Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef: Chickpea and Leek Soup

So in my infinite wisdom I have decided to attempt all of the recipes in Jamie Oliver's first book, "The Naked Chef".

As it is currently bitterly cold and perfect soup weather, the first recipe on my list is Chickpea and Leek Soup (p21).    The recipe is generally quite straight forward and took about an hour to make, but also requires overnight soaking of the chickpeas.  I found that the fluid quantities in the recipe were not sufficient. The recipe calls for 850 mls of stock, but I used 1L homemade veggie stock and 500mls commercial chicken stock.

I followed Jamie's recommendation to vitamise half of the quantity and mixed the unblended half back through prior to serving. Because I used mainly homemade unseasoned veggie stock, I found the soup required quite a bit of seasoning.
Because of the extra liquid, I also got approx 10 servings from this dish, rather than the 6 specified in the recipe. The soup was quite thick even with the extra 500mls added, so I recommend adjusting the liquid quantity based on your findings.

Serve: with parmesan, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, a wedge of lemon and crusty bread. Season to taste.
Make again: yes  Liam's Rating: 4/5 My Rating 4/5

Blog: resurrected

I was going to start a new blog but re-discovered this one from a few years ago. I've deleted the old posts as they generally contained drivel about linguistics which I was studying at the time. I've decided to start blogging again for a few reasons. 1) as a creative outlet; 2) to keep a record of what I've been reading/where I've been/things I have made or cooked; and, 3) to track a challenge I have set for myself - to cook more from my recipe books.  So, even though I doubt anyone other than me will read this, this blog will be resurrected soon....