Unsolicited Advice and Cauliflower Soup

The world's full of unsolicited good advice. My crisps have a label on them that tell me I shouldn't eat them every day, the cheese I buy comes with a red warning label that makes me feel as if I'll die tasting it and the veg I buy scream out 'Nice try, but you should eat 5 portions of us!'. It's starting to feel like a  competition - can you meet the requirements every day? (Funnily enough, this man tried and nearly died.)

That is not to say of course that this advice is all rubbish. Some of the arguments out there make a lot of sense. I particularly like this one, a talk by Mark Bittman about our eating habits. He promotes eating less meat (for reasons explained well in his talk) without becoming a vegetarian completely (basically because it's so tasty). 

Cutting back on meat is what I try to do, too. (It all started when I read this book.) Next week, I'm going to take this to the next level by trying to cook only vegetarian meals for me and my partner. A huge feat, but after buying this book by Madhur Jaffrey I got inspired. She is all about accidental vegetarian food, taken from countries in the East. Next week I'll try one of her dishes, plus a couple of exotic others from this fun volume:

Indian aubergine and potato curry with naan (from Jaffrey's book)

Halloumi skewers on a fennel and white bean salad with flatbread

Tofu and pak choi stir-fry with egg noodles

Falafel burgers on buns

Tacos with chickpea salsa and home-made guacamole

I'll keep you posted about the results! Until then, how about this nice veggie soup?

Ingredients

1 cauliflower

2 large potatoes

200g carrots

2 large onions

2 cloves of garlic

200g mature organic cheddar cheese (yes, the one with the red warning label)

1 tbsp English mustard

2 veg stock cubes

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Clean the vegetables, remove the green bits from the cauliflower and the eyes from the potatoes. Dice the potatoes, carrots and onions finely, chop up the garlic and slice the cauliflower in thin slices (about 1cm). Heat some olive oil in a large pan and put in all the vegetables. Fry until the onions are soft and yellow, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. Meanwhile, bring a litre of water to the boil. Add the water and the stock cubes to the vegetables and bring to the boil. Then, let the soup simmer until the vegetables are nice and soft. Use a masher to mash the vegetables. Grate the cheese and add the cheese and mustard to the soup. Season to taste. I served this with garlic bread. 

From Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food book. I did not use celery and I did not pulse the soup. I also used less water.