Pistou Soup

So here we are, still waiting for summer to start.  As I write this, the sky is black, there have been hail and rain storms and enough wind to erm, do something windy.  Not what you would expect from May weather, it has to be said.  But enough of me fulifilling the stereotype of being an Englisman who moans about the weather all the time and on with today's soup...

After running this blog for, oooh, ages now, it's getting harder to find new recipes.  Sometimes, the planning process goes something like this... "I have some carrots and some leeks in the veg rack... Hmm.... I know, carrot and leek soup.  That's a thing, isn't it?  It is now..." But somehow that feels like cheating.  Really, I enjoy making recipes that have a name and a history, like Waterzooi, or Minestrone, or Ezo The Bride.  Some of these are well known, and others are obscure, but tasty.  Today's soup is somewhere inbetween.  Essentially it's a bean and vegetable soup with pesto on top.

However, that's not to say it isn't delicious and tasty, and whilst the summer might now be living up to it's early promise, this soup is like a burst of sunshine in a bowl, which is just what I need as a rainy bank holdiay weekend stretches out before me (at the time of writing anyway, not perpetually, although that would be brilliant too...)

Also, on a 'not sure if it's cheating on not' note, the croutons pictured above were those ones that come out of  packet, rather than the home made variety.  Sometimes, life is just too short...

Ingredients

For the soup
1 Onion
2 Leeks
2 Potatoes
2 Courgettes
1 Tin Cannelini Beans
1 Tin Borlotti Beans
1 Tin Tomatoes
1l Vegetable Stock

For the pistou
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Large Handful Fresh Basil
50g Parmesan
2tbsp Olive oil
Salt

Method
1. Grind the Garlic, basil, grated Parmesan, oil and salt using a pestle and mortar until the form a paste.  Put this in the fridge for later.

2.  Peels and slice the onion and leek, cut the potato into small cube and dice the courgette.

3.  Heat some olive oil in your soup pan and gently fry the onion, leek and potatoes until they go soft, then add the courgette and cook for another 3-5 minutes.

4.  Add the stock, tomatoes and beans, bring the soup to the boil, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

5.  Season to taste and then serve.  Spoon some of the pistou onto each bowl and then garnish with some croutons.  Enjoy

Tuscan Chicken Soup With Orzo

I remember the first soup I ever learned to make, when I was about 12 in Home Economics lessons at school.  The teacher didn't actually teach us how to make it, but let us all cook one thing that we ate at home.

Pretty much every Friday thoughout the winter months, dinner was either Macaroni Cheese or Minestrone - made from scratch by my mother, and I did love the minestrone soup, so that was the dish that I decided to cook in school.  I badgered my mum for the recipe and then got all the ingredients, turnied up in the classroom and started to cook.  And suddenly, lo-and-behold, there was soup!  I felt like an alchemist, I had combined vegetables, pasta and meat, and with the judicious application of fire, the end result was soup, and it even tasted pretty good!

And from then on, I realised I could cook (although I didn't actually cook much for another six or seven years when I went away to University)   and I loved the buzz I got from being able to do that.. It's something that hasn't ever gone away.

Which brings us, in a very round about way to today's soup.  Although I'm not making Minestrone (and I still pronounce it Mine Strone in my head...) this soup is very similar, using as it does lots of vegetables, a bit of meat and a rich tomato-y stock.  And it also uses Orzo, which I love - it's pasta that thinks it is rice!  Crazy!

If you can't get orzo, any small pasta shells will do - I was over-joyed when I first found it in a small corner shop, and immediately bought some for Mrs Soup, as she had never been able to find it in this country before, for which I won brownie points, and gained a nice ingredient for soups, stews and casseroles.

Ingredients
3 Chicken Thighs
1 Large Onion
3 Carrots
2 Stalks of Celery
1 Medium Potato
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Tin Tomatoes
1.2l Chicken Stock
75g Orzo (Pasta Rice)
Fresh Basil
Fresh Thyme
Salt and Pepper

Method
1.  Heat some oil in your soup pan. Fry the chicken thighs until they are golden and cooked through.  Remove the chicken and set aside to cool.

2. Finely chop the onion and garlic.  In the same oil that you fried the chicken in, soften and brown the onions and garlic (add some more oil if there isn't enough left)

3.  Add the chopped carrot, potato and celery and let them soften over a low heat for 3-5 minutes, then add the stock, cooked chicken and tomatoes.  To this add the thyme, salt and pepper, simmer and cover, then let cook for 25 minutes.

4.  Add the orzo to the soup and let simmer for another 10 minute, until the pasta is cooked through.  Check seasoning and then serve, garnished with fresh basil.  Enjoy!

Gnocchi with Tomato and Black Pudding

I love my Sunday Roast, as I think I mentioned before.  There is no finer meal in a week and the care and devotion I put into the gravy and roast potatoes borders on obsessional. However, the downside to a roast dinner is it seems to take ages to make and is devoured in minutes (although that may just be due to my terrible lack of manners...)

So this week I thought that instead of roasting something, I'd try a completely different tack and do something I've never had before.  Whilst investigating soups (and in particular Nettle and Snail soup - which may just appear on the blog at some point in the future) I hit upon the idea of adding potato gnocchi to the soup.  Now I may have also mentioned before that I am a sucker for foods with beautiful sounding names, and also dumplings (which I can eat until I burst) and potato gnocchi seemed to combine both of those things in one cute little package, so how could I resist.

And also, because I'm obsessed with black pudding (this must be the sixth or seventh recipe with the stuff in it) I thought I'd chuck some of that in too, because, well, why the heck not...

Ingredients

For the gnocchi
500g Waxy Potatoes
150g Plain Flour
Handful of finely chopped Fresh Basil
Salt
Pepper


For the Sauce
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
250g Black Pudding
1 Onion
75ml Red Wine
1tsp Balsamic Vinegar
1tsp Finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 Cloves Finely Chopped Garlic

1.  Peel the potatoes, chop into cubes and put into a pan of boiling salted water for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.  Drain them and allow to cool

2.  Mash the potatoes.   I used a potato ricer for this because you want the mash to be as smooth as possible.

3. Put the mashed potatoes into a mixing bowl, then add the flour, chopped basil, salt and pepper.  Combine the mixture like you would if you were making a dough, then kneed gently for 2-3 minutes until the dough is nice and smooth.

4.  Spead some flour on a worktop and then roll the dough out into a roll thats about 1-1 and a half cm thick, then cut into 1-2cm pieces.  Set these aside for now.

5.  Fry the finely chopped onion and garlic in some oil until the onion is just starting to colour.  Then add the red wine, vinegar, rosemary and some black pepper.  Bring this to a simmer and cover.

6.  Cut the black pudding into 1cm cubes.  Ina frying pan, heat some oil and yhen fry the black pudding until it starts to brown.  Then transfer to the sauce.

6.  In a very large pan. bring some water to the boil, then put the gnocchi in, cooking for about 2 minutes, until they start to float to the surface.  Drain them well then put onto a heated plate and serve with the sauce and a grating of fresh parmesan.  Enjoy!

Wild Garlic and Basil Pesto with Fresh Pasta

We are mad for wild garlic here at Soup Tuesday.  The wild garlic, chorizo and black pudding soup has proven to be one of our most popular recipes, and as we love the taste so much, here's another wild garlic heavy recipe.

I remember when I was getting into food - I mean starting to appreciate food and enjoy making new and unusual recipes - two things seemed alien to me. One of them was making your own pasta, which seemed like a crazy science experiment mixed with the finer points of knitting (for some reason) and the kind of thing that chefs on TV talk about, but no-one in their right minds would ever bother with in the safety of their own kitchen (possibly even including Italian matriarchs, as seen in Dolmio adverts and the films of Martin Scorsese)

A quick straw poll of friends revealed that whilst many had pasta makers, most of these were consigned to bottoms of drawers or tops of cupboards, after being used once, discovering what a phaff it was and then being put alongside slow cookers, ice-cream makers and bread makers in the graveyard of kitchen gadgets.

Having just discovered the wonders of slow cookers and bread makers (and whilst not owning an ice-cream maker, it's on the list of things to buy) it seemed like the time to face my inner cookery demons and get out the pasta maker that had been recently received as a birthday present, after all, how hard can it be? At least one person on Team Soup has a PhD! and we were determined not to let our machine rest in gadget hell...

Lo and behold, it was actually quite easy, and now I'm more than a little bit addicted to fresh pasta. So the moral of this story is this - go, dig out your pasta maker - yes, I know you have one, in the same place my was languishing- and have another go - I promise you won't look back...

The other thing I couldn't get my head around was olive oil.  I know it sounds strange, but the idea of using oil for anything other than frying things with, to my mind sounded like madness, especially in something like a pesto - just herbs and oil?  Urgh, won't it be all greasy?

After biting the bullet and trying the stuff (I should note that these attitudes were directly the result of growing up in the 70's where Spaghetti Bolognese was the most exotic food I was exposed to, and Arctic Roll was considered a delicacy..) I found out it was actually really nice.

And what better way to use some lovely wild garlic than in a pesto? If you make lots, you can always put it into ice-cube trays and freeze it, or have it with the home made pasta that I persuaded you to try earlier...

Ingredients

For the Pesto
30g Wild Garlic
30g Basil
30g Hazelnuts
30g Parmesan
90ml Olive Oil


For the pasta
250g plain flour / pasta flour
1tsp Salt
1 Egg and 3 more egg yolks, lightly beaten
1tbsp Olive Oil


125g Button Mushrooms
Handful of Spinach leaves
Pancetta Cubes

Method

Make the pesto first, which couldn't be easier.  Toast the hazelnuts lightly, in a dry frying pan, heat them until they start to colour, then set aside.  Then throw everything in a food mixer and blitz until it turns into a beautiful bright green paste.  This can then be refrigerated until needed.

Next, make the pasta.  I used pasta flour, which is finer than plain flour, but if you can't get it, then plain will do just fine.  Sieve the flour and salt into a pile on a clean surface, then make a well in the middle.  Pour in the beaten eggs and oil and start to bring the mixture together with your finger tips.

After a while, the mixture will start to come together, but if it's too dry, add some water, sparingly as you don't want to make it too wet.  Once it forms a ball, need for about 5 minutes, until the dough becomes smooth and a bit elastic.  Then wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Run the pasta through your pasta maker, according to the instructions, and then cook in slated boiling water for 3-4 minutes.

In a thick bottomed pan, fry your pancetta cubes and mushrooms until they are golden, then throw in the spinach leaves and let them wilt.

Drain the pasta over the sink, then return to the pan and stir in pesto to taste, enough to cover all the pasta with it's green and tasty goodness, then serve on a warm plate with the pancetta, mushrooms and spinach.  Enjoy!