Thai Spiced Pumpkin Soup

Who doesn't love carving a Pumpkin at Halloween? It's great fun and you can get the kids involved. I use a Mellon baller or Ice cream scoop to scrape out all the flesh from the inside, but it seems really wasteful just to throw it all away!

Inspired by this reluctance to waste food here's my recipe for a simple Thai spiced Pumpkin soup.

How to make Vegetable stock

Many recipes have a stock as the basis of dish, think about Paella or Risotto, stews and soups, the list goes on. A poor stock will spoil the dish while a good stock can elevate it to another level. In Vegetarian food this is probably even more important. The good news is it's cheap and really easy to do.

There are no fixed rules and most of the ingredients can be swapped if you don't have them.

A few of points to remember;

• Chopping the Vegetables more finely will allow more flavour to be extracted.
• You can use bits of Veg. that might otherwise be discarded or wasted such as Vegetable peel and trimmings, broccoli stalks, squishy Tomatoes, outer Cabbage leaves, the list goes on. You can use stuff that may be past it best. Throw in whatever will add to the flavour or needs using up!
• If you're making the stock for a specific recipe don't add ingredients that won't match or will overpower what you're making.

Here is my method for making the Vegetarian stock.

Tomato Sauce with Lentils and Roast Vegetables

Here's my recipe for a Tomato sauce with Lentils, and Roast Vegetables.  It is based on my Simple Tomato sauce for pasta but has extra ingredients to bulk it out and make it into a more balanced meal.

Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry

For a long time I've been promising to teach a friend how to make a curry from scratch, but we haven't got round to it yet, so this recipe is long overdue. This curry is one I make regularly and serve with Dhal as an accompaniment. I know it seems like a lot of onions but trust me, they will cook down and form the basis of the sauce, and this is the secret to many different curries. This recipe serves 4-6 people.

Red Lentil Dhal

In India the word Dhal (or Dal) means Lentils, but it is also the name of a simple dish made mainly out of these versatile pulses and spices.

This is my easy recipe for a delicious, healthy Red Lentil Dhal. I usually serve it as an accompaniment to a Vegetable curry. This makes enough for 4-6 people as a side dish.

Simple Tomato Sauce

Here's my recipe for a simple Tomato sauce. This can be used as a basis for a pasta sauce, the sauce for a pizza or even transformed into a tomato soup.

Tomato & Red Pepper Salsa

Here is my recipe for a really simple, healthy tomato and red pepper salsa with no cooking required. This is an ideal accompaniment for many Mexican dishes such as Nachos or Fajitas.

Vegetable Chilli

I'm sure nearly every cook out there can whip up a decent Chilli. This is my take on the Vegetarian version. I don't make any claim that's it's in any way authentic but it is a simple and tasty, hearty and healthy dish that doesn't cost a lot to make. This much normally serves 3-4 people.