Soup Recipes & Articles

Turmeric and Zucchini Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles ,
soup recipe turmeric and zucchini soup

soup review turmeric and zucchiniThis is now my new favourite soup. Thank you, Irene, for yet another winner. After having the recipe in my pile of “must cook one day”, I finally got around to making it. It was perfect for the spring weather, and two bowls later I wished I’d made a double batch. It’s easy, delicious, lightly hearty (yes, it’s possible), and apparently very good for you. Although I stuck to the actual ingredients, I tweaked the method a bit – Thermomixing, pureeing, and being un-paleo by adding rice noodles at the end to thicken. Next time I’ll add some cooked salmon, or shredded chicken. I’m going to try not to play with the actual ingredients too much as I don’t want to ruin what is a really lovely flavour. Of course, the addition of coconut milk to anything is a sure way to improve it, so this was always going to be a winner.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon ghee (or coconut or olive oil)
  • 1 large brown onion, roughly chopped
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • 500g zucchini, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, diced
  • 2 cms fresh turmeric, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon mild curry powder
  • ¼ teaspoon white pepper
  • 2 teaspoons TM vegetable stock paste
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 1 teaspoon fish sauce
  • Juice of ½ lemon

Method

  1. Heat the ghee, add onion and turmeric and sauté for 4-5 minutes until softened.
  2. Add salt, zucchini and garlic and stir through the onion. Then add curry powder and pepper and stir through a few times to release the aromas.
  3. Add stock, water, coconut milk and fish sauce and stir through.  Simmer for around 15 minutes.  Puree until smooth.
  4. Add lemon juice, toss in some rice noodles, stir, and allow to sit for 10 minute until noodles have softened.

Click here to go to Irene’s Eat Drink Paleo website for more on this recipe.

Creamy Chicken and Brown Rice Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles
creamy chicken and brown rice soup recipe

soup recipe creamy chicken and brown riceThis recipe has been on my radar for years. It keeps coming up on various blogs I follow, always referenced to the lovely Jo from Quirky Cooking. It’s also in her cookbook, and on the Thermomix Cookidoo and Recipe Community sites. And no wonder. It’s divine! Hearty, filling, easy, and considering how few ingredients there are, it’s a really simple but tasty addition to my winter soup favourites list. The Recipe Community website also has a grain-free version (originally suggested by Jo on her website) where you use cauliflower rather than rice. I’m going to try this next, but at the moment the original version is in the fridge ready to be used up over coming days. I used the Thermomix Veggie Stock Paste, and might try the chicken stock paste recipe one day. And I’m tempted to do my usual tweaking and throw in some peas or broccoli or zucchini or sweet potato (or all of them) and maybe leave out the chicken. I like the creamy thickness of using the ground up brown rice. I’m going to try it in some of my other soup recipes and see how it goes. Or not, given I try and follow a paleo diet and rice is not part of that, but every now and then can’t hurt me. Thank you Jo for this great addition to my soup recipe collection!

Click here to go to Quirky Cooking for the Creamy Chicken and Brown Rice Soup recipe.

Broccoli and Zucchini Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles ,
broccoli and zucchini soup recipe

My Version of Broccoli and Zucchini Soup

Soup recipe broccoli and Zucchini soup

I remembered seeing a recipe somewhere for broccoli and zucchini soup, and felt inspired to make it, but when I was finally ready after a few days, I couldn’t find the recipe.  Not surprising, given my collection of cookbooks, ripped out pages from magazines, typed out recipes from cookbooks and magazines I don’t own, and randomly reading through my favourite food blogs.  So I decided to experiment (not always a success in my kitchen) and am thrilled that this one worked amazingly well, and provided a much needed warm up on a recently shivery 40 C Ballarat day.

Ingredients

  • 1 head broccoli (including stalk), chopped
  • 2 zucchini, chopped
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 stick celery, chopped
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • 2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • Grated peel from half a lemon
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 3 cups chicken stock

Method

Heat some oil, and gently fry onion, garlic, cumin seeds, celery and carrot until soft. Add remaining ingredients and cook for around 20 minutes, then puree until smooth. I added some fennel fronds just before I pureed to give a bit of extra flavour.

Sorrel Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles ,

great soup recipesThis is one of my mum’s recipes which I ate regularly as a child, and recently felt I wanted the comforting taste of mum’s home cooking.   I was given a bunch of sorrel by a friend (along with some cuttings for the garden – another story) and immediately decided to try and recreate my mum’s soup with the sketchy instructions scribbled many years ago in an old exercise book.  Surprisingly (given my lack of real cooking skills), it worked quite well.  The taste was almost spot on.  But lesson learned – cut the stems off the sorrel and just use the leaves – the stems proved stringy and slightly woody, which makes for an annoying way to eat when you have to keep picking bits of tough grass out of your mouth.

I needed lamb bones for the base – the butcher tried to talk me out of lamb, saying it would be too fatty, but I insisted that my mum’s recipe said lamb (not beef) so he cut up some lamb neck, which turned out to be fine.  I shredded the meat back into the soup to make it more substantial, but that’s not what mum used to do – she’d give us the meat separately.  I substituted the potato for a mix of purple and white sweet potato, and left out the milk.  Don’t know why I’m bothering with the original recipe really, but it’s a starting point.

 

Mum’s quantities were always along the lines of ‘a handful’ or ‘to taste’ which is fine if you’re an experienced cook, but try the following suggestions and see how you go.

Sorrel Soup Recipe
  • Lamb bones
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 carrot, finely chopped
  • 4 cups water
  • 2 large handfuls of sorrel leaves, roughly chopped
  • 2 tablespoons chopped dill
  • 2 potatoes, peeled, finely cubed
  • 1 hard-boiled egg, finely chopped
  • ½ cup warm milk (optional)
  • Salt, to taste

 

Gently fry onion and carrot until soft.  Add lamb bones, water, and salt to taste.  Simmer for 30 minutes, then add sorrel, dill and potatoes.  Simmer for a further 30 minutes.  Turn off the heat, remove lamb and bones and stir in egg and milk.

Spiced Pumpkin and Apple Soup with Kale

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles ,

How many versions of pupumpkin soup kalempkin soup are there, and how many more will be ‘discovered’ ?  I have my two favourites that I make regularly, but I came across a picture recently in the Woolworths Taste magazine and there was something about it which appealed.  The addition of buttermilk was so unusual and I had some in the freezer after making butter so I thought I’d give it a go.  I was moving house soon and emptying out the freezer was a high priority. I left out the kale. The soup was divine and is now on my list of top three favourite pumpkin soups.

I’ve driven several vegetarian friends mad with my constant recommending it.  I’ve now stopped, and will no doubt find a new ‘favourite’ soup shortly which will be highly recommended, until the next new ‘favourite’.  A pattern emerges…..

Ingredients
  • 11/2 tbs olive oil
  • 1 leek, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • 1 tsp each ground ginger, cinnamon and cumin
  • 1kg butternut pumpkin, peeled and chopped
  • 1 red apple, peeled, quartered, cored and chopped
  • 600ml chicken or vegetable stock
  • 300ml buttermilk
  • 1/2 bunch green kale
Method
  1. Preheat oven to 220°c. Heat 1 tbs oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add leek and garlic and cook for 5 minutes until leek is soft.
  2. Combine spices in a small bowl. Add 2 tsp of spice mix to the pan and stir for 1 minute or until fragrant.
  3. Add pumpkin and apple and cook for 2 minutes until well coated in spice mixture. Stir in stock and bring to a simmer. Cook for 15 minutes or until pumpkin and apple are soft.
  4. Puree with a stick blender or blender and return to saucepan. Stir in 1 cup of the buttermilk and simmer gently for 5 minutes until heated through.
  5. Meanwhile, strip kale leaves from the stems and tear into small pieces. Wash well and dry in a salad spinner.
  6. Add remaining oil to kale and rub in well to coat. Arrange in a single layer on 2 baking paper lined oven trays. Mix reserved spice mix with 11/2 tsp salt flakes and scatter over kale. Bake for 8-10 minutes until crisp.
  7. Ladle soup into bowls, drizzle with remaining buttermilk and serve topped with kale.

Use salt-reduced stock if watching your salt intake. Kale chips can be stored in a snap-lock bag for a few days.

For more on this recipe, visit the Woolworths website at spiced-pumpkin-apple-soup-with-kale

Chilled Soups

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles

Having just returned from a South Pacific cruise with the lovely friends who have developed this website (hi Marg and Martin), I had the opportunity to taste a few chilled soups – more like desserts than starters, but the flavours were so divine that I’m determined this summer to give some chilled soup recipes a try.  So if any of them work out, and they are as delicious as the ones I tried on the cruise, I’ll be posting them up. Who would have thought soups could not only warm you and comfort you, they can provide a cooling relief from the summer heat.

Green Pea, Broccoli and Mint Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles

Green Pea soup

When I browsed through a borrowed copy of the new Green Kitchen at Home cookbook (see below or click here), there were so many recipes I wanted to try that I ended up buying the book.

 

I’m not a fan of mint, but I always cook the first version of the recipe exactly as stated.  It was so good, even with the mint, that I dare not do my usual tweaking.

If you haven’t come across the gorgeous website of this Swedish couple, please have a look at greenkitchenstories.com  Beautiful photos, gorgeous healthy recipes, and probably interesting and useful info in the blog (which I usually skip and go straight to the recipe).

Thanks also to another of my favourite websites for providing great recipes such as this:  recipes.28bysamwood.com. This website is the new custodian of the “I Quit Sugar” recipes.

I do strongly recommend Green Kitchen at Home. If you wish to purchase this book, please click here to find out more, click on the book above or click on “Buy Now” for the best price.

buy now

 

 

 

Roast Vegetable Tray Bake

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles ,

Okay, it’s not a soup.  But it could be.  The leftover roast veg with some lovely stock, heated, then pureed.  But I can’t stop eating the roast vegies so there’s rarely any or enough left over.

Ridiculously simple, and discovered during my two week drive around northern Tasmania where in the first cabin I stayed at on Cradle Mountain, the only oven was a small bench type.  I was desperate for vegies, there was no steamer, so I chopped everything up, scattered them into the tray, and stuck them into a very hot oven for half an hour.  What a revelation!  Divine!  And quick.  And easy.  And I’ve been eating this most evenings ever since – sometimes with some sausage or chops on top of the veggies, or a bit of fish, or a few eggs (in their shells).  I vary the flavours a bit by sometimes drizzling oil, lemon juice and cumin over the veggies, or leaving them plain and sprinkling with sea salt after, or sprinkling over ras-el-hanout.  Mostly I leave them plain and add a bit of salt.  And the invariable left-overs are made into lunch the next day, a frittata, or just heated up, or turned into roast veggie soup.  The ultimate ‘set and forget’ one-pot meal that’s flexible enough to allow for whatever you have in the fridge.

Spicy Kumara and Corn Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  If I’ve made this Spicy Kumara and Corn Soup once I’ve made it twenty times.  There something hearty and comforting and divine about the taste and texture.

I took this recipe and a few others to Perth when I stayed with a work-a-holic friend some years ago.  She’d go to work each day, I’d play tourist, aspicy soupnd get home in time to cook dinner for us.  I felt I had to earn my keep somehow, and I enjoyed being in someone else’s kitchen.   This was her absolute favourite of all the meals I cooked over my two week stay.  The following year, on another quick visit, I made a huge batch so she could freeze individual serves and take them with her to work for lunch.  I’ve never made the cornbread muffins.

Ingredients
  • 50g butter
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 carrot diced
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (use ¼ teaspoon)
  • 1 cup yellow split peas
  • 5 cups of vegetable stock
  • 1 kumara (sweet potato) peeled and cubed
  • kernels of two large corn cobs
Method

Melt the butter in a large pot and add onion and garlic.  Fry until softened.  Add the spices and stir until fragrant.  Add carrot, stock and split peas.  Simmer for about 30 minutes and add kumara.  Simmer for a further 10 minutes, then add corn kernels.  Cook for another 10 minutes.  Scoop out about 2 cups of the soup and puree the rest.  Then return the 2 cups.

For those interested in the source of this magnificent recipe, I came across it in “Delicious” magazine back in August 2010: spicy-kumara-corn-soup-cornbread-muffins

Broccoli, Garlic and Lemon Zest Soup

Michael Soos Soup Recipes & Articles

I love broccoli, I love lemon, I love garlic.  Who thought of putting them together?  Well, Naomi Devlin did (link below). And thank goodness she did!  soup recipe

Vibrant, aromatic, creamy and delicious – I always seem to have excess broccoli, and it’s a great way to use up the stems.  I’ve tried adjusting the amount of lemon and garlic, with not nice results.  Stick to the tried and tested original, is my view for this soup.

Ingredients
  • 1 lb (0.5kg) broccoli florets
  • 1 oz (30g) butter
  • 3-4 cloves of garlic
  • zest of 1 lemon
  • 2 large pinches of sea salt
Method

Wash and chop the broccoli into small florets.

Mince the garlic finely and melt the butter gently over a low flame in a medium to large saucepan. When the butter has melted, add garlic and sweat for a couple of minutes until translucent but not coloured at all.

Grate the zest from the lemon and add to the pan with salt and brocolli, stir to coat.

Pour over 1 1/2 pints of boiling water and bring back up to the boil again.

Boil gently – a kind of aggressive simmer, not a rolling boil – until the stalks of the broccoli are soft, but still bright green. Don’t let the broccoli turn olive green or the soup will lose its freshness.

Puree in a blender (or with a stick blender) until completely smooth and creamy. Adjust seasoning to taste, adding more salt or some black pepper if you like, possibly a little lemon juice – but not too much.

Pour into bowls and garnish with a little yogurt.

 

The link for this recipe is Broccoli, Garlic and Lemon Zest Soup

Naomi Devlin’s blog is worth a visit at milkforthemorningcake.blogspot.com.au .