Happy New Year everyone, can you believe that it is 2017 already? Where did that year go? There’s been a chill in the air in the past week, my windscreen is frozen every morning.
A new year always brings new year resolutions, giving up the booze, going on a diet, etc.…. So, with the cold weather and the healthy lifestyles, I thought that I would share some recipes that everyone can appreciate this time of the year. Fresh homemade soup is so easy to make, you basically chop up your ingredients, cover them with water, boil, simmer, and puree, and that’s it.
Simple and delicious.
Tasty vegetable soup
Ingredients
1 celery stick chopped
3 carrots, chopped
3 large potatoes - peeled and cubed
1 parsnip, peeled and diced
1 turnip, peeled and diced
1 leek, sliced
1 onion, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 vegetable stock cube
Method
Place all the vegetables into a large saucepan with the crumbled vegetable stock cube. Fill the saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook until the vegetables are tender. Puree vegetables in a blender or using a stick blender. Serve and enjoy.
Sometimes I cut my vegetables up very neatly and don’t puree the soup for an alternative, but it’s up to your own preference. You can put any vegetables that you want into this soup but I personally like to keep it simple.
This is the basic vegetable soup recipe that is cooked in many pubs, cafés and restaurants around Mayo, so you should find this soup to taste familiar. You could add chopped fresh herbs if you had them as well. Also as many diets let you eat as much vegetables as you like this is a very low points meal which will fill you up.
Tomato and basil soup
.
Ingredients
4 sprays of “fry lite” cooking spray
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tin of tomato passata
2 vegetable stock cubes
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
Method
Spray the cooking spray into a large pot over medium-low heat; cook and stir onion, carrots, celery, and garlic until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the tomato passata, vegetable stock cubes, basil, and oregano. Increase heat to medium and simmer until soup is reduced, 10 to 20 minutes.
Use a stick blender to get a lovely smooth soup and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper if you think that it needs it. You can get passata in most supermarkets, and I prefer to use it instead of tinned tomatoes as it gives the soup an extra dimension. Again, this soup is packed with low calorie ingredients and an alternative to vegetable soup for the January dieters.
Roasted red pepper and butternut squash soup
This is a favourite in our house, and in the hotel, especially this time of the year when everyone is on a diet.
.
Ingredients
1 red pepper
1 clove of garlic
Squirt of low fat spray
1 butternut squash
1 onion
3 vegetable stock cubes
Seasoning
Water
Method
Set the oven for 200°C. Squirt the whole red pepper with the low-fat spray and season with salt and pepper. Cook the red pepper on a tray in the oven with the clove of garlic, until the pepper skin is mostly black and burned. Take the tray out of the oven and leave to cool.
Peel and chop the butternut squash and the onion and put them in a saucepan with the stock cubes and enough water to cover the vegetables. Peel the skin of the red pepper and remove the seeds and put in the saucepan with the other ingredients.
Squeeze the garlic clove out of its skin and into the pan as well. Bring the soup to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer until the vegetables are soft, then blend until smooth with a stick blender.
Go on, you can do it. These recipes are very easy to prepare and soon you will be tucking into a lovely warm bowl of soup that you have made all by yourself.
If you would like a recipe for anything at all, you can e-mail me at [email protected] and I will do my best to accommodate you.
