I’m all about the soups in winter. These are my soup rules:
- Use leftovers: that stir fry and bit of rice that didn’t quite get eaten up, I whizzed the vegetables with hot water and a spoonful of stock powder then added the leftover rice at the end.
It’s the same principle as chicken soup: make roast chicken on a Sunday, make sandwiches or chicken salad on a Monday, and soup from the bones and leftovers on Tuesday. You can do the exact same thing with leftover vegetables.
- 2) Adding a little bit of carb such as teeny pasta (stellete or noodles or orzo) or rice turns the soup from a starter into a main meal.
- 3) Another necessity for a good soup is some kind of acidity: it can be wine, vinegar, lemon juice, verjuice, yoghurt, anything- but it needs something to cut through and brighten flavours. The French used to pour a little of their wine glass into their soup.
- 4) Add something creamy: either cream, yoghurt, or cheese. A swirl at the end does wonders.
Here is a a made from scratch soup. If you leave out the mushrooms and add more tomatoes, it will look red.
Starry starry soup recipe
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 carrot, chopped finely
- 1 stick celery, chopped finely
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled, minced
- 3 fresh bay leaves
- 1 glass white wine, or red
- 1 kilo tomatoes
- 500 g mushrooms
- 1 litre vegetable stock
- 200 g stellete pasta stars
- 125 g butternut squash stars (optional), from Tesco
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Make soup base:Heat up the olive oil in a heavy deep saucepan.Add the carrot, celery, onion and cook on medium high for 5 minutesAdd the garlic, bay leaves and wine, cook for 5 to 10 minutesAdd the tomatoes and mushrooms, simmer for 30 minutes.
- Strain soup into sieve or chinois. You will end up with a thin and transparent broth.Season with salt and pepper.
- Pour in the pasta stars and the butternut squash stars if using and heat on high for 10 minutes until the pasta is cooked.
- Serve hot.
Leave a Reply