I hate wasting food so I was pretty annoyed to find, at the end of last week, that we had loads of curly, wrinkly veg left over. All that care and energy spent sowing, growing, picking, packing and transporting the dratted stuff, and we hadn’t managed to eat it.
Oh, the guilt! I even found myself muttering darkly about wasting the outer leaves of a cabbage and regretting chucking out potato peel.
Obsessive? Probably. But I decided to give ‘Ancient Vegetable Soup’ a go and see how it turned out.
Here’s what I did:
- mixed a pint of hot water with a chicken stock cube, salt and pepper and a couple of dessert spoons of Pesto that was about to go mouldy in the fridge
- brought a pan of water to the boil
- hurled in washed potato peelings, chopped old cabbage leaves, thinly-sliced leftover Broccoli stems and a handful of wrinkled carrots on their last legs
- chucked in a tin of peas for good measure
- simmered until the veg was cooked
- sieved the veg out and mashed it with a potato masher
- put it back in the pan and added the stock
- added a tin of cheap tomatoes and a tin of kidney beans
- heated it back up and served it with crusty brown bread and salted butter
The result? Wow, that was a bit of a surprise. I’d expected something slightly unpleasant but it tasted just like any other home made vegetable soup. The lesson? I’ve learned that where ageing veg are concerned, appearances are deceptive. It might look flabby and sad but it tastes just as good as fresh veg once you’ve completely pulverised and seasoned it! And it lasted me three days’ worth of lunches.
That’s what I call a bargain!
(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sooperkuh for the excellent image!)
