I was recently invited to attend a 1 day vegetarian cookery course at Exeter Cookery School (you can read all about my experience here ). I had such a brilliant day- I really loved learning all the new skills and recipes! One of the things that we made was a slow-roasted fennel and tomato ragout, which we then turned into a soup- and honestly I can say that it is the most delicious soup I have ever eaten. I took some home with me and had it for dinner and I just didn’t want it to end! Jim’s recipe was perfect, and I would definitely recreate it completely for a special occasion. But it did contain a lot of wine, olive oil and Pastis (an anise flavoured liqueur), and I got thinking about how I could tweak it to make it a healthy everday soup, that you could still enjoy with the calories cut down.
I replaced the wine with white wine stock (I get this from Tescos and it is fab!), and I really cut down on the oil. The real key for me in this soup is the orange zest- it just adds an amazing flavour, and that’s why I called it Christmas soup as the orange makes it taste really Christmassy to me!
Jim, the chef at Exeter Cookery School will probably be horrified with me mangling his recipe so much, but I was really happy with this soup and I ate it guilt-free all week (I also used it as a pasta sauce for my children one night when I had run out of ideas!)
did keep a tablespoon of olive oil in this- if you are following Slimming World and want to keep it syn free you can take this out and use low calorie cooking spray instead.