Soup Disaster of the Week 1

Not all days in the kitchen are good. Sometimes something – or everything – goes horribly wrong, and you end up with something barely edible. This is what happened to the Original Soupwoman this week.

I had this great plan for some leeks and potatoes that I had in my fridge – a vision of this creamy light soup, spiced with cumin, with a little bit of creme fraiche for extra silkyness. I thought it would be a slam dunk.

But right in the end, I failed spectacularly.

Everything started so well: the potatoes and leeks were simmering happily, the aromas of cumin wafting around in the kitchen. Then the things started to go wrong.  I took out my trusted Bamix to whizz the soup silky smooth – but shock horror! I could not find the right attachment. The chopper had mysteriously disappeared. I had to make do with what I had, but the whisker wasn’t enough to make the leek disintegrate appropriately.

Fine, I thought. It doesn’t have to be a triumph every time, I am sure it will taste nice nevertheless, even with the wrong texture. Still confident, I added the creme fraiche and seasoning, and it was pretty good, but needed something. My eyes fell on the lemons on the counter, and I thought I had a revelation – a little bit of citrus would surely lift the soup to another level. Therefore, I added a generous squirt.

That was a mistake of gigantic proportions. The effect was nothing like I had anticipated. There was no lovely citrus note in the symphony of flavours – instead, everything had turned sour.

Hence, no soup for anybody.

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Christmas food – just the way we like it

“I really, really like Christmas food,” the Inhouse Food Critic declared as we were having our Christmas Eve dinner. Wonderful, I thought – except that very few items on the table were traditional Christmas fare.

We have been living abroad for quite some time, and as going ‘back home’ for Christmas holidays is – for various reasons – both impractical and very expensive, we have had the opportunity to create our own Christmas food traditions, to pick and choose only those traditional Finnish things we like and top up with whatever we fancied.

This Christmas, for example, our table was laden with dishes such as pheasant terrine, carrot pate, caramellised leek, gravadlax, pickled herring, gammon cooked in cider and baked rubbed with jerk spice mixture, rosolli and imelletty perunalaatikko, sticky toffee pudding for afters, not to mention our traditional ‘light’ lunch (on Christmas day or Boxing day, it depends) of buckwheat blinis with toppings such soured cream, lumpfish roe, smoked salmon, pickled cucumber and honey.

Rosolli – a cold salad of boiled carrots, boiled beetroot, boiled potatoes, pickled cucumber, apples and onion – and imelletty perunalaatikko – best described as sweet (!)  mashed potato casserole – are the most traditional elements of our Christmas foods, they are dishes you only make for Christmas. Rosolli is the Inhouse Food Critic’s speciality, so no more about that, but I am going to give you my special recipe for the perunalaatikko. It is somewhat unorthodox – I took inspiration from Heston Blumenthal and his tips for the ultimate mashed potato –  but the result is very tasty indeed.

Imelletty perunalaatikko

Ingredients
2000g even-sized potatoes, washed (a floury variety, such as Maris Piper)
100ml plain flour
100-400ml milk
1.5 tsp salt
50-100g butter
(grated nutmeg)

Put the potatoes on a baking tray, put it in the oven and set the temperature for 250C. Bake until the potatoes are soft (the flesh should be all fluffy),  let cool a little so that you can handle them, cut in half and scoop the potato flesh into a large bowl. Add the butter and salt, and mash until silky smooth (bamix or other hand mixer is good). Add about third of the flour and mix well.

Now is the tricky part, where no cheating is allowed, otherwise you will end up with just a loose, baked mash. The whole point of the dish is to get some of the starch turn into sugars, so that the bake will have a rich, slightly sweet taste. In order to get the process started you need to keep the mixture warm enough. Therefore, set your oven to 60-70C, which  is about ideal, cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and put it in the oven for a few hours, adding the rest of the flour in two batches. After a few hours, taste the mixture to ensure that there is distinct sweetness, if there is not, then add some more flour and put the bowl back in the oven for an hour or two, which should do the trick. After that you can turn the oven off and leave the bowl there, to allow the mixture to mature until the next day.

Now, the baking part. Set the oven to 160C. Grease a large, deep casserole dish – the mash mixture should come only around half way, as it may rise quite a bit momentarily while cooking. Then add the milk in the mixture in batches, mixing thoroughly. The mixture should be like normal mash that is a little bit too runny. Pour the mixture in the casserole dish, add some grated nutmeg  (if you like) and a few knobs of butter on top and bake in the oven until it is golden brown – for about 1.5-2 hours. To ensure it does not dry up it might be good to cover it with foil for the first 45 mins or so.

Serve as side dish with e.g. baked gammon.

Note: I have heard people using spices such as cinnamon and aniseed, but I cannot say whether they work well or not – in the spirit of the season of goodwill, I have not tampered with this tried and tested recipe which has been approved by the Inhouse Food Critic.

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Soup of the Week 10 – Curried Creamy Cauliflower

Yes, the Original Soupwoman is well aware this is already a second cauliflower soup this month, but as cauliflower is something that the packers at Abel&Cole in their infinite wisdom choose to include in my box, that’s how it is going to be.

This soup is inspired by a recipe by The Pioneer Woman. Hers is much more sophisticated, though!

Ingredients
1 small cauliflower, florets only, chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
50 ml peeled chopped tomatoes
1 tbl vegetable oil
2 tbl plain flour
1-2 tsp curry powder
500ml water (or vegetable/chicken stock)
200ml soya cream (or normal cream)
salt to taste

Heat the oil in a pot, add the onions and fry, stirring constantly, until light golden. Add the curry, and stir. Add the flour, and stir again. Add the tomatoes, and stir some more. Add the cauliflower, mix everything well, and keep stirring for a few minutes. Add then the water (stir stir stir), bring to a boil, cover and let simmer until the cauliflower is to your liking. This depends on how finely you chopped the cauliflower, and what exactly is “to your liking”. Add then the soya cream (and more water/stock, if your soup looks more like a stew), heat to the boiling point, check the seasoning and serve.

According to Inhouse Food Critic, this would have needed some Bamix action, but I thought it was a bit more grown-up this way. Sorry dear – one can’t please everybody all the time.

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Soup of the Week 9 – Bratwurst and Vegetables

And now for something completely different.

It is true – it  is not yet another veggie puree soup!

This hearty soup fills and warms you up on a cold winter’s day, such as this. The title refers to bratwurst, but e.g. frankfurters or bockwurst will do just fine. I actually used Lidl’s Linessa Reduced Fat Authentic Nuremberg Pork Sausages, but it would not have made a snappy title.

Ingredients
400-500g potatoes (a firm variety), peeled, cut into bite-size pieces
200g onion, peeled, chopped
150g carrots, peeled, cut into bite-size pieces
2 cloves of garlic, peeled, chopped
2 tbl vegetable oil
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
1/2-1 tsp smoked paprika (depends on how freshly opened the jar is)
1000ml stock
4 white peppercorns
4 whole allspice
1 tsp dried thyme
250g bratwurst, cut in bite-size pieces

Heat the oil in a pot on a medium heat, add the onions and garlic and fry stirring constantly until golden brown. Add the fennel and paprika and fry a few more minutes, then add the potatoes and the carrots and fry another few minutes. Add the stock, peppercorns and allspice, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and let simmer until the veg are tender (about 15 mins). While the soup is simmering, fry the sausages in a nonstick pan with just a little bit of oil (or grill them) until they are hot and are nicely browned. Add the thyme and the sausages in the soup, stir well, check the seasoning, and serve.

You can, of course, add the sausages directly in the soup and let simmer there for a minute or two, but I find the browned sausage pieces more aesthetically pleasing.

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The Soup of the Week 7 – Tomato, Apple and Lentil

The Original Soupwoman will be travelling this week, which means no new soup inventions. But fear not, here is one I made earlier.

Ingredients
400g tinned plum tomatoes
300g apples, peeled, cored and chopped (a sour variety, such as Bramley, is best)
100g dried red lentils
800ml vegetable or chicken stock
1/2 ts dried basil
1/2 ts dried thyme
a pinch of ground cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste

Put stock, tomatoes, apples and lentils in a pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover with lid and let simmer until everything is tender. Add the herbs and the cinnamon and puree with a hand mixer. If the soup is very thick, add more stock. Add salt and pepper to taste, bring to a boil and serve hot with nice fresh bread, such as the rosemary spelt bread below.

Rosemary Spelt Bread

Credit where credit is due: this is an adaptation of the “Roman Style Loaf” recipe on the Doves Farm Stoneground Wholegrain Spelt flour bag.

Ingredients
500g wholegrain spelt flour
1/2-1 tsp salt
3 tsp dried rosemary
2 tsp whole cumin
1 tsp quick yeast
1 tbsp honey
400ml warm water
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (the more flavourful and aromatic, the better)
(coarse sea salt)

In a large bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. Dissolve the honey in the warm water and roughly mix it to the flour. While the dough is still craggy, add the olive oil and mix well. Knead or work the dough for a few minutes then divide it between two 500g greased or lined bread tins.  Cover and leave dough to rise for about half an hour in a warm place. Pre-heat the oven to 200C (180C fan assisted). Drizzle some more olive oil on the breads and sprinkle some coarse sea salt on top, if you like. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 40–45 minutes.

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