Shortly before Christmas I was struck with an inexplicable desire to make soup. I got Rachel Allen’s new cookery book ‘Rachel’s Food for Living’ as a Christmas present (kudos to Cousin Lou for that one) and luckily it contains five soup recipes. I’ve tried four of the five soup recipes. I started off with Zac’s Aztec soup which is a light tasty soup made with chicken and a little bit of chilli. The interesting thing about this soup is that you make an accompanying salsa (avocado/onion/tomato/lime) which is added to the soup and is really yummy. The next soup that I tried was the Spanish Chorizo and Chickpea soup. This is a good substantial soup with great flavour and is wonderful to have if the weather is crappy because it feels really warming and comforting. The third soup that I made was a French Onion Soup. I had the most gorgeous bowl of French Onion soup in a restaurant towards the end of my holiday in Montreal back in October. Since then I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I would like to make French Onion soup. I sorted of cheated with this recipe, when I read the ingredients I blenched at the thought of using 1.25 kg of onions so I split the ingredients in two and made a half portion of the soup. This soup was delicious but it took fecking ages to make. Chopping 625g of onions left me red eyed and blotchy and the onions need to be cooked pretty slowly for 45-60 minutes. Making the croutons of crusty bread and gruyère cheese was fun and they really made the soup extra yummy. I think I’ll have to make this soup again except next time I’ll use the full quantity of ingredients! The fourth soup that I tried was a Leek, Potato and Blue Cheese soup. There is a great contrast between the mild leek/potato flavours and the strong blue cheese flavour. If you like creamy smooth soups then this is a good one. All the ingredients are whizzed together at the end so there are no lumpy bits. The only one that I haven’t tried is Rachel’s recipe for Crab and Prawn Coconut soup which sounds delicious so I might give that a try soon. I also found a recipe on the ‘Good Mood Food Blog’ for ‘restorative chicken soup’ which looks really good. I think that will be next on my list after the Crab and Prawn Coconut soup.

* I got so excited about the French Onion soup when I had finally finished making it that I took a picture of it (left), umm… having admitted that I should probably endeavour to get out more. :-)