Soup kitchen

Whenever we go to Ikea for lunch, Andre would inevitably ask for soup and meatballs. He loves the soup at Ikea, especially if it's broccoli. It got to a point where I thought, maybe we could try making it at home.

That started our adventures with soup. The first one was broccoli, based on a recipe I got online from All Recipes.

Few recipes are perfect at the first try but this one was. The whole family loved it and then it struck me, this is the ideal lunch option. Like most kids, Andre's least favourite food group is vegetables and it's hard to get him to eat more than a cursory spoonful of greens at mealtimes. By having broccoli soup, he's actually downing a whole bowl of veggies *muahahaha* and more importantly, willingly!

Now on a roll, we went on to experiment with pumpkin soup, another big hit. We brought it to a New Year's Eve dinner party and a friend polished off two bowls. It's a good seasonal choice for year end festivities.

Next, we tried mushroom soup. It's excellent, similar to the quality you get in restaurants, but since mushroom is not a veg, we don't make this one as often.

Lastly, we tried a tomato soup recipe and wowsers, this is Kenneth's and my favourite. I modified the original recipe quite a bit to include more veg and exclude any fancy equipment like food mills, but it still works. Tangy and flavourful.

What I've learnt from this whole exercise is that soups are not as difficult to make as you might think, and if you serve them as a meal, it's basically a one-pot event. (The washing up is another story though, since it involves the blender.)

We like to serve our soup with Delifrance hard rolls, which you can buy frozen, 6-in-a-pack from Cold Storage. After tasting these soups, we can never go back to the Campbells or Heinz canned soups. Even if you can overlook the sodium and preservative overloads, the flavours pale in comparison to the homemade ones.

I think it's too much to try and post all four recipes here, so I'll just give you a couple. I changed most of the recipes slightly. For example, I don't like buying cream as I never use it up, so any recipe with cream, I changed to milk. I also cut out any complicated steps. The broccoli soup however, is so good I didn't make a single alteration. So here's the link to the recipe. If you don't want to eat your vegetables, drink it!

And here's my recipe for my favourite, the tomato soup. Enjoy!

Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

4 cups chopped tomatoes
1 slice onion
4 cloves garlic
2 cups chicken broth (we use Swansons)
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp thyme or basil
1 tsp salt
2 tsp white sugar

Recipe:

1. Combine tomatoes, celery, carrots, onion, garlic and chicken broth in a pot.
2. Bring to a boil and gently simmer for about 20 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and puree mixture in a blender (careful - mixture is hot!)
4. In empty pot, melt butter over medium heat.
5. Stir in flour to make a roux and cook until medium brown.
6. Gradually whisk in tomato mixture, keep stirring to ensure no lumps form.
7. Add thyme or basil, sugar and salt.