Category Archives: soups

Recipe: Split pea soup with Tandoori Masala and Spiced Cauliflower

Posted on May 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

Kari at Bite-Sized Thoughts posted a recipe yesterday for split pea soup with caraway seeds. It looked gorgeous and warming and wintry, and I did have split peas needing to be used up, so I decided that would be lunch today.

Only then I woke up very late, and letting a soup simmer for an hour didn’t seem like a good way to get lunch on the table at, well, lunchtime. And then I realised I didn’t have caraway seeds or cabbage. No worries – I have a pressure cooker!

Also, I wasn’t dressed yet, which meant that Andrew would be the one doing the shopping, and he hates cabbage. I can sneak it into things and he will eat it (even if he knows it’s there), but blatantly making him go out and buy it seemed a bit unnecessarily confronting. So I started thinking about what I could put in instead, and whether I even wanted caraway seeds, really (I mostly don’t like them, except when I do), and then I needed to look up how long split peas needed in a pressure cooker, and Lorna Sass had a recipe for split pea soup with sweet potato and apples, and I had apples to use up, and then I thought, really, split peas are my favourite kind of dal, and I also have all these Indian spice mixes and…

… well, basically, it was suddenly a very different soup. Almost a stew, actually. Also, it makes enough for 6-8 people, so lunch for the next few days is basically sorted. Also, it’s really, really satisfying and good, especially in this chilly weather. Not bad for something that cooks in twenty minutes…

Your Shopping List

1 tablespoon of butter or sunflower oil

2 small onions

3 celery sticks

2 cups yellow split peas

4 cups water

2 cups stock, any kind that appeals (you can use a couple of extra cups at the end to thin the soup, but don’t use them for the main part of cooking if you are using a pressure cooker, as split peas can misbehave if their level is too high)

1 big sweet potato – about 650g

1 apple

1 tsp mint

1-2 tsp tandoori masala spice blend

pinch of salt and pepper

1 cauliflower

2-3 tbsp sunflower or canola oil

1 tbsp panch poron spice mix

1/4 tsp chilli flakes

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, dairy-free, egg-free, foodie challenges, gluten-free, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged cauliflower, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low GI, nut-free, recipes, soups, spices, split peas, sweet potato, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Tortellini Soup for a Sick Day

Posted on November 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am a sad, sick little Catherine today. Worse still, I woke up with no voice at all, which is most distressing, because I am supposed to be singing solos in three different performances this weekend, one of which will be my first ever go at doing a collection of solos from an oratorio. Or anything. Assuming I have a voice. Though I’ve been steaming it assiduously, and staying scrupulously silent, and it’s beginning to feel as though there might be a voice there after all. Fingers crossed…

Anyway. If I’m going to spend half my time leaning over a bowl of steaming water, I figure it might as well be soup. And since I had all this lovely, rich chicken stock left over from slow cooking a chicken last weekend, chicken-noodle soup seemed like the way to go. I did a survey of the fridge and discovered beans, onions and carrots, and then toddled out to the supermarket for corn and tiny pasta… which is where I found that they had cheese tortellini on special.

Tortellini in brodo (broth) is generally more of a celebration thing than a sick day thing in Italian culture, but given my Nonna’s penchant for feeding us eggy things and chickeny things when we were sick, it seemed appropriate. So a miniaturised, more vegetable-oriented tortellini in brodo is going to be my lunch today…

Your Shopping List (serves 1-2)

olive oil

1 small onion

2 baby carrots (teenaged, really) or one adult carrot

100 g green beans

100 g corn – either in a tin or off the cob

2 cups of broth, any kind so long as it is actually tasty, because it’s the main flavour of the soup.

100 g dried tortellini (Barilla is a good brand)

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Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged beans, carrots, corn, dairy-free, egg-free, low GI, nut-free, onions, recipes, soups, stock, tortellini, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Provençal Vegetable Soup with Pistou

Posted on February 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

This recipe is adapted very slightly from a recipe in The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen, a book that I highly recommend if you want to cook authentic mediterranean dishes that just happen to be vegan. Most of these dishes come into one of two categories: recipes from regions with very few resources and very little food and recipes intended for Lent. This one certainly fits into my Lenten plans, but feels rather luxurious for a fasting season. The vegetables taste very fresh and very much of themselves, and the pistou sets them off beautifully. Be warned, though – there is a fair bit of preparation involved in making this. I think it’s worth it, and if you have a food processor to do your chopping, it probably goes very fast, but I go by hand and chopping all those vegetables took ages…

I eat this soup with bread. It doesn’t really need anything else. It serves around 5-6 people, depending how hungry they are.

Your Shopping List

olive oil

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped, plus 2 for the Pistou

2 onions

3 carrots

2 smallish zucchini (no marrows, but no midgets either)

250g green beans (or purple, or yellow, but you want the nice long ones, not the roundish ones)

1 celery stick

500 g roma tomatoes

6 cups + 4 tablespoons vegetable stock

salt, pepper, herbs of your choice, but don’t go overboard. I used some mediterranean herbed salt.

1 big bunch basil

1 slice of real bread – pasta dura or wholegrain, but not cotton wool

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

500 g potatoes

2 tins cannelini beans, drained

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Posted in cooking with vegetables, dairy-free, egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged basil, beans, carrots, dairy-free, egg-free, garlic, gluten-free, low GI, nut-free, recipes, soups and stocks, vegan, vegetarian, zucchini

Recipe: Onion Soup for a Sick Day

Posted on June 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

Beautiful onions!

The Christopher Robinish breakfast didn’t work, so it’s time to resort to my ultimate virus-fighting weapon: onion soup. What what could be stronger, heartier, or more pungent? No virus would dare colonise a body with this many allicins in it, or at least, that’s my theory. Plus, hot liquids are fabulous for soothing a sore throat.

I’ve based this soup on a beef stock, but you can also use the vegetable stock from my Three Roasted Vegetable Soups post – but add a few dried mushrooms, or a spoonful or two of porcini powder if you have it; you want your stock to have a good, strong, ‘brown’ flavour.

Best of all, you can make this soup in steps, with long rests in between, during which you can stagger back to bed: first the stock, which needs to simmer for an hour, and is even better if it simmers for two; then the sliced onions, which need to cook, slowly for another hour or so without much attention from you; then the combination of both, which simmers on the stove until you are ready to eat. That virus won’t even want to enter the *house

Your Shopping List

For the stock

1kg beef bones, with some meat on them

1 onion, peeled and cut in quarters

2 carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks

2 celery sticks, with their leaves, chopped into large chunks

4 cloves garlic

a few black peppercorns

a teaspoon or two of dried rosemary

salt, to taste

porcini mushroom powder, if you have it, or throw in a few dried mushrooms

125ml white wine

For the soup

50g butter

75g brown sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

2 kg of onions, approximately – use a mix of red, white and yellow, and maybe some shallots if you can find them

2 leeks
6 cloves garlic

salt, pepper and porcini powder (optional, but yummy) to taste

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Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low GI, nut-free, onion, recipes, soups, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Three Roasted Vegetable Soups

Posted on May 18, 2011 | 12 Comments

Three recipes in one post today, because it’s the same (very easy!) method, but with markedly different flavours. I’ve given recipes for a very simple but delicious pumpkin soup, a subtly perfumed beetroot soup and a creamy Jerusalem artichoke soup, but you could use this method to make a soup out of any root vegetable you liked (though you would need to change the roasting times and the seasoning accordingly). Myself, I think it’s crying out for a good sweet-spicy roast carrot incarnation, perhaps with maple syrup and ginger, but three soups is enough for one evening! Don’t be tempted to buy stock. The stock recipe below takes all of 5 minutes of hands-on cooking time and it will taste far better than anything you could buy at the supermarket. And your soups deserve a good stock. Trust me.