New Covent Garden Book of Soups - Boxtree

Successful soups!

Today I am going to review the New Covent Garden Book of Soups!

Shopper's appeal

One thing I love about the United Kingdom is the brand New Covent Garden Food. Their fresh soups are amazing and it's a pity we don't have them over here in Germany. My favourite is "Winter Vegetable", but in the end I really like all of them. Since I can only take a few each time I come to England, I was delighted to find out that there is a cookbook by them!
I immediately ordered it and was really excited to try cook my own fresh soups!

How it looks

The book looks like a spiral notebook so it's easy to handle it when you've got it with you while cooking. The recipes are organized by theme. On each page there is a different recipe with a hand-written look. At the end of the book there are pages for you to take notes on the soups you have tried out.
The book itself is green with picture of vegetables. It's DinA4-sized and has a hard cover.

The recipes and my experiences

There are a lot of different recipes in the book so there is pretty much something to everyone's taste. Most of them are anything but ordinary and they are made with a wide variety of vegetables.
On the first pages there are recipes for vegetable stock, chicken stock, fish stock and other kinds of bases you will sometimes need for soup. You can cook them ahead and store them so you'll have them ready when needed, but sometimes I just smuggle organic broth poweder in to make everything a bit easier.
The recipes and instructions are very easy to understand. On each page, there is not only a list of what you'll need and how to prepare it, but there is also a little story about the soup, telling you who created the recipe or what's so special about it.
The recipes are always for six servings, but after my first tries I realized they meant really tiny servings. Usually it only lasted for two bowls, so when I cooked for others I made double or triple the amount.
In this book you don't only get regular soup recipes, but also recipes for sweet soups or dishes that are served chilled.
There are a lot of different recipes, so the book stays true to it's title "Book of Soups - New, Old & Odd Recipes".
Here are a few examples:

• Avocado and Cucumber
• Brussel Sprout and Chestnut
• Cheese with crispy bacon
• Barolo Blackberry
• Clear Beef with Zupfernockerl
• Moroccan Chicken and Lemon
• Ginger and Carrot with Lime
• Cream of Fennel
• Onion Panade
• Gazpacho
• Jewish Chicken
• Spinach with Nutmeg

... and many more!
I've tried out a few by now and I loved them all. As I said before, I had to adjust the amounts a bit because it was not really enough for six servings if you want soup as the main dish, but everything else was perfect.
The book has 133 pages and there are a lot of recipes. It's defenitely good value and will keep you deliciously busy for quite a while.

The price

The book can be ordered via Amazon.co.uk for £11.19.

Conclusion

I love this book and I had great fun with it. It encourages me to try out new vegetables I have never cooked before - I am a huge fan of frech fennel which I'd only had as tea before. I highly recommend this book - your soups will amaze yourself and your guests!