Carrot and Cardamom Soup (V)

Carrot and cardamom soup with three olive bread

I've always loved carrot soup! One of the first recipes I ever tried was from a Marks & Spencer's cookbook and it was carrot and coriander soup. This was way back before it became popular and available ready made in every supermarket!  I loved it, and it's been a staple for the family ever since.  But I fancied a change from coriander, and having discovered that I can grind down the wondrous cardamom pods into cardamom powder, I wanted to try carrot soup with cardamom instead. It works so well!

Ingredients

280g carrot, thinly sliced (or you can use ready prepared baton carrots if you prefer)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
500 ml (½ litre) of vegetable stock
30g plant butter or dairy butter
1 tablespoon of flour
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon of ground bay leaves
1 cup (½ pint) of plant based such as oat milk, or dairy milk
olive oil for frying
pinch of salt

Method

Put olive oil into soup pan and heat up, add onion and carrot and cook until softened, adding cardamom and bay during the cooking. Add half the stock and simmer gently.

In a separate pan melt the butter and add the flour and make a roux, stirring continuously for 1-1½ mins. Don't overcook it or it will burn. Add the rest of the vegetable stock, a spoonful at a time, mixing well to avoid lumps, once it's pourable add it to the soup pan and mix well. Blend using a stick blender or similar.

Add the milk, do a taste test, add a pinch of salt if needed and simmer for another 3-5 minutes to make sure it's hot through. Serve hot with fresh bread.

Serves 3-4

Vegetarian 

If you use plant based butter and milk this is a great vegetarian soup.

Late Night Baked Frittata

 

During one of those late-night mother and son conversations yesterday about how nice the frittata was at the Kendal People's Cafe / PopUp Repair Workshop at the Castle Street Centre in Kendal, the son grinned and said, "frittatas are easy" and promptly vanished into the kitchen to make one.

He normally makes them in a cast iron frying pan on the stove, but this time he wanted to try a baked in the oven version to see how it worked.

Mother was drafted in to help: chopping onion and long red pepper into small pieces ready for a quick softening fry in the pan, and to crack eggs into the bowl without dropping the shell in as well (she failed!)

Son tackled the potatoes - nice fresh redskins that were just washed and sliced thinly, no need to peel them.

The end result was very tasty and proved that, yes, you can make frittata in the oven! Here's how...

Ingredients

800g of potatoes, washed and thinly sliced
9 eggs
1 large onion, finely chopped
½ long red pepper, finely chopped
approx 10cm of Aldi spicy chorizo or equivalent
Olive oil to fry the onion, pepper and chorizo in to start with
A couple of dashes of Cholula Chipotle sauce
Salt and pepper (optional)

Method

Firstly, put the olive oil into a frying pan and shallow fry the onion, pepper and chorizo for around 3 minutes or so, adding the cholula sauce and making sure everything is hot through.

Crack the eggs into a jug or bowl and lightly mix with a fork to break up the yolks.

In a large mixing bowl combine the sliced potatoes and the contents of the frying pan, pour mixture into a large baking dish (ours is approx 28cm x 17cm). Level it down, then pour the eggs over the mixture. Sprinkle a pinch of salt on the top (only a little!).

Bake in oven on Gas Mark 4 for 100 minutes (1hr 20mins).  Remove from oven and lightly sprinkle a small amount of black pepper over the surface, cut into portions and serve hot.

Serves 4 as a main course or 8 as a side dish.

Salmon and Courgette Rice

Another of our experimental recipes, this was very tasty, and by not over-cooking the vegetables they don't go soggy. The secret is to cook them quickly in very hot oil to retain their crispness and individual flavours.

Salmon and Courgette Rice  Serves up to 4

Ingredients

1 cup (250g) Arborio or Risotto rice
1 medium sized courgette, sliced
1 stick celery, sliced into small pieces
4 round radishes
1 red  Jalapeño or Anaheim pepper, sliced in to rings (discard seeds if you don't like it too hot)
1 cup sliced fresh or frozen green beans
1 small onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 green OXO cube
6 black olives, halved
1 small salmon steak
1 sachet of Oyster and Spring onion sauce (Aldi or Blue Dragon)
Boiling water as needed for stock
A little olive oil for the wok / frying pan to prevent sticking

All in one pan method: 
Put oil into wok and heat quickly, add onion, garlic, pepper and green beans and cook for 2-3 minutes, add olives, cougette, radishes  and celery and cook for further 2 minutes, add rice and sufficient water to cover rice plus the OXO cube, cook for 10 minutes or until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid. Make sure it doesn't start to stick. (Tip: don't over-stir the rice, it tends to start to break down and go very starchy if you do.) Once the rice is cooked mix in the oyster and spring onion sauce (rinse sachet out with a little boiling water) and flake in the salmon steak (Tip: pop the steak into a bowl and break it up with a fork until it makes small pieces.)  Once salmon and sauce is heated through serve in bowls. Enjoy!

Two-pan method:
If you don't have a large enough wok to cook this as we did above you can steam or boil the rice in a separate pan, cook everything else as above, and then combine the rice at the end. Alternatively, you can serve it so the rice forms a bed on which the salmon and courgette mix sits. Whichever suits you best - it's not cast in stone!

Aloo Gobi (V)

I've wanted to try this recipe for a while, but hadn't managed to. A glut of cauliflower in our local supermarket prodded me into action, and oh, the result was good!

Aloo gobi is, according to Wikipedia,

"a vegetarian dish from the Indian subcontinent made with potatoes, cauliflower and Indian spices; popular in Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and Nepali cuisines."

The name describes the two main ingredients: aloo means potato and gobi is cauliflower.

It needs long slow cooking, so a slow cooker is perfect. I've not tried to make it in the oven - I may do that another time, just to check it out.

Meanwhile, if you want to try the recipe (slightly adapted from one we found on theperfectpantry blog) this is how we made it...

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 medium cauliflower, cut into small pieces (discard leaves and main stalk)
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm-ish cubes
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped into small-ish pieces
1 tin chopped tomatoes with their juice (rinse can out with a very little water) or fresh ripe tomatoes, chopped into pieces
2" piece of root ginger, peeled and chopped into small pieces (or grated if you prefer)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped into small pieces (or crushed if you prefer)
2 Jalapeno peppers, remove stalk, seeds and ribs inside, then slice finely
1 tbsp cumin seed
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
a pinch of Cayenne pepper (add more if liked)
a large pinch sea salt
3 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil
½ tsp dried Coriander leaf
handful fresh Coriander leaf, toughly chopped (optional)

Directions

Put all ingredients except fresh Coriander leaf into slow cooker, stir to mix everything together. Put the slow cooker on High for 2 hours, stirring after each hour if possible. Then drop heat down to low and leave to cook for another 4 hours, stirring occasionally if possible.  The original recipe said cook for 4 hours on low (no high level cooking) but I found this didn't work with our slow cooker and it needed the extra cooking time to develop the flavour. It may work on low through depending on the model you have, ours is a somewhat elderly Morphy Richards one.

Hints

Aloo gobi is a dry curry, which is why there is no extra liquid added. The liquid in the recipe comes from the tomatoes and vegetables themselves during the cooking, so the end result is mainly curry with just a small amount of juice.

Serving

Add the fresh Coriander just before you are ready to serve it, it it good eaten on its own, or with rice or naan bread.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating"

I left a note for my son to say this was ready for him when he was hungry. I came back to find the slow cooker empty and the note annotated. I think he enjoyed it! 

Serves 4

Vegetarian

NOLA: Creole ginger sweetcorn and sweet potato (V)

I've spotted a whole raft of interesting looking recipes using sweet potatoes recently, but have never tried them. My son said they are good, so finding some big ones in ALDI this week we added them to our trolley, along with a small root of ginger and decided to experiment!  This isn't a traditional Creole recipe but as it includes Cajun seasoning and tomatoes, plus that Holy Trinity again, we figured it would give an idea of the flavour by calling it Creole ginger sweetcorn and sweet potato!

We made it last night and left it in the casserole dish overnight to stand, then tonight transferred it into a large pan for reheating on the stove. Served with garlic and coriander pita strips it was seriously yummy! 

Here is the recipe if you want to try:

Creole ginger sweetcorn and sweet potato

Ingredients:

olive oil  for cooking

3 cloves smoked garlic finely chopped (unsmoked will work just as well if you prefer)

1cm knob of root ginger (approx 1cm diameter) peeled and finely chopped

1/2 large white onion, peeled and finely chopped

4-5 scallions (spring onions), peeled and finely chopped

1 large sweet potato peeled and diced into 1cm cubes

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tin sweetcorn

2 tbsp Cajun seasoning

1/2 vegetable stock (water +1 veg stock cube + 1 green OXO)

1 tbsp dried thyme

1 green pepper, deseeded and cut into small pieces

2 sticks celery with leafy tops, chopped into small pieces

fresh coriander or flat parsley (optional)

Method:

Put some olive oil in large pan or wok (enough to cover the base), add garlic and ginger, onion and scallion, fry for 2-3 minutes until onion softens. Add Cajun seasoning and thyme and a little boiling water to prevent sticking.  Add sweet potato mixing all together and add stock. Leave on low heat for around 8 minutes until sweet potato is hot. Into an oven proof casserole put the chopped tomatoes, sweetcorn, green pepper, celery. Remove wok from heat and add sweet potato mix to casserole, mix all well together.  Put casserole into oven on Gas mark 6 for around an hour. Remove from heat and leave to stand for several hours in casserole, or overnight if possible. Transfer mix to large pan and heat through over a medium heat on the stove, until it is piping hot throughout. Just before serving ass a handful of chopped fresh coriander or flat parsley.  Really good served with rice or cornbread. 

Serves 4

Vegetarian

Home-made Chinese pork with vegetable rice

Making delicious Chinese pork at home is incredibly easy with this simple marinade.

Preparation and cooking time is around 30-35 minutes.

Following on from last week's post about how to mix up the Chinese marinade that we'd binned the instructions for,  we had need to do it again yesterday.  A trip into our local Tesco had produced 4 pork chops, reduced in price, so we added them to our trolley. Once home we cut the pork from the chop bones, and sliced the meat into thin strips, then laid them into a roasting tray. Mixing up our Flava-It Chinese marinade with the sweetened soya milk we poured it over the pork strips, covered the tray with foil and popped it into the fridge until this evening.

The first thing to do, before cooking the pork, was preparing the vegetable mix. A raid of the fridge produced some mushrooms, a handful of mangetout, red and yellow peppers, and a courgette, all of which were sliced into small pieces (around 2cm max). Adding 3 crushed garlic cloves and a small red bird's eye chili (deseeded and finely chopped), a small red onion chopped, a few green olives halved, and some small plum tomatoes cut into quarters, we were ready to start cooking.

Hubbie set to with the rice (we used Tesco own brand Arborio risotto rice - half a cup per person) and water (a pint and a half) with a couple of stock cubes and a sprinkle of mixed herbs added to make the stock for cooking the rice in the paella pan, whilst I plugged in the teppenyaki grill and cooked the marinaded pork on it. The pork cooked really quickly, and turning it over midway meant it was browned on all sides.  (A big plus was that, unlike when we cooked the marinaded ribs in the oven, the grill cleaned up very quickly afterwards. The oven tray from the ribs had to soak for almost 2 days before all the baked-on marinade finally came off!)

The vegetables were added into the rice once it was almost cooked (test the rice by tasting a small bit, if it's still chewy it needs a few minutes longer) along with the cooked pork. Mix well into the rice and add a bit more boiling water if needed (there should be a bit of liquid in the pan, rather than be very dry). Heat through until all the veg are hot through, and remove from the heat.

Serve in bowls whilst still very hot. Yummy!

Oh look, it's all gone! :)

Bacon and vegetable rice - all in one recipe!

We recently bought a Paella pan from ALDI, and it is the most useful piece of kit!  It's quite big at 39cm diameter, and makes a meal large enough for 4 people. It's now in regular use, several times a week, and we are loving the results. Despite its size it cooks nicely over one gas ring, but would work just as well on an electric hob.  

Tonight's meal is shown above and was made as follows:

Bacon and vegetable rice

250g of Arborio rice

1 litre of vegetable stock (1 litre water and 2 veg stock cubes and 1 green OXO)

1 200g pack ALDI Smoked Bacon Lardons 

1 onion chopped finely

3 cloves garlic, crushed

3 or 4 sticks of celery, cut small - we used the middle part with the leaves still on

1 courgette, sliced into 4 lengthwise and then each length cut into 1cm pieces

1 small orange pepper, deseeded

1/2 red pointed pepper, deseeded

handful of frozen sweetcorn

small handful of mangetout and fine French beans, chopped into 1cm lengths

1 finely sliced lemon grass stick

a few green olives, halved

1 small green bird's eye chilli, finely sliced

sprinkle of herbs (we used Herbes de Provence) 

6 cherry tomatoes, halved

Put rice into paella pan, add stock, sweetcorn and bacon lardons, and stir using a non-scratching spatula (wood or silicon), heat through until rice is almost cooked, adding more boiling water as the stock is absorbed so the rice does not start to stick to the pan.  Cooking the bacon lardons with the rice and stock gives the rice a lovely bacon flavour too. 

Add the rest of vegetables except tomatoes, mixing well and cook for further 5 minutes until all is hot through. Add the tomatoes and heat for another minute. 

Serve in bowls, enjoy! 

It takes about half an hour to make (including preparation) and makes hardly any washing up too, win! win! :)