Tart London: How to make a winter greens soup

When catering for fashion shoots we like to provide food that’s fresh and healthy but also satisfying. This warming dish is ideal, packed with vitamins and minerals and rich in antioxidants. We served it for lunch at a recent Gucci shoot with a dollop of home-made pesto and a side of pasta for those who needed the carbs. It was a huge crew and everyone was up early, working their socks off. It went down a treat.

As you can imagine, the nutritional benefits are huge, being good for skin health, immunity and also packed with vitamin K, sometimes called the ‘forgotten vitamin’, which is important for blood clotting and strong bones. This is a very satisfying dish to make, knowing you are putting 100 per cent goodness into your body.

The trick is to make the base and add the stock, then add the leaves at the last second, which keeps them fresh and bright. On shoots we make our soups with vegetable stock so everyone from meat eaters to vegans can enjoy it. However at home we use chicken stock as we like the depth of flavour. Leftovers are delicious to take into work for lunch — we would add protein such as quinoa, an egg or shredded free-range chicken.

Because the ingredients are in season this is relatively inexpensive to make, especially if you’re growing your own — we’ve had a few frosty mornings down the vegetable patch numbing our fingers picking frozen chard leaves. When in London, we get them from the farmers’ market or our local grocer, Parkway Greens in Camden.

Glug of olive oil

3 rashers of smoked pancetta, roughly chopped (optional)

1 leek, chopped

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1 fennel bulb, chopped

2 tsp of fennel seeds

1 bunch of sage, chopped

A few sprigs of rosemary, stalks removed

Large glass of white wine