Smoked paprika roast vegetable soup

Winter is soup weather and this year I’ve been experimenting with different new flavours instead of just sticking to my old favourites.  This smoked paprika vegetable soup is one of the winning combinations I’ve come up with.

I used swede in this soup, a vegetable I’ve actually never had before!  Swedes are from Sweden (suprise suprise!) and are a hybrid between a turnip and a type of cabbage.  They are a non starchy vegetable and are quite versatile in how you use them.  They are a good source of vitamin C, and provide small amounts of some B vitamins. They are also a significant source of potassium.  The soup also contains onion, garlic, carrot and pumpkin all roasted to give the soup a rich and delicious flavour.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 swede
1 onion, cut into wedges
3 large carrots500g pumpkin
1 small bulb of garlic
2 teaspoons Moroccan seasoning
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups reduced salt chicken stock
2 cups water

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Peel vegetables and cut into similar sized pieces.  Place on an oven tray, drizzle over the olive oil and sprinkle over the Moroccan seasoning and smoked paprika.  Place the whole bulb of garlic on the tray.  Roast for 35 minutes.  Remove vegetables from oven.  When cool enough to handle, squeeze the garlic from it’s skin and place into a pot. Add the other vegetables along with the stock and water and simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend with a stick blender.

Serve with a little sour cream or natural yoghurt, chilli flakes and coriander.