I’ve blogged about this soup recipe before, it is based on a Greek recipe and it’s a favourite with my family. I almost always have a pot of soup on the go in fact last summer was so miserable that I was even making soup in July! Anyway, this is one that I throw together fast and cook up in my pressure cooker. I’ve taken to leaving out the celery as neither of us are very keen on it and it means that I’m left with a load of celery which is unlikely to be used now that we are empty nesters.

1 mugful of dried haricot beans soaked overnight
3 tomatoes, quartered or about 12 cherry tomatoes
2 onions
4 carrots
3 sticks of celery (optional)
2 200g tins of chopped tomatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp tomato puree
chopped parsley and thyme (to your taste)

Roughly chop the onions carrots and celery and whizz up in a blender with water. You will have to do this a few times to deal with it all. Reserve some of the carrot and celery just roughly chopped if you like chunky bits in your soup as we do. Add all of this to a large pan with the haricot beans and tins of tomatoes. Then. add the tomato puree, dried oregano and chopped parsley and thyme. Lastly, add the quartered tomatoes and more water. I use my pressure cooker for this recipe as then you don’t have to bother about soaking the beans first, just cook at pressure for about 20 minutes. I add enough water to make about 12 bowls of soup. If you don’t have a pressure cooker then just boil it all up for about 1 hour. Season to taste. Try it, you’ll love it. If you can’t be bothered with the dried beans, try using ordinary tinned beans at the end. Obviously you will only have to boil the soup until the vegetables are cooked. I’ve never tried it with tinned beans but I think it will work fine. The photo above is from an older post, you can see the celery in it as I was still putting it in back then.