Spiced Leek & Sweet Potato Soup

Apologies for not posting in a while. I’ve been busy making countless cookie jar gifts and various balms in the run up to the festive season. These are just from today…

Anyway, after a productive day of jar layering and labelling, I realised that the school run was looming, we had a parents evening appointment and the church prayer meeting, and I hadn’t thought about dinner. It had to be quick, it had to be nutritious and it had to be warming; it’s freezing today in the North West!

I sliced two large leeks and sautéed in a saucepan with some coconut oil and a couple of cloves of garlic. After a few minutes I threw in two diced sweet potatoes leaving the skin on. A teaspoon of ground coriander, one of madras curry powder, salt, pepper and a couple of dashes of lemon juice provided the seasoning. When the spices had had a couple of minutes to cook out I added some stock, tossed in a good handful of frozen spinach and left to simmer until the sweet potato was tender.

Meanwhile I roughly chopped some cavalo nero, sprinkled it with rapeseed oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin seeds and a little ground coriander.

Spread the greens out in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake at 160oC for about 10-15 minutes until crisp.

I love using my nutribullet to blend soups, it makes them beautifully silky smooth.

To serve I mixed some non fat Greek yoghurt with chopped coriander, salt, pepper and a little lemon juice and put a dollop on top of the soup, added a little mango chutney for sweetness, topped with the cavalo nero crisps, some more coriander and some finely chopped red chilli. We enjoyed a little treat of peshwari naan to dunk too. Delicious.

Enjoy!

Nutribullet green Thai curry paste

As you may have noticed from recent posts I LOVE MY NUTRIBULLET! I use it daily for breakfast smoothies but am finding more and more uses for it. One of my favourites is making fresh green Thai curry paste.

In my paste I use tiny Thai chillies, garlic, onion, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, ginger, lemongrass, frozen spinach for an extra hit of goodness, a large bunch of corriander (cilantro), fish sauce and rice wine vinegar, oh and of course salt and black pepper.

I literally throw all the paste ingredients into the nutribullet, some of them frozen, add a splash of water to help it along a bit and blitz it up.

Once blitzed, cook out the paste in a saucepan with coconut oil for a few minutes before adding in a can of coconut milk. Let it simmer, stiring regularly, for about half an hour, then add in veggies of your choice.

On this occasion I added baby corn, red pepper and courgette, but you can add pretty much whatever you fancy. I add the veg at this point because I like them crunchy, but you could add them earlier if you wish. After a couple of minutes add some prawns in. They’ll only take a couple of minutes to cook. Check the seasoning and add in some fresh lime juice to make all those amazing flavours sing. Serve with steamed basmati rice and sprinkle with chopped coriander. Although not traditional Thai cuisine we also had naan bread. Yummy!