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!

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!

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.

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

October

It has been four months since the last post and it has been extremely busy on the allotment and in our lives!  All the potatoes are out and we have multiple sacks with the 'Desiree' being the most prolific.  In general, all plants that were watered, weeded and got some feed produced massive potatoes (size of half-an-adult's head...) and there were 8 to 10 potatoes per plant.  Maris Piper and two rows of Aran Pilot went in on the 10/4 and 16 weeks later they were monsters! The poorest crop were the three rows of 'King Edward' near the neglected end of the patch. This wasn't a truly scientific analysis, but it seems the lack of water, food, too many weeds left behind (including bind!) prevented monsters here. Or it just might not have been a good spot, or weather for this variety. Ah well, 3 sacks full should be enough!

This weekend we caught up with the allotment neighbors and the latest gossip.  There have been pumpkin and cabbage thefts reported!  Our neighbor removed her prized gigantic Halloween pumpkin, so no one steels it before her grandchildren can carve it.  I can see how the pumpkin can be stolen, especially an oversized prize item, but cabbages?  Apparently the thief has torn the white-fly netting and pulled out the entire row of cabbages! One of the allotment holders recalls seeing people with flashlights n the allotment patch at 11pm at night on her walk back form the balling green. However, she was scared to confront the cabbage thief.

We have several small pumpkins - or squashes, although I am not entirely sure which is which.  Tonight we made a delicious risotto using half of one of the pumpkins. 

The other fruits of plenty are our tomatoes.  Cherry tomatoes as well as the larger variety - 'money makers' are producing lots of fruit and recent warm weather has helped them ripen - or confused them into thinking it's still summer.  Despite the chiller nights now approaching, it has been unusually warm for October and it has helped our tomatoes and chillies thrive. We have so many little chillies! Most dishes in our household have a bit of a kick now.  Surprisingly we still found some raspberries and strawberries - and some not very autumnal flowers, such as sweet-pea! Also in the late summer surprises is the capsicum plant with two large green capsicums. Still growing as we're just waiting for them to turn colour - or for us to decide to eat them!  However, I will keep a stronger lookout for any capsicum thieves in the area!

Rain!

Finally a proper rain! At a 45° angle and rather windy, but a non-stop rain through the night and day.  This will be fantastic for the allotment and save a lot of water.  It is a sort of a wind and rain combination that reminds me of being near the seaside...

I do hope the newly planted sunflowers as well as our tomatoes and chillies are securely staked not to break in this wind.   Anyhow here is a link to a series of u-tube videos for "staking": http://www.videojug.com/interview/garden-staking-2

May & June 2011 - You say Tomato...

Several of our tomato plant on the windowsill.

At the start of the May we planted out tomatoes and chillies. Very risky business.  It was frowned upon by our allotment neighbours as it was too early to plant out tomatoes, but it now appears that we might just be amongst the first to have tomatoes - HA! 

Cherry tomatoes, which we planted from seed.  By now we have left only two of the strongest stems in each plant and they are growing like mad!  All the additional greenness around is just weeds.

May has been interesting.  It started off quite warm and dry,  followed by cooler weather and some close-to-frosty nights.  So for a while it looked like our tomatoes will not survive.  In fact, I thought we lost them and told everyone that the plants froze - but I lied! They were sturdy little things and it now looks like we might possible have tomatoes and chillies! Yay!  Every single plant survived (dramatic music, please).

We planted them in neat rows (East/west - to make the most of the sun) and planted basil as a companion plant near by.  Hope the like each other... Last year none of the basil seeds survived.

We planted out the plants on little mounds, fearing they might drown in endless rain in an English spring, but now I wish for rain! Our neighbours (who planted their tomatoes much later) on contrary have put little mounds around and planted the tomatoes in a ditch with a wall around.  Not sure how this helps and I have never seen it done before, so I might have a word with them. 
A work colleague has given me seven more cherry tomatoes and one more Money-maker (that's a bloody big tomato for those not in the business). These babies are now sitting on the windowsill and waiting their turn.

Jalapeno pepper

Tomatoes

We have lovely allotment neighbors and have had continuous good advice on planting out times, weed control and plant compatibility.  We were advised to not plant out our tomatoes and chillies yet as there might still be some overnight frost in April and early May.  We have bought eight small tomato plants (larger tomatoes: 2 x Moneymaker, 2 x Beefsteak, small (cherry) tomatos: 1 x Cherriettes of Fire, 2x Allicante, 1 x Red Allert), four chillies (Jalapeno Peppers, 2 x Apache Hot Chilli Peppers) and have grown four small tomato plants from seed.  All of which are were basking in the spring sunlight on our kitchen windowsill and now moved to an outdoors greenhouse since last week.

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.