… a little radio silence this week due to the fact that we’ve been busy launching a brand new product for Benefit Cosmetics. Yesterday’s event in London was the culmination of months of hard but hugely enjoyable work for a brilliant new client and the start of an amazing few more months full of all kinds of crazy events up and down the country for the brand – so once again I find myself apologising for a little sporadic posting from me over the coming weeks… I promise to keep you updated of what’s happening and i’ll try and keep it interesting and irreverent as always… and there will be some brilliant pictures from all the events over on The Persuaders website…
watercress and turnip soup
more soup for you today by way of my snazzy new hotpoint steam blender… this soup is pure comfort food for me, the aroma of it cooking is enough to take me back to childhood Sunday’s at Grandma Sylvia’s house. As a family we would converge en-masse to Chigwell in east London almost every Sunday throughout our formative years, all the cousins romping around their apartment whilst the parents did grown-up stuff and grandma worked tirelessly in the kitchen to prepare an incredible meal. Usually a roast of some kind, be it chicken or beef, always preceded by soup and there were a few variations from the carrot and orange to the mixed vegetable but a firm favourite and most common was the watercress and turnip… turnips really don’t get used very much any more but they are an inexpensive and vercitile vegetable that soak up other flavours really well and blend to silky smooth consistency… grandma always told me not to make this soup as watercress was so expensive but with turnips so cheap and the final flavours so gorgeous it’s a crying shame not to…
below are the instructions for using the steam blender but for the regular cooking method try this previous post from 2011
1 medium onion – peeled and diced
8 medium turnips – peeled and diced
200g bags of watercress
1 pint good quality vegetable stock
a little blue cheese and some fresh coriander to taste
put all the veg into the steam blender and place the lid on tightly
ensure the water reservoir is full and switch the blender on to steam for 10 minutes. After this time, pour in the stock using the little removable cap and then steam again for a further 6 minutes before blending into a thick luscious soup
crumble on some blue cheese and a little torn coriander to serve
this is my entry to the brilliant and long-running No Croutons Required bloggers challenge hosted by Jacqueline over at Tinned Tomatoes
eat and of course, enjoy!
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I have never ever cooked with turnips in my life. Seriously. This soup looks rather good.
What a lovely childhood memory, all those cousins and family members gathering at your grandmothers, and what a superb sounding soup! I love the flavour of watercress!
Simply perfect..
Happy Friday
Love watercress, but haven't made a watercress soup for ages, I think I need to amend that. I hardly ever buy turnips, only when they come in soup/stew veggie kits or arrive in Abel and Cole boxes, and then I use them in stews. Great looking soup! And a lovely snippet from your childhood!
Never mind the soup, which is of course gorgeous and is just my bowl of comfort and joy, where's my Benefit samples?!!! Karen xxx
Sounds like you're having lots of fun! I like the idea of turnip and watercress together, looks lovely too.
Ah, food memories! So very powerful! I love turnips, but SB carries horrid food memories of his mom trying to sneak them into stews when he was a child and insisting that the kids 'clean their plates' … poor SB traumatized by the soggy turnips. Now, I can't get him to take one bite! He's been ruined …poor sod!
Emm shame I don't have a steam blender I'll have to resort to traditional methods, but then grandma Sylvia I am guessing would have used traditional methods. I spent my formative years growing up in Chigwell – I could have popped round for a bowl of soup! 6 degrees of separation ….would be very funny if I actually knew grandma Sylvia!
My mum never cooked with turnips, preferring swede instead, so I never cooked with them either until recently and that's because they are one of the ingredients in my favourite soup recipe.
You're right, we should use them more.
The steam blender looks a great little gadget but as we're downsizing to a kitchen a fraction of the size of my present one, it could be just one gadget too many.
Good to hear it's all going splendidly Dom. I'm not very partial tot turnips, but I can see they would work in this soup so I should really give them another trial!