Simple vegetable broth

I love soups during the autumn, winter and spring and come to think of it also during the summer. Soups are so versatile, thick, broth like, chunky, smooth. I love using what ever I have available to make a new soup. The season dictates the vegetable content and beans, lentils, and other proteins can add heartiness and a filling aspect.

For this soup I happened to have some beautiful French flagole beans, Chinese cabbage and sweet potato.

Serves 5

Ingredients

1 yellow onion

1 courgette

200g dried beans (I used flagole) - soaked for 8 hours water in water OR 1 tin white beans (400g)

6 halved cherry tomatoes

2 celery stalks

1 sweet potato

1/3 fresh chilly fruit

1/3 Chinese cabbage

1,5 bio stock cubes (make sure they don't contain lots of E numbers and other un-natural preservatives)

500 ml water

salt & peper

Simple vegetable broth

1. Begin by cooking the beans for 30min, unless you decide to use tinned beans then you can skip this step. The beans need not cook fully through as they will continue to cook in the soup.

2. Peel and chopping the onion, into cubes. 

3. Chop the celery stalks into bite size chunks, and chop the chill finely. 

4. Place the onion and celery in a large soup pan and fry with cooking oil. 

5. While frying the onion and celery, peel the sweet potato and chop into cubes. Cut the Chinese cabbage into larger chunks, each individual layer of the cabbage will loosen and separate in the soup so cutting large pieces initially are better. 

6. Once the onion has softened and glazed over, add the other chopped vegetables and then pour over the water and crumble the stock cube in. Allow to simmer for 20-30minutes. You want the beans to retain their from and the vegetables to have gone soft not completely mushy. Season to taste. 

I served this soup with a Dollop of pesto but it doesn't necessarily need it. It's a very mellow soft tasting soup that ends with a certain sweetness.