soup & jelly diet

hi it's jools here today i'm gonna make areally nice chunky i'm not gonna say winter because it can be used any season a reallynice hearty warm vegetable bean soup which actually i do for my children every week or not necessarily this one but i kind of vary up the soups weekly and my husband loves it thank god it's sucha good soup i've got 2 leeks, they look like 4 but they've been cut in to two washed anda good tip from jamie this is what he told

soup & jelly diet, me to do is to wash downwards so you get allthe dirt out and use it a bit like a little river, so this will probably feed about fourto six so just chop you can do smaller if you prefer but my children quite like a bitof chunk so we're not really a smooth soup family so i have to do it like this two sticksof celery washed three carrots i'm just gonna

chop and two cloves of garlic thinly slicedyou could always use a garlic crusher if you fancy so that's all my veg done so i'm justgonna do some bacon i've got just two rashers just chop that you don't have to use bacon but it doesadd a really nice flavour and if you were doing this for a baby obviously you wouldn'tbe doing the seasoning and you wouldn't use the bacon so you can just take that out andjust have the nice vegetable soup and then blend it so now i'm gonna start cooking justput my oven on, a lug of olive oil and first i'm gonna do the bacon with some rosemary just a sprig of rosemaryis all you need gets all the strong flavours going so now i can hear the sizzle that's whenyou know all the flavours are coming out the rosemary and they're all kind of inter-minglingtogether you can smell it now it's so delicious

this should take about a couple of minutesjust so it goes nice and brown right it's definitely brown and crispy so i'm gonna addall the veg you know it's gonna be great for children and it is one way to getting everythingin all at once and i always feel so good when i see they've eaten this i feel like it's beena really healthy dinner and just mix it around you need about ten to fifteen minutes just to makesure the leeks get really sweet nice and soft and tender i'm gonna put the lid on sweatthem down leave it for about ten fifteen minutes and get on with other jobs so i reckon thisis done they look yep they look really nice they smell pretty good as well they're definitelyready. now i'm gonna add borlotti beans but you can actually use any canned beans youlike my children like these so that's actually

quite nice they're full of protein which isreally good cos they're about normally when i do this it's normally ballet day or athleticsso i really worry that they've got enough energy to kind of do what they have to do and thosebeans will definitely help that so i'm gonna add my stock you can do chicken or veg andi've got a litre of stock there to also make it a bit quicker you can use hot stock soit keeps everything going and boiling at the same time put it back to simmer for abouthalf an hour but i reckon this is done now yep nice and soft we're gonna add a handfulof frozen peas and then two handfuls of kale the girls like kale but you can do spinachor courgettes or anything that doesn't need a lot of cooking time so that it stays reallynice bright and green i'll just mix it in

put the lid on for a couple of minutes andthen prepare the bowls they're ready and because actually this soup hasn't got really muchcarbohydrates in so i sometimes add pasta or i've got some bread here or you could evenhave potatoes sweet potatoes just to get that bit more chunky feeling especially for mychildren because if they've been busy at school i think it's kind of quite healthy to do thatthere we go some nice hunks of bread which they really like so that's my carb as youcan see the leeks have sweated off you can smell actually all the lovely smells the baconand the rosemary and the fresh greens are giving that really nice kind of fresh feeland they're not too overcooked at all so they'll be nice and crunchy still and stocks all reducedi'm just gonna portion it up so i've got one

for buds and one for myself cos it's sucha good soup and it's really quick actually i normally cook my soup the day before butif you're gonna do a good batch and freeze it perhaps don't add the green vegetableslike the kale or the courgette because it will keep its vibrancy if you defrost it putit on the hob then just the same as you did

before add the greens at the end and thenthey're really fresh and lovely and they kind of keep the crunch there you go guys it'sall done my lovely chunky hearty soup and please enjoy it well i hope you enjoy it andgive it a go and i can't wait to hear what you think