At the beginning of January, I decided to go on a health kick. I ate nothing but homemade soup for 10 days before heading back to university. Whilst I did lose weight, the curse of the university eating habits soon overtook me, and I'm now back to the student diet of pasta and toast.
Having said this, my housemates can vouch for the fact that I do still make a lot of soup. It's so easy to do: you can pretty much make soup out of anything. In January I made everything from carrot and coriander to french onion, thai chicken to roasted red pepper. I usually use a lot of root vegetables as staples to thicken soups (think butternut squash, carrots, sweet potatoes and parsnips), and one of my favourites is spicy sweet potato and butternut squash containing cumin and paprika which gives it a warming kick (find a similar recipe here). Check out Sophie Dahl's "From Season to Season" and "Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights" for some frankly beautiful soup inspiration.
Using leafy green vegetables is a great way of getting much needed iron into the diet, and vegetables that can help with this include spinach, broccoli and watercress. I also love peas because they bring a fresh sweetness to soups, and greens like rocket or watercress add a spicy peppery flavour which is really tasty. As I live in a student house I often use dried herbs, as every single live herb plant I've bought from Tescos has shrivelled up and died (I've blamed it on the permanent condensation in our student kitchen). I thought I'd share with you my favourite soup recipe at the moment: pea, broccoli and watercress. Serve it with a crusty roll and some crumbled feta cheese on top and you've got a great little low-calorie lunch to look forward to after lectures.
You will need:
1 small onion (55 calories)
1 clove of garlic (4)
Glug of Olive Oil (or if you're being extra good, substitute with "FryLite") (120)
1 Broccoli 'head' (49)
About 100g of peas (64)
400ml of vegetable stock (18)
A dollop of low fat Creme Fraiche (47)
A handful of watercress (use the pre-bagged stuff) (about 6)
Pinch of dried or fresh parsley
Seasoning
(calorie counts from weightlossresources.com)
Dice the onion, crush the garlic, and lightly fry in the oil until they are a light brown colour. Boil the broccoli for about 6 minutes in another saucepan at the same time.
After draining, add the broccoli to the onion/garlic mix. Add the frozen peas. Lightly fry the vegetables for about 3 or 4 minutes.
Add the stock and parsley, then season. Add more or less stock depending on how thick you want the soup to be. Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer for about 7 minutes.
Pour the mixture into a blender. Add the creme fraiche and the watercress. Blend until smooth.
Voila!
This soup can be kept for a few days in the fridge. It works out at about 360 calories or so per litre, if you use low fat creme fraiche, so is a great healthy option for lunches and quick suppers.
TTFN
x
0 comments:
Post a Comment