My Best Thick Soup

This is for Les

Makes around 7 servings

Ingredients:
1.5Kg Carrots (Morrisons usually have these on offer for around 80p for 1.5Kg)
1 x small head of Broccoli
1 x small Swede
6 x rashers of smoked streaky Bacon
4 x tsp Madras Curry Powder
1 x pinch of Chilli Flakes (optional)
1 x tsp Fennel seeds (optional)
1 x tsp Oregano (optional)
2 x Kallo organic Beef stock cubes - or chicken or vegetable stock if you like.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Method:
1. Break up the stock cubes and put them into your largest pan/soup tureen. Add about 1 litre of boiling water and stir until broken up/all mixed well.
2. Add the Oregano & Chilli flakes.
3. Chop up the carrots, swede and broccoli into small pieces. I usually use a mixer to do this as its quicker. Add the vegetables to the stock.
4. Top up with more water if necessary.
5. Place the saucepan onto the hob and bring to the boil. Once boiled allow to simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Remove from the hob and allow to cool before using a hand blender to puree all of the vegetables. Alternatively you can spoon the veg into a mixer and do it that way except it will take longer as it wont all fit in one go.
7. Add the fennel seeds & stir in. If the soup has cooled too much return it to the hob and allow it to reheat to serving temperature.
N.B The soup should be nice and thick once blended.
8. In a frying pan add the bacon in batches with a little oil and sprinkle a small amount of curry powder over the rashers as they cook on both sides. Once cooked, put aside and add the rest of the bacon to the pan and repeat with the frying and the curry powder.
9. Once all the bacon is cooked, using scissors, chop up the rashers into medium sized pieces and divide them up into the soup bowls
10. Spoon the hot soup over the bacon.
11. Serve with crusty bread.

I got the basis of this recipe off my sister Madeleine. She used Italian bacon which goes nice and crispy but mine is the cheaper version, and I add the curry powder as the kids love the flavour.

Essentially you can use whatever herbs, bacon or veg you like, or none at all except the carrots and just make it a carrot soup - Its all good and does the 4 of us for a Saturday evening meal plus my eldest son for a few lunchtimes during the week.