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Hello everyone and happy new year! When I started this blog four months ago I genuinely wasn’t sure if it would still be going at this point but I am happy to say that it’s still going strong. I hope 2017 wasn’t too hard on any of you and 2018 will keep getting better.

Vegetable soups are a fantastic item to have in your cookery repertoire. They are perfect for a quick and easy starter and will impress anyone you cook them for (it doesn’t take much to give them a professional finish). Not only are they healthy, they are very cheap which makes them ideal to cook on a student budget. Once you have the basics down, you can start adding new ingredients to spice the soup up and really start to show off.

Parsnips have been around for thousands of years. They have been cultivated since the Roman era however they were generally interchangeable with carrots back then. The same word (pastinaca) was often used to refer to both carrots and parsnips and back then, carrots were not the orange ones we know today but were either purple or white. If left in the ground over winter, the cold causes some of the starches within the parsnip to break down into sugar giving it a sweeter flavour. For this reason, parsnips (like carrots) were used as a sweetener before cane and beet sugar became readily available.

One thing of note is that fresh parsnips should be handled with care. The leaves growing from the top produce a toxic sap which reacts in sunlight to form chemicals that can lead to phytophotodermatitis. The condition is not an allergic reaction but more of a chemical burn which causes rashes, blisters and can leave skin discoloured for up to two years. Luckily when you buy parsnips from the shop, they tend to have the leaves cut off so this isn’t an issue for most people.

I am a huge fan of soups at university as they can be prepared in advance and then freeze very well. You can pop them out of the freezer and have a meal ready to eat in no more than 10 minutes! I normally use medium curry powder but you can use any strength though I would recommend only putting one tablespoon in if you like a milder flavour and then adjust it to what you like.

 

Curried Parsnip Soup

Cook time: 45 minutes         Serves: 7           Price per portion: 15p

650g peeled parsnips

1 large onion

3 cloves garlic

1 litre weak vegetable stock

2 tbsp curry powder

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 (200⁰C).

Chop the parsnips up into chunks and place on a baking tray. Drizzle over a little oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, stirring half way through.

Finely slice the onion into half moons.

Fry the onion in a large pan with a tablespoon of olive oil.

When the onion has turned translucent, roughly chop the garlic and add that along with a tablespoon of the stock – this will boil off and help cook the onion and garlic before the garlic can catch.

Add the roasted parsnip to the pan and stir through the curry powder and cook for another minute.

Add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat and blend the soup to a homogeneous mixture. Once it looks blended, continue for another minute making sure to get any bits of oil which may float on the top. This will give the soup a lovely creamy texture.

Serve with bread. You can garnish the soup with a drizzle of cream, a sprinkle of curry powder or even vegetable crisps.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe. Let me know how it turns out for you and drop me a tag on Instagram as I love to see what you guys make! If you fancy a sweet treat – why not try you hand at making a Yule Log (they aren’t just for Christmas) or even make yourself a three course meal starting with parsnip soup and progressing to a rich Beef Wellington for main?

Have a good one and I’ll be back next week with a recipe for delicious, crunchy brandy snaps!

H