Potato and Caraway Soup

Wow!  This is my 200th post! Who knew I'd still be doing this thing (oh, wait, I said this all when I did my 100th soup recipe didn't I? Anyway, thanks for sticking with me, and there are still so many exciting soups to come, I promise...) 

Due to circumstances beyond my control I couldn't make the polish soup I'd planned this week (again) and I needed to throw together a quick 'cupboard' soup.  I can't think of any other kind of food where you can just throw random things into a pot and out comes a tasty result - that's why soups are so brilliant, but I wanted to also have something that had a bit of character, not just a random veggie thing.

I had a look in the cupboards where vegetables lurk and found a few things that would go well together, then added some caraway (I'm still addicted to the stuff in a way that's probably unhealthy) and some sausage to add a little meaty savoury taste to the whole thing, and voilà - a tasty soup was born...

Ingredients
600g Potatoes
1 Leek
1 Large Onion
2 Stalks Celery
40g Butter
3 Cloves Garlic
2tsp Caraway Seeds
1tsp Marjoram
1.2l Chicken Stock
2 Polish Sausages

Method
1. Finely chop the leek, garlic, celery and onion, Heat the butter in your soup pan then gently fry the vegetables until the start to soften

2. Peel and cube the potatoes, then add them to the pan, letting them soften slightly too.

3. Add the stock, marjoram and caraway seed, then bring the soup to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and let cook for 25-30 minutes, until the potatoes are just starting to break up.

4.  Transfer half the soup to a blender and puree it, then return it to the pan (or alternatively, just use a potato masher - this soup works best with a few lumps in it)

5.  Slice the sausage and then fry it in a little oil

6. Serve the soup with slices of sausage as a garnish.  Enjoy

Home-made Sausages (Adventures in Meat Grinding)

So it was my birthday at the weekend.  Whereas normal people get Xboxes or new shirts, Mrs Soup bought me a sausage making machine.  When I tore the wrapping paper off the box, my slightly girlish shrieks of joy probably woke the whole street up!  As well as the meat grinder itself, there were also a pack of sausage skins and a book of sausage recipes, methods and tips.

I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the humble banger. I absolutely love good sausages, but in my student days I used to eat a lot of bad, cheap and nasty sausages, so I tend to think of greasy, nasty, 90% eyeball type sausages, instead of the juicy, meaty things that we all know and love.

Just think of the possibilities...

As far as the cost of shop bought, good quality (80 or 90% meat) versus doing it yourself, how does it work out?  Well, once you have bought the machine (and as it was a present, I didn't ask how much it cost, so you may have to do that particular bit of research yourself, or ask Mrs Soup...) it's not too bad.  A lot of pork sausages in particular use belly or shoulder, which isn't too expensive.  This first batch made about 1kg of sausages for around £4.50. which is pretty good value for money.

As well as the value issue, there is also the benefit of knowing exactly what goes into your sausages - even some 90% meat sausages can contain various things like connective tissue (whatever that is... personally, I'm not all that bothered, as a big fan of offal to start with, I'm not too squeamish about what bits of an animal I eat)  As I used a whole cut of meat, this sort of thing isn't a problem.

*****History Factoid*****
In World War II, sausages weren't rationed, but there was no minimum meat content set by the government, which lead to the scarce meat being bulked out with bread, as well as shredded newspaper, sawdust and other unsavoury things. Offal was similarly 'off-ration.

The sausages were also very tasty, fun and pretty easy to make, and also, now I have the kit, my mind is racing with the possibilities for future fillings - black pudding, haggis, offal-based sausages are all within my grasp!  My first batch, however were some pork sausages with a little spiciness to add a kick...

Spicy Sausages
Ingredients
1kg Pork Shoulder Joint
1 Onion
75g Breadcrumbs
5 Garlic Cloves
15g Salt
2g Black Pepper
2g Cayenne Pepper
4g Thyme
1tbsp Tabasco Sauce

Method
1.  Cube the pork joint, and then pass through the mincer and into a bowl.  This was the first fun stage of the process - there is something primal about doing this - I imagined myself as both Sweeney Todd and a kid with a play-doh machine as it oozed out of the grinder!

2. Mix in the breadcrumbs, and other dry ingredients. Finely chop the onion and mix this in as well.  Cover the bowl and leave to marinade overnight.

3.  Now comes the fun bit - putting the filling into the sausage casing.  The stuff I had was dry, but some skins need soaking first.  Another thing was, until this point, I hadn't realised there were different sizes of casings.  Mine didn't quite fit over the nozzle of the sausage machine...  However with some jiggery-pokery (and with the help of Mrs Soup) I managed to get the filling flowing into the casing.  And surprisingly, it didn't go all 'Generation Game' but was quite easy - although I reckon it's a two-man job, at least until I'm a bit more practised at it.

4.  Twist the sausage into links and then put in the fridge for an hour or two before cooking (I froze some at this point as we did make 1kg)

5.  Fry and eat! They smelled so much more meaty and delicious than any shop-bought sausages I have ever encountered!  I served mine with the traditional mash and thick, rich and tasty onion gravy.... Enjoy!

Boerewors Stuffed Mushrooms

I don't know if you noticed, but we had a Jubilee celebration this week. And rather sadly, the street party we were scheduled to attend was, in true Great British style, rained off...  Rather than be deterred by this sad turn of events, we staged an impromptu BBQ in our living room. 

As at least one of Team Soup is a colonial type, we thought that it would be a good idea to celebrate the Jubilee with a bit of meat from South Africa (being as that's where Mrs Soup calls home) so one trip to the rather brilliant Leeds market later, we had procured some boerewors, which a) I can never pronounce properly, and b) is rather tasty. 

So as we sat in our living room, eating boerewors in buns with tomato sauce (and being told that British BBQs are no where near as good as a proper South African braai) I tried to think of something to to with the left over boerewors sauage.  And this is what I came up with, as a sort of Jubilee celebration of meat and mushroom.

Ingredients
4 Large Open Mushrooms
250g Boerewors (or any other sausage that you can find...)
1 Large Onion
1 Slice of Brown Bread
20g Butter
Olive Oil
White Wine
Fresh Thyme
Fresh Rosemary
Cheddar Cheese

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180ºc

2. Place the Mushrooms in large over proof dish or baking tray.

3.  In each one, pour 1/2 tbsp of olive oil, a splash of white wine and a knob of butter, then spinkle each with fresh thyme leave

4.  Put the mushrooms in the oven and cook for 20 minutes

5.  Heat some oil in a frying pan.  Gently fry the onion, finely chopped for 3-5 minutes, until it starts to colour

6.  Remove the sausage meat from its skin and then add this to the frying pan, breaking up the meat as it gently cooks.

7.  Put the onions and sausage meat in a mixing bowl.  In a food processor, turn the bread into breadcrumbs

8.  Chop the rosemary.  Add this and the breadcrumbs to the onions and sausage meat.  Mix thoroughly with a fork, and season to taste.

9.  Spoon this mixture into the mushrooms, and top with grated cheese.

 10.  Return to the oven and cook for 30 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and browning slightly, then serve!