Kev's Kitchen: Winter Warming soup with a Guy Fawkes Bang.

When I first went into catering I worked as a pot washer at a pub in Northumberland. Having been used to a canny wage doing photography and then washing dirty pans and scraping squashed veg from customers plates all for £4.15 an hour was a very humbling experience. It was a split shift during in which I would go home smelling of stale vegetables and fall asleep 20 minutes before I would have to go back to work. My feet and my back would hurt as I had been used to spending more time driving a car than a kitchen broom.
I did this for 3 months up to new years eve and it was while cleaning the walk in freezer in my coat and gloves at 11.45 pm just 15 minutes before everyone started singing auld lang syne and celebrating the start of another year that I decided that catering was not for me.
I went back to taking photos and had 3 months in the new year taking press shots for the Kia motor company as they were launching a lot of new cars that year.

This is a corner I used for a lot of action shots when working as a snapper. Its on top of Beachy Head near Eastbourne. I used my cousin Nigel as my driver. He is a top bloke.

Although I enjoyed doing the work for Kia I still felt that I was still doing the same old job and was also desperate to come back home to the North-east and try again to work as a cook.
So I sold my house and moved back up North. I did not want to work in a pub but wanted a more gentler introduction to catering where I knew I would have to start at the bottom doing cleaning but also wanted to learn some basic cooking skills and kitchen etiquette in return for smelling of fairy liquid !
So I was lucky enough to find a newly opened farm shop called The Moorhouse Farm shop in Stannington just off the A1 near Morpeth.
Victoria and Ian who own the shop are part of a family of farmers who have pigs, sheep and cows on a farm out on the Hexham road from Newcastle. The pork they sell is second to none and if you get chance to stop by and buy some of their porkie treats I would do so.
They have a cafe as part of the farm shop and it was there I met Sue who was the Head cook.
To say Sue and I had a fiery relationship would have been an understatement. She used to make my life hell sometimes. I think some of it was just testing me out to see if I had the mental toughness to work in a hard profession but with my charm and wit I turned her around (Ha ha !) and she is someone who I learnt a great deal from in the end. Sue had changed careers quite late like me and had worked as a Head chef in Hotels and what stuck me most was that her food always had a lot of flavour in.
She used to taste everything except when she was dieting (not that she really needed to it was just a Monday woman thing ! Ha ha ! ) then I was given the responsibility to taste and season accordingly.
Sue taught me cake making, scones, terrines, basic cooking recipes and everything else you would expect to learn in a lovely homely farm shop cafe kitchen.
However the best thing she taught me was how to make basic soups. Just about every professional kitchen from Mr Ramsey's empire to the little greasy spoon down the road has a soup on the menu admittedly of varying degrees of quality but if you can make a good soup then you can transfer that skill to any kitchen you end up working in.
So with the cold weather coming here's a little soup recipe.

Roasted Winter Vegetable soup.

1 stick of celery thinly sliced.
2 carrots grated.
3 garlic cloves
2 Red Onions roughly chopped.
Half a Celeriac roughly chopped.
Half a Butternut Squash roughly chopped.
2 parsnips roughly chopped.
2 knorr Vegetable stock cubes.
1 tablespoon of dried Rosemary.
1 litre of water.

Place the Red onion, garlic, Celeriac, Butternut squash and Parsnips in a tray. Pour a good glug of olive oil over the vegetables and garlic. Mix the lot together making sure all the oil coats the vegetables. Then sprinkle the Rosemary over the vegetables and season well. Oiling the vegetables first means the seasoning and the Rosemary will stick to the vegetables and not drop on to the bottom of the tray.

Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes until they are soft. Not turning to mush when you squeeze them just plenty of give.

The Timer is timing ! sorry Fred ha ha !

Heat a sturdy bottomed pan Saute off the carrots and celery.

Add all the contents of your roasting tray into it.

Boil a kettle and pour about a litre of water on to 2 vegetable stock cubes in a jug to dissolve.

Pour the liquid into your pan of carrot , celery and roasted vegetables.

Simmer for 10 minutes and then pour the mix into your blender.

I love my upright blender. Its a pain to clean but it just gives me more POWER !

Blend the soup till you get a nice smooth puree. With my upright blender I do not need to pass the soup to get rid of any bits through a sieve unlike with a stick blender.

Pour back into the pan and check the consistence. If its too thick add more water until its how you want it. If its too wet.... erh start again...ha ha !

Check the flavour if it needs more stock add it but chances are it just needs seasoning.

This really is a lovely thick warming soup which would make you glow more than the Paper lad off the old Ready Break advert ! It will keep you warm while you watch your Husband or Dad set fire to his shed with a badly positioned firework hanging out of a milk bottle on November 5th !

If you want to add chili to it to give it an even more warming kick then add it to the saute stage with the celery and carrot.

I like to serve it with my new best Cheese friend Snowdonia Red Devil and croutons.

Unlike a lot of Chili cheeses that seem to be just a lame cheese with a load of chills added to it this little baby from Snowdonia Cheese Company is rich and creamy and has a lovely heat to it. I recently brought some on line for £3.25 a puck !