Star & Crescent Soup

Celery & Pasta soup.

This recipe apart from allowing me to coin a pleasing name also serves two other purposes: firstly I have a thick cold and so needed something warming and restorative and was feed up with tinned soup. Next I had the problem all cooks have i.e. I made recipe that required one stick of celery. As I refuse to buy those packets of hand washed, pruned and air freighted celery I ended up with a whole head, now I could have munched it for lunch all week. But seeing as I was ailing I thought a simple soup would be good and it would use up my supply of this wonderfully, pungent, flavoursome but underappreciated veg. The soups wonderfully savoury and the pasta gives it some oomph even if you are not coming down with anything!

What you'll need:

Serves 3-4

1 head of celery

I used 4 small banana shallots but an onion is fine

2 litres of stock (I had veggie stock in the freezer and bulked it out with a stock cube and water)

2-3 bay leaves

3-4 pepper corns

A handful (possibly 2 if you've small hands) of Stelline star pasta

Salt to taste.

The juice of a quarter of a lemon.

Serve with bread, chopped celery greens or parsley and in my case a splash of Tabasco (look I've a cold)

Prep time 20-30 mins (max) cooking time 40-60 minutes

What to do:

1. Get the stock boiling in a big pan.
   


2. Chop the shallots finely.
   


3. Chop the celery very thinly into crescents or half moons hence the name!( I used a mandolin for this)
   


4. Put the celery and shallots into the boiling stock and give it stir.
   


5. Add the pepper corns and bay leaves and leave to simmer for 40 mins.
   


6. After 40 minutes check the softness of the veg and if it's soft (if not give it more time but you knew that didn't you) put in the handful of pasta and stir again.
   


7. You may need to add a bit more stock or water as the pasta boils depending on how thin you like your soup.
   


8. When the pastas is cooked serve! I added a squeeze of lemon, the greens and chilli sauce but see what you think.
   

Oh a regardless of the name you don't have to only eat it at night!