Last year I grew purple sprouting and the pigeons ate the whole lot. This year I put a net over them – first crop harvested today in a very wet and Muddy allotment. About to eat them with an array of roasted root vegetables – potatoes, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beetroot – and some rubbish Bisto instant gravy.
I recently visited the Blue Tomato Cafe in Rock and ate the most delicious (and stupidly expensive) tomato and butter bean soup. Here is my attempt at recreating it.
couple of tablespoons olive oil
1 onion – chopped
1 clove garlic – chopped
2 sticks celery – finely chopped
1 red pepper – diced
1 x 800g tin tomatoes – blended until smoooth
1 teaspoon paprika
1 whole red of green chili – sliced
vegetable stock
salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 x 400g tin butter beans – drained and discard loose skins
1 x 400g tin red kidney beans – drained
Heat oil, fry onion, garlic, celery and oregano until starting to soften. Add the pepper and chili, stir and fry for about 5 minutes. Now add the blended tomatoes. Add a teaspoon of Marigold bouillon then fill the tomato tin with water and add the water to the soup.
Add the beans, bring everyting to a gentle simmer and simmer with a lid on for around 20-30 minutes. Season with salt and serve piping hot.
We haven’t been to the cottage in Cornwall since May so thought it best to check on the state of the cottage and garden. It is amazing just how some people treat holiday cottages – things go missing, stuff gets broken, rubbish is left to rot in the bin rather than being put out and most surprising of all, a dirty footprint on the kitchen wall!
Having spent Friday painting bedside cabinets and raking leaves – millions of leaves, we did manage to escape from Newhall Green on Saturday lunchtime to eat a wonderful watercress, pea and mint soup at The Strand Cafe in Trebarwith Strand. The cafe is unfortunately closed now for winter, but Kirsty did share her recipe for veggie burgers with me. I hope you don’t mind me sharing your recipe with readers of this blog (don’t worry, there aren’t that many!).
Serve with chili jam
Whilst I am a big fan of Nigel’s food, I don’t own any of his books. A friend at work made this and thoughtfully shared the recipe with me. This has to be one of my all time favourite soups. Roasted red pepper, tomato and chili soup. Perfect for a wet, windy British autumn.
Put your oven onto 220C. Take a large roasting pan and place 3 red peppers (halved and deseeded), 5 whole tomatoes and 6 unpeeled cloves of garlic on it. Drizzle with oil, add a little salt and pepper, then roast for about 30 minutes. Nw take 3 red chilis, half them lengthwise and deseed them. Add to the roasting vegetables and close the oven door for a further 20 minutes.
When everything is charred and wrinkly, remove from the oven and place in a pan with 900ml of vegetable stock. Bring to boil then simmer for about 15 minutes. Let it cool a little then whiz it all up in a blender or with a stick blender.
Take a handful of mint leaves. Chop finely and mix with some olive oil.
To serve, put the soup in a bowl, top with some of the minty oil and some crumbled feta cheese.
Reminder to self: Buy some new soup bowls
Not quite a soup, not quite a curry, but delicious all the same
Couple of tablespoons sunflower oil
1 large onion – chopped
1 clove garlic – chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon turmeric
600 ml vegetable stock
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
1 cauliflower – cut into florets
handful fresh coriander – roughly chopped
½ teaspoon salt
optional hard boiled eggs – halved or quartered
Heat the oil in a pan, then fry off the garlic and onion until soft. Add the spices and fry for a few seconds then add the stock and coconut milk. Tip in the cauliflower and bring to boil. Simmer until cauliflower just soft then add salt, coriander and eggs.
Serve with hot buttered nan bread
Those nice people at Abel & Cole sent me a box of organic cheese to try out….for free. How very kind of them. In the somewhat grubby but obviously re-used polystyrene box I got some Perl Las blue cheese, Websters Somerset Brie and a very tasty cheddar (at least that is what it says on the pack).
So what to do with all this cheese?
First up, the Perl Las
Celery, Cashew and Blue Cheese Soup
Knob of butter
1 onion – chopped
3 cloves garlic – chopped
1 head of celery, leaves and all – chopped
50g unsalted cashew nuts
A few more cashews for garnish
1 glass of white wine
About a litre of vegetable stock
80g blue cheese
Salt and pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan, then fry the onion, garlic and celery with the lid on until starting to soften, but not browned. Remove the lid and add the wine. Let the alcohol evaporate and the wine reduce, then add the stock – just enough to cover the vegetables. Bring to the boil then add the cashews and simmer until the celery is soft.
Blend with a stick blender or in a food processor then strain through a seive to remove the stringy celery bits.
Roughly chop up the cheese and add to the strained soup then whiz again to blend the cheese in. Return to the heat and keep warm.
Break up the remaining cashews and toast in a dry frying pan. Ladle the hot soup ito bowls and sprinkle some of the toasted cashews on top. No photo of this as I couldn’t make it look appetising against the white soup bowls I own.
The Perl Las is quite strong and does have a slightly bitter aftertaste, but the sweetness of the cashews tames this.
Next, the Tasty Cheddar
Cheese Souffle
150ml milk
25g butter
25g plain flour
75g cheddar cheese – grated
Pinch chili powder
¼ teaspoon dry English mustard powder
A little grated nutmeg
3 eggs – separated
Salt, pepper
Place the milk, butter and flour in a pan. Heat and stir vigorously until blended then add the chili powder, mustard and nutmeg. Remove from the heat and add the grated cheese. Stir well then leave to cool a little.
While colling, whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.
Add the egg yolks to the milk, butter and flour mixture then, using a metal spooon, fold in the egg whites.
Put the mixture into a greased souffle dish or six greased ramekins and place on a baking tray. Bake at 180C for about half an hour until set but still soft.
They call it tasty cheddar and that’s exactly what it is.
I ate the brie with french bread and beetroot relish. Delicious.
OK so I had everything now to make the Strand Cafe Burgers. I wizzed the carrots, celery and onions, then found lots and lots of stringy bits of celery in the mix. Way too much to pick them all out. So onto the compost heap it went. Will start again at the weekend. I think fine chopping rather than wizzing perhaps is in order – at least for the celery and onion.
So in keeping with my current soup diet (I had eaten 5 soups in 3 days) I made a Thai Pumpkin Green Curry Soup which was actually quite nice. Rather than using lemograss, coriander, holy basil, chilis, and all that other stuff I just don’t keep in the kitchen, I cheated and used one of the few vegetarian green curry pastes available.
This serves about 6 people
Heat some sunflower oil in a large pan.
Peel and de-seed half a medium pumpkin and chop roughly.
Add to hot oil and fry off for a few minutes.
Now add about 100g of curry paste – more if you want it hotter.
Pour over a standard 400g tin of coconut milk then top it off with water and a teapoon of stock powder.
Bring to boil then simmer until the pumpkin is soft.
Wizz it all with a stick blender of in the food processor. Add more water if the soup is too thick.
Serve with sliced chili, or coriander leaves or maybe sliced spring onions.
Apologies for the poor photo – little bit of spilt soup on the side of the bowl. It would never pass the Masterchef test.
