Soups to mend a broken heart: Hoskers' lentil soup

I'm not saying anyone's got a broken heart. What I'm saying is this soup is the culinary equivalent of Petula Clark's 1965 hit Downtown. This soup mends everything, fixes everything, warms everything and quells everything. This soup pretty much brought me up.

My best friend Rachael's Mum used to cook vats of this soup in a huge pressure cooker at their house over the weekend, when we'd wait in the kitchen to eat bowl after bowl. It would simmer away for hours before being blended into a smooth, rich liquid we'd dip pitta bread and bagels in to. When I moved away from home, the first thing I asked for to put in my new kitchen was a pressure cooker and a blender, so I could make this soup. It's not glamorous or show-stopping, it's delicious, cheap and sustaining.

We eat it before gigs, coming home from nights out, for Sunday lunch, for Monday lunch, for catch ups and for late-night suppers. It freezes well and will keep on the stove for around a day, deepening in flavour after a few hours. I've kept the Hoskers' recipe the same, just switching chicken stock for vegetable stock instead.

Makes enough for six bowls

Ingredients
1 mugful of red lentils, rinsed with a sieve
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
400 ml (or more) of vegetable stock
Few glugs of oil
Salt, pepper, and extra seasoning if you fancy it (chili, paprika, coriander all work well added at the end)

Take the largest pan you can find. Sweat an onion in oil for around five minutes. Add the chopped potato and carrot and stir in. Boil the kettle or prepare your stock so it is ready to pour in. Add the red lentils to the pan, mix in with all the vegetables, then add in the stock to ensure the lentils don't burn to the bottom of the pan. I would leave off seasoning for now until everything is cooked to gauage how the stock is absorbed by the lentils and vegetables.

Allow to simmer for around 30-40 minutes. Check back every 10 or 15 minutes or so to ensure the lentils haven't absorbed all the water. Top up with any leftover stock or water if this happens. Once the potatoes and lentils are cooked through, take off the heat and blend with a hand blender or mixer. Now season to taste, it may need quite a bit of salt to take the bitterness away from the lentils. I like to toast croutons to have along side this, or a huge loaf of bread to tear apart- so bowl up and enjoy.

Thai-style coconut and chili broth

Another ideal rescue recipe for January is this coconut and chili broth, which is perfect if you're looking for something rich, fragrant and spicy. Both lemongrass and coriander have long been touted for their calming and restorative properties when cooked, while chilies are a great source of vitamin C. Ginger is well known for its therapeutic properties, and garlic for lowering blood pressure and helping to fight off colds. Basically a bowl of this is gonna feel good.

Makes enough for four servings
Ingredients
2 tsp vegetable oil
Handful sliced mushrooms
One sliced red pepper
1 chopped chili
4tsp grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, sliced length ways
300ml vegetable broth
1 tin coconut milk
1 tbsp sugar
2 spring onions chopped
1 handful fresh coriander
Juice of 1 lime
1 portion rice noodles

Heat the oil in a wok and add the mushrooms, pepper, chili, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. Cook for three minutes, stirring to ensure nothing burns. Next add the chili, and cook for another minute.
Pour in the vegetable stock, coconut milk and sugar, and bring to a simmer, before reducing the heat and allowing to cook through for 10 minutes.
Most rice noodles will need to soak in cold water first- while they soak, remove the lemon grass and discard. Add the noodles and finally the fresh coriander, spring onions and lime juice, before serving.

Maltby Street Market and spicy squash soup

On Saturday, against my toes' better judgement, I braved the freezing winds with Keelan and Naomi to visit Bermondsey's Maltby Street market and the Ropewalk. Plenty of black filter coffee, stall holders with battery-heated socks and a swift trip to the Kernal Brewery's store meant we were able to stand the cold for a grand total of one hour before heading to the Design Museum to defrost our fingers. 

Still shivering the day after, I made this spicy squash and potato soup with plenty of chili for a perfect snow-day lunch. I didn't manage to save any of the soup back (there seemed to be a continuous depletion of stocks throughout the afternoon...) but this would be great to freeze and defrost for lunches midweek.

Serves about six, or enough for a lot of lunches!
Ingredients

600g potatoes, peeled and chopped
350g squash, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, diced
2 chilis, chopped
1 tsp marjoram
400ml vegetable stock
2 tsp chili flakes (plus a little more for seasoning)
Glugs of vegetable/olive oil
salt
pepper

Sweat the onion in a large pan with the oil. Add in the marjoram, fresh chilies and dried chili flakes. Prepare the vegetable stock, then add the potatoes, squash, seasoning and stock to the pan, and bring to the boil.

Allow to simmer for around 30 minutes, until both the squash and potato are completely cooked through.

Turn off the heat and use a hand blender or mixer to blend the soup to a rich consistency, leaving it as chunky as you like. I added about 200 ml of water at this point to thin it down a little.

Bring back to a simmer, add pepper to taste and you're done.

Super-warming sweet potato, red lentil and chickpea soup

Back from a blustering three-hour bike ride last week, my boyfriend went out to buy the best loaf of bread he could find, whilst I gathered everything tasty in the kitchen into one massive pot. Seasonal, ridiculously filling and warming, this sweet potato soup would make a perfect low-key Sunday lunch- add the spiced soy yoghurt and some warm sour dough bread if you've got hungry friends in tow.

Makes enough for four servings

Ingredients

One sweet potato, peeled and chopped

1 potato, peeled and chopped

1 large onion, chopped small

200g red lentils

1 tin (drained) chick peas

Pinch cayenne pepper

Pinch of paprika

Pinch of tumeric

Around 300-400ml vegetable stock

One chili, chopped small

Handful of coriander, roughly chopped

Seasoning

Few glugs of olive oil

To serve: warm bread and soy yoghurt topped with any remaining coriander and cayenne pepper.

In a large pan, sweat the onion for a few minutes, before adding in both types of potato. Add in the red lentils, chili, spices and seasoning, and mix so all the flavours can begin to combine. Pour in the vegetable stock and allow to simmer for around 20 minutes.

Once the potatoes and red lentils are cooked through, take off the heat and blend with a hand blender or food processor. Now add in the chick peas and half the coriander (saving the rest to garnish on top or to mix in with the yoghurt), season to taste, and serve up.

P.S. If you're on Pinterest, pop over to the Guac & Roll page, where I'll be pinning lots of the recipes I come across, along with plenty of my own photos and works-in-progress from the blog. (Makes for perfect browsing with a big bowl of sweet potato soup too!)

Homemade rosemary plait bread with vegan potato and leek soup

When I was 14, I circulated a petition around an entire school assembly. It wasn't for a change in uniform or longer break times or whatever- it was because I wanted soup for lunch. In the days before Jamie Oliver's coup of the nation's canteens, when Turkey Twizzlers roamed free and the vegetarian option was a spoonful of cheese, I worked out the mark-up on soup would be through the roof for someone that did it properly, and went to see the head chef of school dinners to ask why he didn't. He told me he needed 30 signatures from me, "real names" of people that would actually eat soup for lunch, and then they would think about it. I delivered 207 to him the next day, and soup made its much-awaited debut on the school dinner rota the next week. Unsurprisingly, it was gross: industrial-sized packet soup thinned down with boiling water served in polystyrene cups. In retrospect, I should have just made and sold my own.

Good soup is easy to get right, and here's a recipe I would have used to feed the masses at lunchtime- the bread is fragrant and just the right amount of stodginess to mop up the naturally creamy potato and leek soup.

Makes enough for six

Ingredients
For the soup
1 onion, chopped
6-7 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
3-4 leeks, washed and chopped
500ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
Few glugs of olive oil

For the bread
Sainsbury's Crusty White Bread Mix
Few sprigs rosemary
Olive Oil
Warm water

The bread will need to prove so start by following the instructions on the packet for the bread, adding in the rosemary as you knead it.*

While the bread is being left to rise, begin the soup by sweating the chopped onion in a large pan with some olive oil for about three minutes. I always add the leeks first as I like them to fry a little in the olive oil to start to bring out their flavour. Now add the potatoes and stir through with the oil, onion and leeks, before adding 500ml of vegetable stock. Allow to simmer.

At this point it will probably be time to knock back the bread and knead it again. I chose to do a plait as my bread tin is currently being used to store a vegan haggis (!?) but I think the crusty mix would also work well as individual rolls.

Following the instructions, allow the bread to prove once more and turn the oven on to preheat at the required temperature. Once the bread is ready and in the oven, blitz the soup with a hand blender and season to taste. I love eating the bread almost scolding hot, with lots of pepper to contrast the leek flavour. Lunch for under £3 for 6 portions, and no petitions in sight.

*I feel a major pang of shame writing the words 'follow the instructions'... I am working on some of my own bread recipes from scratch, I promise, just not on chilly, hungover Sunday mornings.

The mighty minestrone

It's bright, it's cold, it's time for minestrone. Perfect for sick days and hangovers alike, I love cooking up a huge pot and just leave it covered on the hob over the weekend. The word minestrone comes from the idea of a big and very substantial soup, and is believed to PRE-DATE the Roman Empire! Woah there. Although there are many recipes using meat stock or leftovers from other dishes, the earliest origins of minestrone are said to be when the Latin tribes of Rome lived off a vegetarian diet by necessity, making minestrone vegan by default, which is truly the best kind!

Makes enough for four

Ingredients
1 pack of Pedon Italian-style minestrone with pasta (or use your preferred pulses and teensy pasta)
3 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped,
2 cloves garlic
Olive oil
1 carton chopped tomatoes
Handful fresh and ripe tomatoes
1 handful chopped basil
Salt, Pepper
Vegetable stock

In a large pan, sweat the onion for 3 minutes in a good glug of olive oil until it starts to go translucent, then add the carrot, garlic and minestrone mix. Add a little more olive oil to make sure everything is covered in it, then pour in around 300 ml of vegetable stock (or enough so it covers the entire mix, with an extra inch of water in the pan- as the pulses and pasta will absorb this). Leave on a medium heat for about 10-20 minutes (as per instructions for the pulses you have used).

While the minestrone is cooking, chop up the tomatoes into small chunks, along with the basil.  Add along with the carton of chopped tomatoes to the soup.

Leave to cook for another 20-30 minutes until the pulses have absorbed all the flavour and the soup has thickened up- season to taste, then eat with plenty of doorstep bread.

Pronto! Perfect minestrone.

Roasted butternut squash soup

The first thing I want to make when I see all the squashes and pumpkins piled up outside greengrocers and in the vegetable bag is soup. Sure, there's plenty of time for risottos and curries, but let's hail in the season of huddling round bowls of warm things in the right way, by tracking down the biggest pot you can find and getting the radio on, a teapot full of English Breakfast and a good hunk of bread to 'sample' before lunch is quite ready.

 Ingredients
1 butternut squash, chopped into finger-size chunks so they roast easily
Handful of carrots- about 3 or 4, chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbsp curry spice (of your choice)
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp ground coriander
1 handful fresh coriander, chopped
300ml vegetable stock
Salt, pepper

Turn the oven up high, about 200°C, and place the butternut squash in a roasting tin with plenty of olive oil, garlic cloves and the dried spices. Cook for about 40 minutes while you make the rest of the soup.

Sweat the red onion in the biggest pan you can find with a lid for about five minutes. Then add the chopped carrots and potatoes, covering in the oil, and then the vegetable stock. Allow to cook for twenty minutes, then season to taste. Check on the squash, and turn down the heat of the soup to a very low heat. 

Once the squash is ready, pour everything into the soup pan including all the oil and garlic cloves. Add the fresh coriander, then blitz with a hand blender or mixer. The result should be a pan full of rich and spicy soup, which I love to top off with croutons and lashings of black pepper.

Wahaca, veganised: Black bean soup

Great transitional piece darling. No, but seriously, I started getting cravings for this hearty, moreish-than-thou soup back in August, and now I know it's going to work wonders right through winter. This is a slightly simplified and adapted version of Thomasina Miers' black bean soup. It's quick, tasty and there never seems to be quite enough of it...

Ingredients
Lots of tomatoes- as you can see from the photo above I was lucky enough to get a mix in the vegetable box, but one large punnet should do the trick. Chop into quarters.
2 garlic cloves, chopped
100ml olive oil
1 onion, diced
1-2 tbsp oregano or marjoram
2 bay leaves
2 chillies
salt and pepper
2 tins of cooked black beans
Juice of 1 lime
800 ml vegetable stock

For the salsa:
Handful of tomatoes, chopped
Handful coriander, chopped
1 red/white onion, diced
1 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp red wine vinegar/ sherry vinegar
1 tsp soft brown sugar

Heat the onion and herbs in a large pan for around 5-10 minutes, making sure the onion stays soft, before adding the garlic. Cook for another few minutes, then add the tomatoes and chillies and season. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, then add the beans.

Stir the beans in the oil and herbs, then allow to cook for a few more minutes, before adding the stock and lime juice and allow to simmer for another 5-10 minutes so all the flavours can mix. In this time you can make the tomato salsa by mixing together the tomatoes, onions and the rest of the salsa ingredients, seasoning to taste.

Blend the soup to your preferred consistency (I like to still be able to see a few bits of tomatoes and beans in there!), then pour into bowls or mugs, and top off with the fresh salsa.