Sweet potato and coconut soup

I invented this soup for lunch. I should say now that the only reason I weighed everything was so that I could write the recipe down for you – left to my own devices I just bung things in.

Ingredients 4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed 1/2 giant onion (500g! by all means use less :), chopped 750g sweet potato, peeled and diced 3 large carrots, peeled and diced 1 heaped tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg and ground coriander 1 litre hot vegetable stock 160 ml coconut cream Salt and pepper to taste Veg oil for frying

Instructions I tend to prepare my vegetables while I’m cooking, which means I start by sorting out the onions and garlic, then set those frying in a little oil while I chop everything else up. You may prefer to have everything ready to go before you start. Either way, step 1 is to fry the onion and garlic until they start to soften.

Then add in the carrots and sweet potato and fry those for a couple of minutes, then add the spices. Pour in the vegetable stock to cover the vegetables, then leave them to simmer for 10 minutes or so.

If I want a smooth soup then at this point I turn off the heat and let the vegetables finish cooking in the residual heat as the pot cools down. Once it’s cooler I put the soup in the blender (have you ever had the lid come off the blender so it sprays boiling hot soup everywhere? It’s not fun). Then I reheat the soup to serve.

If you want your soup chunky then simmer until the vegetables are cooked right through.

If you stop here, and just make sure the seasoning is right, you have a perfectly nice sweet potato soup. I stirred in a can of coconut cream, which combines with the spices to bring it to a whole new level – but of course if does add considerably to the calorie count. Yummy, though