Roasted tomato and basil soup
Roasting the tomatoes with onion and garlic concentrates their sweetness and gives the soup a gentle smokiness you can't get from a tin. Lovely with a grilled cheese sandwich.
4 recipes that use vegetable stock, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Tofu katsu curry, takes 45 minutes. It is most often cooked with onion, carrot and garlic.
Run out of vegetable stock? Chicken stock, same amount.
Got a few things in the fridge? Search by everything you have
Roasting the tomatoes with onion and garlic concentrates their sweetness and gives the soup a gentle smokiness you can't get from a tin. Lovely with a grilled cheese sandwich.
A hearty Italian vegetable soup with cannellini beans, cabbage and a little spaghetti, finished with a bright basil and tomato pesto stirred in at the end. Don't let it boil hard once the vegetables are in: over-boiled soups lose their colour and body. Serve hot with crisp garlic toast.
Japanese curry rice (カレーライス) arrived in Japan from Britain via the navy in the late 1800s and is now a national comfort food, cooked in homes from Hokkaido to Okinawa. It is nothing like an Indian curry: the sauce is thick, glossy and mild, made with a roux of butter, flour and curry powder, and sweetened with grated apple. This vegetarian version is packed with potato, carrot, onion and mushrooms. It tastes even better the next day, and children love it. Chef's tip: take the onions all the way to a deep golden brown before anything else goes in. Japanese home cooks swear by this step, as the caramelised onion gives the curry its rounded sweetness.
Katsu curry (カツカレー) is a favourite in canteens and curry houses across Japan, first served in Tokyo's Ginza in the 1940s. A crunchy breaded cutlet is sliced and laid over rice, then half of it is smothered in thick, mild curry sauce, so you get crisp and saucy bites. Here firm tofu replaces the pork. It is a little more work than plain curry rice, but children love it. Chef's tip: fry the katsu at the last minute and pour the curry over only half of it, so you always keep some crunch; Japanese curry houses serve it exactly this way.