Yesterday’s lunch:

This was based on a Nigella Lawson recipe and turned out to be a fantastic way to use up some beetroot that came with last week’s veg box. I washed the beets and simmered them whole for over an hour, until a butter knife slid in easily. Using a fork to hold them on a plate, I scraped off the skin and dropped the beets into a blender, along with mustard (Dijon) and vinegar (balsamic). This is too solid to blend so I gradually loosened the mixture using the liquor they had been boiled in until the blades were able to turn it into a thick, velvety soup with a glorious deep red colour. The starting amounts of mustard and vinegar were 1 tsp / 1 tbsp respectively but, since this wasn’t compared to a weight of beets, I ended up adding more and judging it by taste.

Since we didn’t have any bread, I wanted something else to make the meal reasonably substantial and so I cooked some cous cous using more of the juice the beetroot were boiled in. It probably pushes the result a bit beyond the thick end of soup but, accompanied by a few cream crackers, it was delicious (as was the final glassful of cooking liquor, which had cooled down by this point).