Oxatouille Soup Recipe
This is the recipe for four bowls of Guild Oxatouille; ratatouille made from the mighty ox instead of the feeble rat. It looks like gruel, but tastes delicious and barely takes any time to craft because we’d all rather be out performing mighty deeds than standing around cooking.
BEWARE: one bowl of this soup may contain just 162 calories (8% of a woman’s RDA), but it also contains 5.6g of saturated fat (28% of a woman’s RDA). Bear this in mind before your bullshit diet app tells you you’re ‘allowed’ ten bowls of it plus a ‘treat’.
(This is one of the many reasons why a Guildsman doesn’t concern himself with calories. Others include our tendency to ignore anything containing the word ‘recommended’ or ‘allowance’.)
If you can’t find an ox or are incapable of punching one to death, use beef instead or a sizable hunk of whatever/whoever you can wrestle to the ground. A couple of simple alterations (outlined at the end of this post) can lean this soup down to just 63 calories per bowl or beef it up to 217 for those who prefer their food to have some food in it.
[toggle_box] [toggle_item title=”Ingredients List” active=”false”]- Onion
- Aubergine
- Courgette
- Pepper
- 110g of plum tomatoes
- 200g of your burliest ox (or beef)
- Sun-dried tomatoes
- 3 tablespoons Tomato puree
- 1 teaspoon Brown sugar
- Pinch cayenne Pepper
- Whatever you use for vegetable stock
- Basil leaves
Strategy
Glug some olive oil into a saucepan and fry a sliced onion for 5 minutes, before throwing in 200g of diced ox (or beef) for a further 5 minutes. Don’t burn either, obviously.
Hack a courgette, aubergine and pepper into chunks and toss EXACTLY 3/5 OF THE CHUNKS (or thereabouts) into the pan. The more you chuck in now, the less chunky it will be later – it’s your call.
Add 110g of bisected plum tomatoes, a litre of veg stock, some hand-crushed garlic, a fistful of tomato puree, a teaspoon of brown sugar and a punch of cayenne pepper. Bring it to THE BOIL and leave it to simmer for 10 minutes.
[toggle_box] [toggle_item title=”Things To Do For 10 Minutes” active=”false”] Anyone can sit around on their arse doing nothing – you’ve got ten minutes spare, so do something productive. Write a poem, make a Death List or tune your guitar. If you’re trying to lose weight or get stronger, use the time wisely:- Do some yoga: burns 40 calories and makes you calmer, stronger and bendier.
- Walk around outside quite quickly: burns 48 calories and gets the imagination going.
- Lift weights: burns 77 calories, makes you stronger and speeds up your metabolism.
- Do vigourous pushups, situps or star-jumps: burns 100 calories and makes you both leaner and fitter.
- Run on the spot: burns 102 calories, raises your metabolism and looks hilarious.
- Spar with a friend: burns 114 calories and brings you closer as friends or establishes you as nemeses.
- Fight somebody: burns 130 calories and makes you more deadly.
- Watch TV because you’re tired and wah wah wah: burns 0 calories, kills your imagination and slows your metabolism. Nice work, champ.
Ten minutes of simmering later, fly into a rage and smash it all into a pulp. Use a blender if you are weak of arm or heart. Throw the rest of the chunks into some boiling salty water. Wait 60 heartbeats (or 100 if you have a puny heart or are still enraged from the smashing), then drain the chunks and hurl them into the soup along with a handful of torn-up sun-dried tomatoes.
Serve. It will be very hot, so take care not to spill any soup on your face if you are pouring from above you head or whilst falling. If you have any basil leaves lying around, place some on top of each bowl of soup to make it taste even better and appear posh.
Further fill your boots by serving with buttered rustic-ass loaves (NEVER to be confused with rustic ass-loaves).
Approx Nutritional Content: Per Bowl (% RDA men/ % RDA women)
Calories: 163 (7% / 8%)
Protein: 14g (25% / 31%)
Fat: 7g (8% / 10%)
Saturated Fat: 5.4g (19% / 28%)
- Take your keenest blade and slice up an onion.
- Whack some olive oil into a saucepan and fry the onion for 5 minutes.
- Throw 200g of diced beef into the saucepan with the onion.
- While the beef is frying for 5 minutes (STIR IT REGULARLY!) stick on a full kettle, hack a courgette, aubergine and pepper into chunks and cut 110g of plum tomatoes into halves.
- When the kettle has boiled, make a litre of vegetable stock.
- When the beef has browned, chuck just over half the chunks into the pan along with the stock, plum tomatoes, 3 tablespoons of tomato puree, a teaspoon of brown sugar and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
- Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes. Do something worthwhile with your ten minutes, please.
- Stick the kettle back on and smash everything in the saucepan into a pulp.
- When the kettle has boiled, chuck the remaining vegetable chunks into a pan of boiling water with some salt.
- After one minute, drain the chunks and toss them into the soup with 20g of sliced up sun-dried tomatoes.
- Pour the soup into bowls, drop some basil on top and serve.
Alterations
Beef it Up
If you are meat loading before a deed, recovering from a mighty lift or sharing dinner with a fellow Guildsman, you can double the beef (to 400g) to provide a hearty 870 calories and 44g of protein per soup (218 calories and 11g of protein per bowl). Also consider eating extra bread rolls to replenish your energy stores and bellowing with every other mouthful to keep your fury at a peak.
Lean It Down
If you’re trying to shed some of your unnecessary fat stores, use half the beef to bring the entire soup down to just 532 calories (133 calories per bowl). If you leave out the beef and onion altogether, you can bring the entire soup down to just 300 tasty calories (75 per bowl). Do not, however, then chow down on buttered bread rolls – that’s just plain fucking stupid.
Jan 30, 2014 at 12:10 AM /
Love your stories…recipe sounds good too!