At this time of year, when the rain seems endless and the days are short, there's nothing nicer than than a bowl of lovely hot soup to warm you up. So we thought we'd post some of our favourite wintry recipes. Soup is also a great way to use delicious seasonal vegetables like leeks, roots and winter greens.
Boil potatoes till cooked, drain and put aside.
Gently fry the leeks in the olive oil, till soft (use a soup pan).
Add cooked potatoes and vegetable stock to leeks.
If you're using cream, stir it through the soup now. Or swirl it on top, once you've served it up.
This soup can be blended or served with the vegetables whole.
Cutting bread into small cubes, gently heating 2 tablespoons of olive in frying pan, adding the bread, sprinkling with salt and pepper and turning gently, until it's golden and crispy all over.
3-4 tablespoons of non dairy cream or unsweetened non dairy milk (choose cream for a richer soup).
Gently fry onion in olive oil, for 5 minutes.
Add garlic and ginger and continue to gently fry until veg is soft but not brown.
Add garam masala and stir continuously for 2 minutes, to cook off the spice.
Add parsnips and stock, bring to the boil, then turn down heat and simmer until the parsnips are soft.
Allow to cool slightly, add cream or milk, then blend.
This makes about 8 to 10 pancakes. Easily doubled.
Melt the coconut oil in a small pan over very low fire. Mash the banana in a bowl. Put in the melted coconut oil and the vanilla essence.
Pour a little bit of sunflower oil into a frying pan (a small one will do) set over a medium heat. You want a good quality oil like Clearspring's, as the oil needs to be really hot and a non-organic oil will taste bad. When the oil starts to smoke, pour in a ladle full of the batter. Work the batter around the pan, so you get a pancake that is about 20cm in diameter (8 inches). As we are using self-raising flour, they will rise a bit. When the edges start to brown, flip the pancake (a metal spatula works best). The underside should resemble the surface of the moon. If you want to fill the pancakes, put the cheese and/or fried mushrooms on one half of the pancakes, use the edge of the spatula to score the pancake in half, and fold over.
You want to keep the pan really hot (without overheating it), so once one pancake is finished, you want to put a little more oil in straight away, and start making the next one.
Our favourite toppings are maple syrup, blueberry spread, lemon and sugar, or strawberry spread non dairy cream. In the summer, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries are good. We recommend Meridian fruit spreads as they are sweetened with apple juice.
Cut off the heads of the squashes, keep these for the lids.
Fry the sliced leek with the herbs in olive oil, add sliced onion, then the chopped garlic and finally the sliced chestnut mushroom.
Add the tomatoes, the Marigold stock and the soaked mushrooms.
Roughly chop the nuts and add to the cooked rice together with the ground almonds.
Once the squashes are pretty much cooked, take them out and put the stuffing in. Grate the mozarella on top, put the lids back on and return to the oven for the cheese to melt.
We served this with organic Robinta roast potatoes (scrub clean, cut into smaller pieces, rub with olive oil and salt, put into top of oven until done) and local organic curly kale, steamed and tossed in olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt.
Stop eating before you explode.