First soup-making attempt since moving to Vancouver: Carrot and Coriander

I have been quiet on the blog front since I made the move from Cambridge to Vancouver. This has been predominantly because I have only just equipped my kitchen to a state where I can actually cook things and also because supermarkets over here confuse me as the brands for everything are different! My first attempt at making soup in my new environment worked out well, despite me making a mess of the kitchen! As it says in the title, my first effort was carrot and coriander!

Ingredients

• 6 large carrots, peeled and sliced.
• 1L stock (I used beef because I only had beef stock in my cupboard, but veggie is probably better!)
• 2 chopped onions
• 2 chopped cloves of garlic
• Small amount of oil
• Salt and pepper
• Bunch of coriander

Procedure

1) Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the onions and garlic to the pan. Cook for a few minutes on a medium heat to soften them.

2) Add carrots to the pan.

3) Add the stock and bring to the boil

Bringing to the boil

4) Simmer for 12 minutes

Following the simmer

5) Add the coriander

Coriander

6) Blend the soup. I used a hand blender and got it everywhere! Job was done in the end though.

Making a mess

7) Serve.

Verdict

I thought that the result was a very tasty soup, that tasted even better when I took it to work for my lunch the next day. So simple to do that I should repeat this soon!

Mushroom Soup!

Happy new year everyone! Over the Christmas and New Year period I didn’t do any cooking myself as I was looked after by my family! In the last week it has been back to reality for me and back to my kitchen! I have been enjoying making soup to take to work for lunch again and this week’s highlight for me was mushroom soup!

Ingredients

• 500g (ish) mushrooms, chopped up! I had 3/4 of a 750g pack left in my fridge!
• 80g butter
• 2 chopped onions
• 2 chopped cloves garlic
• 2 tbsps plain flour
• A litre of hot stock (I used a beef stock pot from Knorr, I think most people would use veggie or chicken stock)
• 4 tbsps cream (it works okay without it too)
• salt and pepper for seasoning

Procedure

• Melt the butter in pan and cook the onions and garlic on a medium heat for about 5 minutes until they are softened.
• Add the mushrooms and cook at a high heat for about 3 minutes while stirring!
• Then add in the 2 tbsps of flour and mix well to coat the mushrooms
• Add the stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for 10 minutes
• After the 10 minutes is up, blitz with a hand blender (take it off the heat for sure and let it cool down if you are scared of injury).
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Reheat and stir in the cream.

All that is left to do is eat it! I had mine with a very nice seeded roll. Nom nom nom!

French Onion Soup:- “it was really really really good”

This weekend I decided to make an attempt at making French onion soup for dinner. It is something that I have always loved yet never actually tried to cook myself. It really was perfect comfort food for a lazy day.

I turned to one of my favourite sources for recipes: the BBC good food website. You can find the recipe here: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4250/french-onion-soup, but I will list everything below.

Ingredients

• 50g butter
• 1kg brown onions , thinly sliced
• 2 tbsp thyme , picked leaves
• 3 tbsp dry sherry
• 2 Knorr beef stock pots made up to 1.2 litre (BBC says you can use fresh stock or stock cubes)
• 1 small baguette , sliced
• 1 garlic clove , halved
• olive oil
• 100g Gruyère cheese , grated

Procedure

• Melt the butter and gently cook the onion and thyme for about 20 minutes.

Chopping this amount of onions really made my eyes stream. It was worth it.

Sweating down onions and thyme

• Increase the heat slightly and cook for 15 minutes. The onion will become sticky and caramelised. Stir it a few times while it is cooking so it doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.
• Add the sherry and cook for 3 minutes
• Add the stock and bring to the boil. Season.
• Simmer for 10 minutes.

• 

Simmer simmer simmer

• While this is going on, toast the bread (I forgot to do this bit), rub each slice with garlic and if you want crush some of the garlic and spread over the bread. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over it and then cover it with the cheese. Stick this in to grill until the cheese is bubbling and looking yummy.

Just in case you don’t know what grated cheese looks like

• Stick the soup in a bowl and put a crouton on top

Nom nom nom nom

• DEVOUR

I think this has been my favourite soup making exploit to date. I had it for lunch today and it still tasted amazing!

 

Guest post #2 from the boy: Pulled Pork

As his last effort was so good, I let Thomas loose to right another blog post. Here is the result:-

The porkening

Introduction

Well as my last entry for this blog seemed to go okay, I thought I would write another entry to tide it over until Claire makes more soup. Last weekend we decided that we needed to eat lots of meat… we settled on pork because:

1. Beef and Lamb are expensive

2. Chicken can be pretty dull

3. Who wants to eat huge amounts of fish? (note from Claire: I don’t even want small amounts of fish)

A few times in the past my dad has roasted pigs whole, and with this in mind on a smaller scale we decided to follow this recipe from the Beeb. You could just follow the link now and read it yourself, but its probably easier to just read on now.

The Ideal Scenario

Materials and methods 

100 g sea salt

150 g light muscovado sugar

1 kg pork shoulder

50 ml maple syrup

50 g wholegrain mustard

1 tbsp English mustard powder

Right so this is a really easy thing to make. You take the pork (we had a chunk that was about 1.3 kg) and rub in a mix of all the salt and 2/3 the sugar. Then you put that in the fridge overnight.

Pork in preparation

In the morning I found that the bag I left it in was full of liquid a sort of salty sugary bloody mix. I took the executive decision to pour it away. Then I made the marinade using the rest of the sugar, the mustards and the syrup. I then used my hands (gross) to smother the pork in it. Like so:

The morning after…

Afterwards I put it on a tray and sealed it with foil. The BBC page said to make a tight seal but I pretty quickly broke the seal when I was curiously checking to see what was going on. I have no idea if this affected the final meal in anyway. After sealing it was put in the oven at 130 degrees for about 7 hours. Half an hour before we took it out I poured some more of the marinade on, I am not sure if it was necessary really but I did it anyway.

Results

Cooked pork

The finished thing looked amazing, it smelt really good too. It doesn’t look exactly like the picture on the BBC article, but after tasting it I no longer cared because it was bloody great .I shredded it with 2 forks and we had it on sandwiches. Then on sandwiches the next day. And then on sandwiches the day after that. Claire grilled the skin on the top to make it crispy, she said it was nice but you will have to take her word for that as I don’t like the skin.

Pulled pork huzzah

In conclusion this really satisfied a craving. It’s probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but when it tastes that good who really cares ?

9/10 – would eat again !

Butternut Squash and Chorizo Soup

Yesterday I decided to attempt a soup I have never tried before- butternut squash soup based on Nigella’s recipe -with a few modifications where I had different things in my cupboard to what was recommended. Additionally, the boy decided that he thought chorizo would be a nice thing to have with squash and who am I to say it would be a bad idea? Here is how it went:

Ingredients

• 1 medium sized butternut squash
• 1 medium sized onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 beef oxo cubes in 1L water
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2-3 tbsp milk to thicken the soup if you so desire
• half a chorizo ring
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• olive oil
• sea salt
• black pepper
• butter

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Cut the squash into quarters lengthways (this was actually quite difficult for me to do) and stick on a baking tray or in an ovenproof dish.

Drizzle the olive oil over the squash and throw on the chilli powder and cumin. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook for 45 mins or until soft. Once cooked allow to cool and then peel off the skin and remove the seeds. To be honest I found this whole thing a faff and it ended up in cubes anyway. If I did this again I would probably peel, de-seed and cube the squash before adding the oil etc and cooking.

Next, chop up the onion and garlic. Melt a knob of butter in a pan and then gently cook the onions and garlic for about 5 mins until they are soft. Then add in the stock and the chunks of squash and simmer for around 5 mins. As this was going on, I decided to cook sliced chorizo in a separate pan until crispy.

I blended the soup with a hand blender and it was at an okay consistency without the milk. I then added the pieces of chorizo.

I tried some last night and I wasn’t overly enamored by it. I had it for lunch today and it tasted much better. I can’t tell you what the chorizo tasted like in it as unfortunately it must have sunk to the bottom of the container and there wasn’t any with my lunch. The boy says that the chorizo definitely added a lot to the flavour and would definitely recommend its inclusion!

Life beyond soup: Chorizo and Butterbean Stew

Last night I decided to take inspiration for my tea from the Nosh for Graduates book that was kindly donated to me by my mate Amy. Luckily for me it is not so great on the veggie recipes for her, but has some good suggestions for meat lovers like me! I picked out the suggestion of Chorizo and butterbean stew as it looked quite tasty, but did make a few modifications in terms of stock. I didn’t remember having eaten butterbeans before, though I am sure in my youth my parents have given them to me, so I wasn’t sure about that element. I went ahead anyway and the recipe was easy to follow, as outlined below, simple to make and quick to produce a nice looking meal!

 

Ingredients

• 1 onion sliced
• 1 410g tin butterbeans, drained and rinsed
• 1 clove garlic sliced (the recipe doesn’t include this, but I love garlic so added it in with the onions)
• 1/2 red pepper sliced
• 1 knorr beef stock pot (The recipe recommends 1tbsp liquid chicken stock, but I didn’t have any)
• 2 chorizo cooking sausages chopped into thin slices
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1tsp sugar
• 1/2 mug of water
• Crusty bread/roll to serve

Method

• In a wok cook the sliced chorizo for 2-3 minutes.
• Remove the chorizo at this point and set aside
• Add the garlic, onion and pepper to the pan and fry for a few minutes until they soften
• Add the mushrooms, water, sugar, balsamic vinegar and the stockpot
• Return the chorizo and bring to the boil
• Turn down the heat and then simmer for 5 minutes

• Add the butterbeans and then boil for 1 minute
• Job done!!

Serve the stew in a bowl with some crusty bread, or if you are lucky enough to have some homemade bread rolls around like me (See previous post) serve with one of those.

 

 

I honestly wasn’t sure about how nice this one would be, but it tasted delicious. I may cook it for the boy in the near future to prove that there is life beyond soup for me!

Lemon Drizzle Cake Baking Attempt: The Soggy Bottom Disaster

I recently made a successful attempt at making lemon drizzle cake and as I wanted to show off to my parents that I actually enter my kitchen now, I decided to make one for them and my sister. Last night with all ingredients purchased and enlisting the boy to help me, I was ready for success. However, possibly due to some slight change in the environment in the kitchen, such as increased wind chill or a change in light, or more likely due to the not following the recipe properly, the end result was a deflated cake with a soggy bottom. As I said, in the past this recipe has worked for me, so here it is:

Ingredients

• caster sugar
• 2 lemons
• 4 eggs
• self raising flower
• a block of unsalted butter

Procedure

• Preheat oven to 180°C
• Line a cake tin (I use a loaf one) with baking paper
• In a mixing bowl mix in 225g softened butter with 225g caster sugar (last night the butter was too hard and it took an age to do this!!)
• Mix in the eggs
• Add the flour and mix
• Add zest of one lemon
• Put in the tin and level off the mixture with a knife
• Bake for 45-50 mins. If you stick a skewer in and it comes out clear it is done! (So far so good it looked beautiful)
• While the cake is cooling, make the topping which is 85g caster sugar mixed with juice from 1 1/2  lemons (Problem here is that boy decided to use 4 lemons and guestimated with sugar, I blame this)
• Make some holes in the cake (I stab it a few times with the skewer) and pour on the drizzle, the holes mean it soaks in and it tastes delicious (I believe I didn’t wait for the cake to cool for long enough here and resulted in fail)
• Wait for the drizzle to set on the top
• Job done if you have done it right it looks beautiful and is really tasty!

Soggy bottom cake

In my case this time it looks a bit of a mess, but it did taste ok….tooo much juice has lead to a very lemony, soggy bottom though. Must try harder next time! At least the parents will know for sure that it was me who made it!!

Last Night’s Soup Making Attempt: Sweet Potato and Red Pepper

My cooking skills in life have often left a lot to be desired and I was convinced that I could never succeed in a kitchen environment! Inevitably by the time I left the lab cooking is something that I just couldn’t be bothered getting involved with.  Recently the realisation that following a recipe is pretty much the same as following an experimental protocol hit me (I know it took at least 4 years for this to become apparent to me) and that soup is something that is usually quick and easy to make and is great to take in for lunch instead of buying it everyday.

Last night’s soup-making efforts were directed towards a sweet potato and red pepper soup, something that I have never tried before, even from the supermarket… I followed a recipe from the BBC good foods site for guidance, but will list what I actually did!

Ingredients:

2 x onions
3 x garlic cloves
2 x red peppers
1 x large sweet potato
1L vegetable stock (I just use veggie oxo cubes)
2tsp cumin
Olive oil

Experimental Procedure:

• Preheat the oven at 180 °C
• Peel and chop the sweet potato into about 1/2 cm thick discs
• Peel and chop the onions
• Peel garlic
• Chop peppers
• Stick everything in an ovenproof dish
• Add the cumin and drizzle over some olive oil. I mixed it up a bit to try and coat everything.
• Stick the dish in the oven for 45mins-1hr until the veggies are soft
• When they are done, take them out and then add the veggie stock (I have to avoid burning myself)
• Blend everything (I used a hand blender and managed to get it all over the place at this point)
• Add some salt and pepper and Bob’s your Uncle

Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup

It looked very nice and I had it for my lunch today. I think it tasted pretty nice in the end and it didn’t take too much effort!