This is a really light soup, and the coconut milk does wonders to counter-act the earthy flavour that puts a lot of people off.  It would work well as a starter or put it in a flask to take on a picnic.

Beware the fact that your kitchen may get messy when preparing the beetroot.  My hands were stained red for a few hours afterwards!

Beef Ragout

'Make do and mend' seems to be the war-cry of the masses at the moment, or is that 'waste not, want not'?  Anyway, we are all looking after the pennies and generally a tightening of the belts is occurring everywhere, especially, although not limited to, Channel 4 cookery and lifestyle shows.

Oh and my kitchen. With this thought in mind, I wanted a nice and tasty way to use up some left over roast beef that had been hanging around in the freezer since a Sunday roast proved that I had eyes bigger than my belly (Today's recipe is brought to you by over-used homilies) so I found this nice Ragout.

Incidentally, the word ragout is a french term meaning 'to revive the flavour' and can be any slow cooked stew.  Mine uses left over roast beef but you could use just vegetables, lamb or add some pulses.  It's all good

Chicken Noodle Soup

I have had an exciting culinary weekend during which I ate Wildebeest and Ostrich burgers, biltong and dim sum, so when I got back I thought I would try something vaguely oriental - inspired as I was by the dim sum (and my almost successful attempts at using chopsticks - the steamed pork buns almost all made it from steamer to mouth without a stop on the floor in-between), and also by the desire to eat something that wasn't too heavy, after all the rich food I had consumed over the last few days

So here is my attempt at chicken noodle soup

Vegan Black Metal Chef!

When I was younger, I was into heavy metal to an almost unhealthy degree (is there a healthy degree of heavy metal fandom?  If there is, you probably aren't doing it right...) so when somebody sent me this link (A crazy Norwegian called Espen) I had to put it up here, although it's not soup, but it is a rather nice pad thai recipe.  Enjoy

Pea, Lettuce and Mint Soup

So you know how when you are hungry, a nice tin of soup is always lurking in the back of the cupboard?  And how tinned soup is one of the greatest things ever?  But what happens if you have possibly a few more mintues to spare and feel like whipping up a home-made soup?

But oh no!  You don't have any ingredients... shock horror.  Well, fear not - this soup (which is really healthy as well, for those of you on a diet)  doesn't have any exotic ingredients, and it can be thrown together with that solitary carrot and half a lettuce thats slowly going brown at the back of the fridge, and some frozen peas that are encrusted with ice in the freezer.

And lo-and-behold, look how lovely it looks!  How wonderful that colour is! And It's made of peas... another pea-based soup.  The best thing about pea recipes is that frozen peas are just as good as fresh ones, in my opinion.  Plus, they are pretty cheap, and keep for a while.  After all, we all have a bag lurking somewhere in the bottom of the freezer, and what better way to use them than in a soup, rather than just sticking them rather forlornly on the edge of the plate?

This recipe is a light and summery soup, as opposed to the pea and bacon soup, which to me seems much more of a hearty winter soup

Pea and Bacon Soup

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the humble pea.  Can't stand them as a side dish, but love them as an ingredient, as in this soup, which has the most wonderful colour, and just enough meat with the addition of the bacon to remind me of my other favourite pea related meal - Pork Pies with mushy peas.  (Preferably eaten standing next to a bonfire with the smell of fireworks in the air)

Roasted Garlic Soup

I  love garlic - can't get enough of it!  Possibly because I was scared of vampires and brought up watching old Hammer Horror films.  Anyway, I was also feeling like I was coming down with a cold, and somebody told me that garlic soup was a good cure.  So here, without further ado, is the Garlic Soup recipe that I cooked up.

And it did cure the cold (possibly with the aid of paracetamol and plenty of sleep)  Oh, and the wild garlic really adds something to it, either as a garnish, or just thrown into the soup as it cooks.  Wild garlic grows all over the place from about March to June and its' leaves can be used raw in salads (and potato salad too) or as an ingredient in a lot of cooking.  It has a much more mild flavour than cloves of garlic, so shouldn't be overwhelmed by other ingredients.