Last year, in lockdown 1, I bought a selection of home-propogated plants from a friend. One of these was sorrel, which I was told would add architecture to the border. This weekend, I needed to cut it back (you can see how vigorous it is from the first photo). So I thought I’d also have…
Category: Soups
Recipes for soups
Lentil and lemon soup
A great starter soup for #veganuary, this is so quick to make, so effortless and so nutritious. And delicious – the addition of lemon juice just at the end makes it lighter than you’d expect. Ingredients (serves 4) 2 tbsp olive oil 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 150g red lentils, washed…
Lockdown veg box idea #4 – lettuce, pea and parsley soup
It’s really easy to let a lettuce languish in your larder [fridge] until it’s a soggy mulch. I don’t mind lettuce but I’m alone in my family. Therefore, it’s almost impossible to get through a whole one such as the one in my veg box two weekends ago. But it feels very wrong to waste…
Lockdown veg box ideas #2 – celery soup
Okay, so this was as a result of two veg boxes giving me a surfeit of celery. Two of our family dislike eating it raw so I wanted to find a way of using it that didn’t have its stringyness. I came across this soup recipe in a Delia book (https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/soups/cream-of-celery-soup). Luckily, the veg boxes…
Red lentil dhal
Who doesn’t love a nourishing, warming dahl – on its own, with naan or with rice. Totally delicious and they’re all different. I have made several different recipes of dhal but this one is an absolute keeper. It has a piquancy and heat that border on the addictive.
Lentil soup with thyme
I’m writing this on a very drab, chilly day when only a very hearty soup will do for lunch. I have gotten into the habit of making soup for weekend lunches, partly based on the fact that we’ll have all done exercise of some description in the morning and need the sustenance. Also, though, partly…
Puy lentil and spinach soup
One of the things I love is food that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Pesto is one of the best examples of this (coming soon on this blog). But I also love it when you can taste the individual components of the whole. This soup (based heavily on a Hugh…
‘Godmother soup’
Otherwise known as harira, this was introduced to us by my daughter’s wonderful godmother Sarah. I’m sure there are millions of versions of harira, and I believe it’s a stable for breaking the daily Ramadan fast. I have only ever tasted this version and the children love it! It’s super-nutritious as well. Ingredients (serves 6 – and some!) 2 tbsp…
Winter vegetable soup
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…
Spinach and ginger soup
This recipe came from my step-mother. There are so many good things about this recipe: it’s incredibly healthy; it’s practically intravenous iron; and it uses one of my favourite ingredients and one of life’s great inventions – frozen spinach. Soups often use root vegetables and have the sweetness that comes with those. It’s therefore always…
The Veg Isle 