White Garlic Soup with Almonds

From Eat Your Veg, Arthur Potts Dawson, Mitchell Beazley, 2012.

In a small bowl I placed 76g blanched almonds and just covered them with milk. They were then left for an hour to soak.

After the hour I took the almonds out and placed in the milk two slices of white bread that had had the crusts cut off. I cut the bread into smaller pieces to fit into the milk in the bowl.

While the bread was soaking in the milk I peeled two garlic cloves and added them to the blender and gave them a whirl. The bread had soaked up the milk by now so it was added and given another whirl to blend it all to a paste. Keeping the blender going I added about ¼ cup olive oil, a tablespoon cider vinegar and 150ml water. The mixture by now resembled a thin cream. It went into the refrigerator to chill.

Before serving some almond pieces were dry fried until they became a little brown. They were sprinkled over the surface of the soup when it had been poured into bowls.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised that a garlic soup would be so strongly garlic—but I was. The soup was creamy with the wonderful crunch of roasted almonds but the raw garlic was harshly overpowering. The recipe does state that the bread mellows the garlic. I’m not so sure about that.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Beetroot Soup with Cumin and Coriander

From Eat Your Veg, Arthur Potts Dawson, Mitchell Beazley, 2012.

With three beetroots in the refrigerator I thought I’d give this recipe a go even though I had recently made another beetroot soup.

Into the pot with some olive oil first went the beetroot peeled and cut into largish cubes. Also in went a red onion cut up similarly and three stalks of celery also cut up. After sautéing for about 10 minutes I added a chopped garlic clove, a sprinkling of cumin seeds and about the same amount of chilli flakes. The sautéing went on now for another 10 minutes.

I now added about 100 mls of vodka and about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar. Once this had almost all evaporated I added a litre of stock and let it all cook until the vegetables were tender. At this stage I added a couple of tablespoons of mascarpone. The recipe called for crème fraîche but only having mascarpone I thought this would be a good compromise. Some chopped coriander also went in. And the whole lot went in the blender to be churned until smooth.

This turned out to be one of the better beetroot soups that I had tasted. With the added flavourings from the spices it had a bite to it that other similar soups did not have. It also looked startlingly vivid on the plates. I did find that it went better the next day when I had strained it through a sieve.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔