A soup for poorly nanas

‘For fuck’s sake I thought you were dying!’ is perhaps not the cheeriest opening gambit with which to greet your ailing grandmother, but after billing this visit as ‘difficult, you’ll be shocked at how altered she is...so frail,’ it was frankly irritating to find her fully dressed in the kitchen, gaily chopping up vegetables and shouting at the squirrels on the bird table. A far cry from the ghoul-made-out-of-tinned turkey breast-look she was working the day before; one eye slowly blinking from the dark and cavernous mouth of a highly flammable dressing gown.

Anyway we took her some soup and a sticky wodge of BP’s lemon drizzle cake. There’s a fine line between making this sort of soup and clearing out the fridge; hence the baked beans. Would not however advocate the inclusion of half a Malteser Bunny or Clinique All About Eyes serum.

Ingredients

1tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 sticks celery
2 carrots
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp tomatoe puree
1 tin tomatoes
1 vegetable or chicken stock cube and 250ml hot water or 250ml stock
2 handfuls spinach (stalks removed)
1 tin chickpeas, barlotti beans, kidney beans ro whatever dubious looking beans you can find in the fridge
1 tsp oregano

Method

Finely chop the onion and soften it in the olive oil for a couple of minutes. Roughly chop the carrot and celery and thrown them in with the squashed clove of garlic.

When the vegetables are soft, stir in the tomato puree, tin of tomatoes and the stock or hot water. After about 10 minutes, the tomato pulp will have separated from the oil on the surface. Now add the beans or pulses, oregano and spinach.

Warm everything through for another five minutes. Serve with grated parmesan and good bread.

 

Ingredients