Mediterranean Chunky Soup – The Soup Diet

Monday, January 18, 2010

By Old Boar

Right, here we go with the first soup I cooked my partner. It is very difficult to go wrong with anything that has carrots and tomatoes in it, to be honest, especially if influenced by the gorgeous people round the med. This soup would be as equally at home in Tuscany as Spain, probably, but more important, it is a good, easy mainstay of your Soup Diet. Like anything this is always at its best fresh, but it freezes quiet happily, so make as much as you like. Here is what I did in a very large saucepan, but remember, you can vary the quantities – just treat this as a rough guide.

Ingredients

1 large onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4 large carrots, chopped into small cubes
2 courgettes, chopped
2 sticks celery, destrung and chopped
1 turnip, peeled and chopped
1 large red pepper, chopped
1/2 white cabbage sliced into small squares
2 tins chopped Italian tomatoes (or peeled and deseeded fresh ones)
1 table spoon concentrated tomato puree
2 cups peas
Salt and Pepper
big handful of chopped oregano, parsley, thyme, or dried equivalent.
couple of litres of stock – chicken or veg.

And that will do. To be honest, as long as you have the tomatoes and onions and carrots, you can bung anything in here. Note, cabbage is useful as it helps give the soup texture!

Okay, cooking time.

In your huge pot, fry the onions, garlic, carrots and celery till the onions are soft. Use just a little good olive oil – it wont matter in this sort of quantity and is rather nice!

Once the onions are soft, add the tomatoes and the puree and all your stock – that is your soup base and not a bad drink already, to be honest!

Now add everything else except the cabbage, courgettes and the herbs. Bring to a boil briefly, then simmer for 10 minutes or so. Now add the cabbage and courgettes and continue till the hard veg are tender, but not too soft! (especially if you are freezing!)

Now add the herbs and taste. Season till its about right – dont over salt!

And that is it. This really is very easy, and is both fresh and warming at the same time. The herbs and the tomatoes should give real richness in the background – if you think it is a little thin and weak, add more tomato puree and some dried oregano, which has a satisfying meaty taste to it. You can also add tinned butter beans or chick peas when you reheat the soup for a little variation without starting from scratch.

Note on Freezing. Water expands when frozen and veg are very high in water, especially things like cabbage and spinach. If you cook your veggies too soft, when you thaw them out and reheat they will go to mush! These recipes work best when they have some firm chunky bits and are closer to a stew that a soup.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 7:49 pm and is filed under The Soup Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.