Bacon, Goat's cheese and root vegetable soup

Note:

The wonderful thing about this soup is that you can pretty much change it up based on what you have to hand. i've put the necessary ingredients up the top and the lower vegetables are pretty much optional. however it's fine if, for example, you have sweet potato, or other root vegetables, or even if you just use potatos.

ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 large potatos
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon smoked paprica or paprica powder
1 teaspoon oregano, though this can be substituted with thyme. i love thyme.
1 small onion
100g soft goat's cheese, crumbled
1l vegetable or chicken stock (orr whatever stock you have to hand, really)
150-200g bacon, cut into very small pieces
1 carrot



Method:
1. preheat oven to 200c. wash, peal and chop your vegetables (not the onion) into small pieces and place them on a baking dish with your garlic cloves. toss the vegetable mix with olive oil, paprica, oregano and salt and pepper to taste.

2. place in the oven to roast for 30 minutes. half way through, take out the pan and make sure nothing has stuck. stirr it round a bit, flip vegetables over etc.

3. while your vegetables are cooking, chop up your onion and fry it in a pan with some olive oil until it is soft. use a large and deep frying pan or saucepan.

4. Once your vegetables are done, add them to your onion and cover them with your stock. Use your hand mixer to blend the mixture into a puree.

5. heat the soup until it starts bubbling, and allow it to simmer for 20 minutes. While the soup is simmering, fry up your bacon till the pieces are nice and crispy. place them in a bowl to add to the soup when it's done.

6. once your soup has finished simmering, test the flavour. add more paprica, pepper and salt as needed and then take it off the heat. Stir in your cheese until melted, and add your bacon.



Serve with crunchy bread! do I need to write this? all soup should be served that way!