Some relaxing blogging always starts the weekend off well. After a long week, it was nice to slow down and take my time over lunch instead of dashing home from work and being caped in my apron and up to my eyes in ingredients before I could even take off my coat! I love to constantly use different flavours and it really is the easiest thing to inspire a standard recipe by adding a few flavourful touches. If you haven’t got a stocked pantry of store cupboard ingredients then I highly recommend investing in a few essentials to be at hand and add to your cooking (see here). My store cupboard is by no means complete…storage space and budget don’t allow my dream pantry so for now I stick to the most useful ingredients.
This warming soup is smooth, creamy and cinnamon scented. Sweet potatoes have natural sweetness which goes really well with cinnamon and ingredients like maple syrup so the lime and cardamon yoghurt is a lovely fresh addition to top it off. Coconut flatbreads (just because) are heavenly.
Serves 4
Soup
- 800g sweet potato, peeled, chopped into chunks
- 2-3 garlic cloves
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 onion, chopped finely
- 2 pints of good, hot chicken or vegetable stock
Lime Cardamon Yoghurt
- 150g plain natural yoghurt
- ½ lime – zest and juice
- Few mint/coriander leaves
- 3-4 cardamon pods
Coconut Flatbreads
- 15g dessicated coconut
- 75-80ml coconut milk/water
- 125g flour
- Salt and pepper
- Preheat the oven to 200°C. Peel and chop you sweet potatoes into chunky pieces and add to a large roasting tray. Throw in your garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled.
- Drizzle with a couple of generous tablespoons of olive oil or sunflower oil and scatter over the cumin seeds, cinnamon and some generous seasoning. Mix until coated in the spices and roast for 30 minutes. Toss half way through cooking.
- Meanwhile, sweat and soften the onion in a little oil in a saucepan over the hob and prepare your stock.
- Make the flatbreads by combining the flour, seasoning and coconut in a large bowl. Add in your liquid and mix with a fork until combined. Bring together to form a smooth dough, adding a little more liquid if needed. Knead for a few minutes and then set aside to rest.
- For the yoghurt, combine in a bowl with the lime juice, zest, finely chopped mint and some salt and pepper. Bash the cardamon pods to remove the seeds inside. Grind these as fine as you can in a pestle and mortar and add to the yoghurt. Stir to combine then set aside.
- Once the potatoes are ready remove from the oven and pick out the garlic cloves. Add the potatoes to the sweating onion. Squeeze the roasted and sweet garlic pulp from their skins and add with the potatoes.
- Add the stock and simmer for 5-10 minutes until the flavours are combined and the potatoes are really tender.
- Puree with a hand blender until silky and smooth. Add a little more stock to thin the soup if you like.
- Keep warm while you cook the flatbreads. Heat a frying pan over a high heat. Divide the dough into four equal pieces and roll each out thinly on a floured surface. Fry each in a the dry hot pan for a few minutes each side until a lightly charred and they begin to puff up slightly.
- Serve warm immediately (or keep warm in the oven) with a generous warming bowl of spiced soup drizzled with the fresh yoghurt.
