Winter Vegetables in a blender

In this house cold January days equal lots of one pot recipes and/or homemade soups. They also seem to signal a deep subconscious desire to listen to progressive rock amongst other things.

Today Emerson, Lake and Palmer's ambitious Brain Salad Surgery album was on the playlist, partly because I remember buying it in a January about 7 years ago following an extremely messy night out with entertaining colleagues at an old employer and also because of the very sad deaths, in different ways, of two of the band's three members in 2016, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake.

Not long after the record's release the band headlined the California Jam, a huge event where the acts that preceded them on the bill included giants Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Both heavy rock acts with the guitar firepower to fill stadiums. To modern listeners it may seem bizarre then how a band such as ELP, who's main sound was rooted in Keith Emerson's electronic keyboard virtuosity could have the ability to headline such a huge event. The answer perhaps was that the musical tastes of the early to mid 1970s allowed for this kind of thing to happen and musical history is all the better for it.

So the soup recipe, whereas I'd recently prepared a soup recipe that had the taste of a pureed curry, this recipe was more of a pureed winter casserole.

The ingredients were:

3 Cubed Potatoes
3 Diced Carrots
2 finely sliced Shallots
A tablespoon of Italian Seasoning, largely comprising of dried Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
Half a pint of vegetable stock.

First I fried the vegetables and the seasoning in sunflower oil in the Le Cresceut for 20 minutes with the lid on.

Second I added the stock and stewed the ingredients on a medium heat for an hour with the Le Cresceut lid on.

After that I left the ingredients to cool on one side for about another hour. Then I blended them and returned them to the Le Cresceut dish where I heated the soup through for ten minutes and then served it in a bowl topped with some more Italian Seasoning.

The taste was one that was best described as full-bodied and despite the absence of meat, was very filling and helped cancel out the chilly weather that had intruded into the previous working week.

Herbs afloat, a dusting of Italian Seasoning on top of this soup helped round off the flavour.