Spiced Winter Vegetable Soup

Thu, 12 November 2015

Just a mild spiced flavour in this soup. It's a very warming nourishing soup.

Ingredients:

1oz/25g butter

½ medium sized onion

1 inch fresh root ginger-peeled

2 sticks of celery

1 medium leek

3 cloves of garlic

1 sweet potato

1 butternut squash

2 medium carrots

2 large sprigs of thyme

Seasoning

2 pints/1200ml chicken/vegetable stock

5floz/150ml double cream

Pinch ground cinnamon

Method:

Peel and chop the potato, carrots & butternut squash and add them to the chopped celery, leeks, onions, ginger and garlic in a large bowl.

Heat a large saucepan with the butter and toss in all of the vegetables together with the thyme sprigs. Allow them to cook very gently (and without colour) for 8-10 minutes or until the smaller of the vegetables are glazed off.

Next add in approximately 2/3 of the chicken or vegetable stock and bring the mixture to a slow boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for an additional 15-20 minutes or until all of the vegetables have softened down completely.

Using a hand blitzer, blitz the soup until it is nice and smooth. Mix in the cream and ground cinnamon at this stage and return to the heat and bring back to a very gentle boil.
If you would like a thinner soup, now would be the best time to add some additional stock to thin it down. Correct the seasoning at this stage also.

Transfer it to your serving bowls or cups and garnish the soup with a little crème fraiche or pouring cream infused with some additional ground cinnamon.

Serve as required or alternatively allow the soup to cool down and then transfer it into suitable containers and freeze until required.