This is a substantial and well-flavoured soup, suitable for winter lunches or a main meal. It would go very well with sun-dried tomato bread. The ingredients are not really voyaging vegetables, but they keep reasonably well and you would still be able to make this soup a week into your passage.
Use
1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the
salt.
Serves at least 8 as a starter, 2 or 3 for a main course
Ingredients
3
large sticks of celery
1 leek
1 cup chickpeas, soaked
5 cups boiling
stock or water
2 bay leaves
1½ tsp oregano
3/4 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp
chilli
14 oz/400 g tin of diced tomatoes
handful
of finely chopped fresh basil or parsley, or 1 tsp dried
basil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
Method:
- Thinly slice the celery.
- Trim the leek, removing the root end and any discoloured outer leaves; trim the top. Slice thinly, washing any slices that have grit or soil lodged in them.
- Drain the chickpeas and put them in your pressure cooker, together with the water/stock, celery, leek, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary and chilli.
- Bring to pressure over a high heat and then cook at high pressure for 20 minutes. Reduce pressure naturally.
- Remove the bay leaves and discard. With a slotted spoon, take out 4 or 5 spoons of chickpeas and put them in a bowl together with half the tomatoes. Mash together to thicken the soup.
- Put the tomato/chickpea mix back in the pressure cooker together with the parsley or basil and the vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.
- Simmer for a further few minutes so that the tomato flavour permeates the whole and serve hot.
- Add (vegan) Parmesan cheese at the table.
- Try using butter beans instead of the chickpeas