Butternut, garlic & red pepper soup

This is a simple recipe adapted slightly from the BBC Good Food website and a couple of other recipes that I have read cookery books.

It feels distinctly Xandrian in style in which world I would have flame roasted the vegetables over an open fire before pounding them into a rough soup. If the Collector of Tales has a copy of a recipe scribbled down somewhere in one of his journals, then he hasn’t shared it with me.

However I’m not in that other world and so I have settled for an electric fan oven at 160C! Simple fare for a light lunch to assist me in my quest to reduce weight without the aid of chemicals or special diets.

Overnight I have managed to reduce my BMI to 29.7 and so I can now with satisfaction declare that I am no longer obese according to the NHS web site. Now there’s a comfort and I can look forward to the slog all the way to a 79kg upper limit acceptable weight, somewhere out there on the distant horizon

a little under 15kg away.

Ingredients

• 1 kg butternut squash

• 2 large red pepper

• 2 large onions

• 1 whole garlic bulb

• 3 tbsps (approximately) olive oil

• 2 tsp ground cumin

• 3 tbsp ground coriander

• 2 tbsp rose harissa paste

• 100 ml double cream

• 500 ml Chicken stock

This makes for a very thick soup. You could double the stock or add water to thin it a little and you can of course use vegetable stock instead.

Method

Peel and cube the squash and place on a large oven tray on greaseproof paper.

Peel and roughly chop the onions and red peppers and arrange on greaseproof paper on another oven tray.

Slice the base off the garlic and add to the tray with onions.

Drizzle both sets of vegetables with olive oil and sprinkle over the spices. Place in oven that has been heated to 160C . Roast for about 45 minutes.

When done carefully squeeze out the garlic cloves from the bulb into a large saucepan. Add the roasted vegetables and the stock and the harissa paste.

Blitz with a stick blender until smooth and then add the cream and heat until boiling.

Serve with freshly toasted croutons. The soup sgould be sweet, spicy and rich with a thick texture.

Serves four at about 300 calories per portion ( excluding croutons).

Cost about £8.20 at current prices.