Guess the gloop!

This post is for Cel! 🙂 xo

Don’t remember quite when I first started making this strange green gloop soup but I do remember the book it came from. A little supermarket cookbook that Lady Claire Macdonald wrote, probably in the early 80s. The book belonged to my Mum and the title was something snappy like “New Ways with Vegetables”. It ended up coming to Luxembourg with me in 1989, then it moved with us to Copenhagen and I gave it away to the charity shop just a couple of months back. (Hmm, maybe I should have kept it?!)

Anyways…it’s a soup recipe using – of all things – brussels sprouts. Now, believe me, I know what you’re thinking. Yuuuuucck probably sums it up. Am I right? That’s what I always think when I hear brussels sprouts. Or eat brussels sprouts! But this soup is really good. Trust me. In fact, I used to make it all the time for friends. I wouldn’t tell them what was in it when I first served it (see reasons above), but they always liked it – even though they couldn’t quite place the vegetable – and it would end up being a guessing game 😉

For a bit of dinner time fun, you’ll need:

• butter or oil for frying
• one onion or a couple of shallots, roughly chopped
• about 2 cups of brussels sprouts (probably 300g?), frozen are easiest…see below
• nutmeg if you happen to have it
• at least ½ litre (2 cups) of stock to start with
• salt and pepper

Fry your roughly chopped onion in a wee bit of butter or oil. In Scotland we always use butter when making soup. Gives the best taste 🙂 Once the onion has softened a bit, add the frozen brussels sprouts. You can use fresh ones if you insist, but then you have to prep them by taking off any dry outer leaves etc. You can get frozen bags of brussels sprouts at the supermarket – and that way you’ve always got them on hand for making a quick pot of gloop soup!

Let the frozen brussels sprouts fry with the onions for a minute or two. Then add the stock (I normally use chicken stock cubes), a good grating of nutmeg (not so much for flavour…more because it stops you getting ‘wind’ from the sprouts…) and let the whole thing simmer gently for about 15 minutes. Use your Flylady timer! 😉

When the sprouts are soft and mushy, remove from the soup from the heat. Then use a blender, hand blender, or a potato masher (if you need a good upper arm workout) to get it nice and smooth. Season to taste with…you know what’s coming…some good sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Add more stock as you think fit. Personally I don’t like this soup too thick.

Pour into bowls and let the guessing begin! 😉

[On a side note, this is a pretty healthy soup. But not ‘pretty’ to look at! 😉 If you like you can add a little swirl of cream on the top or some croutons to tart it up a bit.]

People always assume there is milk in this soup. Or cream. And potato. Or is it spinach? Definitely courgette! Must be cabbage. Wait a minute…peas! Or ??? Add in any green vegetable you can think of…

Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Bon appétit and happy simmering Saturday! 🙂