(from the Good Food Diet)
Smooth, mild and creamy with an avocado green colour, this healthy, gluten-free, low-fat baby marrow (zucchini / courgette) soup makes an excellent starter or main course. It is the baby marrow (zucchini / courgette) cousin of the famous French style vichyssoise (read more below recipe), a rich leek and potato cream soup, which is usually eaten cold. But don’t fear, this one is definitely served hot.
Creamy Baby Marrow (Zucchini / Courgette) and Potato Soup is:
- heart-friendly
- diabetic-friendly
- vegetarian-friendly
- fibre-rich
- wheat-free
- gluten-free and
- egg-free.
- 30 ml (2 tbsp) sunflower oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 15 ml (3 tsp) freshly crushed garlic
- 1,25 litres (5 cups) water
- 2 x 400 g punnets baby marrows (zucchini / courgettes), thickly sliced or roughly chopped
- 3 large potatoes, peeled, cut into chunks
- 1 x 410 g can butter beans (do not drain)
- 2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes
- 1 ml (¼ tsp) ground nutmeg (optional)
- 1 x 380 g can low-fat Ideal milk (evaporated milk)
- salt and milled black pepper to taste
- plain low fat yoghurt to garnish
Step 1: Heat oil in a large pot. Sauté onion. Add garlic; stir-fry for 30 seconds.
Step 2: Add water, baby marrows (zucchini / courgettes), potatoes, butter beans (together with brine in can), stock cubes and nutmeg. Cover and simmer over moderate heat for 25 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Step 3: Remove from heat. Liquidise until smooth. Stir in Ideal milk. Season with salt and black pepper. Reheat.
Step 4: Spoon into bowls. Garnish with yoghurt (see below). Serve immediately. This soup can be kept in the fridge for four days. (Serves 10)
Art on soup: In a small bowl, thin a little low-fat plain yoghurt with tap water to the consistency of cream. Drizzle a tablespoonful in a spiral shape on top of the soup. Pull a toothpick through the yoghurt to create your own arty design.
Vichyssoise - the French connection
Not all people like their soup cold, unless it is vichyssoise (pronunciation VEE-she-swahz), of course.
This popular, refreshing soup, made with leeks, potatoes, onions and cream - and sounding terribly French - is said to have been created in New York at the beginning of the 20th century.
Louis Diat, for many years the French head chef at the fashionable Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Madison Avenue, apparently dreamt up this soup between 1916 and 1917. Reminiscing about the potato and leek soup of his youth and how he and his brother added milk to cool it off during the hot summers, the invention was born. He nostalgically named it after the town of Vichy, near his hometown in France.
The popularity of a cold soup should never be underestimated. The Soup Bar at Lord and Taylor, a New York department store, for many years only had two items on its lunch menu: a bowl of vichyssoise and a slice of apple pie - and the New Yorkers queued for it. But fame is no guarantee. Despite all its popularity, 99% of all Americans still mispronounce vichyssoise as VEEN-she-swah instead of VEE-she-swahz.
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