Cauliflower Soup

Now that the weather is nice and wintry, I'm back to my favourite food - soup. I feel soups can perk up the dullest of meals and add interest. They are also a great way to get veggies into the kids, and a low-cal way to fill up. I often have soups as meal-substitutes, along with a crisp green salad.

Cauliflower is not one of my favourite vegetables, because I find its taste is so subtle that it tends to get lost in the flavours of whatever other veggies or spices you cook it with. However, yesterday when I got home from work and raided the fridge, I found a bounty of cauliflower and decided to try a new soup recipe. As always, I have freely adapted the ingredients to suit my cupboard, and the soup turned out wonderful. It has a lovely cheesy taste, for no apparent reason, and yet the flavour of cauliflower really comes through despite the spices. And it takes barely 15 minutes - all that takes for it to be a winner in my book.

Ingredients:

1 cauliflower, cut into large chunks

1 large red onion, cut into large chunks

1 large garlic clove, cut into half

900 ml veg stock

2/3 cup milk

1 tsp mustard powder

1/2 tbsp coriander powder

Handful coriander leaves, chopped fine

Sour cream

Simmer the cauliflower, together with the onion, garlic, mustard powder ( didn't have any so used a tsp of colman's mustard), roast coriander seeds powder, salt and pepper ( I used red chilli powder) in the stock for 10-15 minutes until the veggies are cooked through.

Cool and blend in batches. I'm notoriously bad at blending liquids and can't wait to batch process so I strained the veggies and pureed them and added the stock back.

Put back on heat and add the milk and bring to the boil.

Adjust salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot, garnished with coriander leaves and stems ( I hate to waste coriander - it's so aromatic) and a swirl of sour cream. I didn't have sour cream so added a dollop of whisked yoghurt on top, which worked very well.

This soup is going to get added to my repertoire for a wonderful mix of taste and ease of preparation. I'm sure it'll go well with crusty bread, toasted with a little butter, too.