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Christmas Soup

A simple and delicious soup recipe from The Happy Pear duo, with warming Christmas flavours of parsnip, chestnut and cranberry.

From the book

Introduction

This ultimate Christmas soup is really rich and delicious and will give you that Christmas feeling when you taste it! The vacuum-packed chestnuts are available in most supermarkets around the festive season and will take this soup to the next level, but if you can’t get them, simply replace with cashew nuts.

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Ingredients

3 small onions
3 cloves garlic
1 medium sweet potato
2 medium parsnips
2 tbsp oil
1 ½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
10 sprigs fresh thyme
1 ½ litres vegetable stock
100g vacuum-packed chestnuts
A handful dried cranberries

Essential kit

You will need: a stick blender.

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onions and garlic. Roughly chop the sweet potato and the parsnips (no need to peel – the skin is where most of the nutrition is).

2. Put the oil into a large saucepan over a medium heat and, once warmed up, add the onions and garlic. Gently cook for about 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

3. Add the sweet potato, parsnips, salt and black pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs and sprinkle in (leaving some aside for garnish).

Cook for another 5 minutes. Add the vegetable stock and chestnuts, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer for about 15 minutes.

4. Remove from the heat and blend with a stick blender until smooth. Taste and season with more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

5. Finely slice the dried cranberries and garnish each serving with a sprinkle of these, along with a few of the reserved thyme leaves.

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From the book: The Happy Pear: Recipes for Happiness

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