"NEW YEAR. NEW YOU?"

Don't you just love a gift that you can benefit from for ages after your birthday/Christmas/any special occasion?  Well, I've already told you about the fantastic gift my boys gave me for my birthday last year - masterclasses with Michelin chef Oliver Dunne, and January brought the next class I'd chosen - "New Year, New You?" - just up my alley at the moment! 

It should be said at this stage that Olivers main concession to healthy eating was managing without his usual use of pounds of butter and replacing them with a whole bottle of olive oil!!!  That said the food was utterly delicious, if I could eat like this all the time I'd happily swear off sugar for life.

Pumpkin and Ginger Soup

This soup tasted so good, that I went out and bought the ingredients the next day and made up a batch (my attempt and the recipe are at the end of this post)

Stir-Fried Duck with Carrots, Sugar Snaps and Orange

This dish also works well with pork and would be perfect to throw together after work - although I can't imagine being able to chop the carrots as well as this!

Salmon with Sweet & Sour Peppers, Olive & Basil Crushed Potatoes

This was probably my favourite dish of the evening - those peppers are to die for, and the potatoes are beyond delicious, there are olives, shallots, basil and lemon juice in there - my mouth is watering at the memory!!

Fillet of Pork, Crushed Carrot and Swede, Chilli Wedge

I learned something new when Oliver was making this dish - what are generally called turnips in Ireland are swedes to the rest of the world! - you live and you learn!!  I felt this dish needed a sauce (maybe I'm not totally getting into the New Year New You vibe!!!!).  See how pink the pork is?  Delicious!

Beef Fillet with Potato Fondant, Tomato & Tarragon Dressing

These fondant potatoes were a total revelation - instead of frying them up to their oxters (technical term!!) in butter, these were cooked in a frying pan of water with a knob of butter and a splash of olive oil, and they actually taste just as good (well very nearly) as the real thing.

Now for my offering - I substituted the pumpkin with butternut squash and the soup went down a treat!

Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup

1kg               butternut squash, peeled and diced into small pieces
1 tbsp           olive oil
1 knob          ginger - about the size of your thumb
4 tbsp           white wine
750ml            chicken stock (from a cube is fine)
100ml            milk
pinch             sugar
                     salt to taste
1 tsp              Greek yogurt (per bowl)

Put the oil in a heavy based saucepan and add the squash, ginger and season.
Cook on a low heat with the lid on until the squash is soft
When it is soft, remove the lid and reduce until the liquid has evaporated.
Add the white wine and simmer, then add the stock and milk.
Bring back to the boil and then simmer for five minutes.
Blend until smooth - this takes longer than you expect to get a really silkey texture.
Serve with a spoon of Greek yogurt.

Enjoy.

RANDOM NO CROUTON RECIPE

This month Dom and Jac * have teamed up to challenge us to pick a random veggie soup recipe and prepare it for your enjoyment (and ours of course!).  Dom has allowed us to choose our own method of randomising (?) our recipe, so I decided I would choose the first book to hand and cook the first soup recipe for which I had all the ingredients in stock.

I have been using Catherine Fulvio's Family Kitchen alot recently and her Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup and Tomato Soup looked delicious but there are pepper allergies in this house so I made her Tomato soup all on it's own, and combined it with her Soda Focaccia, and all I can say is it was the easiest,  tastiest lunch I have had in ages.  The sundried tomatoes in the soup really intensify the flavour - skrummy stuff.

*Dom and Jac - don't present a children's TV show!! They write two excellent blogs - really worth visiting if you haven't already done so.

Tomato Soup
from Catherine Fulvio

extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2 sundried tomatoes, chopped
1 potato, peeled and chopped
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
300ml vegetable stock
2 tsp chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper

Fry the garlic and sundried tomatoes in some olive oil for a minute.
Stir in the potato, tomatoes and stock and bring to the boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer for  10-15 minutes, until the potato is cooked through.
Add the basil and remove from the heat.
Puree the soup and taste for seasoning.
Add more stock if needed.

Serve and enjoy.

SAINTLY SOUP

Jacqueline over at Tinned Tomatoes has challenged us to create a soup or dressing which is luxurious and creamy for this months No Croutons Required.  I have to admit that I was more in a frugal and low fat humour when the time came to make my soup - so here goes ... my attempt at a creamy, luxurious, frugal, low fat/carb soup ...... oxymoron, you might think - but just try it and I think you'll be convinced!!

Although I try to keep most of our food local and seasonal - sometimes I yearn for the fresh flavours of summer.  When I found asparagus for 89c in my local Aldi, I had to leave my principles at the door and buy an obscene amount of the stuff!!!!  As I had so much I felt that I could be extravagant when snapping the stems, then when I saw the amount of asparagus going in the compost, I realized that I had to do something with it (well most of it - I discarded the very woody ends) and this soup is the result.  That was the luxurious and the frugal parts of the equation, now for the creamy and low fat/carb part! Cream cheese was the answer the very low fat type - I have used it before in soups and it always does the business, so here is my contribution to this month's No Croutons Required.


Asparagus Soup

1         Large Onion
           The stem part (minus the very woody ends) from 4 bunches of asparagus - I kept the first 4"/10cm for another recipe and used the rest of the stem for this soup.
            Vegetable Stock - enough to just cover the vegetables in the pot
1tbsp   Extra low fat cream cheese


Chop the onion and the asparagus spears, put in a pot and cover with vegetable stock (I used Marigold).
Bring to a simmer and cook until tender.
When tender remove from the heat and add the cheese.
Blitz until smooth.
Serve with a dollop of low fat yogurt and freshly milled pepper.

Enjoy.

SOUPER SOUP (sorry!!!)

I have at last embraced the whole January thing - as in "eat more healthily", "lose those lbs/kg gathered over Christmas(/last year!)", "be a bit more frugal" you know where I'm going.  My new year's resolutions have a fairly elastic starting date (it gets more elastic with every cake I bake/see!), but Brownieville Boy #1's return to school after the holidays, became the first day of the new, improved me!

This month's No Croutons Required challenge was to prepare a veggie soup or salad with rice - I had some chestnut puree in the fridge, which had to be used and I decided to go the obvious route with it and make a chestnut and mushroom soup - I added some risotto rice (which made the soup lovely and substantial), it made a tasty, filling dish - low in fat, but full of flavour .... result!!  Just what the doctor/dietitian/resolution watchdog ordered.

Healthy meal - tick
Used up the leftovers - tick

The chestnuts are nearly finished, you'll be glad to know!!!


Mushroom and Chestnut Soup

500g          mushrooms
1                large onion
1 tsp          olive oil
1 tbsp        chestnut puree
1 ltr           mushroom/veg stock (I buy porcini stock cubes every time I go to Italy)
1 tbsp        dried porcini mushrooms - crumbled.
2 tbsp        risotto rice


Gently fry the onions in the oil, until they begin to soften.
Add the mushrooms, which you have chopped up (finely if you don't want to puree the soup later).
Meanwhile make up your stock and add the dried porcini mushrooms.
When the mushrooms have cooked down add the chestnut puree and the rice, stir well.
Add the stock and porcini mushrooms.
Allow to simmer until the rice is cooked.
Blitz - I use a hand held blitzer.
Serve and enjoy.

SQUASH SOUP

Sorry about the lack of photos, but we're working on it (well actually someone who knows what they are doing is working on it!!!) and will soon (?!?) be rid of the laptop and back to normal services!!!

I made a really special soup for lunch today - and decided that soup is a good thing to blog about when you are photoless, as soup isn't that inspiring to look at (well that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!).

This weeks vegetable box was really inspiring and autumnal, a cute little sweet dumpling squash which I just halved, seeded  then baked with some salt, pepper and a tiny knob of butter - fantastic.

There was also a lovely (and large) butternut squash in the basket, and I thought it would be nice to add some other autumn flavours to make a warming and hopefully cheering (in this awful weather) soup.  I have a huge bag of cooking apples which M. my lovely sister in law gave me,  I figured that the squash and apples would be a good combination - this is what I came up with:

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

1             medium squash (or half a large one)
2             medium onions
3             medium cooking apples (or granny smiths if not available)
1 tsp       ground cumin
1 tsp       ground coriander
1 tsp       turmeric
               olive oil
               chicken/vegetable stock



Peel the squash with a potato peeler.
Remove the seeds and cut into chunks.
Peel the onions and cut into chunks,
Peel and core the apples and (see a pattern!) cut into chunks.
Place the vegetables on a baking tray, sprinkle with the spices, salt and pepper.
Add enough olive oil to allow them to roast and pop into the oven at 180 C for about 30 minutes.
When they have begun to caramelise remove the vegetables from the oven and place in a pot.
Pour some boiling water/stock into the baking tray (to get the last of the caramelised juices)
Pour this stock and whatever extra is needed to just cover the squash, onion and apple in the pot.
Simmer for 15 minutes and then blitz with a hand held blitzer or whatever implement you use to make your soup smooth and delicious.
Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed, sometimes a teaspoon of honey added at this stage can balance the flavours perfectly.

The soup was all I had hoped for warming and welcoming - the perfect lunch to eat inside while watching the weather do it's worst!!!

*Photo added later

FOREVER SUMMER REVISITED

I have rediscovered "Forever Summer" by Nigella Lawson recently, it was one of those books that I bought, tried one or two recipes and then forgot about - this was a mistake as it is jam packed with wonderful recipes that work beautifully and more importantly are easily changed to suit your taste and what you have in the pantry.

I tried the pineapple salsa with some organic ham and a tomato salsa, it was just perfect and was the ideal dinner on a very warm day (warmth - seems like a distant memory now!).The pineapple combined perfectly with the coriander and mint to lift the ham to sublime!

When I spotted some yellow courgettes in my  vegetable basket, I knew that this was the first recipe they were destined for!

It is a light tasty soup, again perfect summer fodder.  It is based on a Middle Eastern dish, where they believe that "eating yellow foods will result in laughter and happiness" - how could you resist trying that!!

I blitzed a couple of portions (faddy eaters!!) and for some strange reason it tasted much more substantial and warming - go figure!!

This is a version of Nigella's recipe for Sea Bass with Saffron, Sherry and Pine Nuts,  this time I used Plaice in place of the Sea Bass and it was excellent, the light delicate sauce  compliments the fresh flavours of the fish.  Neither the saffron nor sherry dominate, they just compliment.  I have cooked this with Sea Bass before and couldn't recommend one fish above the other - both were just right.  The dish would have looked better if I had used the white half of the plaice, but I think there is more flesh on the dark side.

This is the Old Fashioned Tomato Salad, and although it tastes lovely, it wouldn't be great on the "taste/labour ratio" scale.  There was quite a bit of faffing about making the Salad Cream, and I would prefer a nice garlic mayonnaise.

I loved this Short Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon Garlic and Parsley, but then I love anything with asparagus.  It is a super simple dish where you gently fry some garlic in olive oil add steamed asparagus and lemon juice to taste.  Combine with your pasta of choice and sprinkle over some parsley, yumm!

Finally, The Rainbow Room's Carrot and Peanut Salad was totally addictive.  Amo and I ate the whole bowl in the belief that "it's a salad therefore it's low fat and healthy", obviously this thinking was aided by the glass of wine (or two) we enjoyed with the salad!!!!  Well I suppose it was better than eating a bag of peanuts (not lower fat though :-{{ )  Here's the recipe

Carrot and Peanut Salad

4 medium carrots, peeled

75g    salted peanuts

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp groundnut oil

few drops sesame oil

Grate the carrots coarsely.

Combine with the peanuts, vinegar and oils.

Devour as you choose!

PEAS AND RICE

This warm weather really does call for a different style of eating - barbecues are perfect, as are salads.  This soup/risotto also hits the spot, it doesn't call for standing over the stove stirring (no hardship in the winter, but just too hot at the moment) but feels more of a meal than a bowl of soup.

Risi e bisi (from Nigella Summer) is the basis for this dish, I had intended on using the bunch of peas that came in this week's vegetable box - but (confession time) they didn't last until dinner, actually they didn't last an hour, I ate them all while planning what to cook with them!!!!!!  But I have to say they were delicious, I don't regret a single pod ;-)

I turned to the ever ready frozen peas (the friend of every cook) and even the veg phobic one enjoyed this.  I did blitz the peas before adding the rice, so the texture suited him - the taste would have to please anyone, it was sweet, savoury and really, really fresh.

This is my version:

Pea and Rice Soup

3/4 litre      hot chicken stock
200g          frozen peas
1 tbsp        butter
2 tbsp        grated parmesan cheese + the cheese rind (if you have one handy)*
1 tbsp        olive oil
1               shallot
1 tbsp       chopped mint
110g         risotto rice (best quality you can get)


Gently fry the shallot in the butter and oil until soft and translucent.
Add the peas and mint and stir in the buttery oil for a few minutes.
Add some of the stock and blitz this mixture until smooth.
Add the rice and coat in the pea mixture.
Add the stock and the cheese rind (if available).
Simmer for about 15 minutes or until the rice is cooked.
Pour into bowls and sprinkle over the grated parmesan cheese.
Serve and enjoy.

*I always save my parmesan rinds, and keep them in the freezer to use in soups and risottos.