Ciorba de Perisoare - Romanian Meatball Soup

Running a soup blog, I invariably get asked the question "What is your favourite soup?".  Its a really difficult question to answer, obviously.  That's like asking "Which is your favourite child" and I wouldn't want any of my soups to feel like they were second best. However, after several years of making and eating soups from around the world, I'm beginning to think that my favourite soups are those from Eastern Europe.

The reason for this is that I think they get the flavour combinations right - often using lemon juice, or vinegar to add a sour note that works really well.  They are often pretty simple recipes, and (oh yes) often incorporate either dumplings or meatballs.  And regular readers will know how I feel about those two...

So my round-the-world soupstravaganza hits Romania, which is undoubtedly most well known as the place where Dracula lives.  I'm pretty sure some other stuff must have happened there, but really nothing of importance from the time Peter Cushing killed Vlad until the present time*

They did, however, come up with lots and lots of exiting soups, many of them with that slightly sour taste that I love so much.  And this one has meatballs, so I just had to give it a go.  The addition of rice to the meatballs makes the meat stretch that little bit further, and although it's a simple soup to put together, the end results are so tasty...

* This may not have happened

Ingredients
300g Minced Beef
50g Long Grain Rice
2 Carrots
2 Onions
2 Celery Stalks
1 Green Pepper
1 Lemon
3tbsp Tomato Puree
1.5l Beef Stock

Method
1.  Peel the carrots and parsnip, cut them into small cubes.

2. De-seed the green pepper and cut finely, as well as one of the onions and the celery stalks

3.  Heat some oil in your soup pan and gently fry the vegetables until soft but not starting to colour

4.  Add the stock to the pan, as well as the tomato puree, lemon juice and bring to the boil.  Cover the pan and simmer for 30 minuted

5.  In a mixing bowl, combine the minced beef, washed rice and then grate the other onion and add this to the mixture, along with 1tsp of salt and some black pepper.

6.  Form the mixture into balls about an inch across.

7.  Add these to the soup after 30 minutes and continue to simmer gently for another 10-15 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked.  You will be able to tell when they are cooked as they will float to the surface of the soup.

8.  Adjust seasoning to taste and then serve.  Enjoy!

Carrot and Coriander Soup

Ahhhhhh!  That was the sound of panic when the doorbell rang this morning at 7.15.  Not because I was still in bed and there was someone at the door, but because the person at the door was our lovely veg box man.  Don't mis-understand me - there was nothing actually wrong with the veg box, nor the hour of its arrival (although a more fashionably late hour would suit me better)

No, the cause of my outburst was that there was meant to be parsnips in the box this week, which were going to form the basis for this weeks soup, Curried Parsnip.  Only, now bereft of parsnip, what is a boy to do?  Well, what is that I spied in the veg box, nestled under some cabbage and next to the potatoes?  Carrots?  Still covered in mud you say?  Well that gives me an idea...

I told you all a while ago about the first ever soup I made, minestrone as part of a home economics class when I was 12? Well today I'm going to tell you about the first soup I ever cooked to impress a girl...  Carrot and coriander soup.  This soup seems to be a bit of a student classic, probably because it's cheap and easy to make, healthy and quick, and there are hundreds of ways to do it.

Some people add lentils, some tomatoes, cream, sour cream, coconut milk.  It is, in a nutshell, what is brilliant about soup - it's tasty and it's very hard to mess it up.  So I thought it would be perfect for impressing a girl that I invited to come round for a meal.  It was the first time I'd ever cooked to impress, so needless to say, I was worried.

The soup simmered away, with vegetable stock as she was a vegetarian, not too much chili as she didn't like her food too spicy. The ginger and lemon a sharp counterpoint to the earthy carrots sweet tomatoes and spices.  It was perfect...

She turned up, the lights were low, the music was soft, the chat was small, and then I dished up the soup and... she loved it, was very impressed - in fact, it was the best carrot and coriander soup she'd ever tasted - even better than her friend who worked in a vegan cafe made (which was previously the pinnacle of soupy perfection for her)

I could hardly believe my luck.  Maybe there was something in this cooking malarkey after all.  And then I served the main dish - tandoori salmon, choked on a fish bone and spent the next three hours retching and coughing like a cat coughing up a hair-ball...  The girl left rather quickly after that...

Ingredients
500g Carrots
10 Medium Tomatoes
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 Lemon (Juice Only)
750ml Chicken Stock
1 Tin Coconut Milk
1tsp Grated Ginger
1tbsp Coriander Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
1tsp Chili Flakes Oregano


Balsamic Vinegar
Bunch of fresh Coriander
Olive Oil
Salt and Black Pepper

Method

1.  Heat the oven to 200ºc.  Cut the tomatoes in half and de-seed.  Put them in an oven dish and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle on a pinch of dried oregano and a splash of balsamic vinegar, then a pinch of salt and pepper.  Put the dish in the oven and roast the tomatoes for 35-40 minutes, until they have started to brown.  Remove from the oven and set aside.

2.  In a dry frying pan, heat the coriander and cumin seeds over a moderate heat for 2 minutes, until the seeds start to pop.  Transfer them to a mortar and grind.

3.  Slice the onion and fry gently in a little oil.  Add the  garlic and ginger and fry for another 2 minutes, then add the ground cumin and coriander seeds, as well as the chili flakes and stir until everything is coated in the spices

4.  Add the tomatoes, stock and peeled sliced carrots.  Bring the soup to the boil and then cover, simmering and cooking for 30 minutes, until the carrots are cooked through

5.  Blend the soup until it's smooth and then return to the pan.  Gently heat through.

6.  Stir in the coconut milk, chopped fresh coriander and the juice of a lemon.

7.  Garnish with a few coriander leaves.  Serve and enjoy!

Ceviche - Olympic Food Challenge : Panama

A man, a plan, a canal – Panama! And so we reach the end, the final dish, and like Usain Bolt, this one is a sharp lunge towards the finish line!  Panama had lots of dishes to choose from when I went a-looking, and like a lot of South and Central American countries, there was a preponderance of beef (There's a band name if ever I heard one...) but looking back on the dishes I had already cooked there was a paucity of fish (that will be Preponderance of Beef's first album...) so I plumped for this dish.

Someone asked me the other day how I got into cooking.  Thinking back, I was a pretty terrible cook for the first 25 years of my life - tinned curries, stews and cheap burgers were the order of the day; and then a few of my friends and I decided to do 'Gourmet Night' once a month and push the boat out, cook-wise.  It was great and I cooked more interesting dishes than I had ever done, caught the bug and now here I am, a moderatly amusing food blogger with a black pudding and dumpling obsession

But what does this have to to with the Olympic Food Challenge, I hear you yawn... Well, when I was doing Gourmet Night, there were two notable failures - one, the Sticky Toffee Pudding disaster, has gone down in history (n.b. Sticky Toffee Pudding needs flour in it, or it resembles brown snot; admittedly tasty brown snot, but it looks awful nonetheless)

The other disaster was ceviche, which was made with frozen cod and had the texture of boot leather soaked in lime juice.  And yet here I was again, about to attempt the same dish and make it look (and taste) impressive as befits the last entry into the Olympic Food Challenge.  And guess what, it was rather nice this time!  Having fresh fish is the key it seems, but the length of time you marinade it for is up to you.  Some recipes suggest as little as 2 hours, whilst we did it overnight with good results.

How I almost killed someone with cake...

This week's Weekly Bake Off was a Madeira cake. I don't think I've ever actually had a Madeira cake before, and so I was keen to try it out.

The recipe is very straightforward - a variation on a basic sponge, with ground almonds and lemon zest givin it the distinctive madeira taste. Instead of icing, you sprinkle some citron peel (I used standard candied peel) on the top of the cake partway through baking.

Pretty and tasty, but potentially lethal!

This is quite a pretty cake, once you get over the fact that there is no icing, and the ground almonds give the cake a denser, moister feel than a normal sponge. I made the cake on Thursday night to take to a regular event we attend with a big group of friends on Friday night.

Needless to say, in addition to 3 cakes, a fair amount of alcohol was consumed, and it was sheer luck that someone asked me what goes into a madeira cake as the cakes were being cut. It turns out that one of our friends is allergic to nuts, and if he hadn't heard me saying their were ground almonds in the cake, he may very well have had a slice! (eek!) I didn't ask just how bad his reaction could have been but this serves as a reminder that when baking with nuts, especially 'hidden' nuts, you should always warn everyone that might eat your baked goods!

Lavender and Lemon Battenberg

A few months ago a friend at work proposed a baking challenge - she picked something most people wouldn't normally bake and that would be a bit technically challenging. Despite this, 16 of us signed up for it, and since we decided that we'd take turns with the tin (specially bought for the challenge, and provided as the prize), this means we're in for 4 months of eating battenberg!

This is my entry - look at me giving away the final outcome and killing the suspense!

Some people have gone for a traditional approach, but there have also been some very exciting combinations - the most exotic colour combination so far was yellow and (very bright) blue (vanilla and blueberry), and the very first contribution was coated (all four sides!) in chocolate. (I happen to know there's something even more exotic and stylish on the cards and am very excited to see next week's cake!)

The other thing that has characterised this challenge has been the level of stress. In some ways it's been more of a Battenberg Break-Down than a Bake-Off! I know several people have scapped their first attempt and remade it, and the tin (link to Amazon because I forgot to take a picture of it!) presented endless problems too. It doesn't have a non-stick coating, and once you've baked your cake, it can be very hard to get the pieces out without a problem. I had my own mini-crisis when applying the marzipan at 11pm the night before when all I wanted to do was forget the cake and go to bed! Luckily the marzipan coating wasn't too difficult and I didn't end up throwing cake all over the kitchen!

I decided to go with a traditional-look Battenberg, but with a non-traditional flavour, and used lavender for the pink quarters and lemon for the yellow quarters.  I'd been playing with the idea of a lavender sponge for a while, and almost made a lavender opera cake for the Headingley Clandestine Cake Club event last week, so had some ideas about how best to flavour the cake, and was almost very please with how it turned out... (you'll see why it was 'almost' at the end!)

Sponge - standard recipe (I was surprised when speaking to people how few people know this very easy technique for making a sponge!) :
Break your eggs into a bowl and weigh them (I used 3 for the size of the tin I was using and that's about right for a medium cake)
In a separate bowl weigh out an equal quantity of butter (at room temperature - if it's chilled oyu might want to pop it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it)
Add an equal weight of caster sugar.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light
Add an equal quantity of self raising flour - I weigh mine separately and then add a bit of flour and an egg, beat, then a bit more flour and another egg etc.


Then pour into a greased, lined tin and bake at 180 ºC until a toothpick/knife comes out clean

 

For the lavender sponge I used lavender infused caster sugar prepared by adding 2tsp lavender flowers (dried or fresh) to 100g caster sugar, and leaving to infuse (shaking every few days) for a week or longer. Sieve before using to remove the lavender flowers - those that pass through the sieve are fine to include in the cake, you just don't want big chunks! I also used a liquid food colouring, in liberal quantities, having been warned that it might fade when baking. When it went into the oven it was a very dark pink...

 

Once the cake had cooled, I prepared a lemon syrup (1/4 cup each of caster sugar and water heated till boiling in a panwith the juice of half a lemon). I repeated the process for a lavender syrup and boiled lavender flowers with the water, caster sugar and lemon juice, then passed the syrup through a sieve to remove the lavender flowers. 

I poured the syrups over the cake quarters, and then assembled the cake. First I stuck the quarters together with apricot jam. I then rolled out the marzipan using icing sugar on the counter to stop it sticking. I flipped the marzipan over, clean side down onto a sheet of baking paper, and smoothed a layer of apricot jam over the inside. I placed the sponge onto the marzipan at one end, and trimmed the marzipan to about 2cm from the edge (to form the seam). I then used the baking paper to roll the battenberg up in the marzipan - this worked really effectively and I can add instructions if anyone is interested! (Another trick is to keep your marzipan cool). Once it was rolled up I trimmed the edges, and scored the top, and there it was.

 

And the 'almost' happy bit... was down to the colour! It's not as obvious in the pictures (though the one below comes close...), but my dark pink batter turned into a bright orange sponge! I decided to go ahead with it as I didn't have any other food colouring to use, but it did look like it might be a carrot battenberg! (Apparently paste colouring is far more reliable and less likely to fade/change colour.) The taste was incredible - a really light, delicate flavour and I was very happy with the combination of lavender, lemon and marzipan - will definitely use it again!  

Doesn't this look like it might be a carrot or orange flavoured cake?!

Shchav - Russian Chard Soup

The process of inspiration when it comes to recipes for the blog is often a strange and meandering thing.  Some soup recipes are old favourites, some are things that I see in shops or read about somewhere and have a crack at coming up with my own variation of, and sometimes, I will just pick an ingredient out of the aether and wonder if it can be turned into soup.

That is most definitely the case with today's recipe.  I remember the first time I had chard, after signing up for a vegetable box to be delivered and receiving a rather manky looking cabbage, some flea-bitten carrots (do fleas bite carrots?) and some big dark green and red things that could, in a bad light, be mistaken for rhubarb, but rhubarb it most assuredly was not.

I think that i just steamed it and had it with chicken breasts or something, not feeling particularly inspired at the time, but it was thinking about this incident that made me wonder if there was such a thing as chard soup.  After a quick Google, I found a few references to Shchav (or Schav, depending on how you want to spell it) which it seems can be made with chard, but is more traditionally made with sorrel but can be made with chard instead.  My local supermarket is particularly well stocked with regards to fresh produce, but I couldn't find sorrel anywhere, so I went back to plan a) which was to make the soup with chard.

So apologies to any Eastern Europeans who find this version of Shchav slightly inaccurate, just consider this the Yorkshire version of a classic soup (also sometimes known as green borscht, and sometimes eaten cold as well. This soup is also served with boiled eggs, and has a wonderful creamy taste)

Ingredients
300g Swiss Chard
200g Red Chard
1 Red Onion
1 Large Potato
2 Cloves Garlic
30g Butter
25g Plain Flour
1.2l Chicken Stock
Fresh Dill
1 Lemon
200g Smoked Sausage
4 Eggs
150ml Sour Cream

Method

1. Prepare the chard. First give it a good wash, then remove the stalks.  Slice the stalks and chop the leaves.  Peel and cube the potato and roughly chop the red onion.

2. In your soup pan, heat butter, then add the chopped chard stalks, onion and garlic. Lower the heat, cover and cook for 4-5 Minuntes

3.  Add chopped leaves and cook for another 4-5 minutes, then stir in the flour. a bit at a time.

4. Add the stock and stir well, then put the potatoes in, bring to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are fully cooked through

 5. Add the chopped dill and juice of a lemon, then cook for another 5 minutes

6.  Take the pan off the heat and let the soup cool, then blend it smooth (pass through a sieve to get any lumps out) then return to the heat, checking the seasoning and adding the sour cream.

7.  When the soup is cooling, hard boil the eggs.  Shell them for use as a garnish.  At the same time, fry the smoked sausage, cubed or thinly sliced until it starts to colour.

8.  Serve the soup in warmed bowls, with slices of hard boiled egg and smoked sausage for garnish, as well as a sprinkling of chopped dill. Enjoy!

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

 This is a perfect way to make fresh strawberries last a little longer - if you can manage not to sit and eat the frozen yogurt all in one go! Making a syrup (quite like the first steps in making strawberry jam) stops the strawberries developing ice-crystals as they freeze.

Beef Ragout

'Make do and mend' seems to be the war-cry of the masses at the moment, or is that 'waste not, want not'?  Anyway, we are all looking after the pennies and generally a tightening of the belts is occurring everywhere, especially, although not limited to, Channel 4 cookery and lifestyle shows.

Oh and my kitchen. With this thought in mind, I wanted a nice and tasty way to use up some left over roast beef that had been hanging around in the freezer since a Sunday roast proved that I had eyes bigger than my belly (Today's recipe is brought to you by over-used homilies) so I found this nice Ragout.

Incidentally, the word ragout is a french term meaning 'to revive the flavour' and can be any slow cooked stew.  Mine uses left over roast beef but you could use just vegetables, lamb or add some pulses.  It's all good

Roasted Garlic Soup

I  love garlic - can't get enough of it!  Possibly because I was scared of vampires and brought up watching old Hammer Horror films.  Anyway, I was also feeling like I was coming down with a cold, and somebody told me that garlic soup was a good cure.  So here, without further ado, is the Garlic Soup recipe that I cooked up.

And it did cure the cold (possibly with the aid of paracetamol and plenty of sleep)  Oh, and the wild garlic really adds something to it, either as a garnish, or just thrown into the soup as it cooks.  Wild garlic grows all over the place from about March to June and its' leaves can be used raw in salads (and potato salad too) or as an ingredient in a lot of cooking.  It has a much more mild flavour than cloves of garlic, so shouldn't be overwhelmed by other ingredients.