I've decided to do a cleanse to get nice and trim for the summer... and in preparation for my high school bff's upcoming wedding. As I'll be wearing a midriff baring sari for the occasion, it's probably a good idea to shed a few spare pounds before the big day. And my skin has been a bit spotty lately and I figured my innards could do with a bit of a tidy up.
In my last year of uni I did this cleanse but as I was only ever cooking for myself, I don't remember making soup at all. It felt daunting to get a big pot out and make something with - what I imagined to be - huge amounts of leftovers. How wrong was I! I don't know how I managed a cleanse without making soup! Soup is so brilliantly healthy and easy and it makes eating a variety of things simple so you don't get bored and give up on the cleanse.
(As I write this, Saturday Kitchen Best Bits is on and Lorraine Pascale has just made triple chocolate cheesecake... omg it looks nice... and sooooo not cleanse friendly... How does she stay so skinny while eating brie and pancetta toasties? Some people just have it all.)
Yesterday's dinner was Tuscan Bean Soup - a modified version from The Soup Bible.
I've omitted the potato - potatoes, tomatoes and mushrooms aren't allowed on the first 10 days of my cleanse. All my food has to be cooked as well (no salads) so this soup gave a good chance to get some healthy greens in. (I've used curly kale instead of Savoy cabbage.)
I went a bit o.t.t. with the dried oregano last night. I didn't have any fresh in, but would highly recommend this - think it would be nicer. The recipe says that this soup tastes even better when reheated so I'll be looking forward to this for lunch today.
Tuscan Bean Soup, adapted from The Soup Bible
Ingredients
Serves 4
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 leeks, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, squashed through our new garlic press (Steven broke the old one and I'm sure glad he did)
5 cups veggie stock
14 oz can cannellini beans, drained and liquid reserved
6 oz Savoy cabbage, shredded (I used curly kale instead)
3 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1 Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently cook the onion, leeks, potato and garlic for 4-5 minutes until they are just beginning to soften
2 Pour on the stock and the liquid from the beans. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
3 Stir in the cabbage, beans and half the herbs, season and cook for a further 10 minutes. Spoon about one-third of the soup into a food processor or blender and process until fairly smooth. Return to the soup in the pan, adjust the seasoning and heat through for 5 minutes. (I just used the hand mixer to blend about a third of the soup. This worked fine too.)
Step 4 of this recipe has you make some garlic toasts to go with the soup. (Rub oil-drizzled bread with garlic and then toast the bread.) I'm not allowed wheat or yeast on my cleanse (or dairy or alcohol or...) so bread that matches this criteria is quite difficult to come by. I was in Whole Foods in London last week and got some amazing German rye bread but it's so tasty I'm going through it quite quickly. The expiry date is in 2014 but it will definitely be gone long before then... So absolute joy of joys when I found proper bread at Waitrose yesterday without wheat or yeast! Two varieties and it doesn't break the bank at about £1.70 a loaf. Though I haven't tasted it yet, I'm going to big this bread up simply for existing - Whole Foods sells loaves of spelt bread for more like £5.00 a loaf - not cool. I'm doing this cleanse by choice, but it really does make me feel for people in the UK who have food allergies. The gluten-free ranges at all the major supermarkets carry something that sure looks like bread, but it's crammed full of potato or maize starch (gross) and a long list of ingredients I can't pronounce. My bread from Waitrose has three ingredients - and I've heard of everything on the list. Sounds good to me.
On the left is bread from biona, available at Whole Foods and on the right bread by The Village Bakery, available at Waitrose. The bag looks funny here as it had just come out of the freezer for this photo shoot. Love the statement on it: ' More than 80% agree Rye leaves you less bloated...' It's only day 5 of the cleanse, but I would have to agree.
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