Beetroot Soup

From A Foreign Flavour, Rose Elliot, Fontana, 1982.

I had some cooked beetroot left over from another recipe so decided to use it up in this beetroot soup. The soup has several extra vegetables in it so I thought I'd also use some roasted capsicum that was also left over.

Firstly I chopped an onion and put it into a pan with a little oil and on a very low heat. I now continued to prepare the other vegetables and add them to the pan, letting them all cook a little. I added a carrot diced, a celery stalk chopped, and a good slice of cabbage sliced.

After about 10 minutes I added two chopped tomatoes and 500ml water and a stock cube. This was brought to the boil and then simmered for another 20 minutes. The beetroot and capsicum were now added and the whole lot pureed. It made a quite thick soup so I thinned it just a little with some water and then tasted it for seasoning. I added a pinch of sugar and some ground black pepper. It did not seem to require any salt.

The soup was served in bowls with a good dollop of yoghurt.

This was a satisfying beetroot soup. It was thick with the sweet richness of the beetroot and though it was not strictly the recipe of the author’s it worked well and was a good way to use up my leftovers.

A Foreign Flavour is an old paperback cookery book that has obviously been on the shelf a long time. It is about the size of a paperback novel and looks just like one. There are no coloured illustrations, in fact, no illustrations at all but it is such a useful vegetarian recipe book. It’s usefulness is obvious from the fact that the first section in the book has come loose from the spine. Rose Elliot’s recipes generally work well, are easy to follow, and down-to-earth without all the fiddly bits that are so often in modern cookery books.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Beetroot Soup

From Vegetarian Supercook, Rose Elliot, Hamlyn, 2004.

Beetroot is such a good vegetable to use. Whenever I have a batch of them I like to cook them all in one hit. I put them in the saucepan, fill it with water then bring it to the boil and simmer them for about 45 minutes. At this stage I turn off the heat and leave them in the water until it cools. That seems to work the trick quite well. I know that baking them will bring out the flavour a little more but it takes a bit more work to do it that way and boiling them does not lose a lot.

I had some cooked beetroot on hand when I came across Rose Elliot’s recipe for iced beetroot soup. I didn’t want iced but the recipe says that it works as well hot.

An onion was fried in olive oil until it was soft. A potato, peeled and cut into pieces, was now added to the saucepan. With the lid on, it was left for another few minutes to cook a little further.

I then added 4 medium sized beetroot, cut into pieces, and a little over a litre of stock and brought it to the boil. The rind of half a lemon was added and the mixture was left to simmer long enough for the potato to be well cooked.

The mixture was now pureed with a stick blender. A little lemon juice was added and the soup was seasoned. It was served with a little sour cream on top.

While Rose Elliot said that this recipe got her a marriage proposal I would suspect that there was a little more behind the proposal than just this soup. It was tasty with the sweetness of the beetroot heightened nicely from the sourness of the lemon juice.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔