Red,red,red soup

Roast tomato soup
Serves four.
Preparation time 20 mins and 1:15 hours roasting and simmering

At this time of year tomatoes aren’t necessarily at their best but ironically you don’t want hot tomato soup in the summer do you! Roasting the ingredients makes life very easy and also adds loads of caramelised sugary flavours as well as concentrating and deepening them. I’ve added a little Heston Blumenthal’s trick I saw on one his programmes which is to add the vines from the tomatoes to the stewing soup as they contain the essence of tomatoes and add extra flavour. You do need to remember to remove them like the bay leaves before liquidising the soup though.

What you’ll need:
3.5 kg mix of tomatoes I used vine and little yellow plum shaped cherries.
2 medium red onions
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp dried Oregano
A few glugs of olive oil
A good squirt of tomato puree
A good squirt of ketchup
Pinch of dried chillies
Splash of Worcester sauce
Caster sugar to taste.
Salt & pepper.

Optional to serve:
I made some cheesy toasties and added a swirl of cream.

What you'll need to do:
1. Pre heat the oven 180 oC.

2. Take the tomatoes and if they have them remove the vines (and retain for later) and cut them in half.
3. Place the tommies in a large roasting dish and peel and quarter the onions and add to the pan.
4. Season the veg, splash with oil and mix them around,
5. Put in the hot oven and leave to roast for 30-40 mins until they have coloured and roasted but not burnt.
6. Next empty the roasting dish into large sauce pan and add the rest of the ingredients (including the retained stalks) except the sugar. If it needs it add water to stop the mixture sticking, just a bit.
7. Stir and put on the heat to simmer covered with a lid until the tomatoes are collapsed and the flavours blended.
8. Now taste the soup if it’s too sour add the sugar (to counter the acid in the tomatoes) and also adjust the seasoning.
9. Remove the tomatoes stalks and bay leaves and blend, you made need to add a little water to help the whizzing.
10. Return to the pan and reheat and adjust the amount of fluid and check the seasoning and serve.
11. Add a swirl of cream it might look a bit 70’s but it tastes good and add some bread or toast perfection.

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!

Little Stars......

Let’s ease into this....

Vegetable Soup with Little Stars

To celebrate getting my stove sorted out after too long I made some soup. I was feeling rough this morning so didn’t go down the market but managed to amble out in the low winter sun round to my local grocers and was pleased to find all the things I need for a simple vegetable soup. One pleasant surprise was a bag of little pasta stars or stelline which apart from being perfect for soups are also cute looking alphabeti spaghetti for grown ups!

Vegetable soup is one of those pleasingly simple tasty things, ultimately adjustable to the time of year and what you find at the shop or in your cupboard. I think however it should always include one of the most of the following:

“Alliums” (onion, charlottes, celery, leeks, scallions or garlic)
Root veg (carrots, swede, parsnip, kohl rabi, turnip)
Starch (potatoes, rice, and pasta)
Legumes (peas, beans)
And additionally greens (cabbage, turnip tops, parsley, celery greens)
My version today.
1 leek medium about 20 cm of white!
4 medium carrots
Half a Kohl rabi
1 medium potato
1 medium red onion
Handful of frozen peas
Large handful of green beans sliced
8 mushrooms
Handful of stelline (little stars) pasta
3 sticks of celery plus the chopped leaves if they are worth eating
2 bay leaves
2 Veggie stock cubes
2 tablespoons of olive oil.
Salt and pepper
Large pan

Stock: (I did what I normal do which chop and wash the top of the leeks, one of the carrots, 2 bay leafs , 2-4 pepper corns and 2 veggie stock cubes) as to amounts I measured out 4-6 portions of water in my soup bowls 2 litres. I boiled the above for 30 mins until the carrot was soft. I then careful sieved the stock leaving the gritty last few drops in the pan.
Time: around an hour (plus 30-40 minutes for stock)

What to do:
1. Make stock (see above)
2. While the stock is boiling peel and chop the veg into small pieces of similar sizes i.e. so they will fit on a spoon.
3. In a large stock pan heat the oil and add the chopped and washed leeks, onion and celery.
4. Allow the leeks onion and celery to sweat down for 5 mins.
5. Add the stock to the pan once the stock is back to the boil let the veg cook for 5 mins. till it softens.
6. Add a couple of grinds of black pepper
7. Now add the sliced beans and mushrooms and cook for further 5 minutes.
8. Now it’s the turn of the potatoes and kohl rabi which need about 10-15 minutes of cooking . In general make sure everything is cooked through.
9. Add frozen peas and allow soup to come back to the boil.
10. Check on the pasta packet how long the little stars take to boil mine said 6 mins and add the pasta.
11. Once the pasta is cooked check the seasoning it’s best to do it now because the starchy items like the pasta and the potatoes absorb salt so add it now and another grind of pepper and the chopped celery tops.
12. Serve in this case with some Turkish flat bread from the shop.