Pesto cabbage and chickpea soup

This is a red soup, a very red soup indeed! 

As much as I love this soup and could eat it every day, sometimes I have the urge to change things up a little and so today this is my new soup concoction.

I used a red onion and a red cabbage which gives the deep rich hue, but I imagine this would also work fine with white cabbage. The key ingredient in this soup is pesto. I used my homemade pesto but you could use any vegan pesto (or regular pesto if vegan is not a priority).

This soup is super simple to throw together, and allows for plenty of variation with choice of beans and cabbage type if you don’t have the ones I used to hand. I love using chickpeas in soups as they have a lovely unique bite to them, more so that other beans in my opinion, but that’s just me so feel free to go for your favourite. Or use red kidney beans for a truly red delight!

This makes for a lovely light lunch or a more hearty evening meal served with bread, cous-cous or quinoa. You could even try this chilled on a hot summers day!

The sun has finally decided to come out here and I am going to make the most of it! I have a few ‘summer’ recipe ideas up my sleeve for the coming days…and hopefully a few days of reading in the sun will be on the cards for this weekend. Yay!

I hope the sun is out wherever you are too!

Recipe: Pesto cabbage and chickpea soup

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2tbs olive oil
• 1 red onion
• 1 carrot- grated
• 1 small courgette- grated
• ½ head red cabbage- chopped/sliced
• ¼ cup vegan pesto (I used my homemade version)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 4 cups vegetable stock
• 1 tsp dried oregano or mixed herbs
• 1 ½ cups cooked chickpeas
• Salt and pepper to taste
• ¼ cup pine nuts (or crushed cashews as I used)
• Handful fresh basil

Method

Heat oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions for 2 minutes. Add the pesto, grated carrot, courgette and cabbage and sauté for another 3 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, dried herbs and stock and simmer for around 15 minutes until softening. Add the chickpeas and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Mix through the basil and nuts just before serving. Serve with a swirl or soy yoghurt or cream if desired.