Serves 4

45 minutes to make (30 mins of roasting the veg).

While I’m making this soup, we are currently in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the UK. We have been in lockdown for just over 3 weeks. My weekly shopping trip was planned for tomorrow however my husband came home from working at the hospital last night feeling unwell and developed a fever. I can’t leave the house now for 14 days so before starting on my freezer stock, I need to make sure I’ve used my fresh produce first. I’ve had sweet potatoes in the back of my cupboard for a couple of weeks now and been contemplating what to make. I’d already made a sweet potato curry from BBC Good Food (see how it turned out on instagram ) and now thought about a soup. I wanted to keep away from the Asian flavours as I’ve over done this recently (curry and noodle EVERYTHING) so went for good old British onions and garlic with rosemary for this soup.

In terms of prep and cooking, I decided to just throw all the veggies into the oven for 30 minutes. Even the onion. I just roughly segmented the onion, halved the sweet potatoes and kept the cloves of garlic as they were. I stripped the leaves from a sprig of rosemary and tossed amongst the veg. After 30 minutes I scooped the soft flesh of the potatoes into a pan, popped the garlic cloves from their papery cases and just added the onion as it was, to the pan. I gently mashed the ingredients together before adding stock, gently bringing to the boil and then removing from the hear before blending with a stick blender. I added a tiny bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar just before serving. The tang of the balsamic worked perfectly with the sweetness of the potatoes.

Ingredients

650g sweet potatoes, halved

1 onion, peeled and chopped in rough segments

1 bulb garlic, cloves separated

1 sprig rosemary

700 ml hot vegetable stock

Black pepper, to taste

2 tsp extra virgin olive oil (optional)

2 tsp balsamic vinegar (optional)

Method

See above for my detailed notes.

Preheat oven to 170C. Roast all the vegetables for 30 minutes. Remove the skin from the potato and the garlic then add to a pan with the onion. Add the hot stock. Bring to the boil. Remove from the heat. Blend and serve. Drizzle 1/2 tsp each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar immediately before serving if you like.