Soup-er-licious #1

Simple Roasted Vegetable soup

A warm bowl of tasty soup and some crusty bread to dip in it is so much more exciting and filling than a plain old sandwich for lunch.  Maybe it feels more filling because it's warm, or perhaps because you need to use a spoon to eat it.

Soup is such a varied thing - from 'salad soup' Gazpacho to Cawl which is more of a stew.
I remember having tinned 'Cream of Tomato' soup when I was little and the craze for 'Cuppa soups' with croutons.  I still use the latest versions of these -  Big Soup pots - as they live in my desk at work for really busy days.

I also have previously mentioned my addiction to Tesco Finest Puy Lentil and Tomato Soup which is an ongoing love affair.

But soup is so easy to make at home that I seem to end up making it at least once a week in the winter.  It is a great way to use vegetables that need using up.



I have tried soup recipes - one really simple one is pea and mint which consists of a bag frozen peas, a few mint leaves and some chicken stock.


However I tend to have a random assortment of root vegetables and squashes to use up from my delivered vegetable box which I use to make a Roasted Vegetable soup.

A few notes on using different vegetables. Adding  more than 1 parsnip to the soup seems to make it taste overwhelmingly of parsnips no matter what else you put in the soup.  Adding Beetroot to the soup makes it weirdly purple but yummy.  Tomatoes do well being roasted and then in this soup too and you can try to remove the biggest bits of skin and rely on the handblender to whizz the rest. Potatoes do not do well in a soup that is going to be 'whizzed' as it becomes more like glue.

My method is to peel and chop the vegetables and an onion and put them in a large deep roasting tray with some olive oil massaged through them.  I then add a few peeled whole cloves of garlic and springs of fresh herbs (thyme, oregano) if I have them in the garden.  I then roast everything in the oven at about 200 degrees for 20-30 minutes until softened and possibly a little caramelised at the corners.

Tip everything into a huge saucepan and add some hot stock - vegetable or chicken - and cook until the vegetables are soft.

Then whizz up with a hand held mixer to make a thick soup, adding more liquid if necessary, and adding salt pepper and lemon juice to taste, and serve.

Simple.
 Toppings to serve on the soup form a whole different post........