Soup Season: Winter, a time for great soups.

I am getting excited because we have entered soup season! Who doesn’t love a good heart-warming (or is it gut-warming)  soup? I enjoy both creamy and chunky versions.

Soups have so many advantages:

1. They are a great way of using up those close to expired vegetables lurking in the bottom of your fridge.
2. They are economical and can make ingredients go a long way
3. They are usually easy to prepare, but that, of course, will depend on the recipes that you choose.
4. They are versatile and flexible. How many varieties are there? Google “soup recipes” and you get 672,000,000 hits! No doubt there are lots of double-ups but still, that’s a lot of soup.
5. They are filling, especially with some nice crusty bread
6. You can freeze them for later.
7. You can add in all sorts of good for your gut ingredients.

I make lots of soup in winter. Lots! I always have the image of the Seinfeld episode with the Soup Nazi in my mind as I cook. I hear that fellow yell out “No soup for you!” but change it to “Yes! Soup for You!” A few years ago I even had the idea of doing a new blog based entirely on soup! I still might do that. It was provisionally entitled Sunday Soup Sessions.

Here are a couple of my favourites.

Harira (Moroccan lamb, tomato and lentil soup)

Lots and lots of good things in this soup. I am not sure if it would work so well without the meat.

Orange Vegetable Soup

I make up my own recipes and it’s a bit hard to give the precise list of ingredients for these.

A case in point is this pumpkin, sweet potato and carrot soup spiced with ginger and turmeric.

The ingredients and method could be roughly translated as

Ingredients

• Pumpkin – as much as you have depending on how much you want to make – cut into cubes
• Sweet potato (orange variety) –  about half the amount of pumpkin – cut into cubes
• Carrots – about the same as the sweet potato – cut into chunks
• Stock and water – I would have used chicken stock but vegetable stock would be fine. How much…well that depends on how many vegetables you are using! At least a litre.
• Tumeric – powdered or fresh, grated
• Ginger –  fresh grated
• Onion – at least 2 – sliced
• Garlic – 1 tablespoon-ish
• Olive oil
• Lime juice to serve.
• Feta cheese for garnish

Method

1. Fry the onions and garlic in the oil till soft
2. Add the turmeric and ginger and saute for 1 – 2 minutes.
3. Add the veggies
4. Stir around in the oil to coat and saute for 2 – 3 minutes
5. Add enough stock to partially cover the veggies
6. Put the lid on and simmer until the vegetables are tender. (maybe 30 minutes?)
7. Use a stick blender to blend in the pot, adding more stock/water as needed to get the right consistency. Or transfer really carefully to your jug blender/mouli thingy and blend till smooth.
8. Adjust seasoning
9. Serve with lemon or lime juice and garnishes as you like.

Have you got any soup season recipes to share?