We decided to use some of them and have a nice hearty vegetable soup for supper this evening. Quick, easy and tasty was the remit so here goes.
In a large pan I softened five finely sliced shallots in about 25g of butter. To this I added four medium sized potatoes which had been peeled and roughly quartered, three peeled and sliced onions and a sliced leek. This was all stirred round in the shallotty butter to get everything mixed up. In went a couple of bay leaves, a half a teaspoon each of dried oregano and thyme and some some salt and pepper. A couple of pints of fresh chicken stock (vegetable would obviously work as well but I had the chicken to hand) together with the same quantity of water were added and the whole lot was brought to the boil and then simmered for 20 minutes until all the vegetables were soft.
Once cool enough to handle the bay leaves were removed (don't forget to do this otherwise the soup takes on a certain crunchy note!) and the whole lot was blitzed, using a hand blender, until smooth. You can use a blender unit, obviously, but that creates a lot more washing up!
This was left to cool whilst waiting for The Woo to get in from work via her dad's.
What you have here is a really easy, bulk standard soup base to which you can add virtually anything. Into mine went a diced up swede, a bag of 'top and tailed' chantenay carrots, three chunkily sliced leeks and three diced potatoes. The whole lot was then brought to the boil and simmered until the vegetables were just cooked. If you make sure everything is more or less the same size when it goes in then they should all be fairly evenly cooked.
There's loads left over so whatever The Woo doesn't take to work tomorrow I'll do a bit of a conversion job on for another budget soupy supper.
Bargain!
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