I find making soup somewhat therapeutic. I enjoy the methodical preparation of the vegetables and the anticipation of a warm, comforting, wholesome meal. Its won’t give you a food baby for the next 5 hours and you can make it to be low calorie without compromising on the taste. Roasting the vegetables in this recipe really brings out the flavour; especially the sweetness in the red pepper and butternut squash.

Ingredients for 2 large portions of this soup:

A red pepper

Approx 1/3 of a butternut squash

A sweet potato

A shallot

Chilli flakes

Garlic and chilli salt

Chicken or vegetable stock depending on personal preference/your views on eating meat

Mixed herbs

Chives

Olive oil or fry light

Butter

Switch the oven on to around 200°C. Peel and chop the butternut squash and sweet potato and chop the red pepper into small 1cm pieces. Put the veggies on a roasting tray sprinkle with the chilli flakes and garlic and chilli salt. Drizzle with olive oil or spray with fry light and put this in the oven for approx 20 minutes.

During this time finely chop the shallot and heat a knob of butter in a large pan at medium heat (for soup making the larger the pan the better in case you get carried away and make too much).

Remove veggies from the oven.

Add the contents of the roasting pan into the pan on the hob. Add the stock. Turn the temperature of the hob down to a lower heat. Cover the pan and leave to simmer for 40-50 minutes.

Turn off the heat and do one of 4 things:

1. Put in a blender in batches

2. Use a food processor to liquidize

3. Use a hand blender on your soup

4. If you do not own any of the above (like myself until 3 weeks ago) use a potato masher to make the soup mushy. The texture is not quite as smooth or lovely as with the other 3 methods but it works.

Serve with whatever you fancy – crusty bread, melba toast, crackers. Next time I think I’ll tone down the chilli as it was initially a little overpowering. Then again, they did fly out of the jar when I got carried away sprinkling.