Hi all,

A few days ago I tried some of my brother-in-law Simon’s veg and polish sausage soup, and really enjoyed it. Today he has been making up a fresh batch with me peering over his shoulder (as much as a short-arse can with a 6ft-something bloke) to learn the recipe.

The basics of the soup are straight forward, and can be altered to cater for what you have in the cupboards. So to start with he chopped up a couple of Polish sausages and browned them off in a large pan with some oil. Some smoked paprika, rosmary and thyme were added. While these were cooking through he cut up a few potatoes and parsnips all with skins on. Onions were skinned, diced and added to the other veg. I do realise that onions aren’t suitable for my knackered innards, however the batch we made turned out about 5 litres of soup, so the onions are diluted to a level that hasn’t caused me any problems. Once the sausage was browned through they were put into a bowl to one side. In the same large pan, he put some fresh oil and the veg. This was stirred periodically over the next half hour over a medium heat. Then a litre of water, some stock, some frozen veg, broad beans, grains and lentils. The whole lot was bought to the boil for another quarter of an hour. He then used a blender to blitz the soup into a smoother consistancy. Finally the sausage was stirred in, heated through and the soup was ready. As I said we ended up with quite a large quantity of soup, far more than we needed this lunchtime, meaning we had plenty to put in the fridge for another time.

As I said its one of those recipes you can adapt to your preferences, dietary requirements and the contents of your kitchen cupboards. At the end it gives you a really decent favourful meal.

Happy eating people

KBO