Every day I receive beautiful and inspiring photos from all the teaching chefs, who all to a woman treat their families and loved ones to amazing lock-down food, based on more or less store-cupboard ingredients.

The inspiring Jackie Hobbs made this soup while the weather was warm.

Although there is a very chilly wind in Cambridge today, the sun continues to shine from a clear blue sky which turns ones thoughts to more summery food.

This soup is made from such humble ingredients – one cucumber and one potato, plus a splash or milk and stock. It tastes lovely warm as well, if you prefer warm soup to cold. Our little milk rolls would go very well with this – click here for the recipe

Cucumber soup – serves 2

This soup can be served hot or cold. If serving cold it is probably easier to make the day before. It has a delicate flavour and it is therefore important not to overpower the cucumber flavour with too much onion or very concentrated stock.  You could substitute the onion with a small amount of leek. I only used half of a little Knorr stock pot to 750ml of hot water.  If you have any left over salad leaves, watercress or spinach, then these can be added near the end of cooking.  Fresh herbs such as dill or mint could be added at this point too. If you want to make the soup dairy free or vegan then it is not necessary to add the milk as it tastes delicious without also.  

1 medium cucumber

1/2 small onion

1 medium potato

1 tablespoons oil

750ml weak vegetable stock

Juice of half a lemon

75ml cream or milk

salt and pepper

Method

Prepare the vegetables:

Dice the onion and cucumber and peel and chop the potato.

Heat the oil in a large pan and slowly cook the onion with a little salt over a gentle heat until soft and translucent.  Add the cucumber, potato and vegetable stock, bring to the boil and then turn to simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potato is soft. At this point add any additional leaves or herbs, if using.  Leave to cool and then process in a liquidiser.  Add the cream or milk, if using, and juice of half a lemon.  Taste and season with salt and pepper.

 

What’s for Supper tomorrow 

Now that all days tend to follow the same rhythm it hardly seems relevant to distinguish between weekday and weekend food. I made steak Béarnaise the other day, and Saltimbocca was on the menu midweek. I have a craving for the sweet, sour, hot and spicy flavours of Thailand and am planning to make Thai style glass noodles with prawns for supper.