It has been cold and raining in Brussels for I can’t even count how many days in a row now. The days are also getting really short, you can hardly get a glimpse of the daylight outside the weekend. I have been doing my best to cope with the lack of sunlight, trying not to let the autumn aura influence my mood too much. I find that some of best ways to keep up the positive spirit are physical activity and comfort food. And I have noticed that comfort food at this time of the year usually comes to our home in the form of soups. My favourite soups are for sure cream soups, with one exception – minestrone. Strangely enough, one of the best minestrones I’ve ever had was the one I got in Amico Bio – an organic vegetarian Italian restaurant in London (in an unexpected location - the City), which I strongly recommend. I should pull myself together one of these days and write about all the great food I had during my month in London… But back to today’s soup :)
Now is the perfect time to take advantage of various root vegetables. Unfortunately my local supermarket doesn’t seem to realise that, I wasn’t able to get half of the vegetables I had in mind. They have five different kinds of ‘tomatoes’, but no sign of butternut squash or sweet potatoes… Well, if you can’t get what you want, you have to do with what you can get. Which anyway turned out to be great
Here’s what I used:
2 medium carrots
1 large parsnip
3 small turnips
1 small pumpkin (deseeded)
2 onions
half of fennel bulb
2 leeks (white parts only)
6 garlic cloves
fresh rosemary and thyme
bay leaves
vegetable bullion (around 1.5 L, depending on how many vegetables you have and how thick you want the soup to be)
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Cut all the vegetables into pieces and place them in a large roasting pan. Pour some olive oil over them and mix well, so that they are all well coated with the oil. Add a few bay leaves and thyme and rosemary sprigs, tucking them in among the vegetables.
Roast the vegetables in the oven for about 50 min-1 hour or until soft, turning them from time to time. Peel the pumpkin, remove the bay leaves, thyme and rosemary and place the vegetables in a large pan. Add the vegetable bullion and bring to boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the soup cool down, then blend it. Once blended, heat it up again, seasoning with salt, pepper and some freshly ground chili. Garnish with thyme and serve with some fresh warm bread.
It works miracles, the weather outside suddenly doesn’t bother me that much anymore ;)
