Autumnal Feeling; This Calls For Soup!

Hello from a rainy West Berkshire!

Autumn is definitely here and I'm amazed at just how quickly the leaves are changing colour and falling here. I do think Autumn is a very pretty season, it's probably my favourite season actually for the fact that it's acceptable to wrap up in jumpers and boots, and eat comforting homemade soups and stews. I'm a big lover of proper British food and relish coming home to the smells of the slow-cooker creating a tasty tender stew for us.

I also love making warming soups with all manner of different veg (usually I buy one main ingredient and the rest is leftover veg in the fridge so they work out cheap to make). I got a soup book the other day and it has some great recipes, all very easy to follow too. I didn't own any soup books so this was my splurge this month! It was only £8 when I got it to the tills too, so I'm pleased at that :-)

I love celeriac and it's now in season so I decided I wanted to make a celeriac and leek soup yesterday. Here were the ingredients I used;

• Celeriac £1.30 (when did celeriac get so pricey!?)
• Leek (reduced to £0.30 in the supermarket)
• Carrot (leftover in fridge)
• Onion (£0.60 for a giant one at the local farm shop - half went in soup and half went in a cottage pie I made last night too)
• Fresh thyme (from the garden)
• 2 Bay Leaves (my bay plant in the garden isn't quite big enough to start stealing leaves yet)
• Salt & cracked black pepper (lots of pepper, I love it in soups!)
• 1 1/2 pints chicken stock

When I say a giant onion, I really do mean a giant onion - I'd never seen one this size!

Anyway, I loosely followed one of the celeriac soup recipes I found in my new book but I like making it up as I go along too. I think the recipe wanted me to fry the onions and leek in butter first but I was trying to make this soup as healthy as possible so just chopped everything up and let it cook away in the stock for half hour on a medium heat. It probably didn't even need that long but I was busy making cottage pie portions too.

Celeriac

 

Everything chopped up and thrown in

 

I removed the Thyme stalks and bay leaves once it had finished cooking and then blended the soup. It's quite thick but that's the way I like my soups. It tastes lovely and I've got a flask of it today at work.

 

Finished!

 

Celeriac has a nice creamy flavour as it is but I can see why people like adding cream to these kind of soups. I'm lactose intolerant however so no cream for me! I'm looking forward to making some more soups now that soup weather is here. I'd like to try a pumpkin soup next, but can't decide what else to cook it with... carrot? Any suggestions welcome! I made a lovely parsnip and apple soup last year which was really tasty and froze well too, so I must have a go at that seeing as I have tonnes of apples in the cold cupboard from Jack's Parent's trees.

 

Em x