Soup recipes

One of my work colleagues is very pregnant (actually a couple of them are), and wants to start filling her freezer with soup for when the baby comes along. I said I'd cobble together some recipes for her and here's the result! I thought I might as well put them up as a bonus post - enjoy! Sorry for the lack of pictures.

All of these can be changed depending on how you like them! Just keep tasting them and season with salt and pepper. All should freezable. All use chicken or veg stock – and the amount stated is just a rough guide. Add a bit more or less if you think it needs to be thicker/thinner. If you don't have a hand blender I'd suggest getting a cheap one from the supermarket, they're a godsend! And if you get one with a little bowl attachment you'll never have to chop ginger and chilli again.

Leek and potato

• peel and slice about five decent sized potatoes
• chop and rinse about 3 or 4 leeks (depends on the size of them)
• fry leeks on a low heat with a chopped onion in some butter and a touch of normal cooking oil
• put in the potatoes and stir around for a couple of minutes
• add a pint and a half of stock (chicken or veg)
• add a splash of milk
• season with salt and pepper
• when the potatoes are soft, add a splash of cream and blitz with a hand blender until smooth

Curried carrot and lentil

• chop an onion and two cloves of garlic and three or four good sized carrots
• fry over a low heat in a little oil
• add half a teaspoon of curry powder and a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cumin. (if you don't have any cumin use a little bit more curry powder instead)
• rinse two handfuls of red lentils and add to the pan with one and a half pints of stock.
• Season it, then when the carrots are cooked and the lentils soft use the hand blender to blitz it

Spicy butternut squash

• you'll need a big sharp knife for this. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees, quarter the squash and scoop out the seeds. Drizzle a little oil over and season them. Shove in the oven for about half an hour or until it's soft.
• Meanwhile fry on a low heat an onion, two cloves of garlic and a chilli (all roughly chopped). You could also use a bit of peeled, grated ginger if you can be bothered. Add a pint of stock.
• Let the butternut squash cool a bit once it's cooked, then take all the flesh out and add to the onion and stock etc. (if there's still a few bits of skin it doesn't really matter, you'll blitz it anyway and it won't do you any harm.
• Add a tin of coconut milk. Blitz. You could add a squeeze of lime juice and some chopped coriander at the end if you wanted to.
• FOR A NON SPICY VERSION: don't use chilli and ginger, don't add coconut milk but use more stock and a touch of cream.

Mushroom

• chop an onion and a clove of garlic and fry over a low heat in a little butter.
• Slice a packet and a half of mushrooms. The normal size from the supermarket. Add to the pan and fry for a few minutes
• add a pint of stock and a touch of milk
• after it's bubbled away for about half an hour the mushrooms should be done
• add a touch of cream and blitz

Turkish lentil

Had this in Istanbul and loved it, so came home and worked out the recipe. It sounds weird but it's really nice.

• fry a finely chopped onion over a low heat in some butter. Add a pinch of chilli flakes and three quarters of a teaspoon of paprika. (chilli flakes optional)
• rinse four or five handfuls of red lentils and add them to the pan along with two handfuls of bulgur wheat and a good squidge of tomato puree
• stir around for a minute or two, then add a pint and a half of stock. Season
• give it a good stir to make sure its not stuck to them bottom then cover and simmer on a low heat until the lentils are cooked.
• Add the juice of half a lemon and a good teaspoonful of dried mint.

Minestrone-ish

Minestrone can be anything with some veggies in it. I tend to make it to use up any old veg I have lying around. You can add anything you like to it. The only problem is because you don't blitz it takes a bit more time to chop it finely! Here's one version:

• Fry some bacon pieces, lardons or chopped bits of bacon
• Add a finely chopped onion, a clove of garlic or two and a couple of sticks of celery over a low heat.
• Add some finely chopped carrots and a tin of rinsed borlotti beans. (could also add some chopped mushrooms?)
• add a pint and a half of stock, season
• bubble away till all the vegetable are nearly cooked, then add some frozen peas and about three handfuls of fresh spinach. After a couple of minutes it should be done – you don't want the spinach and peas to be on for too long.

For a different version – add a tin of tomatoes too. You can add pasta bits but it won't freeze too well. Could add chopped parsley and basil at the end too.

Tomato and basil

• fry a chopped onion, chopped celery and garlic.
• Add two tins of tomatoes
• add a pint of stock, bubble away for twenty minutes
• add a touch of cream
• season, then blitz
• add some finely chopped basil

If you happen to have the rind bit of some parmesan kicking around put that in when you add the stock and let it bubble away for twenty minutes then fish it out. Sounds weird, but adds a nice savouriness to it.

Chicken and vegetable (add any other veg you want – spinach or peas are good to add at the end) – Make it with less stock and it'll be like a stew

• finely chop an onion, some celery, a couple of cloves of garlic and fry on a low heat
• add two decent sized potatoes and a carrot, peeled and diced. (when these cook and break down they'll thicken the soup a bit)
• add a pint and a half of stock. Season
• add a tin of sweetcorn (drained)
• put two whole raw chicken breasts in. Cover, turn the heat right down and let it simmer for about twenty minutes
• after this time the chicken should be cooked, so take it out and let it cool slightly before shredding/chopping and adding back to the soup.

Comfort food on a snowy Sunday

Winter has finally arrived. It's at least a month late. But no matter, I kind of love snow! It makes everything pretty. We went for a walk and were beaten about by the snow on Saturday for a few hours and it was great. We then went into town at night, ate Persian food for the first time (amazing), and sat in window seats in pubs sipping ale and looking out at it. Brilliant.

It's comfort food time. Today's tasty comfort food is: slow cooked duck legs with celeriac gratin and heaps of veg.

I've never cooked duck legs before, they were on offer a while ago and I bought them and shoved them in the freezer. As usual I looked up loads of recipes then ignored them.

In fact, I've never cooked celeriac gratin before, but I decided we've had a hell of a lot of mash recently and wanted something different.

We even had a vegetable I'd never cooked before, cavolo nero, which I just steamed like it was kale, then added some butter and pepper. (Actually too much pepper, as our pepper mill broke and it ended up covered in whole peppercorns. I managed to pick most of them off.)

Duck legs braised in red wine:

For the duck legs heat up a pan nice and hot, if possible use one that can go straight in the oven. Season the duck legs then shove them in the pan skin side down for a few minutes. You want a good colour on them. Brown them on the other side too, then remove from the pan.

Pour away a lot of the fat from the pan – duck is a fatty meat – then fry off a chopped onion and a couple of chopped cloves of garlic. Add some thyme, then pour in half a bottle of red wine. I then added a grating of nutmeg and a couple of bay leaves. I also chucked in a handful of mixed berries from the freezer. This might sound odd, but lots of recipes I read called for redcurrant jelly or similar and we don't have any of that in because the other half doesn't like it.

Shove the duck legs back in the pan, season then put a lid on and shove it in the oven at about 170 degrees. It'll be in there for about two hours, uncover it after the first hour.

Celeriac Gratin:

Peel and slice a celeriac as finely as you can. Do the same with a couple of potatoes and an onion, then layer it all up in a dish with salt and pepper. Take a small tub of cream, and top it up with some milk to make it up to about half a pint. Pour it over the vegetables and dot some butter on the top. 

Shove it in the oven for a good hour. I think I would normally do it on a higher heat for slightly less time, but the oven was already set at 170 for the duck! 

 The gravy:

When the duck is ready it will have gone all sticky and lovely. Take the duck legs out and put the sauce back on the heat, then add some chicken stock and let it reduce for a little while. Without this step it would be incredibly tasty but SO rich, and you wouldn't have as much gravy. Strain the sauce through a sieve, then put back on the heat and put the duck legs back in to warm through. 

This was seriously good. There are a few things I would maybe do differently; I think the celeriac gratin would have been nice with some garlic through it, and if you were having it with meat that's not so rich I'd put some parmesan on top. I wouldn't throw a load of whole peppercorns over my cavolo nero, as that was annoying. But in general this was really good in a “pick up bones and gnaw on them” kind of way. And I have a good wedge of celeriac gratin for my tea at work tonight, which is much better than a ready meal.

This week's soup: Spicy butternut squash. It's a good 'un. I'm currently compiling a big list of soup recipes for someone from work, so I'll put them up as a bonus blog post one of these days.