Winter warmer - spicy vegetable soup

Hallo 2013!

Here is a great winter recipe that never fails me!

Ingredients:

• Chicken or Veg Stock
• Smoked paprika
• Olive oil (best kind)
• Salt
• Coriander seeds
• Dried mixed Italian herbs
• Minced garlic 
• Dried chilly (I used bird's eye) (1)
• Carrots (3)
• Sweet potato (1)
• Leek (1)
• Swede (1/4)
• Can of diced tomatoes (1)

Serve with sour cream and fresh parsley.

1. Boil about 1,5l of water with chicken or veg stock.
2. Add generous amounts of smoked paprika, dash of olive oil (best kind), salt, coriander seeds, dried mixed Italian herbs, half-spoon of minced garlic and a dried chilly (I used one dried bird's eye).
3. Roughly shop up some peeled carrots (3), one large sweet potato, one leek and a quarter of a swede.
4. Boil for about 30 minutes.
5. Drain the veg, setting the boiling liquid aside for later.
6. Chuck the veg in the oven for 10 minutes on 200C (fan-forced) with an optional small drizzle of honey to caramelise.
7. Process small amounts of grilled veg in the food processor together with the boiling liquid, plus one can of diced tomatoes, until it's a smooth liquid. I prefer the soup a bit lumpy. A bit more rustic?
8. Return to heat up, but not boil.
9. Serve with sour cream and fresh parsley.

I have tried this with all sorts of variations. For example using Indian spices and pumpkin, using corn, coriander and cumin… anything is possible. A tip for success is to think of complimenting foods and I use a geographical food region as a reference - Italian, French, Latvian, Hungarian, Thai etc.

Enjoy! : )

Minestrone

We were lucky to have a lot of tomatoes from our two cherry-tomato buckets. Here is an autumnal recipe (with a personal twist, of course) of my favorite tomato based soup - Minestrone.

Cooking time for maximum flavor is around 2 hours on a lazy Sunday night or one hour on a weekday for a less spectacular result.

You will need (in order of usage):

• butter (a reasonable quantity)
• olive oil (I prefer Bertolli, extra virgin)
• 2 cups chopped onions (or just one big onion chopped) 
• one chilli (hot!)
• one portion Knorr Bouillon Pur with herbs and garlic (or fresh beef stock instead of water... )
• water (1l or more)
•  3 to 4 large carrots chopped 
• 1 zucchini chopped
• 500ml passata  (best possible quality)
• 500g tomatoes (chopped, I do not worry about de-seeding)
• 1 can of red kidney beans
• 1 cup small pasta shells
• a healthy bunch of fresh oregano & rosemary (from the balcony or garden!)
• salt & pepper

I cook onions until slightly translucent, mix in the stock concentrate, crushed chilli and add water. Bring to slow boil, add diced carrots. When carrots have cooked for 10-15min, add zucchini, passata and tomatoes. Return to boil and simmer. Add kidney beans, pasta and herbs - cook until pasta is ready. Remember to take out any rosemary sprigs before serving. As with most soups, it tastes even better the next day. 

I use Parmesan cheese and fresh herbs to decorate. Buon appetito!

Berry ice-cream cake

Partially inspired by a recipe I saw somewhere and also because the ice-cream melted quite a bit on the way home from the shop...

Here it is:
1 tub (1L) vanilla ice-cream (full fat)
500g strawberries
500g raspberries
150-200g grated white cooking chocolate

Layer all ingredients in a cake tin of sorts lined with aluminium foil. The lining bit is important as otherwise you cannot get the cake out without melting everything.  Cover with foil and put in the freezer. A couple of hours is best - if left overnight then it turns into an ice brick and too solid to cut.

I did think of melting the white chocolate, but that was a bit time-consuming. The whole assembly took about 10 minutes or less. Most of it was washing and dicing strawberries. Very happy with the result!

Happy Tomatoes!

One day lovely, next not so much. We had some summer, we had some autumn, spring and just about everything else other than the snow. Since the initial posts the balcony garden is taking shape and starting to look more like the terrace of my dreams. But not quite without work.

First we needed dirt and pots and window-boxes. To solve the problem of expensive pots, I found an ingenious idea in the 'IKEA Hackers' site. Under the 'outdoors' label there are multiple bright ideas how to adapt inexpensive IKEA items. However I needed a pot for two tomato plants - deep enough for their roots. Hallo FNISS - at €1,99, what a bargain (for a 14 L tub). Here is the original article - FNISS-waste basket as deep root planter.
In order to make FNISS into a planter, we had to drill a few drainage holes and add an overspill tray.
The two tomato plants we have are cherry tomatoes: Freiland - 'Cherrytomate', 'Philovita'F1. We planted them on the 21st of April, when it was getting warmer. However we still had some cold night and several evenings we had to bring the plants indoors!
We bought a special tomato soil and at the bottom of the tubs poured about 5-8cm worth of small rocks for drainage.


In the third FNISS I have planted a lovely bright red Gerbera and a Rosemary plant, which originated from supermarket veg aisle, but has survived and now enjoys a longer life. Here are a couple of pics from 20th of May - one month later.



And a week later... The plants are growing like small trees now and I have bought some bamboo stakes to provide some support.


It's June now: Gerbera gained five more flowers and tomato flowering has finished and I think I can see first green mini-tomatoes. Very exciting! Now just need to try not to kill the plants before we can enjoy the amazing taste of the home-grown tomatoes!

Shade and Our North-facing Balcony

The above photos are from the Bremen 'Botanica' gardens and the surrounding Rhododendron Garden. Very impressive collection of plants! The Rhododendron Garden covers more than 45 hectares and boasts to have the largest rhododendron collection in the world. Here are several photos of the Hostas, which is a very decorative foliage plant. I have bean reading about it and it is frequently used in shady gardens and under trees. I started researching in April, but it is May now! The above photos have been taken mid-May.

Have been looking at more options for the front balcony that gets minimal sunshine.  The balcony is north-facing. There is some sunshine in the morning and midday. But the balcony edge is high and paved and this would mean that whatever plants I put on the ground there must like partial to full shade. Definitely like the Hostas for their spectacular foliage.



I haven't bought any Hostas yet. Perhaps next year, I will have more chance to plan it all out a bit better. But for now I have bought a seed mix of shade-loving flowers from a company called Kiepenkerl. Check out their site - the mixed flower seed collections look fantastic. I will be be able to report how the shade mix goes in a couple of months. I have a window-box and a big bag of flower dirt and in the next few days this shade-loving-flower mix will be made. Any more ideas for shade-loving flowers and herbs?

Pomodori - Tomatoes - Tomaten

Yes it is a FRUIT! Not a vegetable. Much too early to judge whether our balcony experiment will work (photos to be posted soon), but here is an interesting article about the tomatoes in Italian cuisine by Gourmet Traveller.

Herbs

I look forward to my new herb garden.  I especially look forward to having fresh coriander once again.  I still have a supply of coriander seeds, which I harvested and dried last year from our allotment.  Because it is such a strong herb, you only need a little bit - a few crushed seeds will flavour an entire casserole.  Unlike fresh coriander, dried seeds are good for casseroles - slow and long cooking recipes. Thyme is great for stews and sauces too - so I have a packet of thyme leaves ready to be planted this weekend. Hopefully we get the balcony-pot soil this weekend, some nice weather too, and all the herbs can be planted! (below is a photo from last year's out-of-control dill jungle)

I found that making herb butter is one of the best ways to ensure that I have plenty of herbs in supply well into winter.  Here are a few photos and a recipe I made in June 2010.   I made parsley butter, coriander butter and dill butter.

Directions: Wash and dry all herbs and check for any garden immigrants.  Chop herbs in a mixer or by hand - quite finely.

 Soften butter to room temperature butter, cube and add to the herbs. Add a dash of salt and for the coriander version I also added garlic.
Cool down the mixture a little and roll into sausages in grease-proof paper. Then put them in the freezer. Once frozen they can stay in the freezer for a while and then just slice pieces off with a sharp knife and add to whatever. 

Coriander seeds can be dried - place in an oven at a low temperature (~80-100 deg C) for a few hours.  If you pack them away without being completely dry they will rot and grow mold - as it happened to me first time I collected the seeds.  Thyme and rosemary can be dried too, but rosemary is fine to be stored in the freezer for a long periods without drying.  I wrap it in a damp kitchen paper towel and leave it in a Tupperware box.

Delia's ideas with herbs are quite inspiring.  She has a particularly good mixed-herb butter recipe with parsley, chives, tarragon and more.  Check it out!

Space Age Window Garden

This is way cool! No, we are not planning anything that sophisticated, but pretty cool ideas?!

This weekend we are getting the window-boxes and some of the larger plants.  Cannot wait to have our own herb garden!

2012 - Willkommen zurück

We are back - five months later and in a new country!

A little about leaving the allotment: late November and December 2012 I tidied up our much loved allotment and collected any seeds that could be used.


It was tough to say ‘cheerio’ and I even spend an afternoon by myself collecting some ridiculously late raspberries, veg, remaining herbs and flower seeds.



We even still had some tomatoes - in December! How crazy is that?!

Looking back, this was a fantastic opportunity to experiment and learn about vegetables, herbs and flowers and, although time consuming, it has been very worthwhile.

Our new home does not have a garden or even space to rent one anywhere in the walking distance.  However, what we do have is a great new project: a large city balcony/terrace! Very exciting.  It is south/west facing, so plenty of sun almost the whole day long.  In addition the balcony is well protected from wind.  The balcony is 15.5 m² with 4 m  wall of railings exposed to sun.  There are hooks in place for five reasonable size rectangle flower containers. Easy!

At this point the idea is to have several containers that are reasonably low-maintenance.  Because the balcony will be used for mealtimes, entertaining and relaxing, I want plants with fresh and gentle fragrance, so no lilies or roses (anything with thorns or spikes for that matter!).  I have come up with a list of herbs and flowers to use and here is the list:

Seeds I have already: mixed flowers (collected from the allotment: marigolds, cornflowers, poppies etc.), Cornflower, Lupine, China Aster (mixed colours), Lavender, decorative sage (purple/pink - Salvia Horminum), lettuce, dill, parsley (Gigante di Napoli - it did very well in the allotment), thyme, coriander and lemon balm (Melissa Officinalis).

Plants and seeds planning to purchase: tomatoes, peppermint, chilli, two pots of larger conifers (yet to decide - any suggestions for fragrance and species suitable for pots???), Rosemary (found: Hänge-Rosemarin ‘Capri’, looks very pretty!), Riesen-Hosta (or just Hosta) and anti-mozzy Geranium Citrioderum.

Here is the current layout plan - very proximate - made using The Better Homes and Gardens, Arrange-a-Deck online app:

In addition to the south-facing balcony, we have a small north-facing and shady balcony.  For this space I have planned a combination of shade-loving plants, flowers and herbs.  I have done a little bit of research online and also have a bit of experience from planting in the shady area of the allotment. At the moment I am considering Begonias, Hostas (Riesen-Hosta), sage (Salvia Officinalis) and peppermint (Mentha Piperata).  Peppermint  and sage are apparently good insect repellents, so this might be useful when airing the house in summer.  Hostas have flowers, but are mostly a very decorative foliage.  I am not sure how well geraniums would cope with just about full-shade.  Any suggestions?
This is an exciting time - spring - and I cannot wait to have our garden oasis!

Chilli Rocks the Jambalaya

It is cooling down a bit, but still 'extremely mild' (according to BBC weather news).  Time to put our chilies, onions and last of the tomatoes to good use.  So we stirred up this wicked Jambalaya - it is a simplified version of the traditional recipes, but - hey presto - ready in no time!

Ingredient:

• 250g diced turkey
• 200g diced chorizo sausage
• olive oil
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 lemon juice
• 2 celery sticks
• 3 chillies (any kind... but be prepared for some serious heat!)
• 1 cup brown rice ('cose it is more healthy than basmati)
• 0.5lt chicken stock 
• 1 tsp tabasco sauce
• 3-4 tomatoes and a can of diced tomatoes
• 2 bay leaves

Marinade the turkey meat in lemon, one chilli, pepper and olive oil.  Heat the pot on high and brown the chorizo.  Take it out leaving the remaining fat and oils - add a dash of olive oil to that and brown the turkey meat.  Take out the meat.  Saute the chopped onion until starting to brown and return the chorizo, turkey, stir, and immediately add the garlic cloves (crushed), celery, chilli.  Cook for 5 min until the celery softens, adding more oil if needed.  Then add rice and coat it well with the oil.  Add tabasco to the stock, then add chopped tomatoes and canned tomatoes, bay leaf to the pot, pour in the stock and stir well once or twice. Push the solids below the water level, and turn heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 mins, until the rice is cooked.

Enjoy! xxx