Practical Peter from FoodCycle Finsbury Park loves a good hack. Whether it is making delicious food with very few ingredients, using simple methods to clean difficult stains or thinking up non-traditional cooking methods, Peter is your man. In this monthly blog, he will be sharing all his favourite FoodCycley knowledge with you, so you can get a bit of the Peter magic each month.
My first monthly blog is all about colours! Red, white and green especially when it comes to quick and easy soups. Not only are they quick and easy to make, but they also make great pictures!
Green Soup
I have perfected this over the years, and in true Italian fashion I am a bit vague about the quantities. You need to experiment and taste.
Ingredients
Tin of peas
Iceberg lettuce but anyone works
Spinach fresh or frozen
One onion (sweet or white ideally but any onion will do)
- Make vegetable stock, about 2 litres, I like using Maggi
- Simply dump all ingredients into the stock
- Add the lettuce – you can’t use too much lettuce as it adds sweetness
- Boil for about ten minutes
- Blend with stick blender
And that’s it!
At home, I always sieve my soups. It gives a nice smooth texture and removes pea skin. Don’t worry if you don’t have time, it still turns out great. To get intense green colour add more spinach if necessary and garnish with a swirl of coconut cream.
White soup
Ingredients
3 Leeks
1 Cauliflower (whole head)
2 White onions
1 Potato
- Trim the leeks and use just the white third, keep the rest for making stock.
- Break the cauliflower into small florets
- Dice onion and potato
- Add to 2 litres of vegetable stock
- Boil for about 20 minutes till soft
- Blend with stick blender
- Adjust thickness with additional stock if necessary
Red soup
Ingredients
2 sweet red peppers, deseeded and cut into chunks
250g cherry tomatoes
1 onion chopped into chunks
Half a cup of easy cook red lentils
Basil leaves
1 tablespoon red sweet paprika or smoked paprika (depending on how hot you like your soup)
2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup
- Roast peppers onions and cherry tomatoes in the oven with a little olive oil for about 30 min @165c
- Mix two litres of veg stock with the lentils and paprika in a pan
- Add tomato ketchup – this helps intensify the red colour
- Simmer for about 30 minutes until lentils are soft
- Blend with a stick blender
- Garnish with shredded Basil leaves
I also sieve the soup to remove the tomato seed and skins as I like a smooth texture.
Please have a go at these soups and let me have any suggestions for improvement. Let’s add a bit of colour to our meals!
