Recipe: Spicy Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup

I absolutely love the weather we are having at the moment; sunny, but cool enough that you have to wear all those lovely autumn jackets, boots and jumpers. We officially had to turn the heating back on in the house again in the evenings and in my mind, that means it's time to start making soup again!

I am a big fan of soup, but I rarely order it in a restaurant or buy it ready made as you never know what's in it and it could be loaded with salt, cream or oil. So it's a good thing that soup is so easy to make at home yourself and requires only a chopping board, one pot and a hand blender. I'm sure there are tons of different ways to make soup, but I have my way that I apply to any type of ingredients and I always end up with a thick and tasty soup that's perfect to warm yourself up in the evenings. I'd heard about sweet potato and coconut soup before, and I thought it sounded amazing! I've never actually tried it before now, so making it today was a little bit of a gamble! I decided to make it on a whim and I really had no clue if it would be nice, especially as I made up the ingredients and the recipe (something I'm not great at)! However, I'm glad to say it was delicious and definitely worth posting about! Here is my recipe for spicy sweet potato and coconut soup, I hope you like it! 

Ingredients

1 medium onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 tin of coconut milk

1 large sweet potato

1 tbsp coconut oil

2 tsp ginger

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili

1 tsp turmeric

Salt and Pepper

Makes 4 servings

1 Serving contains approximately 254 calories, 18.6 g fat (16.2 g saturated), 20.2 g carbohydrates (6.3 g sugar), 2.9 g fibre, 2.9 g protein

Method

1. Heat the coconut oil in a large pan with a heavy base and fry the onion and garlic for approx. 5 minutes.
2. Roughly chop the sweet potato into cubes, add to the pot and fry for a further 5 minutes.
3. Add the ginger, chili, cumin, turmeric and coconut oil. Fill the empty tin of coconut oil with water and add this to the pot too.
4. Bring to the boil, season and leave to simmer for around 20 minutes.
5. Using the hand blender, blitz the soup until it is smooth.

The soup can be kept in the fridge in an air-tight container for 2-3 days.

I hope you enjoy this soup if you try it!

Niamh xxx

Recipe: Healthy Bread and Butter Pudding

I recently watched “The Hundred Foot Journey”, a movie about an Indian family who set up an Indian restaurant directly across the road from a French Michelin star restaurant in a small French village. It’s a good movie – funny, light hearted and feel-good and Helen Mirren is in it, I love her! 

One of the quotes from the movie is “food is memories”. I couldn’t agree more with this!! I learned to cook from my two grandmothers and my mother, though I’m still nowhere near as good as them! One of my grandmothers died three years ago and there is one dish especially that always reminds me of her. My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis; it’s a type of arthritis that seriously affects your hands (as well as the rest of your body of course). Despite all this, she was tough and a true lady! When I was young, she taught me how to make bread and butter pudding. It was the first time I tried it and I loved it! Most people can take or leave this dessert but it’s one of my favourite comfort foods!  When I was in school and in college studying for exams, she would prepare the bread and butter pudding and drop it to our house so that I could put it in the oven and have it fresh! She always put cinnamon and nutmeg on top so the smell in the kitchen would literally make your mouth water. It always meant so much that she would think to do this for me.  

At the moment, I’m writing my PhD thesis while also working as a research assistant, so I am really feeling the “exam-time” pressure and getting cravings for comfort food. I want my body and brain working at their best so I can get all this work done, so I decided to substitute the ingredients from my grandmother’s recipe with healthy alternatives. Give it a try; it's really good and full of memories! <3

Ingredients