This is a soup. It's a real heart-warmer. It is such good comfort food. I'm making a soup like I'm in Australia. It's a pearl barley soup, loads of veg, and it's proper comfort food. So, this is something you can make in a big pan. You can do a batch of it. So, you can cook for a load of people or make it once and have a meal that you can reheat again in the week. So, it's a cracker. Get yourself a big pan. First up, chorizo. 150 g is all I need. Run your knife through the sausage. You can have some big bits and some fine bits. There's so much love gone into this already: spices, sweetness, peppers. A little touch of nice olive oil to the pan. Add this chorizo. It smells incredible already. We're going to get loads of veg into this soup. So, two onions, just kind of roughly chopped. They're in with the onion. And then we'll kind of just keep chopping and adding, chopping and adding. And over the course of sort of 10 minutes, this will be the most tasty base. Two carrots. Cut them up anyway you like. Just get them fine-ish. And then celery. Celery's a funny one. Doesn't crack jokes or anything like that. But people think that it doesn't do anything. But what it does is it gives a fantastic base. We'll get two sticks in there as well. I'm also going to add some herbs. So, two bay leaves, dried or fresh. And then the whole thing of this is just to invest about 10 minutes in stirring and slow cooking this lovely base, concentrating the flavors. It's going to be so much tastier.
There's another ingredient I want to show you instead of pasta that I think is a brilliant healthy swap, right? And this is pearl barley. You can do all kinds of stuff with it. You can use it to bulk out things like soups and stews. It's really delicious. It's very nutritious. So, it's kind of like veg goodness. This is what we want. We want healthy, clever swaps. 200 g goes in. Let's stir that in and let it soak up all the flavor. What I can do now is add some tinned tomatoes. Try and get the whole tomatoes, right? It makes all the difference. Break up those tomatoes with a spoon. You don't want big chunks in there. It smells so good. Wowzers. So, you want about 1.8 L of stock—veggie, chicken, or even water's fine. Like I said earlier, we're batch cooking, right? So, we're doing a nice big batch. This will be enough for eight to 10 people. So, lid on. And once it's come to the boil, turn it down to a medium heat. Let that simmer for 40 minutes to cook the barley, and then I'll show you what to do next.
So, it's had 40 minutes. It smells incredible. And there's one last ingredient that I want to put in here, which is cabbage, the cabbage family. You can choose any cabbage you like. Kale I really like at the moment. So, a nice watch of that kale goes in. Any of the cabbage family is super, super good for you. With all these flavors, it's going to taste so, so good. This is supposed to be a thick, comforting soup. But really, you should adjust the consistency so you like it, okay? So, I'll add a little bit more water. But one of the things I like to do, which is optional by the way, is if you want a little bit of kind of silkiness, just use a little hand blender. You don't have to do it, but it's quite nice to do in just one corner, right? Just to make it a puree, and then fold it through all the chunks. So, you get the best of both worlds from brothy, chunky, and sort of silky. So, look, lid on top. Turn that down. Five more minutes, and then I'll serve it.
Here we are, lovely people. A really gorgeous, humble, delicious thing. Really important actually, this: taste and season to perfection. Mhm. Oh my god. Wow. Delicious, big, juicy, comforting flavor. Wow. It only needs a tiny bit of salt and a little pepper. And that, my friends, is a mighty, mighty soup. You could serve that with some bread, but it doesn't really need it. Lunch, dinner, a little pick-me-up. That is a beautiful, beautiful dish that's going to put smiles on people's faces. Let's have a little try. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Oh my lord. Wow, big flavor. It's smoky, it's sweet, it's really comforting. It makes you feel really good. I just love it. So, I really want you to try this soup, guys. Have a go at making a batch. And you know what? The healthy swaps, genius. Pearl barley, get a pack. So, guys, it's quick, it's easy, it's healthy. What are you waiting for? It's so blooming tasty.
My cheesy onion soup is a perfect way to celebrate autumn as the days draw in. This is a homage to the French onion soup, but there's a few things that we do in this country that are so good. I'm really proud of bread and cheese and a few little kind of hacks for flavor. So, slice up 2 kilos of onions, red or white, it doesn't matter. Without being kind of too boring or geeky, if you slice an onion, it tastes different when you cook it to if you chop an onion. And if you chop it coarse, it tastes different than if you chop it small. And if you roast it whole in the skin, it tastes different to if you roast it whole without the skin. So, like that's cool, right? So, we cut it this way. It's just sweeter and more delicious. So, I'm going to use a lovely casserole-style pan, medium-high heat. Go in with some olive oil, couple of tablespoons. I'll take a knob of butter. This looks generous, but I'm making quite a lot of soup, right? This is going to be enough for like eight, maybe even 10 portions. And then garlic. Take six cloves. We'll slice these up. As soon as this lovely butter is sizzling away, get the garlic in there. I don't want any color on this garlic. You just want to bring out those sweet flavors.
And then I'm going to go in with the onions. And lots of them. It's going to look like too much, but you have to trust me. We need to access the natural sugars in this incredible vegetable, and that requires a little time, right? So, we want to soften these. And then as the moisture starts to cook away, we start to fry. And then we start to caramelize. I'm going to turn the heat up now. Season it with some salt and some pepper, fairly generously. And then I want to take another little bit of inspiration from the French and have a bouquet garni, which is like a little bunch of herbs. So, take a little bit of sage, thyme, rosemary. You could have a little bay leaf in there. Grab some string and tie it up. Or you can buy them like this. That little bunch of herbs is going to give incredible fragrance and flavor. Turn the heat down to medium. And I am going to cook this down for about 40 minutes. But, instead of losing all of this moisture—you can see the steam, right?—I want to keep it. So, I'm going to make a little lid. This is what the French would call a cartouche. But, this bit of paper is folded in half and then folded in half again. And then again. Measure up to the center of your pan. Slice off the end. Take the tip of your knife and just do a little cross like that, and let a little bit of steam come through.
So, if I put our little cartouche on top, or if you don't want to do that, use a lid, ajar. So, what's that going to do? It's going to keep it wetter for longer. We're going to release more sugars, get more caramelization, more color, more flavor. So, that's how you cheat out epic flavor. So, I'm going to cook this for 20 minutes with the cartouche paper on top, and then I'll rip it off, and then I'll caramelize it for 20 minutes, and then I'll show you what to do next. I've just given it a little stir every now and again. If you look in the bottom of the pan, it's actually those brownings that are going to give this broth, this soup the most beautiful dark color. So, to help get all those sticky bits off the bottom, add a little beer. A British IPA, 300 mils, not too much. And I'm going to turn the heat up now and cook all that beer away. Now, we're going to go in with the stock. I'm going to use a chicken stock. Two and a half liters goes in. Let that simmer for like 5 or 10 minutes. And then let's get onto the bread. I'm going to go for quite brave kind of 2 cm slices. When I say brave, I mean like chunky, rustic. I find that if I toast it, I get deeper flavors. And this is not a garnish. This is part of the ingredients.
That little bouquet garni on a leash has done its work. We'll get loads of lovely fragrance from that. You all right, Conker? Mate, sadly, you're not going to be able to enjoy this. Sorry, dude. Next time. And hopefully, I haven't burnt my toast. I'm going to take a little bit of butter for deliciousness. I'm then going to bring in another friend, English mustard. And then, amazing British farmhouse cheeses. You can use any one or two or three that you like. Things that are going to ooze really nicely. You want just enough cheese to sort of generously top your toast. Just use what you love. Use your little toasty barges to float on this beautiful sea of onion. And you want to submerge the bread. And you want them to be soft, but you want the top to kind of gratinate and go beautiful. I didn't think I had enough cheese, so I added just a little bit more. And then, last but not least, a little Worcestershire sauce. And now, turn it off and get this under the grill for like 5, maybe 10 minutes, until it's just golden, crispy, oozy, and delicious. Heaven.
Just look at that. Oh, it's gorgeous. A homage to the fine, humble onion, banging season right now. Let's have a little portion up. I am very, very excited about this. Amazing color. A beautiful, oozy slice of that good stuff. Extra virgin olive oil over the top. Let's have a little try. A nice wedge of those onions. They're so soft. Effortless to eat. Mhm. So good. Even though that bread's been toasted and it's quite robust, when it sits in that lovely broth, it absorbs it all and it just softens. This is a brilliant soup to kick off the beginning of autumn, whether you're growing onions or just down the markets and supermarkets where there will be onions like you wouldn't believe. It's nice to shine a little spotlight on that lovely vegetable. What a joy.
If chilled soups aren't your thing, you can heat it up and it's still equally delicious. So let's get cooking. First up, let's get those lovely tomatoes out. Tomatoes are at their best right now. Give them a little wash. Halve them, put them at the bottom of the liquidizer like that. I'm then going to go in with the pepper. Put your thumb in where the stalk is and then just split it open like that, and this way you're not going to waste much. Chop this up into sort of like chunky bits. So I've got two peppers. So I'm going to put one and a half into here. Chop it up, tear it up. It's all good. With this little half a pepper here, finely slice the peppers like that and then just put it into a little bowl. Then we want onion. So I've peeled it. Just take the ends off. Cut it in half. I'll just roughly chop this half and put this into our liquidizer. And then this half here, I'm just going to finely slice but not quite to the end. Turn it around and just carefully slice in half like that, and then we'll finely slice it. In with the onion. A nice pinch of salt and then a splash of vinegar. And then what you get is a really quick little pickle, a little crunchy salsa. And I'll show you what we do with that a little bit later. I'm going to also put 1 Tbsp of red wine vinegar or white wine into here, and that gives it a nice little tang. Then we've got one clove of garlic, just peeled. I'm going to take one half and just put it to one side, and then this half goes into the liquidizer. I don't want to use too much garlic. It's powerful, it's delicious, it's pungent, but kind of be subtle. About 3 or 4 Tbsp of olive oil, a good pinch of salt and pepper, and then a nice big handful of ice, and that will chill it down and make it absolutely delicious.
And then what I want to do is just take the end off this lovely baguette, and this is going to make this soup have a bit of body and a real delicious creaminess, a real shiny creaminess. You'll see in a minute. And then I'm going to slice this bread into 1 cm slices, put it into your large pan like that, and we'll just toast them on both sides. Get them nice and golden, and then the rest of the ends go into here. Just turn it on. Give it a little whiz up. So, literally 30 seconds is all you need here. So, that leftover piece of garlic here, just take it, and as these toasts are nice and golden, just take it off and give it a couple of rubs. What's amazing is just that kind of crispy toast and the heat is enough to pull out the pungent flavor, the gorgeous fragrant pungent flavor of the garlic. And then I'm going to show you the quickest way to turn humble beans into something that is delicious in the Mediterranean. You know, one of the most famously healthy diets in the world, we celebrate beans. So, let me show you how to make them utterly delicious. This hot pan, I'm going to pour in the beans, juice and all, right? We'll bring it to the boil. A lot of that liquid is starting to evaporate. I can take a fork and mash up like 10% of those beans. That will release even more creaminess and ooziness. And then what we want to do is season this with salt, pepper, and a little thimble of olive oil and vinegar. But why not use the vinegar from our little quick pickle here, right? It really makes a massive difference. So, just a little tablespoon in there, and you can see it's now getting creamy and delicious. Look at that. In no time at all, we've transformed boring old beans into something that tastes really delicious.
I'm simply going to take this hot beans and just top it on our little toasts here. What I love about this dish is it's delicious, nutritious. It's coming in at under a pound a portion. It's two of your five fruit and veg a day in one dish. It's something a little bit different. On a hot summer's day, you don't want to be slaving away in the kitchen like, you know, cooking loads. Like, zip it up, chop it up, and just like little re-seasoning of the beans. Now, with this lovely little salsa, just a little pinch on top. Now, look at the colors. Beautiful. This in itself is a lovely little antipasti mezze, but with the soup, I think it works really, really well. You know, having the beans gives you a nice source of protein, so really, really good. Then we've got some parsley. It's a delicious herb. And I'm going to equally love the stalks and the leaves. And I know it's messy, but it's chaotic and it's brilliant and I love it. And then last but not least, let's get that soup out. Look at the color. Just beautiful. Cold, it is so refreshing on a hot day. It's like an antidote. It just cools you. It's so full of the good stuff. By taking just a little crostini or two, the bread starts sucking up all the beautiful juice from the soup. Just a little drizzle of olive oil. Look at that. That is summertime right there. So, you can see this is kind of a friend of gazpacho. Super simple soup, toasts, beans, full of the good stuff. And whether you have it hot or cold, it's really easy. Let's get in there. It tastes how a greenhouse smells: sweet, fresh, and then you get these little toasts. You know, the hot garlic toast with those lovely beans. The two.
With toast of whipped ricotta, lemon zest, and chili, this is a delicious little soup that I know you're going to love. Full of color, full of texture, full of nutrition. And this is a brand new recipe from my new cookbook Eat Yourself Healthy. And it can happen in about 25-30 minutes. It's a really nice thing to do. So, this is a celebration of veggies, and actually veggies in many different forms. I'm going to be using artichokes, which are jarred. I'm going to be using fresh leeks, which is fantastic. You can swap these out for onions if you wish. And then some frozen veggies from the freezer, broad beans and peas. This is a real celebration of veggies, but I think it's really important that we don't get so kind of worthy about seasons and it has to be from a farmer's market. I love all that, by the way, even if you grow your own. But also, being busy, corner shops, supermarkets, and kind of working with things so you can enjoy spring all year round, or more importantly, you can enjoy the nutrition of spring all year round. So, let's start it off. Pan on, nice big pan. We'll kick off with these artichokes. These are actually already cut into quarters. If yours aren't, cut them into quarters. We'll place that into a pan. I'll pour in a couple of tablespoons of the oil that it comes in. And let's just put the artichokes into the pan like that. Add some vinegar to it and some mustard. Put the lid on, shake it up, and you make a lovely French dressing, and that'll be good for a week in the fridge, so I'll put that over here. What I want to do is start off the frying by just putting these artichokes in one little layer.
Let's go to the world of fresh. So, we love leeks: sweet, creamy, and delicious. What I tend to do is just take the outer leaf off like that, and just run my knife down like that. Pull this off. And once I've done that, get the tip of my knife and run it down the length of the leek. We'll compost this. So, I'll trim the green part off here, and I'll use this for making a stew or something nice like that. Wash away any of those gritty bits. And then what I want to do is just run my knife down the length again. What's nice about giving them a wash as well is you create a little bit of moisture. It's going to really soften up nicely. And then in we go with all these veggies. So, let's mix everything up. Give it a light seasoning with salt and pepper. And we'll let the excess water from washing the leeks create a nice little bit of steam. And what we want to do is cook this on a medium heat for 15 minutes just to really help those leeks become sweet, delicious, and beautifully buttery. So, let that cook, and then I'll show you what to do next.
After 15 minutes, you can see the leeks have really cooked down. It smells amazing. You created good flavor and texture here. If you want to kind of get real good food into your life and you're busy, like using jarred food, tinned food, fresh food, and even frozen food, this is important. And there's a few things that we should probably know about the freezer. The freezer's amazing. It's like your best friend. So, when you pick veggies, the nutrition is depleting all the time, but when you snap freeze it, it's really, really helpful and useful. This is broad beans. Really common. You get them in most of the supermarkets. Really, really delicious. So, we'll stir that in. A classic, frozen peas. People just love it. And again, embracing the freezer and frozen veggies, it's super cool. They're sitting there in the freezer waiting to be used. So, what I've tried to do in this book and in this recipe is show you how easy it is to get more veggies into your life, which are super nutritious and often incredibly affordable. So, here I've got 60 g bunch of mint. Just grab it at the top. Rip that off like that. And do the same on the other half, right? So, we can keep these stalks for putting in stews or cooking potatoes. So, do not waste that. We'll put that to one side. And then with this, we just roughly chop it. And boldly and bravely, we're going in with the mint. So, mint, broad beans, peas, leeks, they love each other. It's a good combo. So, stir in the mint, cook it down, and we're almost treating it like spinach.
Now, I'm going to add a liter of boiled water. You could add a chicken stock cube or a veggie stock cube if you wanted to, but actually, I think we've achieved enough flavor by slow cooking those leeks already. Bring that now to the boil. We don't have to cook the life out of it cuz we want to keep the color, the texture, and the nutrition, right? But I want to give you a really nice little trick. And it feels really indulgent. So, I can take just a couple of little ladles of this beautiful soup and whiz it up. We can simply pour it back in. Salt and pepper. And let that tick over while we make some beautiful toasts. And I've got a lovely loaf of bread here. So, four nice centimeter slices of good bread. The better the bread, the better the flavor. So, this is going to go under the grill. So, we'll let that grill. It won't take long at all. In that time we're going to grill it, what I want to do is show you a way of using a really delicious cheese that's very, very healthy. This is ricotta. Kind of neutral, light, delicious, and super healthy, high protein cheese. You can get it in the supermarkets. And what I love to do is just put a pop of the ricotta in like that. Season it with a little salt. I'll take a little lemon zest and then some Parmesan. 20 g in weight of Parmesan, a little bit of lemon zest in and on it like that. We'll season it a little bit with salt and pepper. And then we just take a little spatula and smash it, whip it, mix it. You can go coarse or you can go smooth and shiny like that.
So, soup done. That lovely ricotta done. Lovely hot toast. Look at that. Put a nice little dollop of that ricotta on each toast. Any extra you have, you can put in the fridge. That will last for 2, 3 days easily. Just use the back of the spoon just to push that ricotta around to the edge. If you've got any extra ricotta, you can put that in a little bowl in the fridge. It's good for like 2, 3 days, and you can use it as a dip. To make this even more delicious, I just want to take a little bit of lemon zest and a little bit of extra Parmesan. Look at that. And a little Parmesan goes such a long way. Just a few extra mint leaves just on top. I love it. And very important, flaked dried chilies. That little bit of heat with the peas and broad beans works so well with the lemon, the creamy ricotta, the peas, the broad beans. It's a beautiful thing. So, let's just plate some of this up. I'm just going to take a nice big bowl of this creamy and chunky soup. Look at that. So, look, I'm going to serve up two lovely bowls of this soup. Any leftovers, you can keep in the fridge for like three or four days. And if you just serve that with a nice little toast on the side like that, I think that is just a beautiful way to enjoy veggies. You can slurp it, you can get involved. It's comforting. You can dip in your beautiful toast. So, for me, just that simple act of making a delicious homemade soup with accessible ingredients is a cool thing. So, look at that. Count to three, let it absorb, and then get amongst it. Mhm.
Right, I'm going to make one of the most incredible soups ever. And we've got a whole head of Savoy cabbage there. We've got a big handful of cavolo nero and a big handful of red and green curly kale. And I've cooked that in 2 L of chicken stock, but you could do veggie stock if you want. So, that's been boiling for about 5 minutes. And then big enough, Mr. Bread. Stale bread, just grilled on a griddle pan, or you could even roast it in the oven if you wanted to. A whole load, big stack of the bread like that. And when you get your bread like this, while it's hot, just get a piece of garlic and give it two rubs, and you'll be amazed how much flavor that transmits. But, there's a perfume of garlic there, which is lovely. I've got a tray in the oven. But, what I want to do, get my tray here. I'm going to get one tin of about 14 anchovy fillets. Pour the oil in here first. Then I want about 12 rashers of nice pancetta. So, just lay it in here. Normally I do this on a gas hob, but I'm outside. So, I'm going to cover this tray with the bacon, and I'm going to put it back in the oven just to render and go crispy. But, before I do that, these anchovy fillets here—oh, be careful when you take these off. Shake them out there. Just put the anchovies out and about, finding things out. And let's roast these babies up. Pop it back in the oven.
Now, over here, I've got two cheeses: Fontina, which is a wonderful cheese. It's quite mild in flavor, but it has the most incredible melting qualities. It's all stringy and light and incredible. And then I've got good old Parmesan there just for good flavor. I want 200 g of Fontina, about 150 g of Parmesan. Get this out of the way. And then, check this. You can hear it sizzling. Look at that. No time at all. Just have a look at it. You can see the anchovies have totally, totally melted into nothing. The bacon's nice and crisp. At this point, get your greens straight in there. Now, I'm just literally coating it in all this lovely gear. Even if you're just serving this as a veg dish, this is a fantastic way to do it. I'm cooking this in a casserole-type pan, something of that ilk and that size. Get four bits or enough stale toasted bread to cover the bottom. And then, we go nice mixture of greens here. And we've got one whole Savoy cabbage, and we've got cavolo nero, and we've got some kale, purple and green. And then we put our cheese. And then I put a nice sprinkling of the Fontina, and a sprinkling of the Parmesan. And this is a great opportunity to have a little drizzly up of quality extra virgin olive oil. All right, so that goes there. Bit more bread on top. So it's like a lasagna, but instead of using pasta and minced meat, you know, we're using nice garlic rubbed bread. Again, Savoy cabbage in and around. You can chop this cabbage up if you want, but the way I've had it has always been quite crude. Fontina, and a sprinkling of the Parmesan. And then we go more bread. Cabbage. You can tear it up a bit if you want to. Cheese. Let's have a little bit more Fontina. Parmesan. Here we go. Last one on top. I'm going to use untoasted bread for this part. You can kind of push down on it like this. Give it a bit of pressure.
Okay, let's taste the stock. Give it a stir. It's gone a bit dark because you cooked the cabbage in it, but at least it's got the flavor. Pour this in there. There you go. And then what I'll do, just a tiny bit of cheese. There we go. Final bit of Parmesan. And then good lug of extra virgin olive oil. Nice sprinkling of pepper. At this point, if you want, you can just push this all into each other. All right, and as that cooks, that's going to cook for about 40 minutes at about 180 Celsius, 350 Fahrenheit. And what will happen is it'll go crunchy and golden on top. And then the water will just sort of suck into all the bread and the flavors will mix up and it'll be delicious. So, I'm just going to put that at the back of the oven. Give it about 40 minutes. Just look at that. Fantastic. And you can see it's like a cross between a kind of bread and butter pudding and a French onion soup. Most of that water's cooked into the bread now. It's had about 35-40 minutes. And if it gets too much color, you know, you can put a bit of tin foil over the top. But look at that. Absolutely lovely. So, I'll put that there.
Right. So, one of the classic things to go with this is a sage butter. So, just going to get a nice big knob of butter straight in there. And then straight in with some sage leaves. Just take the leaves off. And you want to melt that butter. Just toss the sage in there. I'm going to put it straight back in the oven. That'll take 30 seconds, 40 seconds to make that raw sage leaf go to being like snappy crisp and really meaty in flavor. Now, let's plate these little darlings up. Don't go thinking this is going to be some kind of creamy soup or brothy soup. Don't go there. This is a bread soup. This is an Italian soup with attitude. I'm literally going to take a nice big clunk of this. Look at that. Beautiful. Get some of this. Lovely dark color. Get more. Let's check the sage. All right. And then all you do, you know, while the butter's nice and brown, but not dark, not black, just put the sage leaves around, a little bit of that butter, and a little grating of Parmesan. And that's it.
