Soupa fun

I started making homemade soup for lunch in first year, simply as an experiment, and have stuck with it ever since. It’s comfort food that keeps you warm in the cold months before and after Christmas, but also extremely healthy. Once a batch is made, it’s the quickest thing in the world to shove in the microwave for a few minutes when you’re particularly famished. One book I read suggested having a small bowl of soup as a snack throughout the day because it will fill you up for longer than a chocolate bar for example. These are my two particularly successful, but extremely simple soups developed in first year, during term time and the holidays. Let me start with a story.

Once upon a time, my mother presented me with a steaming bowl of divine nectar that was Heinz special edition Tomato and Red Pepper soup. From the moment that succulent red liquid entered my quivering parted lips, I silently proclaimed an everlasting love for said soup – my taste-buds too infatuated with the infusion of mouthwatering pepper, tangy tomatoes and an exhilarating jolt of chilli to profess this love in verbal form.

Little did I know this love was doomed to go through the desperate hardship of separation as, one day, my mother came home empty handed. The fatal proclamation “They don’t make it anymore” rang like a death sentence in my ears, but I vowed to put my every effort into finding the love of my life again. I searched far and wide throughout the land, from the treacherous depths of the supermarket shelves to the shifty looking own-brands, until finally I alighted on something quite different. A recipe ….

Tomato and Pepper Soup

4-5 peppers – deseeded and chopped

2 cans chopped tomatoes

1 large onion – chopped

1 clove garlic – chopped

2 tbsp tomato puree

500ml stock – chicken or vegetable

1-2 tsp chilli powder

Salt and pepper

If you have any celery lying around, a few sticks of that don’t go amiss!

Fry the onion and garlic (and celery if available) in oil in a large saucepan for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped up pepper and fry for a further 3-5 minutes.

Add chopped tomatoes, stock, tomato puree and chilli powder. Still through and simmer for 20 minutes.

Take off the heat. Blend and season with salt and black pepper.

This is a ridiculously simple soup that is a great variation to the standard tomato. I like to add the chilli powder as it gives a little kick and an additional flavour to the soup that you wouldn’t get in ordinary tomato soup. I know peppers are expensive if you buy them singly, but the reason I love this soup is that the value packs contain exactly the right amount of peppers for the recipe and are slightly cheaper.

Note: If you want to make soup on a regular basis then DO get a blender. The value hand blenders work fine and are under £10, well worth the investment because you can use them for other sauces as well.

Curried Lentil Soup

3 big carrots – peeled and chopped

2 celery sticks – chopped

1 large onion – chopped

150g dried red split lentils

2 tsp chilli powder

1 litre water

2 stock cubes – chicken or vegetable

(Optional 1 pepper – chopped)

Fry the onion in oil in a large saucepan for 5 minutes until softened.

Add the carrots, celery, lentils, water, crumbled stock cubes, chilli powder and pepper if using into the pan.

Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.

Blend.

This is an adaption of the first soup I ever made – which was in first year at uni! It’s a great one because, once again, you just chop everything up and put it all in and wait for a bit. Again, the chilli gives it a bit of a kick. I’d recommend this recipe especially because of its nutritional value. The lentils are really filling – and one of your five a day – so it’s a meal that keeps you warm and keeps you going ‘til teatime. Once you’ve bought the lentils, it’s a particularly cheap soup to make as well, because carrots and onions cost pittance.

These soups share ingredients, like celery and peppers, so it might be worthwhile making them one week after the other, leaving a spare pepper and the celery aside from tomato and pepper soup in preparation for making the curried lentil soup the week after.