Tomato, Apple and Celery Cream Soup

1 hour 10 minutes

to cook

This is one of John Tovey's famous soups, as served at his hotel, the Miller Howe, in the English Lakes, and it demonstrates his own method of sweating vegetables for quite a long initial cooking, sealed with greaseproof paper.

This really brings out all the flavour.

The Delia Online Cookery School: Make sure your spices are at their best, watch our video showing how to buy and store spices, just click the recipe image to play.

This recipe is from Delia's Complete Cookery Course. Serves 4

method
Ingredients

Method

First melt the butter in a large, heavy pan, then add the onions and cook gently until golden (about 10 minutes), taking care that they don't burn or catch on the bottom.

Add the sherry, vegetables, fruit, spices and seasoning to the pan, place a double thickness of greaseproof paper (well dampened with cold water) over the ingredients, and cover the pan with a lid.

Simmer gently for 1 hour, checking from time to time that nothing is sticking. After that, add the stock to the contents of the pan (first removing the paper!), and stir everything. Now transfer the soup - in two batches - to a liquidiser and blend, then press through a sieve (to remove pips and stalks), and return to a clean pan. Reheat, check the seasoning, ladle into warmed soup bowls and garnish each serving with an apple slice and some snipped chives. Serve with croutons.