Recipe corner: carrot, tomato and feta soup

A beautiful soup is a wonderful thing and I haven’t posted a soup recipe for AGES.

It was partly, perhaps, a reaction to Weight Watchers (where zero point soup, aka joyless, fatless veg purée) is heavily endorsed that I had all but stopped making the stuff. But one day, after yet another disappointing pot of ready made supermarket offering, fishing around for the one, desultory chunk of chicken in what purported to be chicken soup, D pointed out that we should really go back to doing it ourselves. He’s right; given that one only has a finite number of meals, why waste your time on crap?

Here then is a delicious, sweet and summery concoction, courtesy of Nigel Slater. I did mine slightly differently to him in that I blitzed the carrot element to be quite silky smooth (I like a smooth soup) and then stirred the tomatoes through to add texture at the end. The carrots were the mellow backdrop to the peppery, sprightly basil flecked tomatoes with a final zing from the feta. Lovely. I must admit, I also used a bit less oil than he recommended. Weight Watchers habits die hard...

Ingredients

Tbsp olive oil
Large onion, roughly chopped
400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
Litre of very dilute veg stock (I used a tsp of Bouillon powder in total)

Tbsp olive oil
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
Garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
Small handful basil leaves, shredded

To garnish:
120g feta cheese, crumbled
Basil leaves, torn
4tsp olive oil

Serves 4

Place a nice, large saucepan over a low heat. Warm the oil and then cook the onion until pale and soft. Then in go the carrots with a hefty whack of salt and pepper to cook slowly for a further 10 minutes. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble away for half an hour until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before blitzing to a smooth purée with a stick blender (or in a processor). This can all be done in advance.

Shortly before serving, put the quartered tomatoes in a second pan with the oil and garlic and cook down, over a low heat, for 10 minutes or so until you have a sweet mush. Season, stir through the basil and then add to the carrot mix and heat the whole gently.

To serve, garnish with the crumbled feta, some torn basil and a drizzle of olive oil.