A Fridge Soup is kind of my favourite,
I like feeling smug in my own Kitchen. Like I’ve somehow shown my damn self who’s boss. Like ‘see… I told you I’d use up all those ingredients you bought’.
I often get asked what some of my best Kitchen tips are. My first is always enough forward planning so you have a structure, my second is have enough embrace for change so you’re not cooking with military precision.
My third is that waste is more often than not avoidable. Leftover vegetables in the fridge on a Sunday will ALWAYS make a great soup.
This is a fact.
This Carrot Soup was in particular quite a delicious use up of vegetables that I thought I’d actually recall the steps to make it proactively at a later date. Even the feta topping was the result of a fridge raid.
Will this recipe break the mould? No. Was it supposed to? No. I was starving. We had got in from a dog walk and I hadn’t done a shop. A warming bowl of soup on the sofa with a glass of wine is exactly what you need sometimes.
And in other news – have you ever dipped a pretzel into soup instead of bread? They’re doing large, salty, pillowy pretzels in Lidl’s now for like 36p. It’s an experience. Do it. Now. Run, don’t walk. I bought 4 and had 1 leftover which went stale so I blitzed it up in a processor and used it as breadcrumbs. Pretzel breadcrumbs? I’m telling you now… a subtle, doughy and nutty salt injection without even trying.
I mean, the recipe here is difficult because you can literally use whatever you have to hand, but this is what I used!
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Throw 4/5 roughly chopped carrots into a large roasting tray. I washed them, but didn’t peel them. Now throw in a de-seeded yellow pepper.
Fling in a roughly chopped courgette along with a leek and two cloves of garlic.
I had a bunch of herbs in my fridge. I wanted to keep some to make a Herbed Feta, so for the soup itself I just threw some finely chopped rosemary in.
Coat everything in the pan with some olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of cumin. Stir everything together and slide in the oven for 40 minutes.
In this time make your Herbed Feta. All you do here is place half a block of feta on a chopping board with whatever herbs you have hanging about (mine was thyme, rosemary and parsley) and finely chop everything up until it resembles white crumbs with flecks of green. Leave to one side.
Once the vegetables have roasted, carefully spoon them into a blender with a vegetable stock cube and a cup of hot water. Blitz everything to a soupy puree.
Pour into bowls. Top with the Herbed Feta. Dip in the pretzel. Enjoy.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 