Warm Bowl of Soup

Bought BBC Good Food Magazine on the way home last night and started flicking through the recipes, saw some good ones I might try in the next few days, but all that yummy food started to make the old tummy rumble.

The good old Northern Ireland weather was not at its best and the baguettes I had bought to make a warm salad started to look a bit tame, a warm bowl of soup was definitely what was needed!  I found an old 1980's soup book and had a flick through for inspiration:  Moroccan Vegetable Soup!  The main ingredients of Carrot, Parsnip and Butternut Squash didn't sound overly Moroccan to me, but I decided to give it a go anyway.  We changed some of the ingredients to make it a bit more store-cupboardy and I didn't really fancy frying parsley in olive oil and garlic to drizzle over the top so here is the recipe I used to make a great big pot of soup.

500g Parsnip, peeled and sliced
500g Carrot, peeled and sliced
500g Butternut Squash (or pumpkin) peeled, deseeded and chopped
2 Medium Onions, peeled and chopped
1 Clove Garlic, peeled and crushed or chopped
pinch salt
pinch chilli flakes
1tsp Dried Parsley
1tsp Pink Peppercorns (I just love these but less cracked black ones would do)
1tsp Corriander seeds
Splash Olive Oil
Enough stock to cover generously

We fried the onions & garlic in olive oil, in the soup pan.
Once they started to sweat we added the rest of the veg and cooked through for about 10 mins, stirring regularly until they began to soften.
We generously covered with stock, added the salt, pepper, corriander and chilli, boiled it up and then just left it all to simmer - about 30 minutes did it.
I blitzed it using the hand blender and served with cheesey rolls!

That was it - Simples!
If I wanted to posh it up a bit, I would swirl a spoonful of sour cream/creme fraiche into each bowl and top with afew crispy onions (bought a tub in BM Bargains)

We were glad of our soup, when we went to pick up the trailer in Bangor, it hadn't been used in a while and it took us (well Keith) ages to get the lights sorted out - definitely provided some central heating inside us!