Chicken and white bean soup with hisby and garlic_ Iain Graham, Chef and Food Stylist

6 cloves confit garlic

1 onion, roughly diced

1 orange sweet potato, peeled and roughly diced

1 potato, peeled and roughly diced

100g finely diced celeraic

1 star anise

1 bay leaf

1 red pepper, roughly diced

1/2 dried chilli flakes

4 scallions, finely chopped

1/4 hisby cabbage, separated into leaves and blanched

1 x 400 g tin of cannelini beans

1500 ml chicken stock

This is a great comfort soup, not only because of its solid warm flavours, a touch of chilli and spice, but also because its great to use up anything, you can vary the veggies as much as you like, I always use the beans, but the veg can vary from one execution to the next. The cabbage happened by chance but even my kids love this now and eat it all without complaint!

I have started using confit garlic in everything at the moment, I cant help it. I do a batch of skin on garlic, broken into cloves, I warm it gently in Extra Virgin olive oil or rapeseed oil and then once soft and delicious I leave it to cool. For this recipe I warm around 60ml of EV rapeseed oil and pop 5 cioves of confit garlic out of their crisp skins and then mash them on the bottom of the pan. Next add in the bay, anise and chilli flakes and then the rest of the veg, keeping back the scallions for later.

Lightly fry these ingredients until they start to soften. It should smell awesome at this point. Now add the stock and a good splash of salt and pepper. After about 20 minutes everything should be ready to go, at ewhich point you throw in the scallions.

Heat up the last splashes of oil in a frying pan and saute the cabbage leaves, popping another clove of confit garlic into the pan and mincing whilst sauteeing the cabbage.

Pour the soup into the bowls and finish with the cabbage leaves cracked pepper and a splash of E.V oil