Raiding your larder can be great fun, particularly when you find soup ingredients ready and waiting. I bet you’ve already got most of these in the kitchen cupboard… particularly welcome news if you are unwilling to face the supermarket in these sub-zero temperatures!

For 4 people, you will need:

100g Orzo pasta (or any pasta shape will do, any scraps of pasta shapes are ideal. Simply pour whatever you’ve found into a freezer bag and crush the mixture into rough chunks with a rolling pin)
Streaky bacon
2 large leeks
3 large carrots
100g frozen sweetcorn
2 tsp good quality stock
Roughly 200g of Passatta

Put the streaky bacon in the oven and cook at 180C.

Chop your carrots into fine cubes.

And chop your leeks into fine slices.

In a small saucepan, cook the pasta for about 7 minutes until al dente.

Meanwhile bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and pour in the chopped vegetables. Add the sweetcorn and the stock and cook  on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes. Drain the pasta and pour into the vegetable mix and stir (you might need to add an extra teaspoon of gravy dissolved into a large mug of boiling water.)

At this point your bacon should cooked. Snip into small pieces and stir into the pan. Add the passata and stir, keeping it on the boil for a further 5  minutes before lowering the temperature and allowing to simmer for another 10 minutes.

Serve piping hot with your favourite bread! (Mine is homemade ciabatta with extra olive oil for Tuscan temperatures!).

Yum!