Two Tasty Soups in the Blink of an Eye

You may have been wondering where I have been. (Or maybe not?) Well, I have been here all the time. I have been cooking all the time. I have a huge number of photographs of ‘throw-together’ dishes I’ve cooked which have turned out unexpectedly well, but too often it is late and I haven’t written down what I have done, and then life takes over again in the morning and then hey presto, I’ve forgotten! Certainly forgotten too much to be able to pass on details with any certainty of success...

But yesterday and today, as I prepare to leave for France for a few weeks, I am in the business of being creative with leftovers as I need to clear out the fridge prior to departure on Saturday.  They are so easy that I can actually remember what I did. So here are two soups that I made in a brace of shakes which cleared the fridge and tasted delicious too:-

Sunday Roast Leftover Vegetable and Sausage Soup

 

We had roast chicken on Sunday and sitting out in my ‘pantry’ was the left-over meat and all the left-over vegetables (husband had been in charge of the roast this week and had forgotten we only had one out of three children at home so rather over-catered!). So I peered into the bowl and saw: roast potatoes, broad beans, peas, green beans and some baby sweet corn. There were also about four sausages (himself insists on sausages with his roast chicken…).  In a split second, I decided they would make a rather tasty vegetable soup. 

All I had to do was go to the cupboard where the mixer is, take it out, plug it in. There were brief moments of thought with regard to ‘Do I want smooth soup?’ (in which case use the liquidiser), ‘Or do I want textured soup?’ (in which case just put it in the main chopping bowl). I decided on the latter, threw everything in (including the sausages and roast potatoes and the leftover gravy and onions) and turned the machine on. The blades whizzed everything into a sludgy pulp in two shakes of a dice. All I had to do now was make up some stock to loosen things up – so I made up 450ml using a chicken stock cube and boiling water and put this into a saucepan on the heat. I then scraped the vegetable ‘paste’ into the stock in the saucepan and gave it a stir around and a good warm through and, voila, that was it. Undeniably the quickest soup I have ever made. And one of the tastiest. The sausages, rich gravy remains, stock and all the veg produced a fulsome flavour with absolutely no need to add any extra seasoning. 

Obviously, the amount of stock you add depends on the quantity of leftovers you had in the first place. To give you an idea, I had a total of about your average vegetable dish size of vegetables and 450ml of stock together with the jellified gravy (about one inch left in the bottom of a milk-jug size jug).  But at the end of the day, you can add more liquid if you want to – it’s as you please, and how thick or runny you like your soup.  Just use common sense, really.

Quick Gazpacho Soup

 

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE gazpacho soup. So very summery. So very holiday. And since the sun was out today for the first time in about three months it didn’t seem like a silly idea. 

Again, all this came about as I peered into the fridge. There was a pack of four good size tomatoes, needing eating, for sure. Then I had a couple of red peppers and the dog end of a cucumber. I had a small bag of white breadcrumbs in the freezer, and I had garlic, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, parsley and basil. I decided that would probably add up to about enough to produce something reasonable. 

So I boiled the kettle and put the four tomatoes in the boiling water for a few minutes before draining them and peeling off the skin (score it with a knife when you take it out the water and then it comes away easily). I also removed the dense ‘core’ of the tomatoes before putting them in the main bowl of the mixer (as above).  I took one of the romano peppers and cut it in half, de-seeded it and roughly chopped it and added it to the tomatoes. I also removed the dodgy end of the cucumber stump, then peeled the remained and chopped it up and added it to the mix. I also threw in a handful of basil leaves and parsely before pressing the button on the mixer. I then added the bag (small freezer bag size) of homemade white breadcrumbs (still frozen) and a generous splash of olive oil, three peeled and crushed cloves of garlic and the dog end of a bottle of balsamic glaze (this is slightly sweeter and thicker than normal balsamic, but I’m sure any red or white wine or balsamic vinegar you had in the house would be just as good). I then whizzed it all up again with the addition of a couple of teaspoons of vegetable bouillon powder.  Eldest daughter peered into the bowl and made yuck noises as she hates fresh tomato (will happily eat pasta with a tomato sauce, though: strange, isn’t it?), while I took a spoon and tasted it and made ‘Mm, yummy’ noises. And again, I have to say, it turned out better than I could possibly have imagined given that I’ve never actually made gazpacho soup before. 

So there we are, just a couple of ideas to encourage you to be brave with what’s in your fridge. It’s amazing how easy it is to whip up some tasty, healthy, quick meals with just a little courage and a tiny amount of imagination.