The secret to making your soups an indulgent treat without the calories

A good way to make a bowl of soup taste more indulgent, without adding cream or milk, is to use coconut milk. Lilly Higgins takes this route a lot, and her butternut coconut soup is a treat.

If you want to omit dairy altogether in this recipe, you could use coconut oil rather than butter to saute the vegetables.

But don’t fall into the trap of buying low-fat coconut milk, it’s just coconut milk diluted with water. Use half the tin and make up the balance of the liquid with stock if you prefer. Or double the ingredients and make a batch for the freezer too, replacing one tin of coconut milk with stock or water.

BUTTERNUT COCONUT SOUP

Serves 6

Exercise for wellness: ‘Everybody here is flying on one wing’

---

First steps to top level: How Cora Staunton got to the top of her game

---

Five experts, five tips: GPs on keeping well – mentally and physically

---

Ingredients
1 butternut squash
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
1 tin coconut milk
Butter
Salt and pepper

Method
1 Halve the butternut squash; remove the inner seeds with a spoon and discard them. Peel and then roughly chop. Peel and chop the sweet potato. Peel the ginger and slice it. Peel the garlic cloves and bruise them by crushing with the flat of a knife.

2 Melt two tablespoons of butter in a heavy-based pan.

3 Add the ginger and garlic and leave to cook for a minute before adding the squash and sweet potato.

4 Stir everything well to coat in the butter. Add 500ml of water or stock and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Add the tin of coconut milk. Blitz until smooth and season to taste. Sprinkle with coconut chips or fresh coriander before serving.