New Jerusalem

The last four days have been good ones; the sun has shone, I've played a round of golf, seen plenty of good friends in super surroundings, enjoyed some relaxing walks and been away from the office. The generally sunny weather has meant a lot stickiness and mugginess hanging in the air as well, not good weather you would think for making soup however the soup I prepared on today was an exception to the rule.

I had been a long walk in a sun that had succeeded in burning my neck and making my dog collapse with exhaustion in a meadow at various points but we made it back by mid-afternoon even though I could have stayed out all day.

One of David Bowie's slightly weaker efforts, 1984's "Tonight" was on the media player and it contained some summery music in the form of a slightly tired cover of the Beach Boys' song "God Only Knows".

The key ingredient of the soup was a selection of six Jerusalem Artichokes that I had picked up  from the local market the previous week. You will be hard pressed to find this vegetable at your local supermarket and I would certainly recommend looking at your local market stall to pick it up, one good reason why you should not always rely on the big supermarkets for your food.

Before starting work on the artichokes I topped and tailed two white onions and then diced them. The onions were so strong that I had to put on a pair of goggles while preparing them! Next I topped and tailed six cloves of garlic but I did not cut them up in any other way. After melting four ounces of low fat margarine in a large pan on the hob I added the onions and garlic and let them stew for around fifteen minutes until the onions became soft and translucent.

While the onions and garlic cooked I prepared the Jerusalem Artichokes by peeling the dark brown skin from them and then cutting them up into small rectangles. I added them to the pan of onions and garlic with a pint and a half of chicken stock and a quarter of a pint of milk. I let the ingredients simmer away for around half an hour before taking them off the heat and then blending them when cooled.

After the blending I added half a pint of plain, low fat Greek Yoghurt to the pan and stirred it in thoroughly with the rest of the soup. Once I had warmed the soup through I served it with some chives to garnish that I put on top of each bowl of soup.

The margarine and the garlic gave the soup a real tangy and sweet taste that offset the strong flavour of the Jerusalem Artichoke, which tasted much like watercress. Despite it being a warm dish I found it to be very refreshing especially when consumed sat in the garden as the evening sun beat down.

Ready to eat and garnished with chives freshly cut from the back garden.

Salmon Saturday

The second part of our eve of Tour De France meal was a dish that I had not cooked for a while and was long overdue pride of place on my menu- roast salmon. This was a dish that had first came to my attention as a young child when I saw an advert on the TV which extolled the virtues of roasted Salmon Steaks with a side helping of watercress mixed with yoghurt.

For my dish however I substituted salmon steaks with salmon fillets. The reason for this was that salmon steaks tend to be festooned with bones and you spend half your time picking the bones out of the steaks which in turn detracts from the taste experience of the salmon.

The album of choice for cooking which I had earlier in the day picked up second hand from Poundland, ironically for the sum of £2.00, was Radiohead's patchy 1993 debut "Pablo Honey". Although some of the tracks clearly illustrate that the band was still finding its feet before having a tilt at greatness, the melodic singing and biting guitar of "You", the evergreen "Creep" and the confident, surging "Anyone Can Play Guitar," show that some of the ingredients of their classic second album "The Bends" were already in place. Funnily the enough the album was released around the same time that I saw the advert for the salmon steaks.

I prepared the fillets by putting them on a foil sheet and sprinkling fresh Thyme on them and thick circular slices of red onion as well as the juice from a whole lemon. I then wrapped the salmon in a foil parcel and left it to one side while I prepared some new potatoes. The trick with new potatoes is not to peel them fully but instead to cut out any black or brown bits and then wash them thoroughly. Once the potatoes had been prepared I boiled them on the hob with fresh mint to give them a fresh flavour of summer.

While the potatoes were cooking on the hob I cooked the salmon in the oven for twenty minutes at 180 degrees,or more like 170 degrees with a fan oven. I also prepared the watercress by first washing it thoroughly and then adding it to a bowl with a tub of low fat, plain Greek Yoghurt. In readiness for the meal I put the bowl of watercress on the dining table next to the bottle of Bordeaux red wine.

Next I sliced finely five shallots, after first topping and tailing them, and cooked them lightly in five ounces of melted margarine. After the shallots had softened slightly I sliced thinly two ounces of spinach leaves and added them to the margarine and shallots. The spinach soon shrank and became part of the mixture which meant the spinach butter sauce, as I dubbed it, was ready.

I served the salmon with red onions and the lemon by splitting it between two dinner plates. I then added the sauce exclusively to the salmon and kept the potatoes and spinach on a separate part of the plate. The reason for this was that the spinach and potatoes, as a result of the mint, had a very fresh taste which contrasted with the rich taste of the salmon and the sauce. Certainly the mint and spinach helped us cool down from the high temperature caused by the Mediterranean- like weather while we were consuming the delicious salmon.

Together with the French Onion Soup this meal served to set us up well for the following day's unique opportunity to see the Tour De France first hand as it passed through a nearby village and got us in the mood for the Tour De France themed barbeque afterwards.

Just like on TV twenty years ago but without although the bones in the fish

Tour De Food

Last weekend I was away up north in Huddersfield for a Tour De France themed barbeque and also to watch a stage of the Tour as it came on a route near the town. The night before we went to see the Tour and have the barbeque we settled upon a spot of home cooking followed by an early night.

There was only one choice for the starter- French Onion Soup. As I was away from home I didn't have the usual wide range of cooking facilities so I started by frying in a wok two thinly sliced white onions with three ounces of melted margarine. I stirred the onions constantly while they were being fried and once they were translucent I added the leaves from five shoots of fresh Thyme together with half a pint of red wine.

I let the wine boil vigorously until it was absorbed by the onions and the Thyme. In doing this I ensured that the onions were soaked with lots of flavour. I then added a pint of beef stock to the wok and let it stew.

While the soup stewed on the wok I cut some white baguette into thick slices and put thin slices of Gruyere cheese on top of it. I then shared the soup out in bowls and put a slice of baguette with Gruyere atop it on each bowl so that the bread floated on top of the soup. Next I heated up the grill and put the bowls underneath it until the Gruyere had melted on top of the bread. Now the soup was ready to eat.

I've made French Onion Soup on a number of occasions and often utilised vegetable stock or chicken. However the beef stock made a real difference this time round and gave the soup a more earthier taste which complemented the rich Bordeaux Red Wine and Gruyere cheese I used in the recipe. The main course for this meal will be on the blog very soon...

  Rich Gruyere cheese on top of a baguette floating on a rich soup containing Bordeaux Red Wine all of which equal a dish that is as French as the Eiffel Tower.