Welcoming Autumn with a warming soup
We love the cosiness of autumn and here in Scotland the season itself is in full swing. The light is deep and rich and the leaves are gold, red and jewel like. It's a season we relish, we cling on to it before the real cold appears.
Soup is a great meal to fill you with goodness and we love this carrot and cardamon soup. Using the cardamon to flavour gives it a slight spice and a warming note. The smells are delicious just from preparing the ingredients; the grinding of the cardmon pods, the scent from jar of bay leaves. And every step of the way children can help, with the cleaning and cutting of the carrots, chopping the celery, choosing the bay leaves, counting the peppercorns and using the pestle and mortar. This soup sums up the flavours and scents of autumn. It's so delicious and healthy, perfect for a cold autumn day.
Ingredients (Serves 4) :
- 400 grams carrots
- 2 sticks of celery
- 1 onion
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 black peppercorns
- 6 cardamon pods
- Salt to taste
- I.5 litre of organic vegetable stock
Peel the carrots and roughly chop. Cut the celery into pieces about 1cm long. Peel and chop the onion. Put the carrots, the celery and the onion into a large deep pan together with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Cook for ten minutes until the onion is soft.
Add the bay leaves and peppercorns to the pan. Using a pestle and mortar remove the seeds from the cardamon pods by carefully bashing them. The kids love to do this and the smell is amazing!
Add the cardamon seeds to the vegetables with the salt and vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 30 minutes.
While the soup is simmering, cut a few strands of chives and snip them into small pieces ready to sprinkle over the soup. Blitz the soup until smooth. Serve hot with fresh warm pitta bread.
A few days before making this soup we had made Anna Jones' smoky chowder with maple-toasted coconut. A recipe taken from her latest book A Modern Way to Eat. It was utterly divine and we had a little pot of the toasted coconut left which we added to the chives and sprinkled on our soup. It gave a lovely added flavour and slight crunch to the soup.
We would love to hear of your suggestions for your favourites soups, so please share!
Happy Autumn!
Vanessa, Helena and Florence x