If you love cooking, or even just enjoy food for food's sake, you should visit Henrie's Hotch Potch, the Highlife regular recipe column for a truly amazing website: www.iafrica.com.

A food guru if ever there was, Henrie Geyser does not supply just any old kind of recipe, randomly pinched from the yellowing pages of Your Average Cookbook. Rather, the wondrous menus that grace the pages of Henrie's Hotch Potch each week have come to exist through endless experimenting and tasting, night after night of gleeful peeling, chopping, stirring, stuffing, straining, baking, grilling, frying and braaiing - wooden spoon in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

We are fortunate enough to have been given permission to reproduce a few of Henrie's recipes, just so that we can get a taste! To visit Henrie at the iAfrica web site where he updates his column every Friday with a full menu of Starter, Main Course and Dessert - click here

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup water
2 blocks chicken or vegetable stock
1 kg ripe tomatoes, halved, but not peeled
3 cinnamon sticks
5 cloves
3 bay leaves
4 - 6 curry leaves, dry or fresh (optional)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
salt
1 red or green chilli (more, if you like it hot!), seeds removed and finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons torn fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup fresh cream, whipped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped

• Bring water to the boil and add the tomatoes, cloves, leaves, salt, chilli, cinnamon, onions and carrots.

• Simmer for 40 minutes

• Let the soup cool and then blend until smooth

• Melt butter in saucepan, sprinkle flour in a cook for about 2 minutes, stirring over medium heat

• Add the soup and simmer for about 15 minutes

• Serve in heated bowls and garnish each bowl with fresh mint and a twirl of the cream

Serve with warm garlic bread

Serves 4

Henrie

To visit Henrie at the iAfrica web site where he updates his column every Friday with a full menu of Starter, Main Course and Dessert - click here