This week Facebook and Instagram were full of delicious things by my friends and family, so I didn’t have to go far to find inspiration for things to do with my veg box. I landed on soup. I wanted something thick and creamy, and one of my friends had done a kinda soup thing with rice and that sounded like a good thing to copy. In my soup, it is the cheap white rice makes the tomato-based soup thick and creamy. You can used whatever veg you want to make this exciting. I had some nice kale, red peppers, and flat beans from my veg box, as well onions, celery, and carrots to form the base. I used box of of tomato passata, but any canned/ puréed/whatever thing of tomatoes will do. Here is what I did.

Put some olive oil in a pot at med/high heat. Dice onion and garlic (or whiz quickly in mini food processor) and put it in the pot with salt. Dice or whiz half a large carrot, half a celery stalk, and half a pepper, and then add that to the pot to make the flavour base. Let that cook for 10 mins, while you chop the rest of the veg (carrot, celery, pepper, beans, kale, whatever) into small pieces for the good texture and colour. Add the rest of the veg to the pot, sauté for a few minutes, add can of tomatoes, two and a half cans of water, 1/2 cup of rice, 2 tbsps of nutritional yeast, oregano, basil, fennel, chilli pepper flakes to taste (or whatever spices you like), and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil, and then cover and simmer for about 30 mins, stirring occasionally and adding water if needed. When rice is done, take it off the heat and finish with some olive oil and fresh lemon.