Soup

Every month we visit our local farmers market to buy some of the wonderful produce.  We buy cheese, eggs, some meat, I know I am vegetarian but the rest of the family do eat meat very occasionally, and vegetables.  We buy cheese, eggs and meat all year round but the vegetables in late autumn and winter only.

Each week we have a veg bag delivered from a local farm co-op (five miles down the road) with eight different vegetables.  I find that the bag is not quite enough for our needs so in the late spring, summer and some of the autumn I supplement from the garden.  The rest of the year I visit the farmers market and use the veg I buy there to make soup, enough to last the month.  I bulk cook as much as I can with the veg I buy and then freeze it.  I was a bit late to the market this month so it was thin pickings at the veg stall I walked away with carrots, swede and broccoli and along with a very large courgette from my garden I have made the whole lot into soup.  Spicy Carrot, Broccoli and Stilton, Swede and, Courgette and Brie.

I have made up three of these recipes as I could not find one I liked or could eat in any of my cookbooks or on line.  I am not able to eat tomatoes, peppers, lemons or limes and use alternative ingredients in most recipes but with soups I prefer to just make up a recipe in the absence of one that uses ingredients that I can eat.

Spicy Carrot Soup
1 onion
500g carrots
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
Pinch chilli powder or more depending on your taste
1.5 pints vegetable stock

Fry the onion in butter in a large saucepan until soft and clear.
Roughly chop the carrots.
Add the spices to the onions and stir in, fry gently for a minute.
Add the carrots and mix throughly to coat with the onion spicey mix.
Add the stock and cook until the carrots are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

Broccoli and Stilton
Largish Head of Broccoli
1 onion
2 pints vegetable stock
100g Stilton

Roughly chop the broccoli heads and stalks into pieces and dice the onion.
Put into a pan with stock and boil until the broccoli is tender.
Allow to cool a little, blend and return to pan.
Chop Stilton and heat gently until melted.

Swede Soup
1 onion
400g swede
1 small potato
1 small carrot
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 pints vegetable stock

Dice the onion and fry gently in butter in a saucepan until soft and clear.
Peel and roughly chop the other veg, add to saucepan and fry gently for a few minutes.
Add the nutmeg and stir through.
Add the stock and stir, cook for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

The fourth recipe is from this marvellous soup cookbook.

Courgette and Brie
450g Courgettes sliced
350g potatoes peeled and chopped
1 onion finely chopped
2 pints vegetable stock
225g Brie

Put all the ingredients except the Brie into a pan.
Bring to the boil and cook until the vegetables are tender.
Stir in the cheese until melted.
Allow to cool a little and blend.

I should add that both the cheeses used in these soups were also bought from the farmers market. This post has been included in a challenge Shop Local #2 hosted by Elizabeth at Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.