Recipe Broccoli, Apple and Peanut Soup

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I have a very old cookbook, one if the first, if not the first that I ever purchased for myself. We needed to cut costs. We were just out of university, my then fiance, now husband had just landed is his first job (accidentally, but that's another story). We were broke, living in a one up one down property against the railway line in Woking, Surrey. When a train went passed (which was all too frequently) you couldn't hear the tv, you couldn't hear the phone ring, or anyone talking on the phone, or in the room. Life just stopped until the train had passed. And so I ventured into a bookshop to look for vegetarian soup recipes. I found just 1 book that meet those requirements, but only by asking. They had to get it in for me. It was American, had measurements in it that meant nothing and a new language of veg and pulses to learn. It was a mystery and we ended up writing alongside the recipes we made what the weights were, and what the English UK names of vegetables and pulses were. Great northern beans, garbanzo beans, eggplant, zucchini. But despite those challenges (and in the early days they really were challenges with no internet available to look things up on) the book had some wonderful recipes in it even if the portion sizes were just a mystery to me.

Adapted from Soups for All Seasons by Nava Atlas
Serves 6 (ish)

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2-3 medium carrots, sliced
2 medium heads of broccoli, chopped
2 medium apples, peeled, cored and diced
1½ L vegetable stock
75 ml dry white wine
1 tbsp good quality garam masala or curry powder
⅔ cup natural peanut butter (unsalted is best, and smooth not crunchy)
Juice of ½ lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
  1. Heat the oil in a large stock pan, add the onions and garlic and saute until golden.
  2. Set aside roughly a third of the sliced carrots and about 1 cup of broccoli florets. Put the rest, along with the apples, 1L of stock, the white wine and garam masala or curry powder. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes until the carrots and broccoli are tender. Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter.
  3. Once cool enough to safely liquidise, liquidise in batches before returning to the stock pan. If the soup is too thick, add more of the vegetable stock. Return to the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
  4. In a separate pan, steam the reserved broccoli florets and sliced carrots. Steam until lightly crunchy. They'll continue to cook in the soup.
  5. Add the reserved broccoli and carrots to the soup along with the lemon juice and bring back to the boil. Simmer until the carrots and broccoli are just cooked, season and serve.
 
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The apples come through ever so slightly in this soup, it's not a sweet soup at all. We used Pink Lady because they are one of the cheapest offer here, but I guess you could use any dessert apple. I liked the soup, but it needed a little work. Some more curry powder, more broccoli florets. Don't know about more carrots. It was however pleasant. Hubby wasn't so sure about it, but he doesn't see potential in the same way i do. You could easily make it with any nut butter, but obviously peanut butter is the cheapest. Look for an unsalted, smooth peanut butter for ease and taste. Smooth will mean less issues liquidising the soup (unless you want peanut chunks in your soup, but I think they'll sink to the bottom of the pan) and unsalted will cause fewer problems with seasonings and additives in the peanut buttery itself.
 
I really like the idea of this soup. Peanut butter with apples is something I love, maybe because it's not a blatantly dessert-type of snack. I would probably add a hot pepper, taking it a bit closer to Thailand, but then again I like adding hot peppers to just about everything. I will definitely try making this.
 
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