It's about that time were the squashes are coming into season again! Here's an absolutely delicious recipe to help most of the upcoming seasonal produce.

Ingredients:

6 cups of diced organic pumpkin (or squash i.e. butternut)
2 medium sized leeks (finely chopped)
1 clove garlic (pressed or finely chopped)
200g block of coconut
1 heaped teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground corriander seed
small chopped bunch of fresh corriander
table spoon of tamari (or enough sea salt to taste)
filtered or spring water
A sprinkle of Love

How to make it:

1. Lightly saute the leek and garlic.
2. Add the pumpkin along with enough water to cover the contents in the cooking pot
3. Bring to the boil, and then turn down to simmer gently for about 30 minutes
4. Whilst it is simmering add the fresh herbs, ground spices, tamari/salt
5. Roughly chop the coconut block and add to pot.
6. Allow the delightful aroma to flood your home.
7. Add a sprinkle of LOVE (for extra flavour!)
8. Blend altogether to make a thick creamy soup (if you don't have a blender you could always use a potato masher, to roughly press through the soup, allowing the squash to thicken the preparation).
9. Enjoy!

We made this on friday night and thought it well worthy of sharing. An excellent way to make tasty use of cauliflower, which seems to be in abundance at our local wholefood cooperative right now.

Creamy cauliflower, coconut and nutmeg soup

Ingredients:
1 large cauliflower
1 large onion
1 large potato
200g creamed coconut
Table spoon olive oil
1 heaped tsp ground nutmeg
handful of chopped garden herbs
(rosemary, lemon thyme, parsley with a few sage leaves)
1 tsp sea salt
Water (approximately 1.5 litres or enough to just cover the ingredients when in the cooking pot)

How to make:

Finely chop the onion. Chop the cauliflower into pieces and the potatoes into half inch cubes.

Heat the oil in a large cooking pan.

Saute the onion for two minutes and then add the cauliflower stirring often over a five minute period.

Add the potatoes and then add the water so that the ingredients are just covered.

Toss in the herbs and sea salt and allow the contents to come to the boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and allow it to cook for 20 minutes. Add the nutmeg during the cooking period.

Once thoroughly cooked blend contents (this works well with a hand blender) to make a thick creamy soup.

Finely chop the remaining parsely and use it to garnish each bowl of soup as you serve.

Here as requested Trin! Lol Sophx

Easy-peasy Sweet Mama Soup (serves 4-6 peeps)

Ingredients:

1tbsp sunflower oil
2 onions finely chopped
450g Sweet Mama squash (or butternut or other!), peeled, seeded & diced
400g can butterbeans, drained
1cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled & chopped
1 pint (600ml) vegan stock (recommend Marigold Swiss Bouillon)
400g can coconut milk made up to 1 pint (600ml) with water
salt & pepper
fresh parsley

How to...

Heat oil in pan & fry onions for 5 mins
Stir in squash, beans & ginger
Cook for 5 mins stirring occasionally
Add stock & coconut milk
Season with salt & pepper
Bring to boil
Reduce to low & simmer for 30 mins
Whizz with a blender until smooth for a creamy soup
Garnish with fresh parsley for posh presentation

xxx

Thank you Sophie! Your soup was absolutely delicious! I was so happy you brought it to share at the weekend pot luck. Highly recommended.
x

Delicious Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:

Five sweet potatoes (or about 1kg/2lbs depending on size)
One large onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tin tomatoes
50g creamed coconut (or between half and full tin of coconut milk)
1 dessert spoon mild curry powder
1 tsp sea salt
large handful of fresh basil

How to make:

Finely chop onion and crush or finely chop the garlic and add to a large soup pan (you may like to lightly saute this with a little olive or coconut oil before you add the other ingredients).

Dice the sweet potato and add to large soup pan.

Add the creamed coconut (roughly chop it, size doesn't really matter as it will melt in).

Add enough water to just cover the ingredients of the pan.

Add the tomatoes, curry powder and sea salt.

Bring to the boil and allow to cook until the sweet potato begins to fall apart. This may take upto half an hour. Cooking longer is fine too.

Stir regularly towards the end of the cooking period to form a thick creamy soup.

Take off the heat and stir in the fresh basil (roughly chopped), saving a little for garnishing purposes.

This is ideally served with fresh organic spelt bread. We enjoyed it will home made grilled flat bread.

I made this recipe the other day (adapted from Pamela Michael's Edible Wild Plants & Herbs) from some wild rosehips I picked and it was delicious and refreshing to make something from rosehips which doesnt involve lots of sugar! I used the leftovers to flavour some veggie cottage pie - its quite similar to a tomato flavour and I think would be good in recipes that use tomato puree or tinned tomatoes!

I loved picking the rosehips too, they are like beautiful crimson gems twinkling in the autumn sun

So first make juice from the rose hips:

Simmer 0.5kg rose hips whole with stalks removed with 1 pint water for 1 hour, mashing occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Drip through muslin overnight to give highly concentrated juice. (I briefly mixed the pulp a second time with a little more hot water and *gently* squeezed through the muslin to get the most of the juice out - this yielded about a pint of juice)

Then use the juice in the soup:

150 ml / 0.25 pint of rose hip juice
Small amount of olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot
Corn flour / Arrowroot to thicken (make into a paste with water then add slowly to achieve required thickness!)
1 pint veggie stock (my preference is Kallo Organic Very Low Salt)
1 blade of mace / pinch of ground mace (I used nutmeg as I didn't have any mace but would like to try it next time)
Shoyu & pepper
1 tsp veggie Worcester sauce

Thinly slice onion and carrot and gently fry in oil for 5 minutes.
Stir in rose hip juice and stock and bring to slow simmer. Add cornflour a bit at a time to thicken.
Add mace, shoyu, pepper and Worcester sauce.
Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes...

It would be great to hear of any experiments with different flavours! As the soup is quite tomatoey in taste, perhaps some basil would work! Or spices? ...

For 1 portion:
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 garlic clove
handful of chopped parsley
1/2 lemon's juice (right before eating)
1 tea sp basil (spice)
1 table sp oregano (spice)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup of water
1 "tiny" red hot pepper (optional or some kind of hot pepper spice or sauce will serve as well)

OK!!
You have this unpleasant feeling in your throat and nose and it seems you're going to get sick..Now is the time for a "stinky" but healthy 5 minutes tomatoe soup

Put 1 cup of water in a pot. Bring it to boiling point.
Make a small cut in a pepper and put it into the boiling water (low fire)..If you use a spice or a sauce instead, then you can add it with the rest of the ingredients.

Cut the onion to 8 pieces, cut the tomatoes to small cubes, sqeeze or chop the garlic, put them in a boiling water on low fire, stir, add basil, oregano and parsley (and hot spice if not a pepper).
Stir and turn the fire off.
Put the soup in a plate, add olive oil and lemon juice and have a nice "illness killer".

Note: if you're under pressure, a little nervous, angry and not "surrendering" at all,if you have a high blood pressure, acne or high acidity in your stomach - please, ignore the hot pepper!!!

Ingredients:
1 eggplant (big)
4 potatoes (medium size)
1 onion
1 head of garlic (~8 cloves)
Parsley root or handfull of leaves
1 cup soy/rice/oat etc milk
1/2 a cup of whole rice
2-3 table spoons of oil (olive/coconut/sunflower)
1-2 table spoon of almond butter (optional)
10-12 Portobello mushrooms (or champignon/shitake etc) - of medium-large size - cut them in any shape you like.

Spices:
salt to taste
1 table spoon of agave/maple syrup
black pepper
nutmeg powder - 1/4-1/2 teasp
cardamom powder - 1/2 teasp
ginger powder (optional)
white pepper - 1/4 teasp
cumin powder - 1/2 teasp
water to the desired consistency

Place water in a pot (for potatoes) to boil.

Peel the eggplant and cut it to pieces, peel and cut garlic and onion. Add parsley leaves (the way you can remove them after cooking). Cover with water and cook ~20-30 minutes, until the eggplants are soft and well cooked. (in a separate from potatoes pot).

In the meantime - peel and cut to small cubes potatoes, add them to boiling water. Add rice and cook until the potatoes are soft. Stir and remove the foam occasionally.

Cut the mushrooms.

When the eggplants are ready - remove from heat, don't remove the water, remove parsely leaves and puree everything (like potatoe puree), until it's smooth, but it doesn't have to be totally homogeneously pureed.

When potatoes are ready, remove the water from the potatoes and transfer potatoes and rice to an 'eggplants pot', or transfer everything to a big pot. Add mushrooms. Stir and add soy/.. milk, then add water to a desired consistency - I add ~500-600 ml(I prefer to add already boiled water to prevent foam formation, but also a room T water can be added), spices and cook for ~15-20 minutes.

In the end - 1 tablesp of syrup, oil and almond butter.

This soup is approved by several 'kitchen experiments victims'

Note: for vegetarians, or those who eat eggs - 1 egg (if I use, I use organic) is added and immediately stirred well, keep stirring for a while, then add syrup, oil, etc.

Bon appetite

Thanks Yulia. Sounds delicious.

Perhaps you might like to become an Openhand Chef and treat us to some of your delighful medley's on our retreats

By popular request from the retreats here goes...

Born from having to whip something up incredibly fast a couple of years ago during the Transfiguration course. Always a winner

Serenity Mint Pea Soup by Trinity

INGREDIENTS:
900g Frozen Garden Peas (or if you can sit and shell your own produce by hand even better ;0) )
1 large potato
50g creamed coconut block
Large handful of fresh garden mint (or 1 heaped Table spoon of dried spearmint)
1 tsp Sea Salt
Spring Water

PREPARATION
1. Chop potato (leave skin on) into small chunks
2. Boil potato in large cooking pot for ten minutes with salt
3. Add frozen peas and bring back to the boil, adding enough spring water to just reach the top of the peas
4. Add mint
5. Allow to simmer for a few minutes once boiling again.
6. Blend thoroughly with a hand blender

Thank you Trinity for sharing this, i can't wait to try it! x