Self care is something I don’t really excel at, to be very honest I am totally rubbish at it! I tend more to the eat to fuel mode, a common trait of chefs as we prepare food on a daily basis as a job we don’t really feel excited all the time to get home and then prepare food for ourselves, it would be like working as an accountant at a big law firm and then coming home everyday and creating spreadsheets for fun. Don’t get me wrong there are days I do enjoy creating something delicious, nutritious and beautiful but that is definitely NOT everyday. But often enough, not preparing fresh food means meals lacking nutritional balance, there are only so many honey and Marmite sandwiches I can eat and not feel exhausted, thirsty, bloated and yearning for green soup. Those are my guilty pleasures, now you know my darkest secret!
But last week I was kind to myself, I nurtured my soul and my body with my favourite autumn/winter food; SOUP! What an amazingly fabulous way to eat. Simple, hydrating, nutritious, easy to digest and process, soothing… I could go on.
Tatu’s soulful Beetroot basil soup
Ingredients – serves 6
1 kg tomatoes of your choice, halved if larger variety
800g organic passata or tinned tomatoes
2 medium beetroots, quartered
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced or finely grated
60g basil
2 tbsp butter/coconut oil
200ml coconut/cashew/oat/cows cream
salt and pepper to taste
Method:
In a large cooking pot on a low heat add the butter/oil and the onions and sautee until soft but not browned, add the tinned tomatoes and fresh tomatoes along with some salt and pepper and 3 cups of water and allow to simmer for 40 mins. In the meantime whizz up the basil and beetroot until they are a lovely smooth paste and add this towards the end of the cooking period allowing to bubble briefly before adding the cream of choice and reseasoning. You may choose to blend all till smooth with stick blender and garnish with an extra swirl of cream and a few basil leaves before you serve, or go wild and use coriander as you can see in this picture. Yuuummmmm!
This is a soup that freezes well if you are a batch cooker 😉