Recipe of the week...

Well, the weather forecast got it almost right. It still rained a little on Friday, but Saturday afternoon turned out to be amazingly mild and sunny. As we had totally depleted all the firewood I'd stocked up since last spring, I took a trip to the pine woods to gather some more kindling for the coming week. It's to be dry again today, so - after my "ambulatorio" appointment for the injection - Ada, Gabriela and I are all planning a trip together to gather as much firewood as we can before the rains come and soak it all again. This will probably be our last chance to collect wood that's lying around (it's at a spot where they had cut down some pine trees earlier in the year) before we have to start buying firewood for the rest of the winter.

I began eating a lot of soup when the colder, rainy weather started. It's a great way to keep warm without just eating for the sake of it. Ada couldn't believe it was possible to make so many different soups. First I made carrot and coriander, then chicken and sweetcorn. Next it was cauliflower soup, cabbage and onion soup (surprisingly nice, this one), then potato and leek. Ada's favourite is cauliflower and broccoli, and I think mine's the sweetcorn...

But yesterday I tried out a new recipe that we enjoyed so much, I thought it would be worth passing it on to you. It's for sweet potato and red pepper soup. Slightly spicy, and something different from what we'd made previously. So, here we go.... recipe of the week, coming up.

You'll need a huge sweet potato and an equally huge red pepper, as well as a medium sized carrot, a medium onion and a clove of garlic. (For seasoning, you'll need ground cumin, ground coriander, paprika, and some vegetable stock cubes.)

Fry the chopped garlic and onion in a tiny amount of oil, eventually adding half a teaspoonful each of the cumin, coriander and paprika, and stirring it well until everything is coated with the spices. Then you can add the chopped sweet potato and carrot, along with a litre or so of vegetable stock. (Depends how thick you'd like your soup to be.) While all that is boiling away, you can chop up the red pepper, and add that to the pot too.

Once everything has boiled and softened, liquidise it with a hand blender, and that's basically it: a sweet, spicy soup to keep out the winter cold. You might want to add some salt and pepper, or you might find you don't even need it. (If you generally find the taste of cumin and coriander a bit strong, you might want to reduce the amount you use at the beginning.) You can serve it just as is, or stir a spoonful of natural yogurt through it when it's in the bowl. Delicious!