One of the most important parts of the whole Growhampton project is show our students at the University of Roehampton, and all the regular readers of this blog, how to benefit from the food you grow.

With that in mind, I'm going to hand over this blog post to Celia Briseid, one of Growhampton's stars, to explain her recipe for caramelised onion and beetroot soup...

Joel

---------------

Hi everyone:

Sounds fancy eh? Well, this recipe basically has only two ingredients...
Beetroot and Onions! You just have to add a few little extra things.
And conveniently enough, you can usually get beetroots in your Growhampton veggie bag which are on sale at The Hive  cafe on the University campus every Thursday.

So here is what you need.

3-4 medium sized beetroots (chopped)
1 large onion (sliced)
800-900ml vegetable stock (1 cube should do it)
1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. coconut or olive oil
1 tbsp. parmesan cheese or 2 tbsp. nutritional yeast for vegans (I’m not vegan, but used the yeast as I think it creates a really nice flavour)
S&P

Optional:

2 tbsp. natural yoghurt
3-4 potatoes with skin, for oven roasted croutons.

If you wish to have oven roasted croutons with your soup, then start by pre-heating the oven to 200°C. Meanwhile, start dicing your potatoes, toss them into a baking tray and cover with coconut or olive oil, salt and pepper, and I also use some dried thyme because it tastes amazing! Put in the oven and leave it in there until the soup is done. But do remember to stir up the potatoes once in a while so they are evenly roasted.

Now for the soup, start melting butter and oil in a large pot. Toss in your onion and leave until it is slightly browned and gives off a sweet smell, around five minutes, remember to stir a lot. Then put in your chopped beetroots, stir and lightly sauté for two minutes. Add your stock and leave to boil for around 20 minutes until the beetroots are tender. Take your pot off the heat and blend it until a smooth soup. Then add your cheese or nutritional yeast and stir in. I also added two tablespoons of natural yoghurt, just because it was there is my fridge and needed to be used, and it worked out really well.

Serve in a bowl and top with your potato croutons, a swoosh of olive oil and some finely chopped Growhampton parsley – enjoy!