Souper trooper

Smooth operator: carrot and parsnip soup

A few weeks ago, one of my household acquired a new toy in the form of a soup maker. We know that it's perfectly possible to make soup without a one-job gadget, of course, but we had never bothered to try before. It's proved to be an easy, healthyish - and sometimes tasty - diversion.

The soup maker is a fairly small and basic model, with a choice of 'smooth' or 'chunky' programmes. Officially its capacity is 2-to-3 servings, but the 2 must be for people with giant-sized bowls. For a light lunch, it makes 4 adequate or 3 generous portions.

Our most successful effort so far is a carrot and parnip soup: 3 carrots, 2 parsnips, an onion, a potato, a clove of garlic and a tablespoon of frozen coriander. We diced the vegetables fairly small, added veg stock cubes (because we're not fancy) and water and cooked it on the 'smooth' setting. The result looked rather like gravy but was actually delicious.

There is a story to the coriander: it and some frozen ginger had arrived as stray items in our supermarket delivery. We were told to keep them and have been trying to think of good uses for them.

Trying out the 'chunky' setting

Determined to cook some soup that wasn't brown, my latest effort was a green pea soup. As well as frozen peas, this contained two potatoes (for fear it should be too thin otherwise), half a courgette, a bit of leek and a clove of garlic. After cooking on the 'chunky' setting, a quick whizz at the end for partial blending gave it a nice consistency.

"Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!"

The result was pleasant enough but rather bland. I probably made the stock too weak (over-compensating against the danger of too much salt). The dried mint that I'd thrown in on a whim didn't really register.

On reflection, it could have done with some olive oil or creme fraiche added at the blending stage. And a little ham or bacon. Who said soup had to be healthy?

Now to think of a good use for that frozen ginger...