/ 27 February 2024

What’s On My Table, With Alexandra Dudley

Alexandra Dudley is a food columnist, cookbook author and host of the Come For Supper podcast. In this monthly column, she takes us inside her east London kitchen to show us what she’s cooking and the tools she’s loving. This time, it’s an elevated soup – plus, three of her favourite home accessories…

By Alexandra Dudley /

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Spiced Sweet Potato Soup

It’s definitely soup season, and this simple recipe really delivers on flavour. I love the addition of fresh grated nutmeg but feel free to play around with other spices if you wish.

Serves

Total Time

40 Minutes

Ingredients

3 medium sized sweet potatoes (approx. 800g)

1 banana shallot

2 cloves garlic

Olive oil

½ tsp of ground coriander

½ tsp of ground cumin

½ tsp of ground cinnamon

¼ tsp of cayenne pepper

½ whole nutmeg finely grated

Sea salt

Black pepper

500ml of stock (or hot water with a stock cube dissolved)

Thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled & finely grated

Juice of 1 lime

To Serve

Yogurt, grated nutmeg, toasted seeds or chilli oil

Method

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 200°C Fan.

Step 2

Peel the sweet potatoes and roughly chop into 3-inch pieces and peel and half the shallot length ways. Place onto a large roasting tray along with the whole garlic cloves (leave the skin on the garlic).

Step 3

Drizzle everything generously with olive oil and add the ground spices and finely grate over just ¼ of the nutmeg. Add a good pinch of salt and freshly cracked black pepper and toss everything to coat with your hands. Roast for 30 minutes.

Step 4

Peel away the skins from the garlic and add to a high-speed blender with the cooked potatoes and shallots. Add the stock, the finely grated ginger and grate in the remaining ¼ clove of fresh nutmeg. Blend until smooth. Or transfer everything as above to a large saucepan and blend using a hand-held stick blender.

Step 5

Heat the soup gently on the hob and ladle into bowls. Serve with yogurt, more freshly grated nutmeg, fresh coriander and toasted seeds if you like.

THE THREE THINGS ALEXANDRA'S LOVING THIS MONTH

One of my least favourite things about this time of year is the dark early evenings, so this year I invested in a new table lamp for my kitchen. I had a lot of fun choosing my lampshades and thought I’d share some of the favourites that caught my eye.

Tangier Olive Stripe Lampshade

Alice Palmer,

£135

Striped Lampshade

Hum London x Domenica Marland,

£75

Liz Rattan Flush Mount

Anthropologie,

£168

AND OFF THE TABLE…

@ELLIOTSLONDON

Cantabrian Anchovy Toast At Elliot’s

I went for lunch with some girlfriends a few weekends ago at Elliot’s. It is one of my favourite places to eat and an excellent choice if you love veg or, like me, don’t eat a huge amount of meat, as they always have a brilliant medley of veg-heavy dishes. Think roasted carrot, blood orange, puntarelle and fennel salad; and squash gnocchi with kale and hazelnut as well as delicious wood-fired sourdough pizzas (my favourite is the one with anchovy, oregano and taggiasche olives). But the thing I always order – what I dream about and crave on a regular basis – is the Cantabrian anchovy toast: perfectly bite-sized morsels of butter are topped with lovingly slow cooked sweet onions and a thick curl of cold salted butter before being christened with a single fat salty anchovy. They are the perfect snack – and an absolute must order if and when you visit.

Visit Elliots.London

For more from Alexandra, follow @AlexandraDudley or visit AlexandraDudley.com