Spiced Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash
2 carrots
1 sweet potato
1 large shallot or 1/2 an onion
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground corriander
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ginger
1L of vegetable stock
1 tbsp of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Start off by washing your butternut squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and compost or pop them into the food waste. Cut it up into medium chunks with the skin on. Next peel your sweet potato and carrots, cut up into similar sized chunks as your butternut squash so that everything roughly cooks at the same time.

Meanwhile, roughly chop the onion and garlic. Drizzle the olive oil into a medium sized pot and fry the onion on a medium heat until softened (about 8mins). Add the garlic and fry for another minute. Once those flavours have mixed together you can add in your spices, the cumin, coriander, turmeric and ground ginger and stir, cook for another minute.

Add in all the veggies (butternut squash, sweet potato and carrots) into the pan and stir well to coat them in the oil and spices. Cover with the vegetable stock, stir then leave to bubble away for about 30min or until it’s fork-tender.

Once all the veggies are cooked, blend together (I like to do it with a stick blender when the soup is cooled - be careful blending when it's hot) until smooth then season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve up into some bowls and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, top with what ever you have to hand, herbs, croutons or some toasted pumpkin seeds work really well.

This soup makes delicious leftovers too, you can also freeze for another day.