Braised Celery & Yellow Pea Soup Recipe

I was heading out to play tennis this morning and was short of time. I knew that when I came back I'd be hungry so it would be nice to have something hot, nourishing and tasty that would be relatively quick and easy to prepare.

I've got a glut of celery from my weekly Able & Cole vegetable boxes....3 heads of  celery to be precise.

Of course, I decided to make soup with it to go with the "Celeriac & Blue Cheese Soda Bread" I was planning on making.

To save time on preparation, I decided to braise the celery and other ingredients all together in the oven on a low heat. The plan being that the vegetables would be cooked and ready to puree into a soup when I got back from tennis.

This plan worked out brilliantly. Hot and tasty soup with very little effort!

Ideally, you will need a roasting tin with a lid or a casserole dish with a lid. If you don't have a lid, you can just cover carefully your ovenproof dish carefully with tin foil.

Braised Celery & Lentil Soup

Serves 8

Ingredients:

2 x heads of celery, roughly chopped

2 x onions, peeled and chopped

2 x large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 cup or 200g of dried split yellow peas

2 litres of vegetable or chicken stock

2 x bay leaves

ground pepper

Method:

• Heat the oven to 150° C / 300°F / Gas Mark 2
• Put the celery, carrots, yellow split peas, bay leaves and 1 Litre of the stock into a roasting dish. Mix together and season with pepper.
• Put the lid on the roasting dish and place in the oven for approximately 2 hours. 
• Take the lid off, give everything a good stir and then put back in the oven without the lid. Turn the heat up to 200°C / 400F / Gas Mark 6 and cook for another 15 minutes.
• Take the veg out of the oven and allow to cool.
• Liquidize the soup in a food processor or with a handheld device, adding the rest of the stock. You will probably have to do this in batches.
• Warm through before serving and garnish with fresh parsley.