Brilliant Broccoli soup

I was drawn to the cover of this month's Waitrose Kitchen magazine by a picture of delicious green soup.  On closer inspection it was a broccoli soup involving mint.  Sounded interesting.

I decided to make it tonight.  On even closer inspection turns out one should really read the recipe  before deciding what's for dinner since I was missing quite a few of the ingredients, so what follows is my adapted version!

For example, the recipe says to roast 1kg broccoli chopped into florets and the stem chopped into 1cm pieces.  I didn't weigh mine, I just chopped up what I had.  

Next the recipe calls for several cloves of garlic.  Oops, I've forgotten to stock up. So I dig a half  mouldy red onion out of the cupboard and chop up the decent bits of that instead.

The broccoli and garlic/red onion (!) is put into a parchment paper lined baking tray, drizzled with olive oil and scattered with almonds.

Aah, I don't have any almonds - they're on the shopping list but I haven't yet ventured out into the world to do actual proper food shopping.  Never mind, I chuck over a handful of shredded sprouts left over from earlier instead!

a bit of salt and into the oven it goes...recipe says 200C so I do 180C on fan.

I forget to time it while cooking - the recipe says about 18 minutes until the broccoli is cooked but still green in parts so I aim for that.

Meanwhile I boil up 750ml chicken stock (the recipe says 500ml veg stock but I seem to have a lot of green stuff in the oven and don't want it too thick).

When it's all cooked it gets chucked in a blender with the zest of a lemon and the juice of 1/2 a lemon plus a handful of mint leaves - this bit I do properly!  At this point I also add about a handful of ground almonds as I do have those, instead of the blanched almonds soaked overnight, which I clearly don't have.

I blend it on full power until the broccoli has stopped being bitty  - the recipe recommends a consistency similar to double cream so that's what I go for.

I am dubious about the addition of mint and lemon and not sure how the almonds will turn out.

Answer - AMAZING!

Wow, this is my new favourite soup.  The almonds make it beautifully creamy and add an almost cheese like undertone.  The lemon and mint lift it so it's not at all farty or heavy like broccoli soup can sometimes be.  It is really really satisfying, rich and yummy.

You're supposed to serve it with a few of the roasted almonds, a charred broccoli floret, a mint sprig and a drizzle of olive oil on the top...I just ate mine :)

I think the main point here, is not to be scared to fiddle about with recipes.  There's an old adage 'don't let the perfect get in the way of the good' or something similar.  I didn't have all the ingredients for this so I couldn't have followed the recipe perfectly.  But rather than not make it at all, I just adapted here and there.  The absolute worse that can happen is that it doesn't taste as nice as the original, but since I've never tried the original, I'm none the wiser. Just get stuck in and have fun and enjoy the end result I say.