Written by Annalisa

* 1 medium onion, chopped
* 1 x 410g tni of cannellini/flageloet beans, drained and rinsed well
* 2 leeks, trimmed and sliced in half horizontally and then chopped
* 3 medium carrot, diced
* 1 tablespoon of olive oil
* 2 cloves of garlic, sliced (you can leave this out if bf and it upsets your LO)
* 2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme or half a teaspoon of dried
* 1.5 litres of vegetable stock made with low-salt stock if will be fed to toddlers!
* 20g fresh flat leaf parsley
* pepper and grated parmesan to seve if you like

You’ll need a large, lidded saucepan.

Heat the olive oil, then add the onions, put lid on and let the onions soften but not brown (if they do brown it’s not the end of the world so don’t cry). Then add the garlic, carrots, shreded leeks and thyme. Add pepper but not more salt unless you have a very salty tooth and don’t want to feed to children as remember the stock will have some salt in.

Cover with lid and let the veg gently stew for 10 mins.

Now add stock, bring to simmer and cook slowly for 20 mins with lid on.

Rinse the tinned beans well and add to broth, cook for five mins with lid off.

Before serving, add parsley, parmesan and a glug of olive oil if you like. What I do is add the parsley and leave out the rest. You don’t need to serve straight away, it heats up really well.

Another thing you can do if you eat meat (look away veggies) is at the point you put the stock in add some chicken pieces - leg or wings are particularly tasty and cook with the soup. This not only flavours the broth nicely but you end up with chicken to eat, too!