Winter warmer: Sparrowholding parsnip and apple soup

Being an unashamed soup fanatic, I love turning the fresh produce we grow here at The Sparrowholding into various seasonal soups. Last week it was the turn of a handful of our newly harvested parsnips plus some of October's apple crop to be committed to the tureen... 

Just as they fell... windblown apples

Still life apples

Parsnips aplenty...

Apples almost ready for action...

Parsnips: peel'em, slic'em, parboil'em for 5 mins then roast'em
till cooked - Summer Harvest rapeseed oil is ideal!

Don't forget to peel and chop the onions...

Brown the onions in rapeseed oil, then
add the peeled/cored/sliced apples for a few minutes.

Make up around 2 pints of boiling water, in which
you can dissolve two chicken stock cubes and one
vegetable stock cube plus Knorr Touch of Taste stock
to taste (but you could use three veggie cubes).

Add most of the stock and the roast parsnips to the fried onion
and apple mix then top with a sprinkling of black pepper.
Cook steadily until the parsnips etc. are totally soft, topping up
with boiling water if necessary. Once soft, blend to the desired
consistency using a potato masher or electric blender.

Mmm, perfectly parsnip-py with an apple-ish tang:-)

Enjoy! No matter how cold and gloomy it is outside in
November, this will be sure to cheer you up :-)

Our parsnips were quite small (but we wanted to harvest them before they became woody) - if you use larger ones, I'd reckon five or six generously sized parsnips would probably equate to the myriad smaller ones that I used here. The apples, too, were quite small - two or three normal-sized eating apples would suffice. Served with crusty bread (wholemeal if you're feeling virtuous!) and a chunk of cheese (not quite so virtuous!), this soup makes a hearty lunch.