Shchi - Russian Cabbage Soup

Some soups are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them.  Some soups, just by their very name conjure up visions of exotic countries, opulence or comfort. 

And then there is cabbage soup.

When I think of cabbage soup, I think of three things -

1) Poverty.  Like Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who's family were so poverty stricken that cabbage soup was all they could afford, this poor soup seemed to be a byword for cheap, bland food.

2) Communist Russia.  Connected to the first point really, when I think of Communist Russia, visions of flat capped men in grey concrete tower blocks drinking potato vodka and eating bowls of cabbage soup spring to mind.

3) Vile diets.  Think of slimming plans where you have to suffer the awful fate of eating just cabbage soup in order to lose a few pounds.  It tastes awful but hey, you'll look good in a bikini come the summer.

With all this in mind, imagine my horror when I checked the soup ingredients pantry to find that pretty much all we had to create this week' recipe from was (yes) cabbage.  And not the fun, exotic kind, but common or garden white cabbage, like the kind that used to be served boiled to death next to school dinners.  Oh the humanity.

But, what do you know, with a few choice additions, you can actually make a nice cabbage soup - leave it to those crafty Ruskies to come up with a good way of doing it (I assume the Russians we are talking about are the good ones, like Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October and not those guys that killed Patrick Swayze in Red Dawn)

This soup was another that I made, then kept in the fridge for 8 hours to see if the flavour intensified, and what do you know, it really did!

The stars of this soup aren't the cabbage itself, but the extras, like the caraway and dill with white wine (A typically Eastern European flavour combination I may have fallen a little bit in love with), but don't take my word for it how good this soup is.  Grab a cabbage and give it a go yourself.  I promise, comrade, that you won't be disappointed. So until next time, dos vedanya tovarisch!

Ingredients
350g White Cabbage
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Large Potato
1 Carrot
1 Onion
1 Leek
30g Butter
2 Bay Leaves
1tsp Black Pepper
1tsp Caraway Seeds
1tbsp White Wine Vinegar
2tbsp Tomato Puree
1.2l Beef Stock
Fresh Dill
Sour Cream

Method
1.  Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage and the core, then finely shred the rest.  Peel the potato then cut into small cubes, remove the green parts of the leek and cut into slices, finely chop the onion and grate the carrot.

2.  Heat the butter in a large pan and then gently cook the vegetables, along with the garlic, for 10 minutes, into everything starts to soften.

3.  Add the caraway, bay, pepper, tomato puree, stock and vinegar, then bring the soup to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes, until everything is cooked.

4.  Serve with a spoonful of sour cream and lots of fresh dill.  Enjoy

Celeriac And Cumin Soup

Is summer here yet?  Looking out of the window today, the answer would be a qualified 'yes' but tomorrow we may be knee deep in more snow, so rather than breaking out the light, summery recipes (and I've got some exciting things planned to do with all the wild garlic that is starting to spring up down the side of the canal - speaking of which, does anybody know where I can get my hands on some snails?)

Today's soup is another celeriac recipe.  I use this quite a bit in soups for two reasons - it's amazingly tasty and it also looks like something that may have tried to invade the Earth and been defeated by Tom Baker era Doctor Who (Younger readers may be interested to know several other actors played the good Doctor before David Tennant turned up*)

I also continued my experiemnts with making the soup the day before I ate is, chilling it overnight and I really am beginning to think that it does improve the flavour of soups, especially the blended variety.  If anyone else has thoughts on this, let me know in't comments section!

*Sarcasm

Ingredients
400g Celeriac
1 Large Potato
2 Cloves Garlic
2 Onions
40g Butter
100ml Single Cream
1.2l Vegetable Stock
2tsp Cumin
1tsp Cumin Seeds
Salt and Black Pepper

Method
1.  Peel wash the celeriac and potatoes.  Cut them into cubes about 1cm square.

2.  Thinly slice the onions.  Heat the butter in your soup pan.  Gently sweat the onions, garlic, potatoes and celeriac for 10 minutes, until they start to soften.

3.  Add the ground cumin and cook for another 2 minutes, to coat everything in the spice, then add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, until everything is cooked and soft.  Remove from the heat and allow the soup to cool.

4.  Blend the soup smooth.  Taste and adjust seasoning and re-heat.

5.  In a frying pan, heat the cumin seeds until they are nicely toasted and giving off a spicy aroma.

6.  Serve in bowls with a swirl of single cream and a sprinkling of toasted cumin seeds.  I also added flat bread as an accompaniment.  Enjoy!

Curried Leek & Potato Soup

So, after a slight break in service whilst we dismantled the entire Soup Lab, moved it about 500 meters and rebuilt it in a top secret location, I'm back.  That's right, I moved house to somewhere much nicer and without all the flights of stairs to climb with heavy shopping.  As a consequence of this, I've been a little too busy over the last few weeks to put up any posts.  I now have a fully functioning kitchen again, so here goes a quick one.

This was a veg box recipe, as in the veg box delivery we get every week provided all the ingredients.  Initially, it was going to be a straight leek, potato and blue cheese soup, but then an accident with the blue cheese (we ate it on Friday) plus the realisation that I'd done something very similar on the blog before made me change my mind.

So we have Curried Leek and Potato soup, which I have to admit to adding way too much chilli to, rendering it unedible to those members of Team Soup who have a lower tolerence to hot foods than I do, and also lack the asbestos tongue that I gained when I was bitten by a radioactive... No, wait, that was Spider-man, wasn't it?

Anyway, be careful when adding the chilli to this recipe, unless you want to have to make cheese on toast for your significant other, despite slaving over a hot soup all afternoon.  (This isn't the first time this has happened either, the infamous Tom Yum incident of 2011 still sends hot, burning shivers down my spine...

Ingredients
6 Leeks
1 Onion
1 Medium Carrot
2 Medium Potatoes
3 Garlic Cloves
Small Piece of Fresh ginger
1.2l Chicken Stock
1tsp Coriander
1tsp Cumin
1tsp Turmeric
1tsp Mustard Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
Pinch Chili Flakes
Salt and Pepper

Method

1.  Remove the tough green part of the leeks and then thinly slice the rest.  Finely chop the onion and carrot

2.  Heat some oil in a large pan.  Gently sweat the leeks, onions and carrot for 5 minutes, until they soften. Add the garlic, grated fresh ginger and spices and sweat for another 2-3 minutes, so the vegetables get covered in the spices.

3.  Add the stock, bring the soup to the boil and then cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Check seasoning and adjust to taste.

4.  Whilst the soup is simmering, peel the potatoes and cut into small (less than 1cm) cubes.  Heat some oil in a frying pan.  Over a gentle heat, fry the potato cubes until they brown and are ccoked through - this should take about 10 minutes.  Throw the cumin seeds in a few minutes before the potatoes are done

5.  Serve the soup topped with a handful of the potato cubes.  Garnish with some fresh coriander and serve.  Enjoy!

Duck, Ginger and Orange Soup

 

Oh the joys of moving house - boxes everywhere, days spent packing and unpacking, trying to squeeze everything you own into the smallest space possible and then realising you accidentally packed the cat at the bottom of the box...

Yes I'm moving house, and one task that I have had to do is to empty the freezer in order that it can have it's once a decade defrosting before the move it.  It has turned up all sorts of fun things, like random bags of unidentified frozen herbs, Tupperware full of goodness-knows-what and the remains of a duck.

It was this bird that prompted today's soup.  The rest of the duck was eaten as part of Mrs Soup's birthday celebration - regular readers will remember I roasted it upside down - but as we never knowingly waste food, the rest of it was frozen for later.

Now, as I'm very un-organised, I forgot to defrost the duck in enough time, so to speed up the process, I hacked the frozen carcass into chunks.  When I had thawed them and put them in the pan, I noticed that the knife I had used to cut it up with had broken, and a tiny but pointy shard of steel had come off and was, presumably, in the soup somewhere, just waiting to shred someones insides like a Jagged Metal Krusty-O (Simpsons reference).  I was pretty sure that, having sieved the stock and shredded the meat with my fingers, the knife fragment hadn't had it to the bowls I served, but it still made for an interesting dining experience...

Anyway, on with the soup...

Ingredients
1 Duck
1 Orange
60ml Sherry
6 Large Cabbage leaves
Large Piece Fresh Finger
2 Star Anise
1tbsp Dried Mushrooms
1 Large Carrot
1 Large Onion
10 Pepper Corns
2 Bay Leaves

Method
1.  Roast your duck.  I found that Hugh FW had all the answers when it came to doing this, so I'll leave you in his capable hands (But remember not to roast it upside down)

2.  Let the roast cool down then strip off the meat and save for later.

3.  Place the carcass, and the drippings form the roasting tray in a large pot, with a roughly chopped carrot, onion, the pepper corns and bay leaves, then add 2 litres of water.  Bring the pan to a boil and then simmer for 3 hours.

4.  Let the pan cool and then strain the liquid, removing all the bits of duck carcass and the vegetables.  At this point, you should try to skim off as much of the fat from the top of the stock, or even leave it in the fridge overnight, so the fat sets and can be removed easily (Don't throw it away as duck fat is amazing and can be used to make roast potatoes even more tasty...)

5. Heat up the stock, and add the sherry, dried mushrooms, star anise and the juice and zest of the orange.  Simmer the soup for 45 minutes.

6. Shred the duck meat - how much you want to put in is up to you.  A good sized duck should have enough meat for the soup and something else as well - and the cabbage leaves and stir them in about 5 minutes before serving.  Enjoy!

Pheasant Bombe and Marmalade Duck. A Week of Meals 005/6

It's been a while since I did one of these 'what I've been eating' posts.  For this delay you have my unreserved apologies, but between preparing to move house, assorted birthdays and trips to darkest Hull, things have been getting on top of me a bit.  Indeed, all I have to remind me of what I've been eating are a load of pictures from my digital camera, which I just spent half an hour trying to figure out what dishes they were actually of.

Anyway, in the spirit of CSI : Soup Kitchen, I think I managed to figure it out, so here we go

Pheasant Bombe

This is an Italian recipe from a book of 'celebration dishes' and it was meant to be pigeon, but we couldn't get hold of any of that particular bird on a trip to the butchers, so we decided to substitute pheasant instead.  It was baked in a sort of risotto, in a dish, and kind of resembles a steak and kidney pudding, but with a game surprise inside.  It got us thinking about what other fillings we could include in further bombes - rabbit seems like a good choice.

Asian Mushroom Risotto

Risotto using rice is my enemy, as I may have mentioned before.  However, using pearl barley it is a dream, easy to cook, tasty and with a really nice texture (also, none of the swearing that accompanies me trying to get the rice cooked perfectly)  I spent quite a bit on various exotic mushrooms, including straw, enoki, shitake, oyster and king oyster but it was worth it as they had such a rich, almost meaty flavour.  It's almost (But not quite) enough to make a boy turn vegetarian...

Fennel and Leek Gratin with Roasted Squash and Sage

This was a veg box meal, as I have started calling them, using up lots of vegetables.  I often think that vegetable dishes feel like side dishes in search of a steak and this was no exception, apart from combining two of them with some couscous made for a perfectly satisfactory meal

Duck with Marmalade

It was Mrs Soup's birthday and as is the time-honoured tradition in our house,  she got to pick what dish she would eat on her special day.  She is a big fan of duck, which was combined with some home made marmalade and then just roasted.  Which would all be fine, I was regularly basting to make sure the meat didn't dry out and it was looking amazing, smelling even better, when I realised that I WAS COOKING THE DUCK UPSIDE DOWN!!! How did I even do that?  I have no idea, but I spent two hours making sure the bird was perfect, only to has wasted my time as the breasts hadn't been basted at all...

All was not lost however, as it was perfectly tasty, but the swearing I had avoided whilst cooking the risotto returned with a vengeance after realising my mistake with the duck...

Lohikeitto - Finnish Salmon and Potato Soup

 Today's recipe is another one suggested by someone who sent me a postcard via Postcrossing.  I'm beginning to think this was the best soup related idea I ever had, as it saves me the hassle of trying to think of a new recipe every week - instead I just let someone else do all the hard work, and all I have to do is come up with a recipe, cook it and then eat it!

Some friends of mine spent a week in Finland on holiday, and when they returned they did so with tales of culinary horror. "The food's alright" they said, "But they put bloody dill on everything"  To me this sounds like heaven, as I love the taste of dill, especially with fish, which is another reason why this recipe appealed to me.  It's just so simple and can be whipped up in next to no time.  I guess if you were on a diet you could substitute some low fat milk for the cream and maybe thicken the soup with a little cornflour instead, or just mash the potatoes to break them up, which thickens the soup up a treat.

Ingredients
1 Leek
300g Potatoes
400g Salmon Fillet
1l Water
150ml Single Cream
1 Bay Leaf
Fresh Dill
1 Lemon
 

 Method
1.  Thinly slice the leek, removing the dark green bits, and cook in some olive oil until soft

2.  Add the water and bay leaf then bring to the boil.  Add the cubed potatoes, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and starting to break up slightly

3.  Add the skinned, de-boned salmon, cut into cubes and cook for a further 5 minutes.

4.  Stir in the single cream and some freshly cut dill and heat through but don't allow the soup to boil.  Taste and adjust seasoning and then serve, ganished with some more dill and a slice of lemon.

Creme Du Barry : French Cauliflower Soup

A cauliflower recipe, my kingdom for a cauliflower recipe!  A few weeks ago I had a surfeit of cauliflower, doe to getting them two weeks in a row in our veg box delivery and not quite getting round to eating them with anything.  I asked around on twitter and got quite a few suggestions for what to do with the vegetable, as all I could think to do was either cauliflower cheese or a curry, neither of which took my fancy at the time.

One of the recipes that I made was a Cauliflower cake, which was savoury and much nicer than it sounds - indeed, I mainly only made it as a challenge and due to the fact that I seem to be drawn to odd recipes.

Another suggestion, made by Jac on twitter (@clickerjac if you want to follow her) was Creme Du Barry which, contrary to my first guess, is NOT a soup made by or from a guy called Barry but instead a cream of cauliflower soup.  Anyway, Jac sent me a recipe, which I have to admit to slightly altering, just because it's cold and miserable and I felt like jazzing things up a bit to make it a bit more rich and comforting, and here it is...

You could always add some meat to the mix if you wanted - I'm thinking some crispy bacon or cubes of black pudding liberally sprinkled on top would be great too (In fact, what am I thinking, I have no idea why I didn't try that myself.  I must be slipping...)

Ingredients
500g Cauliflower
1 Large Onion
1 Potato
2 Leeks
3 Cloves Garlic
20g Butter
1l Chicken Stock
200ml White Wine
150ml Single Cream

Method.
1.  Heat the butter in your soup pan, then gently sweat the finely chopped leeks and onion for 5 minutes

2.  Add the cubed potato and garlic then cook over a moderate heat for a further 5 minutes.

3.  Add the wine and simmer until the liquid has reduced by half.

4.  Add the stock and cauliflower florets, but put a few aside for later.  Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes, until the cauliflower is cooked through and soft.

5.  Take the soup off the heat, leave to cool and then blend until smooth, then return to the pan.

6.  In a frying pan, heat some more butter and then gently fry the remaining cauliflower florets until they are golden.

7.  Heat the soup up, then add the cream and season to taste.  Serve and garnish with the fried cauliflower florets.  Enjoy