Winter warmer - cream of cauliflower soup with curry oil

The days are just about as short as they can get and the temperature is near to zero, the rain is battering against the window but that does not mean that the fun has to stop! Not in our house anyway. Today we put on our wellington boots and our waterproofs and headed out of the house to battle the elements to feed the duck in our local park and let the 3 y.o. burn off some energy. After a couple of hours of muddy puddles, slides and ice cream we arrived back home, wet, cold, tired but happy. All we needed was a nice hot bowl of homemade soup topped with some crunchy croutons in-front of the hot fireplace to warm us up and and keep winter at bay.

For me a good soup is one of the purest forms of cooking showing of the flavours of season in the simplest form and to their fullest potential. This is one of my favourite soups, rich, creamy and full of flavour.

1 large cauliflower

2 banana shallots

1 clove of garlic

400ml whole milk

400ml vegetable stock

for the oil

1tsp of curry paste

50ml olive oil

Peel and roughly chop your shallots and garlic and gently sweat the in a small amount of oil. Roughly chop up you cauliflower and add it into your pan, add the milk and stock, simmer for 15 minuets and blend. Whilst your soup is cooking warm the curry past and oil in a pan, this will cause the flavour of the spices to infuse into the oil. pass the oil through a sieve and spoon a small amount over the soup.

#soup