Cooking with Asia

Usually eaten hot, it’s also surprisingly delicious eaten fridge-cold on a summer’s day with a squeeze of lemon juice and a dollop of natural yoghurt.

Ingredients

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 sticks celery, sliced

2 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped

400 g leeks

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

400 g potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 cm dice.

2 tbsp. olive oil

2 tbsp. Chicken base

7 c. boiling water

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Cut the ends off the leeks, quarter them lengthways. Wash them under running water and cut them into 1 cm slices.

2. Place a large pan on high heat and add 2 tbsp. of olive oil.

3. Add all your chopped and sliced ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon.

4. Cook for around 10 minutes with the lid askew, until the carrots have softened, but are still holding their shape, and the onion and leeks are lightly golden.

5. Put the chicken base into a pan and pour in 7 c. boiling water from the kettle. Stir until the base is dissolved, then add to the vegetables.

6. Add your potatoes. Give the soup a good stir and bring to the boil.

7. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minute with the lid on.

8. Remove the pan from the heat. Season with salt and pepper.

9. Serve like this or pulse until smooth using a hand blender.

Source: jamieoliver.com

 Before I've never made soup from scratch, so when we started making soup for our first cooking lab I was very excited. During our cooking I was nervous that something was going to go wrong. The only thing that went wrong was that we didn't let the vegetables brown as much as we should have but it wasn't too bad. Our soup turned out a couple of shades lighter then the others but in the end it still tasted good even though it was not like the others. In the cooking lab I had lots of fun and as a team in the kitchen I would say we worked together well and we communicated remarkably well. We didn't end up making the soup brown enough so I think that's what I would've done differently if I was able to make this soup again and I would make sure I worked quickly and use it wisely. What I learned that helped me in this cooking lab was knowing the terms of how to slice and chop properly. Without the terms I don't think that before I would have known the difference between the two. Overall I really liked this soup even though I was skeptical in the start about how it would taste.