Welcome to my recipe page
I love cooking and experimenting with a wide range of ingredients to combine colour and flavour in my dishes.
Here you will find my tried and tested recipes with my own unique twist. Focusing not only on the nutritional value of the ingredients I’m using, but also the vibrant colours and the great taste of this delicious food.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did creating them!
Vegetable Chilli
Vegetarian breakfast
Protein porridge
Savoy cabbage, pasta
Velvety Squash Soup with Super Seeded Soda Bread
This is such a perfect, comforting bowl of soup for these cool, crisp Autumn days.
It has a lovely velvety texture, a hint of nuttiness from the tahini and spice from the harissa and cumin.
The seeded soda bread is made to go along side it for a wonderful lunch.
For four helpings of squash soup take:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
1 teaspoon harissa spices
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons tahini
Pre roasted squash – eg. onion squash, butternut squash about 450g*
750ml vegetable stock
Handful of chopped fresh coriander leaves to garnish, or herb of your choice
Pour two tablespoons of oil into a large saucepan and sauté the onion until softened and just beginning to brown around the edges. Stir in the garlic, harissa spices, ground cumin and tahini. Sizzle for 1 minute.
Cut the roasted squash into cubes and add to the pan and pour in the stock.
Take a stick blender and blitz the soup until velvety smooth or you can tip everything into a food processor. Heat the soup in the pan until it is piping hot and check the seasoning adding salt and pepper to taste.
Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle over the chopped herbs. Serve with a wedge of seeded soda bread – receipe below, and enjoy!
* Caroline’s Tips:
Any time you are making a dish with squash, pre roast them whole on a baking tray in a 200C oven. It will take about 40 – 60 minutes depending on the size of the squash and they will need turning about half way through. Once cooled you can easily scoop out the seeds, remove the skin if you want to and chop them up.
If you want to make this soup more of a hearty meal add a tin of drained cannellini beans at the end.
For 16 wedges of soda bread take:
200g plain flour
300g whole meal flour
75g mixed seeds eg. sesame, sunflower, golden linseed and pumpkin
quarter teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons black treacle
300ml warm water
150m natural bio yoghurt
Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6
Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl. The bran will stay in the sieve so tip that into the bowl, then mix in the seeds.
Spoon the treacle into a measuring jug and add the warm water. Stir until the treacle dissolves, then add in the yoghurt and whisk to blend everything together.
Pour the liquid on top of the flour mixture and use a table knife to mix all the ingredients together until you have a soft, sticky dough and leave for five minutes so the bran absorbs the liquid.
Sprinkle a little flour onto the worktop and a baking tray. Tip out the dough and divide in two and shape into two rounds, handling it lightly like scone dough and transfer them to the baking tray spaced apart.
Bake for about 20 – 25 minutes until the rounds are nice and golden and sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom of the loaf.
Leave the loaves to cool on a cooling rack.
Thank you to BBC Good Food for the Seeded Soda Bread Recipe
Thank you to Abel & Cole for the inspiration for the Squash Soup Recipe