- 3 tablespoons coconut oil or olive oil
- 900g/2 lb fennel
- 2 sticks of celery
- 175g/6 oz carrots, scrubbed and sliced
- 150ml /5 fl oz white wine or dry white vermouth
- 750ml/1 ½ pints stock
- 2 star anise
- zest of 1 lemon
- Celtic sea salt and black pepper
- 2 tablespoons Pastis – eg Pernod.
- a little lemon juice.
Serves 4.
- Heat the coconut oil in a large saucepan and sweat the veg over a medium heat until soft.
- Add the wine and boil down to reduce to a syrup if time, otherwise just add with the stock.
- Add the stock, star anise, lemon zest, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 mins.
- Take out the star anise – fishing about for it since it almost certainly will have broken into bits.
- Liquidise the soup.
- If this is for a posh job, then sieve it and liquidise again. If its just for lunch, just give it a good buzzing.
- Taste the soup and add the salt and pepper plus the Pastis and a squeeze of lemon juice.
- Reheat and serve.
To sieve or not. This soup is a bit stringy because of the fennel and celery. But for standard noshing, this is fine and we are better keeping the roughage from the vegetables. But if the vicar is round for tea, then a bit of straining might be called for.
The stock. Any tasty stock will do. I used a beef stock, so it was dark. This made the soup a pale yellow colour. I also pulled the small amount of meat left on the bones and put that into the soup. However, if you have no stock, either use a liquid stock from the supermarket or just plain water – with maybe a little more wine for added flavour. Basically better plain water than a horrible stock cube. Bleurggh.