There’s nothing quite as comforting in its simplicity and nourishment as a vegetable soup.

I wanted to find a combination of vegetables that weren’t too sweet (husband doesn’t like the sweetness of some cooked veg). Knowing I had some rather elderly carrots and a couple of potatoes languishing in the fridge and larder respectively, I perused the shelves of our wonderful farm shop to augment that selection with seasonal veg. I then started cooking it as soon as I got home so that I could give the vegetables the time to impart their flavours properly. The result is a very lovely, light-in-flavour thick soup that I’m definitely going to cook again.

Ingredients

25g butter
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 medium swede, chopped
2 turnips, chopped
2 medium potatoes, chopped
6 smallish carrots, sliced
2 sticks of celery, sliced
1 ltr vegetable stock
most of a small parsley pot
salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

Method

Melt the butter in a large saucepan.

Cook the onions and garlic (and I’d have added the celery if I’d remembered I had some), covered on a very low heat, for 10 minutes.

Add all the other vegetables and cook, covered on a very low heat, for 30 minutes.

Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes. I added some black pepper at this stage but you could wait until after you’ve blended the soup.

Take the soup off the heat and add the parsley – everything: stalks, leaves all unchopped – and let it wilt.

Blend (I used a hand blender – there were lumps but I don’t mind that in a thick soup).

Bring back to a simmer, adding salt and/or pepper to taste.

Serve with a dusting of nutmeg (if you like nutmeg), some lovely crusty bread with lashings of butter.