Cauliflower Cake, Lamb & Sesame Stirfry and more. A Week of Meals 003

Week 3 of the meal planning odyssey and to be honest I'm surprised that I've made it this far.  As far as new year's resolutions go, this has lasted twice as long as my other resolutions, go running 3 days a week (I'm blaming that one on the snow), cut down on the alcohol (I'm blaming that one on the fact it tastes too nice) and build a robot sidekick (I'm working on that one...)

So without further distractions, on with the list...

 Friday - Chickpea and Chorizo Stew

This one was a quick and simple meal as there are many more important things to do on a Friday evening, and I always like something a bit mediteranean every now and then.  This is a Nigella recipe, which made me inclined not to cook it as I really do not like her TV shows.  However, woman can cook, and this was rather amazing for something that took 15 minutes to prepare...

Should you wish to cook this (and you won't regret it), here is linkage

Sunday - Lamb and Sesame Stir fry

This was my pick from the book Mrs Soup chose, as per the rules of Recipe Club (Well, the second rule actually.  The first rule is do not talk about Recipe Clu... oh drat)  The book was 'What's Cooking - Chinese' by Jenny Stacey, and whilst it was nice, Im not sure how authentic a lot of the dishes are - alarm bells always ring when cook books don't include the name of the dish in the original language (or am I just being a food snob?)

Anyway, I chose it because I don't think I've ever encountered lamb on a chinese restaurant menu before, so I thought I'd give it a go.  It turned out nice, as George Formby might have said, if he'd eaten it...

Monday - Leek and Goats Cheese Tart / Poached Pears

Mrs Soup's pick of the week, from a book called 'Farmer's Market Cookbook'.  Because of another new year's resolution - i.e. the whole healthy eating thing, we swapped out the shortcrust pastry for layers of filo pastry - a tip that the Hairy Bikers did on one of their recent shows.  It made the whole thing a lot lighter and rather nice, although it could have done with some bacon or similar to give it a bit more kick.

Tuesday - Ezogelin Soup

This week's soup.  See blog post below

Wednesday - Cauliflower and Cheese Cake

The weekly veg box delivery left us with a couple of Cauliflowers which I had absolutley no idea what to do with, having grown bored of Cauliflower curry and Koftas, so I did what all sensible people do in the 21st Century - ask twitter.  I got some amazing suggestions, including fritters, making them into a pizza base and a tasty soup which may appear on the blog next time I have cauliflowers.

However, the one that caught my eye was a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi for a cake!  It was an experiment, to say the least, and I didn't have high hopes - especially with my aversion to all things baking related.  However, the end result was something of a triumph.  I highly recommend it if you have no idea what to do with the brain shaped vegetable lurking in your cupboard...

The recipe is here

African Chicken and Peanut Soup

Here's a little known and rather sad fact.  Mr Ed, the talking horse (of course) was often said to have been made to talk by having peanut butter smeared on his teeth.  As the horse attempted to lick it off, it looked like his mouth was moving in speech.  The truth of the matter is that the horse had wires attached to his mouth, but the animal trainer thought that the peanut butter story was more charming, child-friendly and less likely to have those pesky animal rights busy-bodies interfering. Nowadays of course, Mr Ed would be made to talk via the wonders of computer animation (and probably voiced by Eddie Murphy - which would be a good thing...)

Another little known fact is that peanut is actually a bean.

A third (and final) fact is that peanut butter is my father's least liked food in the entire world.

At least two of these facts were brought to you with the aid of Wikipedia, see if you can guess which one wasn't...

The reason, of course, for these nut-based facts was that today's soup has peanut butter as an ingredient.  I love peanut butter on toast from my breakfast, but for some reason, I'd never gotten round to using it as an ingredient in cooking before.  I now feel that I have been remiss for all this time, as it added so much to this soup.  Indeed, if anyone has any other recipes which use peanut butter, feel free to point me in their direction in the comments section below!

On the question of crunchy vs smooth, however, I leave the choice entirely up to you!

Also, I used left-over chicken from a Sunday Roast (Again) but there's no reason on that you couldn't use chicken thighs or breast if you wanted.  This is a lovely, hearty and a little bit spicy soup

Ingredients
450g Cooked Chicken
1 Onion
1 Small Squash
2 Red Peppers
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
3 Cloves of Garlic
3tbsp Peanut Butter
2tbsp Sesame Oil
1 Small Piece of Ginger
1tsp Chili Flakes
2tsp Curry Powder
1l Chicken stock

Method
1. Peel and de-seed the squash then cut into cubes.  Finely chop the onion and garlic.

2. Heat some olive oil in your soup pan, then cook the onions until the soften.  Add the garlic and grated ginger, then cook of 3 minutes over a low heat.

3.  Add the squash, chopped pepper chili flakes as curry powder and cook for a further 5 minutes.  Then add the tomatoes, stock and sesame oil.  Finally add the cooked chicken

4.  Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, before adjusting seasoning and serve.  Enjoy!

Chicken Noodle Soup

I have had an exciting culinary weekend during which I ate Wildebeest and Ostrich burgers, biltong and dim sum, so when I got back I thought I would try something vaguely oriental - inspired as I was by the dim sum (and my almost successful attempts at using chopsticks - the steamed pork buns almost all made it from steamer to mouth without a stop on the floor in-between), and also by the desire to eat something that wasn't too heavy, after all the rich food I had consumed over the last few days

So here is my attempt at chicken noodle soup

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup

I first had Hot and Sour soup in a restaurant and was a bit wary, due to my dislike of Sweet and Sour Sauce served in Chinese Take-aways (you know, that radioactive red/orange stuff that they all serve.  Where does it come from anyway? )  But anyway, I was persuaded to try the Hot and Sour soup and needless to say, found it rather lovely.

This recipe seems to be an American version of a Szechan style soup, on account of the egg and cornflour in it, which makes it a lot thicker.  There are a number of variations, for instance Tofu makes a good chicken substitute, or you could go the other way entirely and add pig's blood to flavour it! Or at least use pork as the meat