Vegbox-recipes.co.uk: Here's where you can find tried and tested, delicious recipes to help you make the most of organic, seasonal and local food from your boxes or bags.

Beautiful soups

Gazpacho soup
This classic and delicious Spanish soup is a great way to use your tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers and is easy to prepare. You don’t even have to cook it. You need: 1½lb tomatoes, 4in-long piece of cucumber, 2-3 spring onions, 2 garlic cloves, half a large pepper, teaspoon basil. Peel and chop these veg as needed (tomato skins can be removed by pouring boiling water over the fruit until the skins loosen). Put in liquidiser and add 4 tablespoons olive oil, 1½ tablespoons wine vinegar, about 10 fl oz cold water and seasoning to your taste. Blend until smooth. Either chill your gazpacho or, if you can’t wait, eat immediately. Estupendo!

Parsnip soup
Ingredients: 1 onion, 15g butter, 700g parsnips, 1 tsp fresh grated ginger, salt and pepper, 1 tsp curry powder, 900ml veg stock or water.
Cooking: Fry chopped onion with curry powder and add chopped parsnips and other solid ingredients. Stir fry gently for 10 mins. Add stock and boil to simmer for 15 mins. Puree in blender. When serving, add spoonful of cream to each bowl if you like it.

Pumpkin soup
Pumpkin, being orange, is a rich source of carotene, the vitamin A precursor. It’s also, in my opinion, an underrated vegetable because of the difficulty in preparation.
Tip: Some pumpkin (squash) skins are woody and very difficult to cut. I use a Fijian cane knife (machete) to cut them in half for your bags. You can use a serrated bread knife, pushing down at both ends. Mind your fingers though. But once the initial crude cuts are done, scrape out the seeds with a spoon and shovel the lot into a pressure cooker or microwave and cook them as they are. When cooked, you can easily spoon out the flesh for your soup.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp chopped onion, 1 tsp grated fresh ginger, 1 tbsp flour, 2 cups pureed cooked pumpkin, 2 cups stock, 2 cups milk, salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking: Melt butter and add onion and ginger and fry lightly. Stir in flour. Add pumpkin and cook 5 mins. Add stock and milk and simmer for further 5 mins. Season and puree in blender. Serve hot or cold, garnished with spring onion or parsley.

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