Recipe: A simple spiced carrot soup, with preserved blood orange.

It is half term week and soups are generally the easiest of things to make for lunch as they can always be supplemented with cheese toasties, hunks of sourdough, flatbreads and pastries. Plus it’s a good way of using up vegetables and I always seem to have slightly past their prime vegetables to use up. With that in mind, you can use whatever you like in this soup. A piece of squash will work in place of the sweet potato, you could add a lone courgette, or - as I did last week - add some salad leaves that need using up, just before you blitz it. Just keep the ratio of vegetables and liquid roughly the same.

The garnishes here are optional - nice but not necessary. I buy a crumbly goat’s curd from my local farmers’ market once a month which I add to soups a lot. But a ricotta or some crumbled feta works just as well. One other thing I like to do with the goat’s curd is to spread it on hot buttered toast, then drizzle with some of the preserved citrus - it is such a good combination of creamy/sweet/sour/savoury.

Spiced Carrot Soup

As this soup is blended, you don’t have to peel the carrots and sweet potatoes – just make sure they are clean and blemish free. And you can use a spice blend if you like - just keep it on the sweeter side of the spice spectrum, as opposed to the hot.

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 large carrots, roughly diced

1 small sweet potato, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp dried mint

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp turmeric

75g red lentils, rinsed

800ml water or stock

Juice of 1 blood orange

A small bunch of parsley, roughly chopped

To garnish (optional).

4 tbsp curd cheese, crumbled feta or ricotta

2 tbsp hazelnuts, lightly crushed

2 pieces of preserved blood orange, julienned (see below for recipe)

1 tbsp preserved orange liquid (see below for recipe)

Heat the olive oil in your pressure cooker. Add all the ingredients up to the red lentils and stir for a couple of minutes. Pour in the water or stock and season with salt and pepper. Stir to make sure the base of the pan is clean.

Close the lid and set over a high heat until it reaches high pressure. Keep on a heat just high enough to maintain the pressure and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Add the blood orange juice and parsley to the cooker and blend the contents, using an immersion blender. Alternatively, transfer to a jug blender. Reheat to make sure it is piping hot.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with the curd cheese and hazelnuts. Drape over a few pieces of the julienned blood orange and drizzle with some of the liquid. Serve immediately.

Preserved Blood Oranges

This is a cheat’s version of preserved blood orange which takes 6 minutes to make, rather than the normal minimum of 6 weeks. It is an adaptation of preserved lemon recipe which you can find in Modern Pressure Cooking and works with all kinds of citrus. I always make a variety of preserved citrus this time of year - Seville orange, blood orange, lime and lemon preserves live in my fridge all year long and add zip and flavour to all kinds of things. I find that this method which uses the zest and juice rather than whole fruit is really useful – the zest can be used in exactly the same way as regular preserved citrus, but there is also the added bonus of the salty liquid which makes a great addition to all kinds of things, including salad dressings.

2 blood oranges

1 heaped tsp salt

Pare the zest off the oranges – the easiest way to do this is with a Y shaped peeler. Check the zest over to make sure you haven’t taken off too much pith with it and scrape off any obvious bits. Juice the oranges.

Put the zest and juice in your pressure cooker with the salt. Close the lid and set over a high heat to bring up to high pressure. Adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure and leave to cook for two minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Transfer the contents of your pressure cooker to a small sterilised jar. Keep in the fridge indefinitely. You will find that the liquid will eventually thicken a bit and the texture of the zest will firm up to a soft leather.

A Citrussy Tip

You can get more flavour out of any citrus you have juiced and zested. Simple chop up the shells, put in a bowl and cover with sugar or honey or a combination of the two. The fruit will macerate overnight, dissolving the sugar. The resulting syrup will take on the flavour of the citrus. If you find some of it is still in crystal form after 24 hours, you can help it along by melting over a very gentle heat, but keep this to a minimum as it will add bitter notes to your syrup.