Tag Archives: soup

Some Cookery Confessions

So, you ask, how was the vegetable soup last night? You probably aren’t asking that, but I’m going to tell you anyway and it seems better if I pretend someone is interested.

Well, the vegetable soup, consisting of some festering ready-chopped carrot and swede, some greying carrots, a wrinkly parsnip, quite a lot of onion and some green bits from leeks, was excellent in parts. It was nutritious, tasty, sustaining, wholesome and almost additive free.

The additives came from a garlic and thyme flavour pot I threw in.

The parts that weren’t good came from the seasoning. It was, to say the least, a schoolboy error. It needs a bit of spice to give it a lift, I always feel, and I decided to test out the new jar of smoked paprika. I’ve only just started using it again, I never think of it as particularly hot and… you can already see where this is going can’t you?

A lesson I learned long ago is to test out each new jar of spice unless it’s one you’ve used before.

This one was quite a bit hotter than the previous one and despite attempts to cool it down with honey and extra dilution, it remained a little hotter than is usual for vegetable soup.

Despite this, the basic recipe was good and it used a lot of slightly manky veg.

Tonight we are having gammon, Hasselback potatoes and vegetables that are still to be decided. I’ve been meaning to do Hasselback potatoes for a while, and once I actually read the recipe I was amazed at how easy they are. They always look much more complicated when you see them served on TV.

This could be a case of “famous last words” because they are still in the oven.

Meanwhile, bubbling away on the hob we have a vegetable curry on the go for tomorrow. It’s onions, sweet potato, chickpeas, some chilli from a jar, garlic from a jar, curry powder and five ladles of spicy vegetable soup from yesterday, because it would be silly to waste it and if you have soup (or spicy vegetable sauce as it is now) you may as well put it in a curry.

You can probably tell from the nature of my ingredients that I’m not one of the world’s most industrious cooks, and that I have trouble with stock control and portion sizes, but I keep on trying. Cooking and writing are both similar in that you have to keep trying, and once in a while, possibly by accident, something good happens.

The photos tonight are chickpea and sweet potato curry and half-finished Hasselback potatoes. If I wait until it’s time to serve I’ll eat them before I remember to take the photos.

Chickpea and Swee4t Potato Curry, and steam

In a rush, I forgot the title…

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As usual, Sunday has seen the death of many good intentions. I was going to make vegetable soup for lunch, but we got up late and Julia made brunch, so we didn’t need lunch. We had crumpets instead of lunch, plus a slice of stollen. It was very nice, though in nutritional terms it may not quite have been what the doctor ordered.

She is out for a Christmas dinner with friends from a previous job while I cook myself a lonely meal and cook the soup ready for tomorrow night, when we will eat it with a sandwich and croutons. Oh yes, we are going to be sophisticated. Even more so when I reveal the croutons will be made from a very stale piece of sourdough. I really sound like a foodie rather than a man who can’t manage his pantry properly, don’t I? In an ideal world I wouldn’t have a load of wrinkly root veg and a quarter loaf of inedible bread.

The soup is very like the vegetable stew we had last week, though the ingredients are slightly more wrinkled and I’ve used one stock cube instead of two. We had dumplings with the stew, using freshly ground garlic seasoning. It was tasty, filling and virtuous, though I did get a lecture on my immaturity when I sniggered whilst complimenting her dumplings. It seems it is time I grew up.

That’s one of the nice things about being married to Julia. Despite all the evidence, she still thinks I’m capable of improvement. It’s heart-warming, but improbable. I’m 61, I’m set in my ways and this, I’m afraid, is as good as it’s going to get.

My alarm just went. My lonely meal is ready. It’s potato wedges, cheese and onion pasty and mushy peas – comfort food. I’m going to watch the Strictly Come Dancing results, shout at the judges then make tomorrow’s sandwiches.

This is not the life I envisaged when I was a young man. There were more yachts, steaks and butlers in my vision of my future. Fortunately I’m very fond of mushy peas.

Demarcation, Detritus and Denby

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I woke at 7.00, ascertained that I was on holiday, and went back to sleep until 8.30. I could get used to being retired, if this is what it is like. On the other hand, sleeping in does tend to blur the lines between life and death, and I’d like to preserve that line as I get older.

Maybe all those pensioners who clutter up the blood testing department at City Hospital need to get there at 6.30 to prove they are still alive.

Yesterday we emptied the space under the stairs so the electricians could install a Protective Multiple Earth. No, me neither…

Today we looked at the heap of detritus that had built up and decided to load it straight in the back of the car and deliver it directly to a charity shop.

It wasn’t actually that direct as we went for breakfast at McDonald’s first then picked up a prescription. Then we went to dump the detritus, or donate our surplus kitchen equipment. It definitely depends on your point of view.

After that we went to a shopping outlet to look for Christmas inspiration, but ended up buying books.

Finally we went for soup at Denby Pottery. We tried to buy pottery but there wasn’t anything we wanted. I had vegetable and fizzy orange soup. The vegetable was deliberate, the fizzy orange was because Julia didn’t think it was important to tell me she’d dropped the bottle on the way to the table.

And that was how we spent our day.

A Sunny Day at the Seaside

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We went to the seaside today.

While we were out we went round a garden centre, visited a bookshop (and bought no books!), saw a lot of marshes and ate fish and chips. I also found space for a syrup sponge and custard.

We saw seven Brimstones, a couple of whites and a Red Admiral. Julia has being seeing Brimstones down at the Mencap garden, so it looks like we could be in for a good Brimstone year.

Then we came home for the last of the homemade soup.

There was, of course, a bit more to it than that, but it’s not very interesting. It’s also just after 10pm and I have a lot to do in the next few hours so I’ll leave it here and take up the story later.

I have some major changes to discuss with you all.

The Afternoon Passes…

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The afternoon slipped past as smoothly as the morning, though it was arguably less productive. All I did in the afternoon was to eat lunch and take a trip to Sheffield.

Lunch was slightly disappointing, so I’m not going to review it, except to say that if we ever need to stop for food in Chesterfield again I will ignore Frankie and Benny’s and go to Harvester instead. You get more flavour at Harvester, and free salad. I say “free”, though I concede this may not be totally accurate.

They have a big wheel in Chesterfield at the moment. I’m sure it will be quite interesting to go on it and see the twisted spire close up if you can ignore the fact you are being taken for a trip in the sky in a device where costs and weight have been kept to a minimum. I really should have taken my camera, as it made an interesting sight.

We then carried on to Sheffield and dropped Number Two son off, along with two bags of healthy foodstuffs and the contents of my wallet. He’s been home for the weekend discussing his dissertation with Julia. He discussed the Rugby and the Superbowl with me. It’s probably for the best, as, though my grasp of sport is poor, it’s far better than my grasp of matters academic.

Tonight, being back to sensible eating, we will dine on soup. Julia has already prepared and packed the lunch salads for tomorrow. I foresee a dreary, though virtuous, few days.

A Day for Small Jobs

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I started off by delivering Julia into servitude at 8.30 this morning. She’s not fond of Thursdays as she has to rush across town at 4pm to get from one job to another before finally being allowed home at 8pm.

Then I went to Newark. It was cold, business was non-existent and the tale of the last two weeks was one of cold, snow and poverty. After an exchange of cards, a cup of tea and a laugh about old times (there’s nothing to laugh about at the moment) I went browsing in W H Smiths looking for writing paper. I didn’t find any. The notes in my Christmas cards will, as a result, be written on paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook. To be fair, this is a more accurate reflection of me than smart writing paper.

A trip round Wilkos netted a tin of Vaseline lip-care products for Julia, a bucket of fat balls for the birds for £4 and a chicken and stuffing sandwich for £1. Yes, I know, I’m not supposed to be eating bread. However, as I’d already treated my self to a sausage and onion cob for breakfast I didn’t think a chicken sandwich was going to do too much extra damage, either to my waistline or my digestion.

From there it was a quick trip to the doctor to put in some prescription requests and on to TESCO for healthy veg and new gloves.

Resisting the urge to go home I visited the shop to drop off Christmas cards to my new colleagues (I’m such a creep) and helped with the delivery of two new cabinets for the new shop. It’s starting to take shape.

I then went home, supposedly to post on the blog but actually to engage in a variety of displacement activities, including sleeping in front of the TV, watching TV, checking ebay, picking Julia up from work, browsing the internet, writing notes to go in Christmas cards and warming up soup. I was tempted to say “cooking” but I’m pretty sure preparing soup and a sandwich isn’t cooking. We normally have something more substantial but after a day that saw us both deviating from our diets we thought we’d cut back a bit.

I even managed to do a bit of reading, having bought the Kindle edition of Maya and the Book of Everything by Laurie Graves. It’s going quite well so far. We’re right into the action and moving along nicely and there’s no boring stuff about chivalry or whales. She is therefore already ahead of Cervantes and Melville in my estimation. On the minus side there’s a definite lack of talking animals, though Sir John Oldcastle is about to make an appearance. I like Sir John.

Simple Cookery from a Simple Man

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My soup recipe just got even lazier because TESCO are now doing vegetable packs specifically for soup, with everything cut small and mixed with onions and chilli. Add water, a stock cube and a hand blender and you have soup. I put garlic in this one too. And a few extra onions.

At this time of year our kitchen is so cold you can leave it in a pan on top of the cooker with no need to use the fridge. We’ve had it for tea once and I’ve had it for lunch three times. The rest will go in the vegetable curry tomorrow.

Sweet potato, butternut squash, onion, garlic and chilli soup

We also had the lazy pie this week.

Chop leeks, celery, chicken, mushrooms and tarragon.

Soften the veg and brown the chicken, Stir in some flour and milk to make a sauce bit and bung it in a pie dish. We had a gammon joint this week too, so I cubed some of it to make this a chicken and ham pie. This is optional.

Then unroll a sheet of ready-made puff pastry, cut off a bit about the size of the pie dish.

Argue about who had the pastry brush last.

Pour a little milk on top of the pie and rub it round lightly with your finger tips.

Add “pastry brush” to the shopping list.

Cook until it”s brown on top. This takes about 40 minutes if you put it in the oven cold but I really don’t see the point in heating up an empty oven first.

Serve with whatever veg you have. We had brussels and red cabbage (which I make in quantity and eat all week). With hindsight I could have selected a less environmentally damaging combination. Think methane.

Chicken Pie and vegetables – sorry about the smudge on the lens

I know ready-made pastry and “parachute pies” (ones with just a top and no bottom) are all frowned on on serious pie circles, but ask me if I’m bothered. It’s crispy, it’s flaky and it tastes good. You don’t need all that stuff underneath.

This cooking stuff really is quite simple. I can’t really see how so many people seem to be able to make a career out of it with TV and cookery books and such. As for Delia Smith being made a Companion of Honour “for services to cookery”, well I am, for once, speechless…

Progress of Sorts…

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Make chicken stew. It’s in the oven. Several hours late.

Soup? Er…just about to do it. Veg are ready but I need to wash a pan as I’ve been storing compost scraps in it for the last few days. Yes, I need to empty a bokashi bucket.

Curry. It won’t take long.

Living room – I’ve moved stuff round, which is related to tidying, though not closely related. More a cousin than a sibling.

Hoover. Perhaps tomorrow.

Meanwhile I have washed up and done the recycling, which I’d forgotten about. I often forget the washing up, though not as much as Number Two son, who is a world class amnesiac. Also watched darts and discussed the finer parts of sports marketing and sponsorship with Number Two son. Had bacon cobs with mushrooms for lunch.

Cut up plastic bottles to make poppies. (and give me an excuse to re-use old photos of poppies).

Poppies made from plastic bottles

Poppies and corn wreath

A Tale of Two Soups

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I tried Mushroom and Tarragon soup last week. I really wanted to do Mushroom and Thyme because we’d enjoyed it while we were out a few months ago. However, our thyme has given up the ghost and the supermarket had none. It did, however, have tarragon, As I’d seen a recipe fot Mushroom and Tarragon Soup recently I thought I’d have a crack at that. The rest of the tarragon was earmaked for a chicken casserole next day.

Now, that was good as far as it went. There was a lack of ingredients when I got back to the house butit’s not the first time that ingenuity has had to replace missing ingrdients. Next time I try it I’m going to use this recipe, give or take a few bits. It looks quite simple. It’ll be onions rather than banana shallots and, unless I win the lottery, there won’t be any porcini powder or pink Himalayan salt.

The first attempt did not go well. Apart from the fact that ingenuity doesn’t taste as good as cream, there was the water problem. I usually fill the pan up with veg then pour in a kettle of water. I did this and then stopped to think. With hindsight, it might have been better to think first. It was a bit watery but not entirely bad. Nobody asked for a second helping.

I like to think I retrieved the situation with today’s soup. It’s the old stand-by – packets of ready-chopped squash and sweet potato, garlic, onion, chilli, stock cubes and water. This time I added curry powder for a more spicy flavour. It’s less orange than previous versions due to the curry powder. It’s a sort of khaki, but still reasonably attractive.

My mother, when she first bought a liquidiser, used to produce a greenish soup that always looked like it had been festering since the days of the dinosaurs. Once she moved on to root vegetables the soup seemed so much better.

The first bite, as they say, is taken with the eyes.

Lazy Soup

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I never did get to make that soup yesterday. I was diverted by the need to stack the bokashi bucket and clean forgot. Next thing I knew, I had a sandwich in one hand and… a sandwich in the other. It was organic brown bread so I feel reasonably virtuous. Please notice that I’ve avoided the “balanced diet” joke. Well, side-stepped it rather than actually avoided it I suppose.

I did get round to it today though, and it worked out well. It’s a nicely seasoned brownish soup, partly due to the seasoning, which changes the colour from orange.

It’s easy and almost free of effort, hence the title.

Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

Three bags of ready chopped Sweet Potato/Butternut Squash from TESCO. They are three for the price of two at the moment.

Half a pack of ready-chopped onions.

Three cloves of garlic. Chopped.

A piece of ginger about twice the size of the top of my thumb. Chopped.

Two organic vegetable stock cubes (they were on offer).

Two heaped teaspoons of cumin.

Water. How much water? Enough to cover and simmer. Maybe some to dilute.

Method

Soften the onions. I browned them by accident but it didn’t do any harm. Let#s face it, this isn’t Masterchef.

Throw in the rest of the stuff and add water.

Simmer for around 20 minutes.

Use stick blender to reduce to soup. Dilute to taste.

I meant to add a red chilli because I wanted to add some heat and some red flecks to the soup. Unfortunately I can’t find where Julia put the chillis when she stacked the shopping.

If you do it with chilli you can probably leave out the cumin, which will give you a much more orange soup, with more heat but less depth of flavour.

It’s so easy I should do it more often.

Normally I would chop my own veg, but a combination of knee and back pain means I can’t stand and cook for too long, At the moment quick is good, even if it does cost more.

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Life after the Care Farm