Читать книгу Low Fat, Low Sugar: Essential vegetarian collection - Rose Elliot - Страница 9

When making a soup I generally start by sautéing an onion and any other vegetables in a tablespoonful of olive oil or a small amount of butter, as I have found that this gives the soup a superior flavour. However, wanting to keep the recipes as ‘pure’ as possible, I also experimented with dry-frying the onion and other vegetables before adding the stock or water and found that this also worked well. This process seems to draw out the flavour and, if you allow the vegetables to brown, caramelises their natural sugars and adds to the finished taste of the soup. So after much testing and experimenting, I decided to use this method as a basis for many of the soups. However, if you want to add a little fat, sautéing in 1 teaspoon of olive oil will usually add only about 1 gram of fat per serving.

Good stock can also contribute enormously to the success of a soup and is not difficult to come by now that you can buy vegetable stock in supermarkets or make up your own from good quality stock cubes or – my favourite – vegetable bouillon powder.

Of course in low-fat cookery you can’t rely on a splash of cream to add the final touch to soup and a spoonful of low-fat yogurt somehow doesn’t have the same effect. I think that often the nicest finishing touch is a generous scattering of chopped fresh herbs, which are easy to get almost anywhere all the year round.