No Fancy Soup here - just good old Leek & Potato

There’s a lot of fancy soup about these days. Don't get me wrong, I like a good bit of fancy soup, and I’m as guilty as the next person when I'm brewing the stuff up – chorizo, ginger, coconut milk - it all makes its way into my soups (not necessarily all together, you understand). However, the other day, driven by an excessive amount of leeks in the fridge, I made a big vat of good old fancy-free leek and potato, and boy was it good. It’s still good – I made it on Tuesday for the kids to have for tea with fish finger croutons and it has kept me going for lunch for the rest of the week. It's delicious, undemanding and soothing. Dead easy to make too.

Leek & Potato Soup

To make a big pot

1tbsp olive oil & 1 knob of butter;  1 onion, peeled & chopped;  1 clove of garlic, finely chopped;  5 leeks, cleaned & sliced; 2 large potatoes, peeled and diced; 1 litre of veg stock (I used 4 tsp Marigold bouillon powder, basically because Nigella does); 500ml semi-skimmed milk

Melt the butter and oil in a big pan, add the onions and garlic and fry for 5 minutes or so, stirring so they don’t catch & burn. Add the leeks and potatoes, salt and pepper, and a splash of stock if you want, then turn the heat right down and sweat the veg gently with the lid on for 15 minutes or so. Add the stock and milk, bring to a simmer and carry on simmering for another 15-20 minutes till everything is cooked. Whizz/blitz with your preferred whizzer/blitzer (I have a stick blender). You can freeze it at this point (once it's cold), or just leave it to eat later on. 

When you want to eat, heat on a gentle heat – don’t let it boil away too much.

If you like, you can garnish the end result with some cream and chopped chives, or if like me you were trying to feed the kids, you could grill some fish fingers, and either serve them ‘on the side’ for dipping (Pink) or chopped up in chunks into the soup as croutons (Blue).

and my bowl - croutons & dipping so neither felt 'left out'...

Where Food meets Fiction "The School of Essential Ingredients" - and White Cake

Looking back from this dreary October evening, as the rain lashes down outside, and I can barely face heading down the garden to shut the chickens in, it’s hard to think that actually we (the Recipe Junkie clan) had such a wonderful summer. And we did. One of the highlights of our family holiday when we pottered over to France was the amount of reading we all did. The kids read, the Husband read and I, luxury of luxuries, got to read, uninterrupted, sometimes for even an hour at a time.

One of the books that kept me rapt was one that my mum passed on, almost as an afterthought, but it was such a gorgeous read that I feel compelled to share it with you.

 

“The School of Essential Ingredients” by Erica Bauermeister is a gorgeously understated and beautiful tale of an unusual cookery school where there are, in fact, no essential ingredients – only the needs and desires of the pupils. Steered on their journeys of culinary discovery by the enigmatic Lillian, the participants, of course, learn more than how to cook – they learn self-esteem and confidence. They develop new relationships, overcome grief and heal old wounds. The story is gentle and undemanding, with an element of whimsical fairy tale to it but manages not to slip into sickliness. For me, Bauermeister has created a series of characters that, in the best Maeve Binchy tradition, I really cared about. I had a morning to remember while we were in France, sat with a cup of coffee overlooking the most wonderful beach in the company of the seabirds and this book....

I'll share the picture too, just so you get the idea...

Each chapter focuses on a different character, and Lillian seems to know instinctively which recipe or type of cooking will be appropriate for which character. Carl, attends the classes with his wife, Helen. His recipe is a White Cake – something I had never come across before. But lo, the joys of Google, many traditional recipes (traditional for the US, I guess) abound for a cake made simply with butter, sugar, flour, vanilla and eggs, the eggs separated so that the yolks are combined with the butter/sugar, the flour added alternately with some milk, and the egg whites are whisked and folded into the batter before baking. In the book, the method is not so much as a method, more a caress. The way the creation of the cake is woven into the story of Carl & Helen’s marriage, as seen from Carl’s point of view, is simply beautiful, using words that conjure up so much more than just cooking:

“Lillian put the butter into the bowl and turned on the mixer, the paddle beat its way into the soft yellow rectangles. 

Slowly in an impossibly thin waterfall of white, she let the sugar drift into the bowl.... The paddle continued its revolution around the bowl and the class watched... as the sugar met and mingled with the butter, each drawing color and texture from the other, expanding, softening lifting up the sides of the bowl in silken waves.”

Utterly delicious.

Well, you know me and cake... I wish I had had the patience to wait until the kids were tucked up in bed before embarking on my attempt, but it was not to be, so at the same time as making leek and potato soup withfish finger croutons (I know how to serve up a gourmet treat for my kids), I set to. I’d like to say that my attempt could have been described in such thrilling tones as Lillian’s but unfortunately, what with almost burning the fish fingers, and remembering that Pink had to be at ballet, it was a less soothing experience. I also had a dilemma because I only have one bowl for my Kenwood mixer, so ended up making the butter/sugar batter then scraping it into another bowl before whisking the egg whites. For all that, the cake seems pretty good, and I am quite pleased with what I have come up with, although I fear it may be a little sickly for my taste. As I was making it, I kept thinking "LEMON" but for the first go, at a white cake, I had to put those thoughts aside. I think it might need a few more attempts, so I’ll let you know once it’s perfect, but for now, I give you:

White Cake (with apologies to Lillian)

For the cake: 2 x 20cm loose bottomed cake tins, buttered and floured, bases lined; 120g unsalted butter, 200g +40g caster sugar, 2 large eggs, separated, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 120ml milk, 180g self raising flour, 2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt, pinch cream of tartar

For the frosting: 120g soft unsalted butter, 200g cream cheese (at room temperature), 300g icing sugar, sifted, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Pre-heat the oven to 180⁰C.

Sift together self raising flour, baking powder and salt. Beat the butter till soft then add 200g of sugar and beat again till light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating after each addition, and then add the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk – beginning and ending with flour – flour, milk, flour, milk, flour. Set aside the batter. Beat the egg whites till they start to foam, add the pinch of cream of tartar, then beat till soft peak stage. Add in the remaining 40g of sugar then beat till stiff-ish peaks. Fold the egg whites into the batter, divide between the prepared tins, bang down to even the mixture out and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes till a cake tester (whatever you use – I have a trusty skewer) comes out clean. 

Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then remove from the tin and allow to cool properly before wrapping in clingfilm and popping in the freezer for an hour or so – this will help you spread the icing/frosting.

Make the frosting by creaming together the butter and cream cheese, then adding in the icing sugar a bit at a time beating well after each addition, and scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Add in the vanilla extract and beat again till light and fluffy. Use to sandwich the cakes together, and then to spread over top and sides.

As well as my idea for the recipe, my Google surf advises me that there’s a new book out soon by the same author, called The Joy of Mixing, which picks up the stories of some of the characters. It’s on my wish list already.

I'm linking this up to a blog event I found via the Tinned Tomatoes Blog called Novel Food which aims to encourage people to create dishes inspired by books they have read. Well I was definitely inspired by this book, and there's more where that came from - I am seriously thinking along the lines of Antonia and Isabelles' stuffed turkey breast with rosemary, cranberry and pancetta for a certain feast coming up in a couple of months' time...

Roast Cauliflower & Chorizo Couscous

I feel like this is getting to be a bit of a habit - grabbing ideas from other bloggers, but this is one of the things I have LOVED since starting blogging - looking beyond my groaning shelves of cook books and the Good Food website, to the great wide blogosphere for inspiration for meals. There are so many people cooking so much great food out there, and it's been fantastic picking up different ideas.

The latest great idea came from the brilliant Crumbs website. Probably the simplest yet - don't steam or boil your cauliflower: roast it in olive oil with salt and pepper. I like cauliflower, and cauliflower cheese is a big favourite for me. Blue hates it is less keen (I may have mentioned this once or twice before) so it's not something that graces our table that often, but this evening, I had an opportunity.

Mondays are a little strange for us. The kids do choir (Pink) and football (Blue - no gender stereotyping there, is there?) after school, finishing at 4.30, then Blue has Cubs at 6.30. I take it in turns with another mum to have the kids after school. This means that I either have 4 kids for madness and tea, or almost an extra 2 hours of peace and quiet after my working day has finished to sit around and drink tea to get ahead. Today it was the latter, with only the Husband and I to feed, albeit that the meal then needs to be fitted in between getting Pink back from the tea date at 6.30 and one of us collecting Blue at 8...

The Husband and I were going to have a Rose Prince based meal: cold meat pilaff from her great book, The New English Kitchen (which, incidentally is a great treasure trove of ideas for leftovers) but for a variety of reasons, far to complicated to go into here, we didn't have any leftover roast meat from the weekend, which rather put paid to that idea.However, I did have a cauliflower waiting to be eaten, and like a voice from the food heavens, this post from Crumbs popped up in my blog list. 

I roasted my cauliflower with the intention of turning it into a delicious cauliflower cheese for  the Husband and I, but one thing and another (mainly my greed and the fact that the roast cauli is totally delicious just on its own) meant that there didn't seem to be enough to make just a cauli cheese. I had some cooking chorizo in the fridge, and one of my new favourite ingredients - giant wholewheat couscous - in the cupboard. I hatched a plan...





Roast Cauliflower and chorizo couscous

serves 2 

1 small cauliflower, chopped into florets
olive oil, sea salt & fresh ground pepper 
150g giant couscous
125g cooking chorizo, diced
2 sticks of celery, chopped
400ml chicken stock
a handful of runner beans, sliced  
1 can chick peas, drained
juice of 1/2 lemon
chopped parsley to garnish

Roast your cauliflower: Pre-heat the oven to 220 C, put the cauli florets on a roasting dish, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for 15 minutes before turning the oven down to 180 C and roasting for another 10-15 minutes till cooked. The florets will be slightly charred, but that just adds to the flavour.

Drizzle a little olive oil into a pan, heat and add the chorizo. Cook for a little till the oil starts to run, then add the celery. Put the stock in a pan to warm up (or make it up using hot water) so that it's hot when it goes into the pan. Cook the chorizo and celery together for a few minutes till the celery starts to soften then chick in the couscous and pour in the stock. Bring up to the boil and cook, stirring every now and again, till the couscous is almost cooked - it will take around  15 minutes - then chuck in the runner beans, the chick peas and the roasted cauliflower, stirring in, to finish off the cooking.

When the couscous and runner beans are cooked, squeeze in the lemon juice and stir in the chopped parsley.

Grow your own Watercress??

Did you watch the Great British Food Revival last week? I missed most of Michel Roux junior doing his thing for strawberries, but I did catch James Martin championing watercress. I love watercress. We live on the edge of watercress country in North Hampshire – if you saw the programme, the watercress producer Mr Martin visited is but a few miles down the road. Watercress is a big feature of local farmers’ markets, and every year, the lovely little town of Arlesford hosts a watercress festival. Watercress is healthy (really healthy – it’s classed as a superfood) but for me it’s all about the peppery taste. It’s great in soup, sandwiches (I am quite partial to watercress and crunchy peanut butter – honestly, it’s lovely), and a host of other dishes, but I am not here today to give you any recipes. If you want some watercress recipes, you can visit the watercress website Instead, enthused by Mr Martin, and in the wake of some advice gleaned from Gardeners’ Question Time, I am here to report on growing our own watercress.

Years ago, unencumbered by children, the Husband and I often found ourselves driving places on a Sunday afternoon. Feeling hungover tired and jaded, we would tune in to the soothing tones of Radio 4 and it became a standing joke that if we were driving anywhere on a Sunday it would always be around the time of Gardeners’ Question Time. How times have changed. We now tune in specifically to listen to the undemanding repartee, the slightly pleased with itself advice, the soothing responses to queries about leaf mould, blight, and what to grow in a bed with poor soil against a north facing wall…

The other week, one of the questions on GQT (as it's known) related to the wisdom of converting a garden to veg cultivation as a means of beating the recession. One of the panellists suggested growing watercress and we thought we’d give it a go. It gives me great pleasure to have salad leaves growing in the garden – rocket in particular, so expensive in those packs from the supermarket. If we succeed with the watercress, I will be equally thrilled.

I should point out that it is in fact the Husband who has the green fingers in our house, and it is his efforts that I am now reporting back.

1.     Take a couple of sprigs of watercress from a pack and trim leaves off the stalk, leaving some leaves at the top. We used organic watercress as it won’t have been treated with anything.

a delicious sprig of organic watercress*

bottom stalks removed

2.    Fill a jam jar with water, make a ‘lid’ out of a piece of clingfilm or plastic bag for the jar and put a couple of holes in the top. Attach the lid to the top of the jam jar using an elastic band and pop the watercress sprigs through the holes, and leave on a window sill.

3.     Within a couple of days, you should be able to see little white roots growing from the places where you took off the leaves from the stalk. Quite quickly, these will be long and vigorous and filling the jam jar. At this point you need to pot the plants up into soil.

check out the little roots - you can just see them

rooted sprigs, potted up and looking good

Now obviously, in my enthusiasm to blog about this, I can’t yet tell you whether or not it will be a success. What I can tell you is that the Husband has 2 pots each with 2 plants that have been rooted in this way, and looking healthy, with another couple of sprigs on the way (see photo above). He's advised me to tell you all that they need lots of water, and if your pots have holes in them, then you should line them first with a plastic bag to ensure that they retain water rather than it leaching out.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who grows their own watercress, with any tips for successful cultivation – and of course, your favourite watercress recipes. Obviously, once we have our own abundant supply, I’ll be reciprocating…

*quite a lot of watercress was consumed in the preparation of this post...

Banana Caramel Loaf

I have a disgusting addiction to condensed milk. 

I am not sure where it comes from – probably my mother, who attended various boarding schools as a child and has regaled me with stories of what sounds like a fairly St Trinians-esque Irish headmistress who preferred hill walking over hard work in the classroom and ice skating in the quad over isosceles triangles. Scattered among these stories of a childhood that I completely cannot comprehend, are the stories of sweets smuggled in to dorms in regulation navy knickers and cans of condensed milk. The upshot of this is I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a can in the cupboard. I've got a pretty delicious blondie recipe that I never quite get round to blogging that uses it. One day soon, I promise.

One of the other blogs I love to read is the Recipe Rifle. A few weeks ago, she posted a recipe for Banana and Condensed Milk bread. Well, helloooo. Not only does it include condensed milk, but any cake with fruit in it always counts as a health food in my book. 

I was getting pretty excited about this – got to Wednesday which is my usual shopping delivery day – cue some overripe bananas just begging for the condensed milk treatment. Plus, tea was going to be vegetable pasties and potato wedges so the oven was going to be on anyway - it would have been a shame not to have capitalised on that. It was meant to be.

But then – disaster – no condensed milk. Don’t tell me how that happened. However, what I did have was a tin of Carnation caramel. No caster sugar either, but some soft brown, and the end result – a totally delicious banana loaf. I didn’t use nuts because the kids aren’t allowed to take anything with nuts in it to school, but if I’d been baking at the weekend I would have definitely stirred in some walnuts with the bananas.

Banana and Condensed Milk Caramel Loaf

75g butter, softened
25g soft brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 397g can caramel
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat your oven to 180c (170c for fan ovens).

 

Butter & line a 2lb loaf tin.

Beat the softened butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy then add the beaten egg. Beat in the tin of caramel. Sieve together the flour and baking powder, and fold into the caramel mixture.

Fold in the mashed banana and then pour into the tin. Bang the tin a couple of times to level out the mixture, then pop into the oven and bake for an hour, by which time the cake will be beautifully golden and smelling utterly heavenly.

If you can wait till your daughter gets back from ballet (which I had to) I can attest to the fact that it tastes divine, warm out of the oven.