Autumn 2019Autumn vegetable soup recipe

By Natasha Brown, owner of Brown’s Cakes

Vegetable soup
I like a recipe that can be adapted. When making soup at home, I throw in any vegetables that I have left over and if I don’t have a particular ingredient that’s listed in the recipe, I might just leave it out.

Butternut squash makes a lovely smooth soup and sweet potatoes thicken soup nicely, so I would not leave these out of this recipe but adding any other veg is fine.

You will need:

1 medium sized butternut squash
2 medium sweet potatoes
2 onions
4 carrots
2 cloves garlic
2 vegetable stock cubes
Salt and pepper
Cream (to serve)

There are two ways to make this soup, the first way is to chop all the vegetables and toss them in olive oil. Spread onto a baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C / gas mark 6 for 25 minutes. This creates a lovely caramelised flavour to the soup. If you don’t have time for that, just chop all the veg and place it straight into a large pan.

Cover the vegetables with water, add the two stock cubes and bring to the boil.

Simmer gently for 30 minutes (if you roasted the veg in the oven, it won’t need as long to simmer).

Blend the soup with a handheld stick blender and season with salt and pepper. If the soup is too thick, add boiling water until you have a good consistency.

I like a drizzle of cream on the soup before serving.

Soda bread
I only recently discovered the beauty of making soda bread, and now I think everybody should learn
how to make it. It takes just 10 minutes to mix together, then half an hour in the oven and you have a
fabulous fresh loaf! In the time that the veggies are boiling for the soup, you can have a soda bread
loaf knocked up and on the table piping hot.

To make the soda bread, you will need:

250g wholemeal flour
250g plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
450ml whole milk
Juice of a lemon
Pumpkin seeds

My one piece of advice would be to get all your ingredients, bowls, baking tray, etc. together before you start. Once the milk mixture and the bicarbonate of soda mix together, they will start to react so you need to work quickly to get it all combined and in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 200°C / gas mark 7.

Add the lemon juice to the milk and leave to stand for 5-10 minutes.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Using a rounded knife, stir in three quarters of the milk mixture. Once it starts to combine, add the rest of the milk and stir it all together.

Knead the mixture together to make a dough. Shape this into a ball and flatten slightly by patting it down.

Mark a deep cross with a knife across the top of the dough and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds.

Dust some plain flour over the loaf and onto a baking tray. Place the loaf on the baking tray and pop it in the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes and check it’s cooked properly by tapping the base to make sure it sounds hollow.

Tear the loaf gently to open it up and serve warm with lashing of butter and your homemade soup.

Bliss!