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!

Spring 2011!

Welcome 2011. After a long break we are back in the allotment and everything is growing extremely fast - mostly weeds at the moment!

 In February we went to inspect the allotment and found some interesting things - like these zucchini plant left-overs.

With the growing season starting soon, we have stocked up and bought many seeds and seed potatoes. We also have an inventory of the seeds bought and collected last year that can be planted.  From the last category we have: lupine, marigold, dill, poppies, watercress and coriander.  The list of seeds purchased is rather long, so I might account for the things we have managed to plant in the last two weekends. It has been unusually warm and spring-like.  Around +15C during the day, but still a threat of frost at nighttime.

One of the first things planted this year are potatoes. Here is a picture of them occupying a large space of the kitchen floor.  This process is called chitting and allows them to grow little green shoots, which helps them grow faster. We planted a row of Maris Piper and a row of Desiree potatoes.  Maris Piper and Desiree are both main crop variety which will be ready to harvest in June-July. I think Desiree was the organic variety, but I am to lazy to walk to the garage to check the bags and labels.

But before the spuds went a row of carrots (Mr Fothergill's, Early Nantes 5) with a row of onions (Homebase home-brand Stuttgarter Riesen) next to the carrots them to keep the carrot-fly away.

The front of the allotment is full of new marigold seeds and a mix of field flowers to attract bees and other good insects. Plus a Lidl (cheap supermarket) budget brand summer flower mix.  Marigold is meant to deter animals and I am hoping that means no dogs and cats would be wondering around the allotment.  

We've planted quiet a few rows of Gigante di Napoli parsley - seeds left over from last year, purchased at the Real Food Festival in Earls Court, London.  Last year this parsley grew like mad.  It was not exactly 'gigante', but very tasty.  In the parsley box, we've planted some dill randomly amongst the other herbs surviving the winter - not sure if these seeds collected from last year's plants will actually grow.  The main plan this year is to continually plant herbs throughout the summer, so I have small batches of them to use all the time and not a plantation of dill or parsley in one go. We have made a patch ready for the pumpkin seeds, but did not get very far with planting - perhaps this weekend...? Meanwhile all the weeds are flowering and attracting these bumble-bees that sound like small helicopters!


Never mind, since the weeds are all prostrate - ground covering - and seem to come out reasonably easy. With such a large plot of weeds, the plan is to only clear the area immediately for working on, but that's still quite a lot! But with so much space, we'd be made not to go nuts with planting food! Every week, something new, and every month a new set of spuds and root veg! That should be a great harvest!

Jam Session - Spicy Version

Jam - The Spicy Savory Version

Various version of this have been made in my family and I have also sampled this type of jam elsewhere. It is like a chutney, except the spices are not particularly oriental and the finished product tastes more like a concentrate ridiculously tasty thick soup. It is great as a condiment to meals, fantastic on a piece of toast with melted cheese on top or as an ingredient in bakes and casseroles. In fact, I buy bread-rolls - halve them, take out some of the soft center, spread a little bit of tomato puree or tomato pizza base and fill the rest with the spicy savory jam and then grill it with cheese on top. Here is the recipe!


3 kg tomatoes (diced in small cubes, with hearts removed!)
400 g carrots (from our allotment!) (grated)
300 g celeriac (grated)
100 g celery stems (chopped)
200 g parsley roots (from our allotment!)(grated or can be crushed and chopped)
150 g onions (chopped)
150 g sugar
70 g salt

Simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours

60 g vinegar
6 g chili pepper (ground)
5 g black pepper (ground)
50 g celery leaves
100-150 g parsley leaves (from our allotment!) (chopped)

Cook for 30minutes or more

I made three pots full of jam from the above ingredient, although I added far more parsley to one pot and called it Mix II, Mix I had more chili and Mix III was not as exciting so I added some oak smoked Welsh salt to it and mixed some of the Mix II in it... anyhow - the sterilizing of the jars and filling jars is the same as described in the previous post on regular jam. I can imagine that it not that easy to get hold of parsley root if you do not grow your own parsley, but I believe the above recipe is flexible with ingredients, amounts and chili.


This volume of ingredients gave us 10 jars, from pickle-jar size to jam-jar size.

Charming Carrots

We have some classy, commendable, cute and charming carrots!

Apart from the formations - they taste great. As a matter of fact, tonight we are off to the allotment to get some more!

Sweltering June & Stormy July

After blazing sun and high temperatures in June, it is now a wet and windy July. We were fearing that our allotment would die in the hot sun, but it survived and quite on contrary was thriving in high temperatures. Pumpkin and zucchini plants grew very fast and potatoes doubled in size. Flowers survived, although did require a bit of attention and extra watering.

Fast forward in July and we have reasonable size carrots and onions looking almost ready to pick and runner-beans, beetroot and late-harvest carrots (Autumn-King) appearing. With all the rain we are getting in the last week, we might have to check that there is adequate drainage to direct water away fro the plants and maybe add some hay under zucchinis.