Cream of green soup

After 6 years as a student, I'm pretty darn thrifty, and this "Cream of green" soup is the epitome of cheap food. Any time I'm cooking green vegetables, and have leftover raw cuttings, or bits that aren't great for fancy recipes, I throw them in a ziplock bag in the freezer. In recent weeks, this bag has accumulated woody asparagus ends, broccoli stalks, the green bits of a leek...Anything that isn't perfect enough to use straightaway, but too good to throw out. After a couple of weeks, you have a bag full of soup-worthy ingredients that you would otherwise have wasted. Thrifty! Defrost them, and chop them, and give them the soup-treatment they deserve. 

The ratios for making more or less of this soup are pretty easy - the recipe uses 1 cup of stock to each cup of vegetables. I would recommend a guideline of 4 measuring cups of ingredients per person. Try to cook it for the shortest amount of time possible, so that everything stays an eye-wateringly bright green.

3 cups left-over green vegetables

1 cup of frozen peas

4 cups of stock (I used chicken)

1 clove garlic

1/2 an onion

splash of white wine 

1 tablespoon cornflour

2 tablespoons cream cheese (or ordinary cream, ricotta, mascarpone, sour cream...anything creamy-ish)

olive oil

salt and pepper

Finely chop the onion and garlic. Heat a little olive oil over a medium heat in a large frying pan or wok that's big enough for all your vegetables and stock. Add the onion and garlic, and cook for 3-4 minutes until softened. In a separate pan, heat up your stock so that it is almost at boiling temperature. 

Finely chop all your vegetables so they are around the same size, and smaller than a 1cm dice. They won't be cooked for very long so that they keep their colour, which means they have to be cut up quite small. Add to the pan, and cook for another 3 - 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Turn the heat up to high, and add the white wine. Cook for another 30 seconds while the wine soaks in, then sprinkle the cornflour over all the vegetables. Stir briskly to mix, then start adding the stock one cup at a time, still stirring. 

Once all the stock has been added, add the cream cheese, and stir. Bring the soup to the boil, and cook for a couple of minutes until it starts to thicken. 

Blender time! Transfer the soup to a blender or food processor. Add the frozen peas to the soup - keeping them separate until now means your soup will stay a lovely green-colour. Blitz for a minute or two in the blender, until the vegetables have broken down and you have a creamy-looking soup. Have a taste, to see if you need salt and pepper, then eat!