Recently Woolworths (the South African equivalent of Marks & Spencer) held a competition, the prize being R50,000 for the best original soup recipe. I wracked my brains but nothing came to mind until yesterday……eight days after the competition closed *bangs head on desk*
Inspiration hit due to my friend Micheal giving me a jar of his homegrown pepperdews, he’s done a brilliant job, these are sweet, crunchy and have a nice hot bite to them.
I have a thing about soups and their consistency, I hate them too thick and so often people serve up, what quite frankly, looks like baby puree! The colour of this soup sends me, sunshine in a bowl, perfect winter fare and it tastes great!
Sweet Potato and Pepperdew Soup
1/2 onion finely chopped
50g pepperdews roughly chopped
A little oil for frying
600g sweet potatoes (the orange variety) peeled and sliced
750ml chicken stock
50ml fresh cream
Milk for diluting
Seasoning to taste
Gently fry the onion and pepperdews until soft.
Add in the sweet potatoes.
Pour in the stock.
Simmer until the potatoes are soft.
Cool and then put into a blender & blitz until smooth, a stick blender would work equally well.
Add the cream and heat through, the soup will be quite thick, you can add more cream if you so desire, or you can use less calories by adding milk until you get the consistency you enjoy.
Season to your taste, remembering that there is quite a bit of salt already if you used stock cubes.
I topped my soup with homemade croutons, slivered pepper-dew and garlic chives.
Serves 4-6 depending on the size of your bowls or your appetites.
