Broccoli and almond soup

Well, as I said in my menu planner for the week I intended to make some soup for the weekend but the type of soup would depend on what vegetables were on offer in the supermarket.  When I was doing my shopping broccoli was on offer for 35cent for 500g.  I bought two to use for soup and as one of the vegetables that I would serve with the roast beef dinner on Sunday.

To be honest I hadn't ever made a broccoli soup before and had only ever eaten it once when I was kept in hospital overnight while pregnant with my second child.  I liked it and was sure I'd find a recipe among my various recipe books at home.  If I hadn't I would have fallen back on the trusty Goodfood magazine website for a suitable recipe.

As luck would have it I had a choice of recipes for soups using broccoli as the main ingredient.  I decided to make broccoli and almond soup for the simple reason that I had all the ingredients - there are only 4 excluding the seasoning - in the house.  The recipe is from 'The Soup Bible', edited by Debra Mayhew.

The recipe is as follows:-

Ingredients
50 g/ 2oz/ 0.5 cup ground almonds
675 g/ 1.5lbs broccoli
900 ml/ 1.5pints / 3.75 cups of vegetable stock or water
300ml / 0.5pints / 1.25 coups of skimmed milk
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ gas 4.  Spread the ground almonds evenly on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 10 minutes until golden.  Reserve one quarter of the almonds and set aside to garnish the finished dish.
2. Cut the broccoli into small florets and steam for about 6-7 minutes until tender.
3. Place the remaining toasted almonds, broccoli, stock or water and milk in a blender and blend until smooth.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Reheat the soup and serve sprinkled with the reserved toasted almonds.

This soup was really quick and easy to make.  I decided not to garnish the finished dish with the toasted almonds which saved me a bit of money and will make my ground almonds last a bit longer.  I found it quite tasty.  In the future I might use chicken stock instead just to give it a slightly different flavour. 

Cost - This soup was really cheap for me to make owing to the fact that the broccoli was only 35 cent.  I used one and half heads of the broccoli that I bought to make the soup, costing me 53 cent.  I used about 35g of ground almonds which I have estimated at about 85 cent.  The milk was about 30 cent and I will allow 10 cent for the stock cube and seasoning.  The overall cost of the soup is € 1.78 using these estimates.