Carmel's Somers' Step-by-step Cooking Solutions

1. Assemble a variety of vegetables. Here we include onions, celery, fennel, parsnips, turnip and carrots. But you could omit any of these (with the exception of the onion), and include celeriac, courgette or even shredded Savoy cabbage.

2. Chop all the vegetables into small dice. Saute the vegetables in some olive oil in a heavy pot. At this point season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

3. Cover the pan and sweat the vegetables until they are soft, and have produced a liquid. The longer you leave them to sweat, the better the flavour of your soup. Each time you lift the lid, let the liquid which has condensed on it fall back into the pot.

4. If you are using turnip ­ then add it at this stage, because turnip turns bitter if it cooks too long.

5. Cover the vegetables with water and, if you have it, a little white wine.

6. Cook for about 30 minutes, add cabbage and cook until the vegetables are soft. At this point you can buzz gun or puree the soup in a food processor to make it smooth.

7. To make the parsley pesto garnish, place some garlic and salt into your food processor. Process for a few seconds and then add about 3 bunches of parsley.

8. Process, and then scrape to make sure you have collected all the garlic.

9. Slowly add in olive oil until you get a pesto the consistency of thick mayonnaise.

10. Use a swirl of pesto to garnish the soup.