Spicy Bean and Potato Soup

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Today is my research day, which in today's case meant some cooking and baking to fill the morning, before burying my head in some books this afternoon.

I know I said in my last post that I was going to cook something that wasn't orange, but it turns out that by cleaning my fridge out and cooking with the things that need using, I ended up with another orange coloured meal. Well, at least this time it has specks of colour in it, and it is certainly bordering on red.



There isn't really a recipe for this, as I just threw ingredients into a pot that I thought would go well together. They did indeed, and the result was a very thick slightly spicy bean and potato soup. If I thickened it with some cornflour I could probably call it a stew.

I used some dried mixed beans that I had soaked overnight, boiled them until tender and then added one chopped potato, half a red onion, some red and yellow pepper, one Mettendchen*, 2 minced cloves of garlic, covered the whole lot with water and brought it to a simmer. For further flavouring I added some vegetable stock powder, plenty of sweet paprika, some chili powder, cumin, corriander, a bayleaf, some tomato puree, salt and freshly ground black pepper. I gave it a good stir and let it simmer until the potatoes were done.

*Mettendchen are a German smoked sausage that is great in stews. I had some that I brought back from my Berlin trip, but you could just leave them out or use smoked Polish sausage.



If you really don't want to cook without a recipe and need measurements, you can have a look at a very similar recipe that I have posted here.

Turkish Red Lentil Soup

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As some of you who read this blog regularly will know, I really do like soup and I also really like potatoes. Therefor a soup that is made with potatoes just has to be good in my opinion and when I saw that this month's No Croutons Required challenge is to post about a soup or salad containing potatoes I knew I'd be up for it. Thanks Holler from Tinned Tomatoes for choosing such a great ingredient.

This Turkish Red Lentil Soup is one of the easiest soups I know, with very few and simple store cupboard ingredients, but the end results is so full of flavour that it's hard to believe that there is nothing else in it. (Lucy, if you're reading, this is one to make at your hermitage.)



Turkish Red Lentil Soup (serves 4)

1 cup red lentils, washed and cleaned
4 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup onions, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup white potato, peeled and diced
2 tsp paprika
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)

Place the washed and cleaned lentils into a soup pot together with with the stock, potatoes, onions, garlic and paprika.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Loosely place a lid on the pan. Cook for 40-40 minutes until the lentils are tender.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Place all but 1 cup of the soup into a blender or food processor and blend briefly. Return blended soup to the pan with the un-blended soup and briefly heat through again before serving.

Simple Carrot and Coriander Soup - Eating with the Season

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I thought I was gonna miss the January deadline of the Eating with the Season blogging event over at Maninas: food matters, but as it has been extended until 21st January, I get to take part after all.

I had a couple of rather past-their-prime carrots in my vegetable draw. They were left over from last week's carrot cake, which for some reason I never took a picture of, so no blogging about the cake for now (I'll make it again though). So, when I was making a tentative meal plan before going food shopping yesterday, I thought of making some Carrot & Coriander Soup.

Not only would I be using up what I still had, rather than wasting it, but if you read this blog regularly you will know that I love soup. Of course I wouldn't get far with my two sad looking exemplars, so I picked up some more super fresh carrots from the Unicorn co-operative grocery and today I was ready to make soup.



Carrots are one of my favourite root vegetables. They are in season from pretty much April through to June, so most of the year and of course they are also good for you because of their high content of pro-vitamin A, as well as containing vitamins C, D, E, K, B1 and B6.

Simple Carrot & Coriander Soup (serves 4)

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
1lb carrots, sliced
1 tsp ground coriander
2 pints vegetable stock
large bunch fresh coriander (cilantro), roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large pan and add the sliced onions and the carrots. Cook for 3-4 minutes, until they begin to soften.

Stir in the ground coriander and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, continue to cook for another minute.

Add the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Puree with a hand blender or in a blender until smooth.

Return to the pan, reheat briefly, stir in the fresh chopped coriander and serve with some fresh, crusty bread.

Enjoy!

Lentil and Potato Soup with Kielbasa Tuchowska

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I don't know how it is happening, but every night I seem to get home later and later. So, it's quick dinners for me and there have been a few nights now, where I have resorted to beans on toast and similar meals to just quickly fill the hole in my stomach. I know there are better ways and when I saw Marie over at A Year at Oak Cottage posted her recipe for Lentil and Smoked Sausage Soup yesterday I knew that it would come in as a life saver, because it is quick and I'll happily tuck into a steaming bowl of soup any night!

I have adjusted Marie's recipe a bit and combined it with another recipe I often use for Turkish Red Lentil Soup and ended up with a great tasting soup that made me feel really warm and happy.



Lentil and Potato Soup with Smoked Sausage (serves 3-4)

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 cup red lentils, rinsed
2 medium potatoes, diced
4 cups vegetable stock
approx. 200gr Kielbasa Tuchowska
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste

In a large pan, heat a little olive oil and fry the onion until translucent.

Add the garlic and fry for another minute or so.

Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes until your potatoes and lentils are cooked.

Remove the sausage and cut into slices.

Using a stick blender, puree the soup until smooth.

Return the sliced sausage.

Bring back to a simmer and once hot through serve with a nice slice of crusty bread.

Butternut Squash and Roasted Red Pepper Soup

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Since last night the summer soup break is officially over. I love soup and it is getting to that time of year where the evenings are getting cold and dark enough to have loads of it. Don't get me wrong I'll occassionaly eat soup during the summer, but only when I eat out.

The last couple of days, since getting back from Germany it has been pretty miserable outside, so the weather combined with my cold made me crave a bowl of hot, steaming soup. While I was at my mum and dad's house, one of the local farm shops had a pumpkin and potato fete, which really got me into thinking about autumn and all it's glory, the lovely colours, the frosty and misty mornings, the still sunny days and of course all the autumn vegetables that are already or will soon be available everywhere.

Inspired by all the glorious varieties at the farm shop fete, I quickly decided that pumpkin soup would be the first soup I would make. When I went to my local shop here though all I could get my hands on was a butternut squash, so that's what I used, but if you have of a beautiful pumpkin why not use that instead. I also cheated and used roast pepper from a jar, as it needed using up, but you could easily roast your own at the same time as the squash or pumpkin.



As butternut squash is in season here in the UK in September, I'll enter this into Maninas: Food Matters' Eating with Seasons: September blog event. Go check it out, there are still a couple of days left to enter!

Butternut Squash and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
(serves 3-4)

1 butternut squash
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 rosted red pepper, chopped
1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
1 red chili, desseded and chopped finely
1- 1 1/4 litre vegetable stock
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste

Cut your butternut squash in half lengthwise and remove the seeds with a spoon.

Drizzle with a little olive oil and place in a baking tray in an oven at 200C/Gas 5 for about 45 minutes to an hour, until the flesh is soft.

In the meantime heat a little oil in a large, heavy-based pan and sweat the onions until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add the pepper, ginger, chili and half of the stock. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

Once the butternut squash or pumpkin is done, scoop out all the soft flesh and add to the pan. Puree, using a stick blender until smooth and add the rest of the stock until you get your desired thickness.

Season with salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Cook for a further 5-10 minutes.

Serve with some fresh, crusty bread.

Let them eat soup!

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As everyone who has been watching the UK news at the beginning of the week will know (well most people in the UK will actually know from their own experience), it has been raining and raining and raining here in Yorkshire.

Well, I have to say it has been hideous and I certainly didn't feel like singing. Maybe if Gene Kelly had been around to accompany me I would have burst into song and dance, but as that wasn't the case the only remedy I could think of was to wrap up warm, light a fire, make soup and of course eat it!



When I was in New York in December I had a wonderful Chicken and Corn Chowder, so now my quest is to come up with a recipe to match it. I haven't quite perfected it, but nevertheless this was pretty good and in my opinion well worth posting. I took the Sweetcorn Chowder recipe from 'Nigella Express' as the basis and added and adapted a little here and there to come up with this. It served two of us, plus one portion to take to work for lunch the next day.


Quick Chicken and Corn Chowder

500gr frozen sweetcorn, defrosted
2 spring onions, cleaned and roughly chopped
1 small clove of garlic, peeled
35gr cornmeal or semolina
1 litre hot vegetable stock
1 chicken breast fillet, cooked and shredded
1 pinch of cayenne pepper, or to taste
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
1 red chili, seeds removed and finely chopped

200gr lightly salted tortilla chips
some grated cheddar

Preheat your oven to 200C/Gas 6/400F.

Drain any liquid that might have collected while defrosting from the sweetcorn and place it in a food processor together with the spring onions, garlic, cornmeal (semolina) and blend until mushy.

Scrape the mix into a heavy bottomed pan, add the vegetable stock, stir and bring to a simmer. Season to taste with cayenne, salt and pepper.

Lower the heat and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the soup is simmering spread your tortillas on a baking sheet and sprinkle with as much or as little cheddar as you like, warm them through in your oven until the cheese has melted. It should take about 5 minutes

Add the shredded cooked chicken to the soup (I fried mine on low heat while the soup was simmering, but you could use left over roast chicken as well) and heat through.

Fill some bowls with the soup and top with a few of the tortilla chips and sprinkle with chili.

Serve the rest of the tortilla chips on the side.

More Soup

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I hope you're like me and don't get bored of soup quickly, because that's exactly what I've been cooking again. During the autumn and winter month we often have soup every week or so. It's warming, quick and most of the time even a cheap meal. Even with the added cream one portion of this soup has only about 250kcal. If you wanted to reduce that amount even further, just leave out the cream, the soup is still yummy without it. I like to serve it with croutons if I'm having it for a quick lunch or with some fresh crusty bread if I want something a bit more substantial.







Parsnip Soup

2tbsp butter
900gr parsnips, peeled and thinly sliced
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2tsp ground cumin
1tsp ground corriander
2pints good quality vegetable or chicken stock
1/4 pint single cream
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
chives, for garnish
croutons (optional)


In a large soup pot, melt the butter over a medium heat. Add the parsnip, onion and garlic and cook over a low heat until softened, but don't let it brown.

Add the cumin and corriander and cook for another couple of minutes, stirring continuously.Add the stock, bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until the parsnip is cooked.

Puree the soup with a stick blender or food processor until smooth.

Add the cream and re-heat, making sure that it doesn't boil again.Granish with chives and croutons and serve immidiately.

Soup

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I have no idea where this week has gone. Well, one thing I do know is that I haven't had much time to cook. It's been one of those weeks where I was glad I had some home-cooked meals in the freezer to just quickly heat up when I got home from work. I also have to admit that on Wednesday I even resorted to opening a tin of Ravioli. Oh well, at least it brought back some fond childhood memories. Saying that, my mum is a great cook and it wasn't often that we got fed Ravioli.

The one thing I have made this week is soup. Not only do I truly believe that everyone should be eating soup at this time of year, because it warms your heart and soul, as well as your stomach, but my 87-year-old friend Jock has just come out of hospital and I wanted to take him something that he can easily just warm up. He loves soup, so I thought that's what it'll be.

This particular soup is one of the quickest that I know to make and it uses ingredients I usually always have in my kitchen cupboards. It's great if you want a quick warm lunch or a soup as a starter. It can be on the table in less than 15 minutes.




Butter Bean Soup with Sundried Tomatoes, Pesto and Parmesan

900ml good quality chicken or vegetable stock
2 cans butter beans, drained and rinsed
1 can white kidney beans or butter beans or haricot beans, drained and rinsed
4tbsp sun-dried tomato puree
5tbsp pesto
2cloves of garlic, chopped finely
5tbsp freshly grated parmesan
salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Place the beans and stock in a large pan and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and stirr in the sun-dried tomatoe puree, pesto and garlic. Cover and simmer for five minutes.

Remove from the hob and puree until smooth using a stick blender or a food processor. If you like you can keep some of the beans whole by removing them and adding them back after processing the soup.

Return the pan to the hob and simmer for another 4 minutes. Add the parmesan and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with some crusty bread.