Locro da Papa - Ecuadorian Potato and Cheese Soup

Once you get into a serious cookery habit, you very quickly start to accumulate 'stuff'.  At last count I had 7 varieties of vinegar, 9 types of rice and 5 kinds of lentils. My spice cupboard gets even more full with each passing trip to the shops and every cuisine I dabble in. Some ingredients are pretty easy to get hold of these days - every supermarket has a pretty good selection of herbs and spices these days, and Asian and Chinese supermarkets will furnish the inquisitive cook with pretty much everything else you will need.  Same goes for Eastern European and Caribbean cuisine.

However, some areas of the culinary globe are (in my neck of the woods anyway) a little harder to reach.  And this throws up a dilemma for anyone attempting to make dishes in an authentic a way as possible.

For example, this South American recipe.  Now, unless I'm blind, I haven't seen an Ecuadorian supermarket in my neighbourhood. And this recipe, done authentically, needs some ingredients that it's almost impossible to get without a lot of searching  - achiote powder and queso fresco.  My version, after some research, swaps the achiote for paprika and the queso fresco for ricotta.  Which, after 7 and a half minutes of interweb research appear to be about as good a substitution as I could find.  But it still bugs me that I'm not making a 'proper' version of this soup.

Am I worrying too much? Can anyone recommend a good source of South American ingredients? Does this stuff bother anyone else? Have you found a good supplier for edible Piranhas? Let me know...

Ingredients
600g Potatoes
250g Ricotta Cheese
25g Butter
1 Large Onion
1tbsp Minced Garlic
2tsp Cumin
1tsp Sweet Paprika
900ml Water
150ml Milk
Fresh Coriander

Method
1. In your soup pan, heat the butter. Add the finely chopped onion and cook for a few minutes, until it starts to soften.

2.  Add the minced garlic, cumin and paprika and cook for another 2 minutes.

3.  Add the peeled and cubed potato.  Cook for another 5 minutes, until the potatoes start to soften slightly and everything is covered in the spices

4. Add the water, bring the soup to a simmer and cover. Cook until the potatoes start to break up.  Remove from the heat

5. Once the soup has cooled, either blend the sou until smooth or use a potato masher to break up the potatoes.  Add the milk and crumbled up cheese, adjust seasoning to taste and reheat.

6.  Serve with fresh coriander, grated cheddar cheese and thinly sliced spring onions. Enjoy!

Indian Lambs Liver Soup

I love offal.  Two of my favourite meals of all time are Steak and Kidney Pie and Liver & Onions (Is this the diet of an old man?).  If I'm in a restaurant and there's a dish containing any form of offal at all, I'm all over it.  Of course, I'm aware that I'm in a minority in this love, but there it is.

For me, the question isn't 'why would you eat that?' but rather 'Why WOULDN"T you eat that'?  Offal - and all those other overlooked bits like tongue and cheek - are tasty, unusual and cheap.  In a world where people are going crazy over such boring fare as pulled pork and gourmet burgers, I'd rather have a bit of Lamb's Liver or Ox Heart Ragu any day.  In fact, could there be a market for an offal-based fast food outlet on every high street? I'd eat there, for sure.  Although I may be one of the only ones.

What am I, chopped liver?

Despite this love of all things offal, I haven't done too many soup recipes that show this off - there was Menudo, a tripe soup, that I blogged a while ago, and while I've had quite a few in my to-soup list for a while, I haven't gotten round to making them.  Until I found this little gem of an Indian soup recipe.  Like the Beetroot Rasam that I blogged recently, it should be cooked in a pressure cooker, but as I still haven't extended the kitchen, I made this in a pan.  Many of the recipes I found for this soup used just water, not stock, but I found that just a little bland, and if there's one thing I can't abide it's a bland soup...

If anyone has any other suggestions for soup recipes containing offal of any kind, I'd love to hear them, and maybe put them on the blog for the rest of the world to enjoy.  Also, if you think you don't like offal, dig out a cool sounding recipe and give it another go, you might be surprised!

Ingredients
350g Lambs Liver
2 Onions
4 Tomatoes
1.2l Stock
2tsp Ground Cumin
2tsp Ground Coriander
1tsp Ground Black Pepper
1tsp Turmeric Powder
1tsp Red Chilli Flakes
2tsp Garlic Purée
1tsp Ginger Purée
1/2tsp Garam Masala
Coriander Leaves

Method
1. Place the tomatoes in boiling water for 5 minutes, then remove the skins, de-seed and finely chop them

2.  Heat some oil in your soup pan.  Peel and finely chop the onions.  Gently fry them for 5 minutes, until they start to colour.

3.  Wash and thinly slice the lamb's liver.

4.  Add the chopped tomatoes, liver, garlic and ginger puree and fry for another 5 minutes

5.  Add the stock, bring the soup to a boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until the liver is soft

6. Taste and adjust seasoning.  Serve garnished with some chopped coriander leaves.  Enjoy

Beetroot Rasam

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with beetroot.  On one hand, beetroot risotto is one of the greatest things ever, on the other is that lingering taste that can only be described as earthy.  Or to be less charitable, I made a beetroot and chocolate cake, and despite using half a tonne of chocolate and cream, it still tasted of soil.

It is the kind of vegetable that, to my mind, is healthy but dull - the twin of kale in being a joyless thing that healthy eating advocates bang on about, but I really can't stand,  Or at least it takes a fair bit of effort to make it palatable. Of course, it's entirely possible that beetroot has the same effect on me that sprouts have on others - a chemical that renders if awful tasting to me whilst others don't suffer. (Scientists are telling me that this theory could be what they describe as 'utter tripe')

And yet, and yet, here I am, attempting the fourth soup recipe involving beetroot (and reading the old entries, I see I have rather belaboured the point about beetroot's eccentricities, so I won't malign the poor purple vegetable any more) but suffice to say that this Indian soup recipe, through some subtle alchemy of spices tastes amazing, and not a hint of the evil 'soil taste'*

So here at Soup HQ we have a rather small kitchen, mostly consisting of jars of spices of one kind or another, and it's a huge decision every time we think about investing in another kitchen gadget.  "There's no room!" goes the cry.  Which is why I still don't have a deep fat fryer despite recently discovering the joys of making my own chips.  Another gadget that I still crave is a pressure cooker.  If you have one, it would be prefect for this recipe, as it would cook the lentils and beetroot amazingly, but alas, until I open the West Wing of my kitchen and have room for more gadgets, I'll have to do this the old fashioned way - just boiling the heck out of the beetroot.

Also, be careful when blending the soup.  It went everywhere when I deployed my stick blender and made the kitchen look like Halloween had arrived early...

Also, beware the side effects of eating too many beets...

*Some of you may be wondering, if I have such strong feelings about beetroot, why am I eating it?  Well the simple answer is that we got some as part of our veg box delivery and I'll be damned if I'm going to let any vegetables go to waste.  Apart from Kale...

Ingredients
500g Beetroot
100g Yellow Lentils
50g Tamarind Paste
4 Cloves Garlic
1tsp Dried Red Chili Flakes
1tsp Coriander Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
1tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1tsp Mustard Seeds
Pinch of Asafoetida
Salt
Oil
 
Method.
1. Soak the lentils in water for 30 minutes.  Roughly chop the Tamarind and put ina small bowl, cover with boiling water and leave to soak for 30 minutes too

2. Heat some oil in your soup pan.  Add the Coriander Fenugreek and Cumin Seeds and Chili flakes, and fry gently for a minute or so, until they flavour the oil.

3.  Wash and strain the soaked lentils and add these to the pan, along with the peeled and chopped beetroot and the peeled garlic cloves.

4.  Remove the pulp from the tamarind and add the flavoured water to the pan

5. Add 1.2 litres of water, bring the soup to the boil and simmer on a high heat, covered, for 30 minutes, until the beetroot is cooked and softened.  Remove the pan from the heat

6.  Blend the soup until smooth.  Return to the pan, reheat gently and adjust seasoning to taste

7.  In another pan, heat 3tbsp of oil.  Add the Asafoetida and mustard seeds and heat until the seeds start to pop.  Stir the flaovoured oil into the soup and serve.  Enjoy!

Parsnip and Sweet Potato Soup

It's October!  Where did the summer go? Still, now it's time to pack up your shorts and pull out those woolly jumpers, that can only mean one thing - it's soup season again (aka The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year)

I was in two minds  about starting up the soup blog again; after all, there must be a finite number of soups a man can cook, right? So yesterday, I was opening a carton of soup for my lunch and two things struck me - firstly that I feel guilty every time I buy soup rather than making it, especially as cooking soup is as easy as falling off a log, but less painful, and secondly, that most shop bought soups are usually hugely disappointing. As if to prove my point, the Goan Spicy Lentil and Chicken soup that I eat was slightly bitter tasting, had woody vegetables and left me feeling sad rather than being a hug in a bowl, like all good soups should be

To ease myself back into blogging (and soup making) I set myself the challenge of opening up the vegetable drawer of the fridge, grabbing the first few things that I could lay my hands on and tuning them into a tasty soup.  Just to get myself back into the swing of things.

The first things I pulled out were a can of beer, a bottle of vodka and a lime.  Which would make an awesomely demented cocktail, but not really good for soup.  The next dive into the fridge yielded sweet potatoes and parsnips.  This, I thought to myself, I can work with...

So some quick thinking, a look in the spice cupboard and viola,  a simple, rich and tasty soup that took about 5 minutes to make, 30 minutes to simmer and then was ready for lunch.

Can't say easier than that, can you?  So shut up and make some soup...

Ingredients
2 Onions
2 Parsnips
2 Sweet Potatoes
2 Cloves of Garlic
2tsp Finely chopped Ginger
1tbsp Lemon Juice
1tsp Turmeric
1tsp Cumin
1tsp Dried Chili Flakes
1tsp Salt
1.2l Stock
Yoghurt
Fresh Coriander

Method
1. Chop the onions and fry fry gently until golden

2.  Peel and chop the sweet potato and parsnip.  Add these to the onions and sweat gently for a few minutes until the start to soften

3.  Add the stock, ginger, garlic and spices.  Bring the soup to the boil then cover and simmer for 30 minute, or until all the vegetables have softened

4.  Using a stick blender, purée the soup until smooth.  Adjust seasoning to taste.

5.  Garnish each bowl of soup with yoghurt and fresh coriander.  Enjoy!

Matar ka Shorba - Indian Pea Soup

This is pea soup recipe number 5 on the blog!  Who would have thought that I could get so much mileage out of the humble pea?  And unlike the others, which are variations on two themes, this one is a little different.

You could use frozen peas or fresh, but the great thing about frozen ones is that using those makes this pretty much a cupboard soup - as long as you have a vaguely well stocked spice cupboard - and the fact that its quick and easy to throw together, like most soups, makes it perfect for a tasty lunch or when surprise visits happen.  In fact that could apply to most soups - they really are perfect food, aren't they?

Also, I love the fact that a curry sauce is also known as gravy, as you all know just how much I love gravy.  I assume that the term was taken to India by the British, but you, lovely readers, may know better.  If so, please let me know...

Ingredients
250g Peas
1 Large Onion
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
1 Bunch Spring Onions
1tsp Garlic Purée
1tsp Ginger Purée
2tsp Turmeric
2tsp Coriander
1 Green Chilli
1tsp Garam Masala
1tsp Mustard Seeds
1tsp Cumin Seeds
4 Cardamom Seeds
2 Bay Leaves

Method
1.  Heat some oil in your soup pan.  Once it's hot, add the mustard seeds, cumin seed, cardamom and bay leaves and fry them for 2 minutes, so they flavour the oil.  Watch out, because the mustard seeds can pop in the oil and go everywhere!

2.  Add the finely chopped onion, garlic and ginger puree, then cook through until the onions are browned a little

3.  Add the chilli, turmeric and coriander, stir them through the onions, and then add the tomatoes, cooking until everything reduces down to a thick, spicy paste.

4.  Add 900ml of water, chopped spring onions and half the peas.  The other half of the peas should be smashed to a pulp - I used the end of a rolling pin - and then added too.  Add some salt, then bring the soup to a simmer, cover and cook for 25-30 minutes.

5.  Add the garam masala and then serve.  Accompany with naan or boiled rice.  Enjoy!

Spicy Morrocan Carrot Soup

Guess which jars annoy me...

When I first started cooking properly, back when I was a student, three things were the backbones of any dish, in various combinations.  A huge plastic generic container of 'mixed herbs', another of 'curry powder' and a jar of Chili Powder.  Like a Picasso of the palate, I could mix these few flavourings with any other foodstuff - usually Netto tinned casseroles, chicken soup or just some good old tinned tomatoes - to produce erm, well, something that was at least edible enough to be slapped on top of some pasta to give me enough sustenance to soak up the huge quantities of booze that I would invariably drink at the local nasty nightclub (It was called 'Spiders' in Hull, where cocktails came by the pint, dodgy goths lurked in darkened corners and the music ran the whole gamut from bad to awful... ah, good days...)

Fast forward some years and my spice collection has grown a little bit more elaborate.  In fact it seems like I'm getting a little obsessive about them now.  I started buying them in large bags and putting them into old coffee jars, and now it annoys me unless ALL THE JARS ARE THE SAME SIZE, so when we go to the supermarket, I have to buy the exact brand of coffee to get the jars.

And I have also started labelling the jars using a Dymo Brand™ label maker so all the jars ARE LABELLED EXACTLY THE SAME.  If you, like me suffer from borderline OCD, I highly recommend getting a Dymo Brand™label maker.  Not only do they keep a uniform appearance to all your jars of various brown powders (and before I got my Dymo Brand™label maker, you have no idea how many times I got my corianders and cumins mixed up) but they also give your jars a lovely and satisfying retro look, like something from a Victorian scientist's lab, but without the formaldehyde or eyeballs

Just to prove it's not just my spices that are obsessively orgainised, here is (some of) my book collection.  And yes, they are alphabetized by author and then arragnged by publication date. Problem? Me?

The point of all this rhapsodising about my Dymo Brand™ label maker is that, ummm, oh yeah, having a large and properly labelled spice collection enables you to take any old ingredient and turn it into a delicious soup.  Take for example this Moroccan carrot soup, which is nothing more than a few carrots and an onion, plus some spices.  'Simples' as the annoying rat on the telly says.  And it's all thanks to my Dymo Brand™label maker.

[The post was not, by the way, sponsored by Dymo Brand™label makers]

Ingredients

600g Carrots
1 Onion
1.2l Chicken Stock
4 Cloves Garlic
1tbsp Ginger Puree
1tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1tbsp Cumin Seeds
1tsp Caraway Seeds
1tsp Cinnamon
Sprigs of Thyme
Juice of 1/2 Lemon

Method
1.  Heat the oven to 180ºc.  Peel the carrots and cut into chunks.

2.  Put the carrots in an oven proof dish, along with some oil, salt, pepper, thyme and balsamic vinegar, then add the cumin and caraway seeds.  Toss them all together so the carrots get covered in the oil and the seeds.

3.  Put the dish in the oven and roast for 30 minutes, until the carrots are starting to caramelise and brown at the edges.  Once this is happening, take them out of the oven and leave to cool.,

4.  Finely slice the onion and fry in your soup pan for 5 minutes, until they start to soften.  The add the garlic and ginger, fry for another 2 minutes, until they are both cooked and then add the cinnamon, stir and then add the stock.

5.  Put the carrots and seeds into the soup pan and bring to the boil.  Cover and simmer and then cook for 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat and leave to cool

6.  Blend the soup until smooth, then re-heat, adjust seasoning to taste and add the lemon juice.  Serve and enjoy!

Dal Shorba - Indian Lentil Soup

So pressing on with the brave 'No animal bits will pass these lips for 30 days' challenge (Unless the animal in question is a fish, in which case all bets are off..., and ignoring anyone who says I shouldn't be eating eggs *fingers in ears* lalala I'm not listening) today we have a lentil soup.

Should Dal be classed as a soup?  It's the same as the fine line between soups and stew, but my guideline here is, if I feel like it should be classed as a soup then I'm including it in the blog.  After all, this version is certainly runny enough to be a soup, although it would go quite well with some rice.  I was told that it can be made either way, so before you write in, remember - I'm the boss of this blog (and I don't mean to come over all defensive, maybe it's the lack of animal flesh that's making me all aggressive...)

Also, the addition of hard boiled eggs is another random thing, which I'm sure I've seen done before but couldn't find actual proof of, but I did impulse buy an egg slicer from Ikea and have been aching to find an excuse to use it ever since (and after making this soup, pretty much everything that I've cooked has been garnished with thinly sliced boiled eggs, plus all visitors to the Soup Labs have been serenaded by a tune plucked out on the wires of said slicer)

Ingredients
250g Yellow Lentils
200g Green Beans
3 Eggs
1 Onion
1 Piece of Ginger
4 Cloves of Garlic
Juice of 1 Lemon
2tsp Turmeric
1tsp Cumin
1tbsp Tomato Pure
Fresh Coriander
Salt

Method
1.  Finely chop the onion, crush the garlic and grate the ginger.  Heat some oil in your soup pan then saute the onion until it starts to brown - about 6-7 minutes - then add the garlic and ginger and cook for another 2 minutes

2.  Add the tomato puree, turmeric and cumin and a little water, then cook down until the ingredients resemble a thick paste

3.  Wash the lentils and add them to the pan, as well as 1.2l of water, then season, bring to the boil and then cover the pan.  Simmer for 30 minutes, until the lentils are thoroughly cooked and starting to break up.

4.  Remove the pan from the heat, let cool and then blend the soup until smooth with a stick blender of food processor.  Return to the pan

5.  Hard boil 3 eggs

6.  Cut the green beans into 1cm pieces, add to the soup and reheat.  Let the beans cook through in the soup, adjust seasoning again and then serve

7.  Garnish with slices of boiled egg and freshly chopped coriander, and freshly made Naans.  Enjoy!

Pho - Vietnamese Noodle Soup

 So I'm trying to get in the summery mood.  Now there are vegetables planted in the garden which will hopefully be ready to turn into soup later in the year, and that fiery ball has returned to the skies, it's a bit easier to think that there might be a summer after all.  (Please don't remind me of this statement when it rains from now until September...)

I realised that pretty much all the soups I have blogged recently have been pretty heavy, comfort food type recipes. This is probably for two reasons - one is that it's been sooooo cooooold, and the second is that I think the big warm blanket of creamy warmth is the reason I love soup so much (Please note, don't try to make an actual blanket out of soup) but there are lots of other soups out there which are fresh and light and summery.

Like this one.  Pho is from Vietnam and I imagine it's the sort of thing that you can buy from vendors at the side of the road, like Blade Runner with sunshine (possibly) and it's a very light, fragrant soup that would work well as a starter or as a snack on a warm day...

Ingredients

For the broth
3 Carrots
1 Onion
1tbsp Ginger
1tbsp Soy Sauce
1tsp Coriander Seeds
4 Cloves
2 Bay Leaves
1 Cinnamon Stick
1 Star Anise

Rice Noodles
Broccoli
Bok Choi
Fresh Coriander 
Lime

Method.
1.  Dry roast the coriander, star anise, cloves and cinnamon.  Place them in your soup pan over a low heat and cook until they start to release their aromas

2.  Roughly chop the carrot and onion.  Place them in a pan with the dry roasted spices, ginger, soy sauce and bay leaves, as well as 1.2l of water.  Bring to the boil and then simmer for 30 minutes.

3.  Remove from the heat and let cool.  Strain out all the bits and return to the pan

4.  Cook the rice noodles according to the packaging.

5.  Cut the broccoli into florets, slice the bok choi.  Steam them for 5 minutes, until they are soft

6.  Put some noodles in each soup bowl, then cover in the broth, and then top with the steamed vegetables and some fresh coriander and slices of fresh lime to garnish.  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!

Thai Noodle Soup With Fishballs

I haven't made any of the huge range of Thai soups since I almost killed myself with a huge spicy overdose of chili when making a Tom Yum soup.  Now I'm a fan of spicy foods, and have a pretty high tolerance for chili, but even I had a hard time eating that soup, due to a couple of rogue, extra hot chili peppers that made their way into my shopping basket.

However, I didn't have that problem with this recipe, which was suggested to me by another lovely Postcrossing pal, who is from Thailand and listed this as amongst her favourite soups.  A few of the recipes that I found for this soup had ingredients in that I couldn't find at my local supermarket (Chinese Celery, coriander root) so I've had to approximate with some of the ingredients, but I think what I ended up with was rather special - if you like your soups a bit more spicy, you could aways add some more chili somewhere in the mix, and I'm sure it will be just as good, but I decide to play safe this time...

Also, after stumbling across the website of a soup company somewhere in Scotland, I've been experimenting this week with a tip that they recommend for getting the best out of any soup - that is, making it the day before and leaving it in the fridge to mature overnight which increases the depth of the flavours, or so they claim.  Now obviously, with this soup, a lot of the ingredients (fish balls and noodles etc) need to be added just before serving, but I did prepare the base of the soup the day before, and blow me down, but it seemed to be a lot more flavoursome than I was expecting.  I may experiment further and report back my findings...

Ingredients
1.2l Chicken Stock
2tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
2tsp Grated Ginger
2tsp Light Brown Sugar
1tbsp Fish Sauce
2 Star Anise
2 Cloves of Garlic
1 Small Mooli
Juice and zest of 1 Lime
4tbsp Sweet Chili Sauce
3tbsp Smooth Peanut Butter
300g White Fish, Skinned and boneless
Handful of Fresh Coriander
Rice Noodles 

Method.
 1.  Heat the stock in a soup pan, then add the soy sauce, ginger, sugar, anise and fish sauce.  Simmer and then add the thinly sliced mooli.  Let the soup cook for 15 minutes and then remove from the heat.

2.  Prepare the fish balls.  In a food mixer, put the fish. coriander, garlic, zest of 1 lime and a little salt.  Blend the ingredients together and then make small balls with it, about 2cm round - there should be enough for about 12 fish balls

3.  In a bowl, mix the lime juice, sweet chili sauce and peanut butter into a smooth paste.

4.  Prepare the rice noodles as per the instructions on the packet.

5.  Reheat the soup, bringing to a simmer and then add the fish balls.  Cook gently for about 10 minutes, until everything is reheated properly and the fish is cooked.

6.  Place some noodles in each bowl, then pout over some of the lime and chili paste.  Place some fish balls on top of that, then pour the soup around.  Garnish with fresh coriander and thinly sliced spring onions.  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!

Leek and Bacon Soup with Squash Dumplings

It's raining!  It's cold and wet and miserable.  Welcome to Soup Tuesday, where we have soups for every occasion, to suit every taste  and whatever the weather, there always be something hot and tasty on the stove!

Today's soup has it all!  Bacon! Interesting vegetables!  Dumplings!  Un-necessary exclamation marks! Continuing the the theme of conjouring something up from the vegetable box which is delivered every Tuesday morning, we have Squash dumplings, made from a rather pretty Harlequin Squash, which, ummm, seems to be pretty much the same as a butternut squash but a bit paler flesh and with green bits on the skin.

Roasting the squash with a bit of ground coriander made the whole kitchen smell amazing all morning, and the resulting dumplings are a bit more like gnocchi than the sort of dumplings I usually make (of the suet variety).  I think these squash dumplings would go well with a tomato sauce and lots of basil and parmesan.

Ingredients
Squash Dumplings

350g Squash
300g Plain Flour
50g Butter (Frozen)
1tsp Baking Powder
1/2tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/2tsp Ground Coriander
Pinch Chili Pepper
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil 

Leek and Bacon Soup
100g Bacon
2 Large Leeks
1 Large Onion
1 Large Potato
1.2ml Chicken Stock
100ml White Wine
1 Sprig of Rosemary
Salt and Pepper


Method
1.  Heat the oven to 200ºc. Peel and cube the squash, Put on a baking tray with the Oregano, Coriander, Chili, salt and pepper and olive oil.  Place in the oven and cook for 30 minutes, until the squash is golden.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

2.  Finely chop the onion, peel and dice the potato and cube the bacon.  Heat some oil in your soup pan and then toss in the bacon, letting it fry for 2 minutes before adding the onion and potato.  Let that fry off for 3-4 minutes, until everything starts to colour.

3.  Add the stock, wine and finely chopped rosemary.  Bring to the boil and then add the sliced leeks and then let the soup simmer for 20 minutes

4.  Break up the squash in a bowl with the back of a fork.  Sieve in the flour, nutmeg and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Grate the frozen butter in and mix into a firm dough.  You may need to add a little more liquid to get the dough to the right consistence to roll it up.

5.  Roll it out into a strip that's about 3cm wide, and then cut into 2cm thick pieces..  Cover in flour and then set aside.

6.  Add the dumplings to the soup and let cook for another 8-10 minutes, then the soup is ready to serve.  Enjoy!

Soupe Djiboutienne - Olympic Food Challenge : Djibouti

Just when I thought it was all over, they pulled me back in... It seems that not all the countries allocated to the various bloggers as part of the Olympic Food Challenge got completed, so there were some going spare.  I put my name in the hat and got two further countries to have a crack at.  The first is Djibouti and because this is a soup blog, I'm making a soup! (Well, I say soup, but this dish is more stew than soup.  It's delicious whatever you want to call it though)

Djibouti (and every time I type that I'm thinking 'shake djibouti' for some reason) sent 5 athletes to compete at London 2012, but sadly failed to win any medals to add to their grand total of 1 Bronze, won in Seoul in 1988.

A lot like the soup I made for Tajikistan, this is a no-frills affair.  No spices, no frying of ingredients or browning meat, not even any stock, just throw everything in the pan and cook it for ages.  When I find a recipe like this, I'm always caught between following the recipe as is, or adding, changing and generally tinkering, but when it came to the Olympic Food Challenge, I decided to try to keep as much as possible to the original recipes, as adding too much myself seemed to be going against the spirit of the thing.

Spicy Cauliflower and Chard Soup

 After the craziness of the Olympic Food Challenge, normal service resumes now (although I know it's not Tuesday, but hey, I have made soup).  We have been, for the last few weeks, getting a veg box every week, and so for the next few weeks, I'll be making some random soups, based on whatever comes in the box on a Thursday.

After the random allocation of countries in the Olympic Food Challenge, I like the idea of this.  Also, I was running out of inspiration for new soups every week.  Now I have all the ingredients I need quite literally on my doorstep.

Today's soup is a bit healthy as I've been working odd hours and days this week, eating junk food and generally feeling a bit run down - hopefully all the vegetables will perk me up as I'm working until Sunday (today is my only day off - hence the non-Tuesday soup)

When I blended it all together, I was vaguelly horrifed as it appeared at first glance that I had made piccalilli soup - and I hate piccalilli.  However, after the chard and coconut milk was added, it no longer looked like piccalilli, and definately didn't taste anything like piccalilli. (Did I mention I can't stand the stuff?)

Recipe after the jump >>

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.

Tongabezi Chicken Curry - Olympic Food Challenge : Zambia

The nation of Zambia is the next country we have been sampling the cuisine of.  Zambia have won a grand total of 2 medals in their Olympic history, and this year they have 8 competitors in 4 sports, all hoping to live up to the glory of Samual Matate in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, who won a sliver in the 400 meters hurdles.  As always, check out the wikipedia page to see if they have added to this total by clicking here...

This African curry is a much lighter and fresher affair than Indian curries, more akin to a Thai curry in some respects, and the fried sweet potatoes were a wonderful accompaniment.  I could have just eaten a plate of those on their own...  I served it with some fresh wilted spinach in lieu of some greens, mainly because we had just had some delivered as part of our weekly vegetable box, so that part of the dish is not necessarily accurate...

Chakalaka Soup with Boerewors Meatballs

I went away to the wilds of Wales for the weekend, and after a weekend of drink, cheap burgers and white-water rafting, I really needed something healthy, not to mention the fact that I'm coming down with (another) cold, but this time I'm blaming it on the cold water from the rainy mountains of Bala (or the fact I was screaming like a girl when I went down the rapids...)

That's me, in the front, on the right of the picture, thinking about soup...

I may have mentioned before that Mrs Soup hails from South Africa, and so I thought I would make a signature South African soup, so I asked her what I should make, and she suggested this.  Now apparently, proper Chaklaka (another soup name, like Albondiga, that makes you smile whilst saying it!) is a sort of stew, although some variations of it seem to be more like relish, but I know for sure that Knorr (vendors of packet soups) make a Chakalaka Soup, as I've seen it in the dinky little shop that sells South African stuff in Leeds market, which is where I also got the Boerewors from.

So without further ado, here is Chakalaka soup, which, by the way, makes a good vegetarian soup, if you skip the meatballs and use vegetable stock.  You could also swap the canelini beans for a tin of baked beans (which I understand is a little more traditional, but as I can't stand baked beans, then I swapped them out)

Ingredients
For the Soup
2 Carrots
1 Red Pepper
1 Green Pepper
2 Onions
1 Red Chili
1tsp Minced Garlic
2tsp Minced Ginger
3 Tomatoes (Peeled)
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
1 Tin Canellini Beans
1.2l Stock
2tbsp Tomato Puree
1tsp Curry Powder
1tsp Cumin
Handful of Chopped Fresh Coriander


For the Meatballs
250g Boerewors Sausage
1 Onion
1tsp Cayenne Pepper
1tsp Turmeric

Method 

1. Make the meatballs.  Chop the onion very finely and combine with the de-skinned boerewors (Or you could use another type of sausage if you can't get the proper stuff).  Add the spices and mix everything together and then roll out into small balls, about 3cm across.  Put these in an airtight container and then refrigerate for about an hour

2. Slice the onion, red and green pepper, carrot and chili.

3.  In your soup pan, heat some oil, then add the vegetables, as well as the curry powder, cumin, ginger and garlic.  Fry for 5 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften and are thoroughly coated with the spices

4.  Add the tinned tomatoes, beans, puree and stock then bring to the boil and simmer for 30  minutes

5.  After 20 minutes, heat some oil in a frying pan and then cook the meatballs until they are nice and brown.

6.  Add these, as well as the skinned chopped fresh tomatoes to the soup and cook for 5 minutes, then serve.

7.  Garnish with a handful of chopped coriander or flat leaf parsley

Albondiga Soup

 Sometimes, there is a little bit of serendipity (but not that awful film with Kate Beckinsale in) at work in the Soup Tuesday recipe lab.  For instance, a trail that started with a desire to make meatballs (and don't we all get that desire sometimes) coupled with an obsession with chorizo that is second only to my all-consuming black pudding mania, plus a wish to make something sunny and fresh to combat the wettest April since the dinosaurs pulled their wellies on, led to this soup

And then I realised that it's also almost Cinco de Mayo, which I am given to understand is an excuse to drink as many margaritas as humanly possible, like St Paddy's day with Guinness (possibly it has another meaning which you can find out about here.

Also, Mexico's flag kicks ass! Some sort of bird vs snake battle going on!

So we are making albondigas. Say that word out loud Albondiga.  Can you say it without smiling?  If you can, maybe once you have tasted this soup, you will have a slight grin on your face anyway!

To start this recipe, I made my own version of chorizo, which, before you write in and complain, I know is not really what albondigas are made with, but I thought it sounded like a great combination of flavours.  Maybe in the future I'll get a sausage making machine, but for now this is just the filling of a chorizo, which makes it easier to roll into the albondigas (I'm smiling even as I type that word...)

Ingredients
For the Chorizo
500g Minced Pork
20g Paprika
2g Cayenne Pepper
3g Fennel Seeds
2g Salt
2 Cloves of Garlic


For the Albondigas
1tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Parsley
1tbsp Chopped Mint Leaves
1 Egg (Beaten)


For the Soup
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 Can Chopped Tomatoes
1 Courgette
2 Cloves Garlic
100g Sugar Snap Peas
1tsp Dried Oregano
1tbsp Chopped Coriander
1.2l Chicken Stock

1.  To make the chorizo mix, put the pork and spices in a large bowl and mix them together thoroughly, then put in a sealed container and refrigerate, at least overnight.

2. In a large bowl, combine the chorizo mix, chopped parsley and mint and mix together.  Then roll them out into meatballs, about 3cm across (you should make around 20 with this recipe) then set aside

3. Finely chop the onion and carrot.  Heat some oil in a large pan and add the onion and carrot, then cook for 5 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften.

4. Add the tin of tomatoes, chopped garlic cloves, oregano and bring to the boil.

5.  Add the stock and bring to a simmer before adding the chopped courgette and sugar snap peas.  Check seasoning and adjust to taste.

6.  Add the meatballs, carefully placing them into the pan one at a time, then simmer for 30 minutes.  Try not to stir the soup too much when the meatballs are cooking as this might cause them to break up in the pan

7.  Serve into warm bowls and garnish with fresh chopped corriander leaves and for a little bit of a zing, some tabasco.  Enjoy

Mulligatawny Soup

So this week I was still full of cold - a continuation of last week's suffering (and it's NOT man-flu, OK?) but at least I got my sense of smell and taste back, which I can only think is a good thing, and a sign that the illness may have reached a high-water mark and is now receding!

As soon as I developed a sniffle, it seemed like everyone was tripping over themselves to offer remedies, from staying in bed (my favourite) to drinking Hydrogen Peroxide (Not so keen on drinking rocket fuel...) and also as people know I write a blog about soup, people are also offering their idea of the perfect illness fighting soup.  (indeed, a quick check at search terms that brought people to my sight reveals an increase in interest in my chicken noodle soup, and also a search for 'chicken soup vs minestrone for illness.  If you are still reading, person who searched for that, I hope you are feeling better now!)

Anyway, most of the recipes involved either spices or lots of garlic and ginger, and the one that I thought I'd try - never having tasted it before - was Mulligatawny.  Now I know that this is an Indian recipe, and I imagine that bluff colonial types with mutton chop whiskers sat eating it in Victorian times.  Well, one can dream anyway....

Ingredients
1 Red Onion
1 Parsnip
2 Carrots
1 Potato
200g Lamb
3 Cloves Minced Garlic
1  Green Chili
50g Basmati Rice
2 Pints Vegetable Stock
1tsp Salt
1tsp Black Pepper
 2 Cloves
1ts Cumin Seeds
1tsp Turmeric
2tsp Coriander Seeds
Handful of fresh corriander

Method.
Cube the lamb and fry it off with some oil in a frying pan until its brown.

Chop the onion, parsnip, carrot and potato into small cubes.

In a pestle and mortar, grind the chili, salt and pepper, cloves, cumin and coriander seeds and turmeric into a paste

In your soup pan, heat some more oil and then add the cubed vegetables and garlic, and fry them off until they turn a little brown and start to soften up a bit.

Add the spice paste and basmati rice to the vegetables and allow to cook for a few minutes, then add the vegetable stock, bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for 30-45 minutes, until the rice is soft.

Serve and garnish with fresh chopped coriander leaves.  Enjoy!