Jack Monroe is the 25-year-old behind the now infamous A Girl Called Jack blog, which serialised her struggle to feed herself and her young son on benefits. Now, she’s released a cookbook containing some of her top recipes. Here’s one of our favourites.
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Love Soup
‘There are many different recipes entitled love soup – I’ve seen some rich chicken soup recipes, some with heady garlic and some deep red tomato soup ones. By chance, the ingredients for this were what I had kicking around in the fridge last Valentine’s Day, so this warming carrot, ginger and onion soup is mine. Nothing says ‘I love you’ quite like sweet roasted vegetables. Blended into a home-made silky soft soup. Not in my book anyway.’ - Jack Monroe
Serves 2
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Zest and joice of ½ lemon or 1 tablespoon bottled lemon juice
1 cloves of garlic
1 small piece of fresh ginger or 1 teaspoon ground ginger
A fistful of fresh corander
A fistful of fresh parsley, plus extra garnish
1 onion
2 large carrots
1 potato
1 vegetable stock cube
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4
First make the marinade for the vegetables. Measure the oil into a teacup, jug or other small receptacle. Finely grate the lemon zest into the oil. Peel and crush the garlic, and peel and grate the ginger, then add them too. Finely chop the herbs into the mixture. Squeeze the lemon juice in – as much of it as you can squish out – stir together and set aside.
Peel the onion, chop into quarters and place in a roasting dish. Wash then chop the carrots into thick rounds and add to the roasting dish. Peel and dice the potato and put it in too. Pour the marinade over the top and shake to coat the vegetables. Pop the roasting fish into the preheated over for an hour or so, shaking occasionally to loosen the vegetables and re-coat them in the marinade.
When the carrots and potatoes are tender, remove the vegetables from the oven and tip into a food processor. Dissolve the stock cube in 500ml of boiling water and pout this stock into the food processor (to cover the vegetables). Blend until smooth, and serve with a flourish of parsley and a smile.
Tips: Add a swirl of natural yoghurt and/or honey at the end, to make this soup extra special.
Since it’s quite a lot of effort for a soup, make double the amount and freeze half of it to have an indulgent treat on tap.
You can replace the fresh carrots with a small tin of carrots. Simply drain and rinse them, and add in place of the chopped carrots – halving the roasting time, since they will cook more quickly than their fresh counterparts. The same rule applies to tinned potatoes, but as these tend to be small, use four instead of five.
Recipe from 'A Girl Called Jack' by Jack Monroe (Michael Joseph, £12.99)
Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.