Parsnip Soup

Method

Roughly chop your vegetables and then melt the butter or heat the oil in a heavy pan – my heavy cast iron pan is just ideal for this, and throw in the chopped onions and the other vegetables. Stir them around until they are well coated with the butter or oil, then put the lid on the pan and leave on a gentle heat to sweat for 10 minutes or so, giving them a stir every so often so that they don’t “catch” and turn brown.

Then add the hot water or stock and simmer in the pan for a further 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes before blending with a hand-blender, or putting into your liquidiser.

Return the mixture to the pan and gently reheat before serving. I often add a dollop of natural yogurt to each dish of soup as it is served, a sprinkling of freshly grated pepper and maybe a sprig of parsley if there’s some to be found in the greenhouse at this time of year.

This is basically my method with all vegetable soups, and the fun is adding something to your usual recipe that you might have lying around the kitchen or left over in the fridge from yesterday’s meal, then to discover a new happy combination. Cumin, coriander and possibly some cayenne pepper (all added at the sweating stage) turn the above into a beautifully warming spiced-parsnip soup, and my Launceston friend, Yvonne told me only yesterday about adding a cooking apple to liven up parsnip soup – that’ll be my next experiment. Do you have any Jerusalem artichokes growing in the garden? They make simply divine soup, prepared just as the plain parsnip soup above.

Mrs Trewhitless