The Cottage Smallholder

Photo: Broccoli and watercress soup

“I bet we’re the first in the world to be having broccoli soup and flash fried squid for breakfast.” Danny dunked a chunk of crusty bread in his soup.
With me still at home we tend to have a late brunch these days but yesterday was the first day that we’d gone wild and had soup and seafood.

I’d bought the broccoli in the market. Two giant heads for a pound. As the vegetables don’t have a long shelf life we ate broccoli with the skirt of beef stew and the rest was chopped and popped into the slow cooker to make soup. I’d also bought a bunch of watercress on a whim thinking that it might work well teamed with the broc.

The result was superb. I sprinkled some blue goat’s cheese on the top of mine but it’s tasty enough to eat on its own. I’m feeling peckish just writing this. Time to get up and heat up the rest of the soup. This is another in our skinflint soup series.

Broccoli and watercress soup recipe (for 4 -6 people)

Ingredients:

2 large heads of broccoli (calabrese) washed and chopped including the stalks
1 bunch of watercress – roughly chopped including stalks
1 tsp of garlic granules
2 tsp of vegetable stock powder
Boiling water to just cover the broccoli
Half a teaspoon of celery salt and fresh ground white pepper to taste

Method:
Put all the ingredients (except thecelery salt and white pepper) in the slow cooker. Set the switch to auto and let it bubble away until the broccoli is soft (ours took about an hour or so). Liquidise the soup using a stick blender. Season with celery salt and ground white pepper and serve with warm crusty bread.

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