Soup for the Weather

Yesterday was a good day. It had been one that began with a quiet walk early on with the dog in the nearby woods and then a great carvery at a well-known local pub which was followed by another walk that, although it took place in a familiar part of the world, contained much that was exciting and new.

Although the sun had shone a lot during the walk, the rain had arrived in miniature monsoons that bathed the leaves on the trees bordering the old railway tracks and parkland that the walk took in. This meant despite the time of year I knew that a good quality soup with plenty of body was in order.

Having already had some Game Soup as a starter prior to my carvery I concluded that a similarly substantial soup was needed for tea. I decided the make a sausage soup using a batch left over from a recent indoor barbeque.

The playlist for this weekend was an eclectic mix of mainly and/or introspective music and included Scott Walker (both the avant garde version and the easy listening version), ...and you will know us by the trail of the dead, Suede, R.E.M and at the time I was preparing the soup, Roy Harper. Harper is man who is his own genre as nobody has quite combined the worlds of progressive and folk music in the way he can. The two albums of his that followed each other on the playlist at this time were 1992's Death or Glory and 1988's Garden of Uranium. The former was a fighting response to his partner of some years running off with someone else and includes the track "Miles Remains" a reflective acoustic piece with a soaring quality that is one of the best tributes out there to late Jazz Giant Miles Davis. Garden of Uranium meanwhile is a worthy effort too despite having some songs undercut by synths that although appealing for nostalgic value to a child of the 80's like me, were probably a touch disconcerting for the fans who had been following the great man since he started out in the 1960s.

The Le Cresceut was back in action for today's dish and I started by slicing up finely four carrots, a white onion, two sticks of celery and two cloves of garlic. I added these to the Le Cresceut with some sunflower oil and three ounces of dried parsley. I stirred the ingredients well and put the lid on the Le Cresceut before cooking the contents of it on the hob on a medium heat for around twenty minutes while stirring the food occasionally to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the dish.

While the vegetables were cooking I prepared the sausages. They had been on ice in the freezer since the indoor Barbeque and had been defrosting on my worktop for the last twelve hours. I used a separate knife from the one I used to prepare the vegetables and cut the sausages into narrow slices. I then fried them in a frying pan for fifteen minutes on a medium heat while turning them regularly.

I have a bit of a phobia about undercooked meat; it stems from a time when I accidentally consumed on a night out some raw chicken, which on the face of it looked cooked, and got food poisoning that de-railed me for a good week. This was the reason I pre-cooked the sausages prior to throwing them into the Le Crescent as I wanted to be sure they were cooked properly first before adding them to the vegetables. After fifteen minutes the sausages were ready and I dunked them in with the vegetables in the Le Cresceut. Once the vegetables had cooked for the twenty minutes they needed I added half a pint of vegetable stock and simmered the food for another ten minutes to ensure the carrots were softened as I did not want them al-dente.

After this I added a tin of Canelli Beans to the food and after warming it through for five minutes the soup was ready to eat.

This is one of those soups that is more like a casserole or a stew than a soup, which after a nine and a bit mile walk that featured almost every type of weather known to British meteorology bar snow, was a perfect dish to have as the last meal of the day. The Cannelli Beans and the sausages gave it a rich edge while the parsley, onions and the celery gave a flavour to it that was powerful in the best possible way.

Freshly cooked, crisp sausages simmered in parsley with vegetables and beans- the perfect match for the unpredictable British Weather

Beef, beer, herbs and a school reunion

Last Saturday was already a positive day by the time I'd had a lie in and been to have my swede cut at the local barbers. The reason was that my dog and I had spent Friday night with great company who had made my weekend start in the best way possible.

After walking the dog in muggy heat it was time to prepare a fortifying tea. It needed to be fortifying because I was heading out that evening to a school reunion at my local where plenty of beer was going to flow freely.

I don't eat a lot of meat partly because when I still lived at home my parents were largely vegetarian and as a result I've discovered a wide range of vegetarian recipes that mean I don't need to eat a lot of meat. However once in a while I find the need to cook a meat dish as I think meat gives you much-needed protein that is not always available in vegetarian dishes.

I therefore decided to stew some beef chunks in herbs with ale. As the re-union I was going to was, without giving my age away too much, the class of 1999 some suitable nineties music was in order while I prepared my meal. I put Suede's 1997 effort Coming Up on the player, although not quite as good as their first two albums it does have some excellent melodic moments like "Trash" "Filmstar" and the "The Beautiful Ones" to name but three.

I took a box of beef chunks and fried them for five minutes turning them regularly until they were brown on each side. I also prepared a herb dressing comprised of diced Thyme, Purple Sage, Parsley and Black Pepper that I mixed in a measuring jug with some sunflower oil and half a pint of Tetley Bitter. All the herbs were plucked straight from my back garden.

I put the beef into a glass ovenproof dish with olive oil covering the bottom and then spread evenly over the beef the herb and ale mixture. I then cooked the beef in the oven at Gas Mark 4 for two hours. After two hours I took it out of the oven and turned each of the beef chunks. I then added another half pint of bitter to stop the beef getting too try and then cooked it in the oven for another hour on Gas Mark 3.

After an hour I served it with some steamed green beans, asparagus and butternut squash chunks. A good friend of mine, who was jetting to Vienna the following day, shared the dish with me and as with me it fortified him for an excellent night catching up with him and another close friend as well as meeting some wonderful people who it was great to see back in my life.

Well done, but still tender enough with plenty of herbs and bitter to make this beef come high up in the flavoursome charts

Purple Haze

A colleague of mine, who is a fan of elephant spotting- a hobby that we both indulged in during our lunchbreaks last week- long story, also keeps an allotment and grows lots of flavoursome and decision fresh fruit and veg there. Amongst the produce that I obtained last Friday and gratefully placed in the boot of my aging jallopy just before work commenced for the day was some beetroot.

After I had cleaned up two lots of it I topped and tailed them and peeled them. As is always the way with preparing beetroot the chopping board turned a bright purple, as did my hands, which made them glow as if I was some kind of radioactive mutant.

I next quartered the beetroots and placed them in a glass ovenproof dish, the base of which was covered in sunflower oil, together with some diced cloves of garlic and some sprigs of thyme. I them sprinkled a liberal helping of cumin over the dish and placed it in the oven at gas mark five and cooked it for thirty five minutes.

As the beetroot cooked the music played on in the kitchen; it was more of the Incredible String Band. This time it was their 1969 album "The Big Huge" the record finds the members in, at least as they saw it if not their fans, a better place mentally after their embracing of a new religion and this is reflected in the fact that although the beautifully clear acoustic sounds flow freely, the record is a little too unadventurous even though it contains some solid songs.

Also while the beetroot was cooking I brought a pan of water to the boil and boiled six ounces of spinach for around ten minutes, drained the pan and set the spinach to one side.

After the thirty-five minutes were up I pulled the beetroot out of the oven and turned all the pieces over, as well as hiding the well-cooked garlic cloves under some of the beetroot pieces, and put them back in the oven for another five minutes. Next I took the beetroot out again and laid the spinach on top of it with some slices of mozzerella and put them back in the oven for a further ten minutes.

When I pulled the dish out of the oven ten minutes later I found the mozzerella had browned just enough and the beetroot was crisp, as was the spinach. The cumin also gave it a sharp taste while the the homegrown beetroot was of the highest quality.

Melted Mozzerella, warm spinach plus glowing beetroot with plenty of cumin makes this dish a winner

The Green Man

Today was a day to reflect on a week just passed that, as with this morning, was a mix of old and new. The week saw me return to the Temple for a Monday night meeting out in the Dales that was my first since giving up the Presidency of a club I joined in 2010. It also saw a round of golf with a colleague I've worked with now for nineteen months that was followed by a curry at a longstanding favourite restaurant of mine in Chesterfield and then the following day another colleague vanishing like fat in the frying pan after a quarter of a century's service.

This morning on a walk in clammy and sticky conditions I saw the father of two people I was at Primary School with, he looked tired but hopeful about soon becoming a granddad for the second time in his life.

For me after two weekends involving alcohol related enjoyment with excellent company it was a time also to re-charge my batteries, even in summertime when the longer days give you more energy you still need these type of weekends.

In keeping with the summer theme, and the fact I'd just mowed the lawn for the first time in the month, I decided to cook a green risotto featuring peas, asparagus, runner beans and mint. The ingredients were as follows:

5 shallots.
6 ounces risotto rice.
900 millelitres of vegetable stock.
6 ounces of frozen peas.
3 tablespoons of dried mint.
5 ounces of mozzerella.
3 Runner Beans.
3 Asparagus tips.
3 Large spring onions.

The music I played today was part of what I call my weekend collection, which ostensibly comprises of folk-rock, folk, singer-writer and mellow electronica. The music is more mellow than the type I like to listen to during the long drive to work as that music, largely heavy rock or at the very least up-tempo rock, gets me in the zone to go to work.

Today's soundtrack was the music of the Incredible String Band an almost forgetton psychedlic folk act, and incidentally former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams'  favourite band, who's clean guitar sound and use of instruments from different musical cultures remains unique and enjoyable. The second album "5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, was the record of choice for preparing this dish. It has many highlights including the opener "Chinese White" and, despite its twee title, the suprising lesson in living life that is "The Hedgehog's Song".

The first task was to line the bottom of my Le Cresceut with sunflower oil and then top and tail and dice the shallots. I then stewed them slowly in the Le Cresceut on a low heat in the hob with the lid on for nearly ten minutes so as to make the onions translucent.

After that I added the rice and stirred it constantly, as you always should do when cooking risotto rice so it doesn't stick, for a further five minutes. Then I added about a quarter of the vegetable stock and stirred the rice again regularly until the rice began to soak the stock up, although the rice was still al-dente at this stage.

After another five minutes I added the asparagus, spring onions and the runner beans after first cutting them into 1 centimetre x 1 centimetre (roughly) pieces and washing them. I also added another two quarters of the stock and simmered the mixture with the dried mint for about twenty-five minutes so as to allow all the ingredients, especially the rice, to soak up the stock.

I then added the peas and took a Facetime call from a good friend of mine, who after successful spells at leading international brands, is once more a student and very much enjoying being one. I also added the rest of the stock at this time and after another ten minutes, which included encouragment via Facetime from my friend to ensure the risotto wasn't too runny, I added the mozzerella and let it melt into the risotto and thicken it enough to make sure it wasn't too dry but not have excess liquid at the same time.

I served it quickly and sat in my conservatory looking at the hills as I did so. The mint and green vegetables gave the dish a fresh taste, perfect on a hot summer's day,while the mozzerella added a richness that lifted the risotto way above the ordinary.

All the greens of summer with an extra dusting of mint atop it

Orange is the new squash

The red light was on and there was no gas left in the tank and by the end of last week I was comparing myself to a "H" Reg Ford Fiesta in that I was a little battered and some of the parts felt like they needed replacing. It was clear that I needed a bit of a break and sure enough this up coming week was my first off work since the Christmas Holidays. It had been six months but it had been six months of rewarding hard work personally and professionally.

Yesterday was a day of unwinding and not doing too much as well as revisting an old recipe from six or seven years ago when I first became interested in cookery. I had about twelve ounces of butternut squash in cubes going spare as well as a large white onion, a clove of garlic, a hint of white pepper and a couple of teaspoons of powdered ginger.

I sliced up the white onion finely and the garlic clove and fried them in a saucepan with the lid on for about fifteen minutes. I added the ginger and the white pepper while they were frying. I stirred the ingredients periodically to ensure they did not stick to the bottom of the pan.

After the fifteen minutes was up and I was sure the onions, especially, were suitably softened I added the cubed butternut squash and fried it with the other ingredients for another ten minutes. I then added half a pint of chicken stock and simmered the mixture for around twenty-five minutes.

The soundtrack to the simmering of the soup mixture was Fairport Convention's 1978 effort Tippler's Tales a rustic folk record who's songs are all themed around drinking. The album was their last before their temporary disbanding.

After the twenty-five minutes were up I blended the soup, which transformed it into a bright orange mixture that glowed in the sun coming into my conservatory when I served it in a bowl topped with some fresh chives from my garden.

The soup was perfect for the unseasonable chill in my part of the world and the chives added a freshness to the always flawless taste of butternut squash.

Bright and bubbling with extra chives

Haddock Friday

On Good Friday the sun shone for what seemed like the first time in a couple of weeks, I was off work after a long week of fulfillment and new light through old windows. I also had insurrection to deal with at the charity of which I am President for part of this year. I, as I do when I have challenges to face and overcome, took a long walk with my dog in the sun which lasted nearly five hours and was around ten miles long.

The walk cleared my head and after utilising a trick popularised for me, at least as far as the sleeping part is concerned, by my octagenarian grandad who is also my role model, I had an afternoon nap while listening to the Allman Brothers' Band's wonderful 1972 epic album "Eat A Peach". After walking on the problem earlier in the day and then sleeping on it I was about ready to deal with it. Although first I needed a big meal.

As it was the Easter weekend coming up I had decided to get some fish in during the week. The fish was a smoked haddock fillet and it had been defrosting in my fridge during the course of the day.

I first pre-heated the oven at Gas Mark 4 and once it was warmed up I put the haddock in wrapped in a foil parcel and covered it in rapeseed oil on a baking tray. The haddock was to be cooked for around 22-25 minutes.

In the meantime I set to work frying in my Le Cresceut a leek I had sliced lengthways with some diced onion. I fried it lightly for around fifteen minutes in some rapeseed oil with a hint of squeezed mustard. I then added some fresh cress as well to garnish this element of the meal.

I also steamed for about twenty-five minutes some white potatoes I had cubed several weeks earlier and then frozen to keep them fresh so they could be put straight into my steamer when they were ready to use. I steamed them with some frozen peas that I added to the steaming potatoes after about twenty minutes of steaming.

After the potatoes and peas were cooked I added them with two tablespoons of chopped mint and two of milk to the blender. I then blended them until they resembled the consistency of mushy peas as sampled from one of the many great local chippys in the area. The milk was crucial in the blending as without it the blender struggled to cut through the potato pieces despite the steamer doing an efficient and economic job of cooking them.

After the potatoes and peas were blended I put them in a serving bowl while the other ingredients were still being prepared.

I made a dressing for the dish by putting three tablespoons of honey in a saucepan with four sprigs of fresh Thyme, two tablespoons of dried Tarragon, some Rapeseed Oil and the juice and zest of one lemon. I stirred these ingredients together and warmed them through in the pan before putting them in a serving bowl.

Once the dish was all ready to serve I added the Haddock, some of the dressing, some of the peas and the leek, cress and onion to a plate as shown in the picture. With the Cocteau Twins' charming offering Heaven or Las Vegas playing loudly, I sat down to tea.

There was a real mix of flavours in the meal although not enough to spoil it. The smoked haddock contrasted well with the sweet and sour of the dressing and the freshness of the mint puree seemed all the more appropriate in the sunny weather. Definitely a dish for the end of an exacting week when the sun shone.

Here is the dish ready to eat with a presentation that attempts to give local restaurants a run for their money.

Our Laksma

The 23rd January was a Saturday and it involved a walk in the crisp winter sun in the local wood and exploring the large network of streams in the wood; mainly due to my dog's love of water and my need to get her clean after she found almost every muddy patch of ground possible on our walk.

The day before that I had found time to visit the winter gardens in my local city of Sheffield for a cup of tea with an old schoolfriend to end an exciting week on a high.

When I got home I stuck on the MP3 player Love's string laden and warped masterpiece Forever Changes which was followed by R.E.M's Green which saw them cross over with an album that is at least half successful in terms of creativity.

Following recent exposures to Oriental Culture through various sources I decided to make a dish known as Laksma. The method and the recipe of it from the version I made are as follows:

1. I created a paste that I put through my blender before frying- it as you will see I did later on in the recipe. The paste had in it the following:

1 diced onion.
2 diced garlic cloves.
1 teaspoon turmeric.
1 teaspoon ginger.
1 teaspoon coriander.
2 diced green chilli peppers.
1 tablespoon olive oil.

A close colleague and friend of mine at work swears by making her pastes from scratch rather than buying ready made ones from the shops. I have to say that I totally agree with her, there is certainly something more authentic and flavoursome about making your own paste from scratch even if it takes longer.

2.After leaving the paste on one side I then grilled a salmon steak I had found I my freezer for a period of twenty-five minutes.

3. While the salmon was cooking under the grill I boiled some noodles in a pan of water on the stove for  fifteen minutes.

4. While the noodles boiled and the salmon was cooking I fried the paste in my wok with some light soy sauce, fish sauce, one and a half cups of chicken stock and one and a half cups of coconut milk as well. I fried it for around five minutes until it was warmed through and kept it warm on a light heat while the noodles and salmon were cooking.

5. Once the Salmon and the noodles were ready I combined them in the wok with the paste and served the dish. This is one of those dishes that feels it does you nothing but good and also tastes delicious too. The Salmon and noodles give it plenty of protein while the texture and taste of the paste help increase your intake of fresh vegetables.

I also served it with some spinach which took the edge off the spices in the paste to give the food a more rounded flavour.

The meal definitely helped motivate me to seek out more types of Oriental Recipes which you'll see on the blog in the coming weeks.

Like a lot of Oriental dishes this is best off being served in a bowl because of the liquid content.