Fiery Vegetable Soup

Being sick during the hot burning summer sun can be a bit of a nightmare especially when my mum isn’t around to provide some “peppeh soup”, Salone style. Since I’m now more or less pescatarian with a hint of chicken thrown in here and there, I told myself “I can’t actually eat peppeh soup anyway with all those creatures in it” and came up with my own variation.

Truth be told, I’m really missing my mum. Sigh!

Ingredients

• 2 stalks red spring onions

• 2 stalks celery with leaves

• 1 bulb pak choi, roughly chunked

• 3 carrots, roughly chunked

• 1 red bell pepper

• 1 courgette

• 12 chestnut mushrooms

• 1 scotch bonnet pepper, chopped

• 1 thumb-size piece of ginger

• 1 clove of garlic

• 1 1/2 star anise

• 5 cloves

• 1.5l of water

• Stock cubes

• Marigold Bouillon Powder (Organic)

Instructions

The spring onions and celery went into the pot first along with the water and stock cubes. I can’t stand string celery so I brought everything to the boil and then added the ginger, garlic and the chopped scotch bonnet, do not deseed as the seeds contain the fire and that plus the ginger, garlic, star anise and cloves are what have the healing powers :). After about 10-15 mins, I added the carrots for about 5 mins before turning down the heat. I then added the mushrooms, courgette, pak choi and peppers and let everything simmer until all the veggies were done. I adjusted the flavourings to taste along the way. The end result was a hot, spicy and fiery vegetable soup that is set to nurse me back to full health in no time. Happy cooking!