Spicy Green Veg Soup

Soup glorious soup! Another soup recipe, what a surprise! I love the easy, one pan, minimal washing up approach to soup I guess, which means I do generally make at least one soup a week.

Spicy Green Veg Soup

Serves 5

Ingredients

For the soup:
2 small/1 large onion chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped

1 leek, washed and sliced
1 large courgette, sliced
1 pak choi, washed and sliced
2 large handfuls spinach

2 large carrots, sliced

4 medium potatoes, cubed

1 (425 ml) can coconut milk

5 cups veg stock

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp ground coriander 

1 tbsp coconut oil

Salt and pepper

For the croutons:

4 slices bread, cut into cubes

1-2 tbsp oil 

1 tsp wild garlic powder

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 / 200°C / 400°F

Heat the coconut oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add in the spices and fry gently for a minute or two.

Add in the onion and garlic and fry for another couple of minutes.

Add the carrots, potatoes and leek and fry for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

Add the courgette and pak choi and fry for a final couple of minutes before adding the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes until the veg is tender.

Whilst the soup simmers toss your bread cubes in oil with the wild garlic powder and bake in the preheated oven for 5-6 minutes, shaking half way through.

Add the coconut milk and spinach and season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the spinach until it's just wilted then blend.

Serve the blended soup with the croutons and enjoy!

Wild Garlic Soup

This soup is one of my favourite things to make with wild garlic. It's vibrant green colour really reminds me that spring is here, things are growing and colour is appearing everywhere! This soup broke my immersion blender! Even though the garlic was chopped fairly fine I'm assuming it got tangled around the blade so I reckon you'll be best off using and actual blender unless you have a sturdier stick one than I did!

Wild garlic soup

Serves 4

Ingredients
2 large handfuls wild garlic, roughly chopped
3-4 potatoes, cubed

1 onion, chopped
4 cups veg stock

Squeeze of lemon

Oil
Salt and pepper

Optional:
Wild garlic pesto
Toasted pine nuts

Method
Heat a little oil in a saucepan over a medium heat, add in the onion and potatoes, coat in the oil and fry gently for a few minutes, stirring regularly. 

Add the veg stock, bring to the boil and simmer until tender.

Add the wild garlic, salt and pepper and continue to simmer for a couple more minutes.

Blend, add a squeeze of lemon and serve.

Toast pine nuts in a frying pan for a couple of minutes and top with a blob of wild garlic pesto and toasted pine nuts.

Smokey Red Lentil Soup

Before I was vegan I used to make bacon and lentil soup fairly regularly. I honestly never missed the bacon but I did miss the smokey flavour that it added. Hence this soup was born, slightly hotter than the non vegan counterpart but that's never a bad thing to me! 

It's quite a thick soup which I like but it could easily handle and extra cup of stock being thrown in if you wanted to thin in out or make it stretch further.

Smokey red lentil soup

Makes 3 good bowls, 4 if made thinner.

Ingredients
2 carrots
1 onion
5 cloves garlic

1 cup red lentils

1 400 tin chopped tomatoes

3 cup veg stock (4 if you prefer it thinner)

1 tsp liquid smoke

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp smoked paprika 

1 tbsp maple syrup

Optional toppings:

Oatly creme fraiche 

Toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds

Vegan smoked cheese

Method

Rinse the lentils in a sieve and set aside.

Fry the onions and garlic in a saucepan in little oil over a med heat and fry until soft.

Add the paprika and cayenne and stir through.

Add the carrots and and fry gently for a minute or 2.

Stir in the lentils followed by the tinned tomatoes and stock and liquid smoke, bring to the boil, cover and reduce to a simmer for 20-30 mins.

Add the maple syrup, season to taste and blend. 

Toast the sunflower and pumpkin seeds in a frying pan for a couple of minutes and serve on top of the soup along with the creme fraiche and some grated vegan cheese.  

Jerusalem Artichoke And Carrot Soup

I've been getting a weekly veg bag for a few months now (I'm going to do a actual post about them soon) and every so often I get a vegetable that I haven't used before. Jerusalem artichokes are one of those vegetables! They're not from Jerusalem and they're not even artichokes so go figure. Anyway, I don't think I've ever even eaten them before! So I made soup and it was pretty damn good. I was going to go for a straight up Jerusalem artichoke soup but I didn't have loads so chucked in the carrots to bulk it out a bit. I used a couple of yellowstone carrots (another veg bag veggie) hence why the soup doesn't look particularly 'carroty' (read: orange). But yea, so now I want more of these tasty veggies to try out more ways of eating them!

This recipe makes 2 good sized bowls or 3 smaller bowls of soup.

Jerusalem artichoke and carrot soup

Ingredients

1 & 1/2(ish) cups Jerusalem artichokes (peeled and chopped)

1 large onion

5 cloves garlic

2 celery sticks

3 cups veg stock

oil of choice

salt and pepper

optional: 

Oatly creme fraiche 

1/4 cup roasted hazelnuts.

Method

Chop all your veg and heat a little oil in a pan. Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft. 

Throw in the rest of the veg and cook for a few minutes. 

Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes until all the veg is cooked and soft. 

Whilst the soup simmers you can roast the hazelnuts (if you want them), Stick your hazelnuts on a baking tray and pop in the oven on 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 for 5-10 minutes. When you get them out, put them a tea towel and rub them between your hands to get the skins off then roughly chop.

Blend the soup and serve as is or top with a generous dollop of Oatly creme fraiche, some of the hazelnuts and serve with crusty bread.

Roasted Tomato and Sweet Pepper Soup With Earl Grey

Well this is my first actual food post, let's kick things off shall we?!

I ate a variation of this in a cafe once, the name escapes me (sorry, I'll to give credit where it's due in future) and I've been meaning to recreate it for a while. So here we are, for your oral pleasure!

P.S I forgot to buy bread, hence the baked tortilla for dipping!

Roasted red pepper and tomato soup!

Ingredients
8-10 tomatoes (I chuck a whole family pack from Lidl in)
2 sweet red peppers
2 tbsp of earl grey tea (or 2 teabags)
3-4 cups of water
1 tsp of dried thyme
1/2 veggie stock cube
Oil of choice

Method
Preheat your oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas mark 7

Stick your tomatoes and peppers on a baking tray, drizzle with a bit of oil and sprinkle over the dried thyme and roast in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. 

Brew your earl grey in 3 cups of boiling water whilst the veg is roasting.

Chuck the roasted veg and tea and the 1/2 a stock cube in a blender or use a stick blender after transferring everything to a pan instead and blend until smooth.

Pour into a pan and heat through for a few minutes, add some more water if you like your soup a bit thinner.

Serve, enjoy!