We've been very busy
the last few weeks and I've not really been keeping on top of things
in the kitchen. This includes buying food. Joe has been a legend and
has done the shopping, but that can mean we have an awful lot of some
random things. Often it means we have a lot of booze and meat.
Strangely, this time, we have a lot of celery and potatoes.
I'm not very good at
cooking for one. I tend to make big pots of stuff and really struggle
to downsize. Normally when I am on my own I make a stir fry or noodle
soup. This time I fancied something different, but I still wanted to
use up some stuff and avoid going shopping. I found a solitary smoked
mackerel fillet in the freezer so I thought I'd make some sort of
chowder. (I defrosted some prawns so I had a bit more meat) I did buy
some soda bread to go with it.
Ingredients (to serve
one very hungry person) -
One smoked mackerel
fillet, with the skin peeled off and flaked into chunks
Three/four big prawns,
uncooked and chopped into 1cm chunks
Two medium potatoes (or
three small ones), peeled and diced into 1cm chunks
One stick of celery,
finely chopped
Three spring onions,
sliced into 1cm pieces
Half a small tin of
sweetcorn/three or four baby corn sliced into chunks
A small handful of
frozen peas
A bay leaf
A quarter of a pint of
milk
Two teaspoonfuls of
crème fraiche
A quarter of a pint of
vegetable stock
A handful of fresh
spinach
Melt a little butter
with a spoonful of vegetable oil over a low heat then add the
potatoes, celery and spring onion with a pinch of salt. Fry slowly
until they soften a bit. Then stir in the crème fraiche.
Stir in the milk,
vegetable stock and bay leaf, simmer for five minutes then add the
peas and sweetcorn and smoked mackerel. Keep the heat low and simmer
for another five-ten minutes until the potatoes are completely
cooked.
For the last minute or
two add the chunks of prawn and the spinach until they cook. If you
happen to have chopped parsley or chopped chives add some finely
chopped at the end. I didn't have any.
Serve with big slabs of
brown soda bread spread with butter.
This was great. Cheap and really tasty. It
would be better with smoked haddock, because that would flavour the
soup more, but still, this did the job.
I'm aware posting this
means I've done two soup recipes in a row but I think this is more of
a stew... later in the week I'm going to make a really easy pie.
Maybe I'll put that one up here to remind you I do eat solid food
occasionally.
