Spring Onion & Celery Soup with Smoked Trout

With its beautiful pale colour and subtle flavours, this soup is good on its own, but delightful topped with flakes of lightly smoked Franschhoek trout. Added cold, the trout half-poaches in the soup’s residual heat, contributing an intriguing smoky note. Straining this soup is laborious but well worth the effort to achieve a fine, smooth result.

My Spring Onion & Celery Soup with Smoked Trout. I snapped this while my book's photographer
Michael Le Grange was setting up the shot. Recipe courtesy of  Random House Struik.

Wine recommendation from Michael Oliver. He says: "I really think you need a medium cream sherry
 with this soup. Douglas Green Medium Cream Traditional Flor No 2 - perfect for chilly weather."
Go to the end of the page for more detail about this pairing.

This is one of my favourite soup recipes, and it comes from my 2012 book Scrumptious Food For Family and Friends. 

Spring Onion & Celery Soup with Smoked Trout 

30 slim spring onions (about 3 bunches)
6 x 20-cm stalks young celery, taken from the heart of the bunch
4 Tbsp (60 ml/60 g) butter
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1.75 litres vegetable or chicken stock
1 cup (250 ml) milk
3 medium potatoes, peeled and finely sliced
2 tsp (10 ml) cornflour
200 ml fresh cream, plus a little extra
salt
a pinch of white pepper, to taste
10 slices lightly smoked Franschhoek trout, or smoked salmon
olive oil
small sprigs of fresh dill

Trim the roots and dark green tops of the spring onions (you’ll use only the white and pale green parts) and slice. Trim and slice the celery stalks.

Chop the pale green leaves and set them to one side. Melt the butter in a soup pot, add the spring onions, sliced celery stalks and garlic and cover them with a circle of baking paper, or the wrapper from a block of butter. Cook over a low heat for 12–15 minutes, or until very soft. Remove the paper, add the stock, milk, potatoes and reserved celery leaves and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 25 minutes, skimming off any foam as it rises.

Blend the soup to a smooth purée and strain it through a fine sieve into the rinsed-out pot. Mix the cornflour and 2 Tbsp (30 ml) of the cream to a smooth paste and add this to the soup, stirring constantly as it comes to the boil. Simmer for 3 minutes, then stir in the remaining cream. Season to taste with salt and white pepper.

Cut the smoked trout into pieces no bigger than the bowl of a soup spoon. Ladle the hot soup into bowls, swirl with a little olive oil and a drizzle of cream, and top each one with tiny sprigs of dill and a few pieces of trout. Serve immediately.

Serves 8.

Cook’s Notes: Make this up to 24 hours ahead, then heat and add the salmon and dill at the last moment. This is a thinnish soup, but it should not be watery. Add a little more cornflour paste if the consistency seems too thin.

Wine pairing by Michael Olivier: 

Douglas Green Medium Cream Traditional Flor No 2. Flor is the yeast under which the wine lives in the criadera [nursery] before going into the Solera for maturation.

It looks like: Elegant packaging, even rich gold straw colour.

It smells like: Layers of nuts, spice and baked biscuits.

It tastes like: Discreetly medium sweet.  Nutty with brown spices.  Rich raisiny grapes.  Full mouthfeel, long aftertaste.  Do serve it slightly chilled in a normal wine glass;  you will enjoy it so much more that way.

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Spicy Chicken, Tomato and Sweetcorn Soup

When I read the theme of this week's Woolies Pantry recipes, I gave a happy little snort. I have teenagers, you see, and feeding them (and the other ravenous students who swarm through my kitchen) is not unlike cooking for an army. If I were a millionaire, I'd give them their favourite food - slabs of steak and triple cheeseburgers - but I'm not, so I have resorted over the years to more economical ways of feeding young people with hollow legs. This is the fifth  in a series of recipes for Woolworths South Africa, pantry sponsors of MasterChef South Africa.

A big pot of richly flavoured soup, served with a mountain of bread, makes excellent teen fodder, and this recipe is one I make often in winter. It's packed with filling carbs - potatoes and sweetcorn - and really is a square meal in itself. What's more, it stretches one chicken across eight or more mouths, whereas if you had to roast a chicken, it would feed only four (and that's being optimistic).

If you're in a hurry, you can make this with shop-bought liquid stock and a ready-roasted chicken, but a proper home-made chicken broth adds wonderful depth of flavour. This is a mildly spiced soup, so feel free to give it extra heat with chopped fresh chillies, dried chilli flakes or lashings of Tabasco.

My other recipes for Woolworths #wooliespantry:

• Warm Lamb and Potato Salad with a Mint Dressing
• Curried Lamb Ribbetjies with Mint Yoghurt
• Champ with Chives and Garlic
• Gin-Cured Gravadlax with Crisped Capers

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Spicy Chicken, Tomato and Sweetcorn Soup

For the stock:
1 large free-range chicken
3 litres cold water
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, skin on, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 stalks celery, thickly sliced
6 stalks flat-leaf parsley
2 bay leaves
1 tsp (5 ml) black peppercorns
2 whole cloves

For the soup:
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely sliced
4 big carrots, peeled and cubed
6 big potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-cm cubes
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 red chilli, seeded and finely minced (optional)
2 tins Italian tomatoes, finely chopped, and their juice
3 Tbsp (45 ml) tomato paste
500 g frozen sweetcorn kernels
1 Tbsp (15 ml) cumin
1 Tbsp (15 ml) dried oregano
1 tsp (5 ml) ground coriander
1 tsp  (5 ml) sweet paprika
1 tsp  (5 ml) chilli powder, to taste
salt and milled black pepper

To serve:
chopped fresh parsley
chopped spring onions
sour cream or natural yoghurt

Place all the ingredients for the stock in a large pot and bring to gently to the boil. Turn down the heat, cover with a tilted lid, and simmer for 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken from the stock, strip the flesh from the bones and set aside, covered. Return the bones and skin to the stock and simmer, partly covered, for another 45 minutes. Strain the stock into a bowl and discard the bones and flavourings. Pull the reserved chicken into strips. At this point, if you are planning ahead, you can put both the stock and the chicken into the fridge for a few hours, or overnight.

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add the onion, celery, carrots, potato cubes, garlic and chilli and fry over a medium heat for five minutes. Skim any fat from the top of the stock and pour the stock over the vegetables. Bring to the boil. Add all the remaining soup ingredients, except the reserved chicken, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the potato cubes are tender. Skim off any foam, tip in the chicken strips and cook gently for a further 35-45 minutes, or until the chicken has fallen apart into shreds. Check the seasoning, stir in the chopped parsley and serve at once, topped with spring onions and sour cream.

Cook's notes:

• For an even more substantial soup, add a cup of split orange lentils, and cook the soup for 10-15 minutes longer, before adding the chicken.
• If you’d like a thicker texture, give the soup a quick whiz with a stick blender before you add the chicken.
• You can use tinned sweetcorn in place of frozen sweetcorn.

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Ten top tips for making memorable soup, and MasterChefSA blogging

My Roast Ratatouille Soup with Basil Mayonnaise

There's an agreeable crispness in the air in the mornings here in Cape Town, a sure sign that autumn's on its way. Never mind Keats's season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; all I'm really looking forward to is making and eating more soup. The older I get, the more I enjoy soup, and during winter often have a bowl of it for breakfast - I think of it as a sort of hot smoothie. But making a really good, well-textured, flavour-packed soup does require some effort, and I hope you'll find my top tips for memorable soup (below) useful.

Before we get to them, though, some news. It's been a very busy six or seven months here at Scrumptious HQ, and with so much freelance work on my plate I've not had the time to compile my usual newsletters (each one takes me up to a week to put together, and I haven't had a single one of those to spare!). I hope to resume sending you them as soon as the dust settles.

I recently joined hopping Cape Town digital agency Liquorice as a social media strategist. In another exciting development, I've been appointed one of four official bloggers for Woolworths, who are a main sponsor of MasterChef South Africa. This action-packed reality show starts in South Africa on 20 March, and I am certain that it's going to cause a sensation when it airs: there's already much talk and speculation in social media circles. You can follow MasterChef on Twitter at @MasterChefSA  (and the hashtag #MasterChefSA), and Woolies at @WOOLWORTHS_SA.  A link to my Twitter profile is on the top right of this page.

Now to the important business of making soup.

1 
It’s an old-fashioned notion that soups need to be boiled for hours. Good stocks certainly require slow simmering, but many soups need less than 25 minutes’ bubbling after the initial softening of aromatics such as onions, leeks, carrots, celery, garlic, and so on. A speedy cooking time helps to preserve the colour and vibrancy of fresh ingredients.

2 
Soups should never cook at a furious boil. A gentle, rolling, burbling boil – a notch above a simmer – is ideal. Take time to skim the foam off soups as it rises.

Cream of Watercress Soup with Wobbly Eggs

3
Some of the heartier soups (as with many stews, casseroles and curries) improve enormously on standing: their flavours mellow and mature as the ingredients have time to mingle. Meaty soups, spicy soups and soups made with pulses are often tastier the next day, so feel confident making them in advance if you're cooking for a crowd. Lively vegetable soups that don't require long simmering should be served on the same day they're made.

4 
Invest in a good-quality stick blender. Stick blenders have a huge advantage over liquidisers and food processors in that you don’t need to remove the soup from the pot when the time comes to purée it, so there are fewer things to wash up and a lot less mess. A powerful modern stick blender can quickly produce a very fine purée – finer, in fact, than one produced by liquidisers and food processors, which can be reluctant and often need stirring or scraping down during the blending process.

5
A soup – or a stock – is only as good as its component parts. Avoid the temptation to use supermarket ‘soup packs’ or ready-chopped bags of vegetables. Soup packs often contain unimpressive specimens of vegetables left over from the supermarket packaging process, while ready-chopped vegetable cubes have such an enormous combined surface area that they quickly turn slimy in the fridge. Take the time to hand-pick the best, freshest, snappiest ingredients.  When it comes to deep flavours, there is nothing quite like a good home-made stock.  Although not every fine soup requires a stock, they do add body and complexity, and it really is worth taking the time to make them -  even a quick stock made with six chicken wings and a few well-chosen aromatics is better than no stock at all (or, worse, a salty stock cube).  Here's my recipe for a chicken stock that's partly made in the oven.

6
When seasoning a soup with salt and pepper, always do so judiciously, adding a pinch at a time. You or your guests can always add more seasoning to a soup, but an over-salted soup cannot be rescued. Not even with slices of raw potato, as many older cookbooks advise.

7
Many soups are improved by a squeeze of lemon juice added just before serving; this little spritz of acid can really lift a soup that’s punching below its weight. The same applies to cream - even a few tablespoons can magically mellow and bring together the flavours of a soup.

My Chakalaka Soup with Little Boerewors Balls

8
If your soup seems too thick, thin it down with a little hot water, stock or (in the case of creamy white soups) milk. If it’s too watery, put a tablespoon or two of cornflour or flour or arrowroot in a jar, add double the amount of water and shake vigorously until the mixture is smooth. Add this, a dribble at a time, to the simmering soup, stirring constantly, until it reaches the desired thickness.

9
Soup must be served either piping hot or ice cold – there really are no half-measures. Heat the bowls in the oven before you ladle hot soup into them or, if you’re making a cold soup, chill the bowls in a freezer an hour before you dish up. When you're serving guests, don't overfill their bowls: soup is very filling and not everyone fancies downing litres of it at a time.

My Iced Beetroot and Gin Shots

10
A lovely way of serving soup at a feast is to treat it as a snack course. Halve the quantities given in the recipe, and pour the soup into small, sturdy glasses (or even teacups) that you’ve heated in a gentle oven. Add the toppings specified in the recipe and serve immediately. I often serve vegetable soups as snacks with toasted-cheese fingers: grate some Cheddar or Gruyère over a few slices of toasted bread, cook under a hot grill until bubbling, then dust with paprika or cayenne pepper and slice into strips. Balance a cheese finger across the top of each glass, and provide a few extra for hungry guests.

For more soup recipes from my blog archive, click here.

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Lightly Curried Mussel Soup with Fresh Coriander

A quick, fragrant soup: plump mussels on the half shell simmered in a gently spiced, turmeric-yellow, winey liquor, enriched with a little coconut milk. I know wine and coconut milk are strange bedfellows, but they work well here.

Bowl by David Walters

Are you put off making this recipe because you can't buy  fresh mussels where you live? Please don't be: there is no need to use quivering live molluscs in this recipe.  Instead, buy a bag of good-quality frozen mussels-in-their-shells from your local supermarket or fishmonger, and use them with confidence. For this recipe, I use inexpensive frozen South African mussels, when I can find them.  If I can't,  I use imported New Zealand green-lipped mussels which are good, fat and flavoursome, and available in most big branches of Pick n' Pay. You can, of course, use fresh mussels, if you're lucky enough to have them to hand.

You do need a nice chicken or fish stock for this recipe. If you don't have any stock, or can't be bothered to make one from scratch, use some of the mussels you've bought to make a quickie stock: half an an hour before you make the soup, put 10 mussels (don't bother to thaw them) in a saucepan. Add half an onion, roughly sliced, a stalk of celery, a carrot snapped into thirds, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a sprig of parsley.  Cover with two cups of water and half a cup of white wine, bring to the boil and simmer  for 20 minutes. Strain into a clean jug, and discard the mussel shells, flesh and flavourings. Set aside.

You can use any mild curry powder in this soup, provided that you buy it spanking fresh. The chilli is entirely optional.

Lightly Curried Mussel Soup with Fresh Coriander

2 Tbsp (30 ml) vegetable oil
1 large onion, peeled and very finely chopped
6 curry leaves, fresh or dried
3 white cardamom pods, cracked
2 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped [optional]
2 tsp (10 ml) cumin
2 tsp (10 ml) medium-strength curry powder
1 tsp (5 ml) turmeric
3 Tbsp (45 ml) flour
½ cup (125 ml) white wine
1 cup (250 ml) chicken or fish stock (see note, above)
2 cups (500 ml) water
1 cup (250 ml) low-fat coconut milk
1 kg frozen mussels in their shells, or fresh mussels
salt and milled black pepper
the juice of a lemon
a handful of chopped fresh coriander

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the onions, curry leaves and cardamom. Cook over a brisk heat until the onions are golden brown. Drain off any excess oil. Stir in the garlic, chilli, cumin, curry powder and turmeric, and cook for a minute.

Now stir in the flour and cook for another minute. Add the wine and the stock, whisking well to prevent lumps forming.  Stir in the water and coconut milk and simmer gently for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally.  Now tip all the frozen mussels into the soup, and bring gently up to the boil. Simmer for another minute or two, then turn off the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir in the lemon juice and serve immediately, topped with fresh coriander.

Serves 4 Print Friendly

Spinach and Pea Soup with a Creamy Lemony Mint Topping

This lovely fresh green soup takes minutes to make, using baby spinach and frozen peas, but it does need a good chicken or vegetable stock to add depth. You can use your own home-made stock, or buy a fresh carton from the supermarket.

Spinach and Pea Soup with a
 Creamy Lemony Mint Topping.

Don't omit the zingy topping: it's the contrast between the cool minty lemony creaminess and the metallic tang of the hot soup that gives this dish its special character.

I really think mint is the most underrated of herbs, and I don't know why it's not used with the same abandon as coriander and parsley.

Take care not to overcook the spinach, or you will end up with a mess of muddy olive green.

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Spinach and Pea Soup with Creamy Lemony Mint Topping

For the soup:
1 Tbsp (15 ml) olive oil or butter
a small onion, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
400 g baby spinach, rinsed (two 'pillow' packs)
3 cups (750 ml) frozen peas
a thumb-long sprig of mint
1.25 litres (5 cups) boiling chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) grated nutmeg
salt and milled black pepper

For the topping:
¾ cup (180 ml) crème fraîche or sour cream
the finely grated zest of half a lemon
4 tsp (20 ml) fresh lemon juice
10 fresh mint leaves, very finely shredded
salt and pepper (white pepper, if have have it)
finely chopped chives

First make the topping. Put the crème fraîche into a small bowl and beat for 30 seconds until soft. Add the lemon zest and juice and the mint, stir well and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate while you make the soup.

Heat the olive oil or butter in a large pot and add the onion and garlic. Cook for a few minutes until soft and translucent, but don't allow the garlic to brown. Pile all the wet spinach, the peas and the mint sprig into the pot, toss well to coat and cook over a high heat for two to three minutes, until the spinach is just wilted. Add a generous pinch of salt and pour in the hot stock.

Cover and bring rapidly to the boil. Cook for five or so minutes, or until the peas are just tender and the spinach is still bright green. Remove from the heat. Fish out the mint sprig and discard. Whizz to a fine purée using a liquidizer or stick blender. Skim off any accumulated foam. Stir in the nutmeg and season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Serve piping hot, topped with big blobs of cold crème fraîche and chopped chives.

Serves 6.

Cook's Notes

You can use young Swiss chard in place of spinach, but take care to remove all the fibrous stems.

If you're watching calories, use thick white Greek yoghurt in place of crème fraîche or sour cream.

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Lettuce, Cucumber, Spring Onion and Pea Soup

A paradox in a bowl: this soup has a lovely, clean, delicate flavour, even though it's sinfully enriched with cream, and thickened with egg yolks. If you like a fresh-tasting soup, as I do, you'll love this one.

This recipe is adapted from Robert Carrier's recipe for Potage à la Bonne Femme, from Great Starters, a little gem of a book first published in 1965.

Of the nine soups Carrier included in this book, no less than three feature lettuce as the main ingredient. Having tasted this soup, I can see why: when softly stewed in butter and stock, the humble and unfashionable iceberg lettuce has an ethereal yet distinctive taste, as does cucumber, that most gentle of flavours.

Carrier's original recipe suggested chervil, sorrel or tarragon as a flavouring herb, but I used fresh parsley (I couldn't find any fresh chervil or sorrel, and I thought tarragon would overpower the dish).

This soup is a bit tricky to make, because the eggs have a tendency to curdle in the blinking of an eye. If you're not confident about adding eggs to hot soup, I suggest you add a little cornflour (see recipe) and only two egg yolks to the mixture, which will greatly minimise (but not eliminate) the chances of the soup splitting. If it does curdle, for whatever reason, strain the whole lot into a liquidiser and blitz until smooth - it will still taste lovely.

Lettuce, Cucumber, Spring Onion and Pea Soup

5 t (25 ml/25 g) butter
1 small iceberg lettuce, finely shredded
6 spring onions [scallions], white and pale-green parts only, finely sliced
250 g frozen peas
half a large cucumber, peeled, deseeded and cut into matchstick-sized pieces
salt and freshly ground pepper
6 cups (1.5 l) good chicken stock, heated
3 egg yolks (or two egg yolks, plus 1 ½ t [7.5 ml) cornflour/cornstarch]
200 ml single cream
3 T (45 ml) very finely chopped fresh parsley or chervil

Heat the butter in a large pot and add the lettuce, spring onions, frozen peas and cucumber. Season with salt and pepper, stir well and cook gently for five minutes. Add the hot chicken stock and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are quite tender, but not mushy. Put the egg yolks and cream into a little bowl and whisk together until well combined. [Alternatively, see above, slake the cornflour with a few teaspoons of cream. Whisk in the remaining cream and two egg yolks.)

Add a soup ladle of the hot soup to the egg and cream mixture and stir well. Remove the soup pot from the heat and strain the egg and cream mixture, through a sieve, into the soup. Put the pot back on a very gentle heat and simmer, stirring constantly, until the soup thickens ever so slightly. Don't, whatever you do, allow the soup to come anywhere near boiling point, at which point it will curdle. Stir in the finely chopped parsley or chervil.

Check the seasoning and serve hot. Robert Carrier suggests croutons as a garnish, but I liked it just as it was.

Serves 4 - 6. Print Friendly

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

The reason the croutons in this photograph are in the shape of twee little hearts is because I just love this recipe: it's one of the best soups I've ever tasted. The recipe comes from Simon Hopkinson's book Roast Chicken and Other Stories*, and includes poached scallops, but as Johannesburg is hardly the epicentre of scallop production I had to make do without. And oh, my goodness, it is good: creamy, earthy, slightly nutty, with a mere whisper of thyme.

My friend Julia gave me a whole bag of these beautiful Jerusalem artichokes, which she grew from a few tubers given to her by someone at a farmer's market. These aren't easy to find, but greengrocers here in Johannesburg occasionally stock them.

These veggies are the very devil to peel, but you do need to peel them well to prevent your soup being freckled with brown bits. A very sharp, short-bladed paring knife and loud music is the way to go.

I added a peeled potato to this recipe (oh me of little faith; I thought there was too much liquid to too few artichokes) , but I needn't have, because the milk reduces as the artichokes cook. Still, I've kept the potato in this recipe. Do use a good home-made chicken stock.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

50 g butter (about 3 T; 45 ml)
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
300 ml good chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
400 ml milk
220 g Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and chopped
1 medium potato, peeled and chopped
salt and milled black pepper
100 ml cream
a handful of chopped fresh parsley

Heat the butter in a saucepan and add the chopped onions. Cook, over a medium heat, until soft, but don't allow them to brown. Add the chicken stock, bay leaf and thyme, cover and cook gently for 10 minutes. Now add the milk, the artichokes and the potato, season with salt and pepper and simmer until the artichoke and potato pieces are very soft. 'You may find that the liquid has a messy separated look about it, but once it has been liquidised... it will all come back together,' says Hopkinson.

Fish out the bay leaf and thyme and use a stick blender or liquidiser to purée the soup. Strain back into the pot and stir in the cream and parsley. Serve hot, with croutons.

Serves 4.

* This book, co-written with Lindsey Bareham,was voted the most useful cookery book of all time, and it's not difficult to see why. The sequel is just as good.

* Hopkinson says he first saw this recipe in The Four Seasons Cookbook by Margaret Costa Print Friendly

Mexican-Style Sweetcorn Soup: bliss in a bowl, for adults and tots

I wish I could remember who gave me this recipe, because I'd like to thank them very much for it. It's everything I want in a recipe: quick as a flash, filling, nourishing and tasty. Best of all is that it can be spiced to the eyebrows for adults who appreciate heat and crunch, or served plain and creamy to young and picky eaters.

White wine and mustard powder are not traditional ingredients in Sopa de Maiz, but I find that they elevate what is essentially a sweetcorn (and thus very sweet) purée to another level.  A good home-made stock adds lovely depth of flavour: when I have time, I made a chicken stock from scratch using a whole chicken, and add the cooked chicken flesh to the soup.  If you'd like a really rich soup for vegetarians, stir in two cups of grated Cheddar just before you serve it.

Mexican-Style Sweetcorn Soup

6 cups frozen mielie (corn) kernels
2 cups (500 ml) very hot chicken or vegetable stock, or boiling water
3 Tbsp (45 ml) butter
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup (250 ml) dry white wine
1½ cups (375 ml) milk
2 tsp (10 ml) good dried oreganum
1 tsp (5 ml) Hot English Mustard Powder
salt and milled black pepper
a squeeze of lime juice

For adults, add any or all of the following, to taste:
green chillies, finely minced
red chilli flakes
a few shakes of Tabasco sauce

To serve:
grated Cheddar
sour cream or plain white yoghurt
guacamole
finely sliced spring onions
finely chopped tomatoes
chopped fresh coriander
fresh lime wedges

Put the mielie (corn) kernels, still frozen, or thawed if you have time, in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Pour in the hot stock or water and process to a thick, creamy purée. If the mixture seems too thick, add a little more stock or water. Melt the butter in a large pot, add the garlic and cook for a minute, without letting the garlic brown. Pour in the white wine and bubble briskly for five minutes, or until the wine has reduced by half. Now add the puréed sweetcorn mixture, milk, oreganum and mustard powder. Stir well and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam as it rises.  If the mixture seems too thick and is bubbling volcanically, thin it down with more stock.

If you're making the soup for adults, add your choice of the ingredients listed above, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Just before you serve the soup, add a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon juice - just enough to give it a pleasant sharpness. Don't add too much, though, or the soup may curdle, and make sure the heat is turned off when you add the juice. If the soup looks a bit grainy, give it a good blitz with a stick blender (or in a liquidiser) until it is creamy again.

Serve in heated bowls, topped with grated Cheddar, a dollop of sour cream or white yoghurt, and  a flurry of crunchy and/or silky toppings. Avocado Whip is gorgeous blobbed onto this soup.

Serves 8. Print Friendly