Good old Minestrone Soup

The winter storms are rolling and rolling across my increasingly sodden and wind lashed world.  In desperation, I turned to the Mediterranean for comfort, and to remind me that once there was a less harsh world!  By stroke of luck, I found a beautiful big bulb of fennel while I was grocery shopping which led to this lovely recipe.  As with all my recipes, this isn’t cast in stone – use what you have and leave out what you don’t!

For four good serves I used :

1 cup of chopped onion

1 bulb of fennel, diced

3 stalks of celery, chopped

1 large carrot, diced

½ medium swede (approximately one cup) (rutabaga)

2 finely chopped cloves of garlic

A good handful of chopped green beans (frozen works as well as fresh)

1 400g tin of Italian tomatoes

1 pint of vegetable stock (use Knorr stock pots if you can find them)

2tsp caraway seeds

Salt and pepper to taste

½ cup soup pasta (or broken macaroni, spaghetti etc)

Preparation is simple – peel and chop the onion and sauté in a little olive oil while you prepare the rest of the vegetables.  After about 10 minutes, add the garlic, fennel, celery, carrot and swede and sweat together for 10 more minutes.  Add the tin of tomatoes and the stock and give it all a good stir.  Season to taste and add the caraway seeds.  Give the soup 20 minutes simmering – until the vegetables are tender.  Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary (you might need several tastings, I did!) then add the soup pasta and cook for 10 more minutes.

Serve with lovely crusty bread, or slices of parmesan toast (toast a few slices of crusty bread, sprinkle with grated parmesan and grill until crispy and golden).

I apologise for the quality of photographs, the real ones are stuck on my SD card as my computer won’t recognise it!  I’ll update the blog post as soon as I can with the real ones!

I’d like to dedicate this recipe to my lovely Dad, who loved a good soup.  I wish I could have shared it with him.

Barefoot in Bologna

This is another one of my favourite cheat sauces.  Glorious Barefoot in Bologna, a really tasty sausage ragu.  I often use it as a sauce with good chilled ravioli or tortellini.  

You simply need to thin out the tub of ragu with a little chicken stock and season with a little salt and pepper to taste, quickly cook the pasta parcels and then arrange in a dish before adding the sauce.  Add a good snowfall of grated cheese (parmesan mixed with cheddar is my favourite) over the top before popping into a hot oven for 25-30 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and hot through.  This is a lovely, quick after-work dinner for next to no effort.

Cheat Ingredient : Cheese Sauce

Cheating is all about knowing which corners to cut, and which packets and tins to buy.  If it’s good enough for Delia, it’s good enough for me!

This is one of my favourite cheat ingredients, and this particular brand one of the better ones.  To be truthful, I haven’t made a cheese sauce in more years than I care to remember, not since these tubs of good cheese sauce hit the shelves in the 90’s!

Cheese sauce is a particularly useful ingredient.  I always use it to top lasagne; when you’ve spent an hour making the meat sauce, making a cheese sauce can be enough to tip you over the edge!  This is the shortcut to make.  No-cook pasta sheets are another handy shortcut.  Back in the day I’d have one pan going to make the meat sauce, another cooking lasagne sheets and a third for the cheese sauce.  By the time I’d done all the washing up I often couldn’t face eating it!

Cauliflower cheese is a favourite, and with a tub of cheese sauce it’s next to no work at all.  I cook the cauliflower (and often broccoli for a bit of colour) briefly before decanting into an ovenproof dish, topping with the cheese sauce and some extra grated cheddar and finally popping it into a hot oven to finish.

A tub of cheese sauce can also make very short work of mac and cheese, especially if you have some leftover bacon or cooked ham hanging around.  Then it’s nothing more than a matter of thinning out the cheese sauce with some milk and a quick assembly job.

Zingy Salmon Pasta Bake

I made this with some hot smoked salmon fillets that I had taking up space in my freezer, it would be equally as good made with fresh salmon though.  Hubby declared this one of the best meals I have ever made him ..... I wonder about him sometimes, I really do!

For two people :

2 salmon (hot smoked or regular) fillets 

½ fennel bulb, finely chopped(leave it out if you don’t have it, it’s not essential)

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

1 small clove of garlic, finely chopped

1tb flour

¼ cup or so white wine (leave it out if you don’t have the dregs of a bottle to hand!)

250ml fish stock (Knorr pots are my favourite)

Zest and juice of a large lemon

2tsp capers

A good bunch of flatleaf parsley chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

100g – 150g pasta cooked to the underdone side of al dente.

Firstly, if you are using regular salmon fillets they will need gentle poaching until cooked – reserve the cooking liquid to make up the stock with.

Finely chop the fennel if using, the celery and garlic and sauté in a little olive oil for 10 minutes until softened.  Meanwhile, zest and juice the lemon and set aside.

Add the flour to the vegetables and stir around to absorb all the liquid and then allow it to cook for a minute or two.  Add the stock a little at a time to make a smooth sauce – as smooth as the copped vegetables will allow – and then cook to thicken.  This is going to be a pasta bake so the sauce needs to be more soupy than thick, so add a little more water if necessary.  Add the zest and juice of the lemon, the capers and season to taste with salt and pepper.   Add the broken up fillets of fish and the chopped parsley and stir together.

Add the drained cooked pasta to the sauce and combine together, then turn out into an ovenproof dish.  Cover with a scattering of breadcrumbs and top with grated cheese – a mixture of cheddar and parmesan works best.

Cook in a hot oven for 25 minutes, until the topping and the sauce underneath are bubbling.  I cooked mine at 190^oC (375^oF / gas mark 5).

I apologise for the quality of photographs, the real ones are stuck on my SD card as my computer won’t recognise it!  I’ll update the blog post as soon as I can with the real ones!

Cheat's Mac and Cheese

I made this a few weeks ago with a large tub of cheese sauce from Tesco.  This tub is about half as big again as the regular sized tubs you get in other supermarkets so if you buy one of those you will either need to thin it out a bit more, or make three serves not four.  It was so easy to put together that I had to share it with you all!

For four sensible portions I used :

300 g dried pasta

1 large tub of Tesco cheese sauce

6 rashers of bacon

About half a cup of milk

About a cup of grated cheese (I used a mix of cheddar and parmesan)

Salt and pepper to taste

Two handfuls of cherry tomatoes sliced

About half a cup of fresh breadcrumbs

Cook the pasta according to the directions.

While the pasta is cooking add the cheese sauce to a large basin and whisk in the milk to thin out the sauce a little.  Add half of the grated cheeses and season to taste with a little salt and pepper.

Cook the bacon and cut into strips/rough dice.

Drain the pasta well and return to the pan, add the cheese sauce and bacon and combine all together.  Turn out into a baking dish, top with the tomato slices and then scatter over the breadcrumbs, finally scatter the last of the cheese over the top.

Bake in a hot oven for 25 – 30 minutes.  I cooked mine at 200^oC (400^oF/gas mark 6).  

This freezes very well (without the tomato slices) so it’s worth making a double batch for a quick after-work meal.

Thick Country Vegetable Soup

It’s been growing increasingly autumnal here so I thought I’d treat us to a good thick vegetable soup.  I managed to pick up some nice soup mix from Sainsbury’s recently (a mixture of dried peas, lentils, beans and barley) which made a good hearty soup.

It’s difficult to give exact quantities, because much depends on appetite and how many serves you want.  Similarly, the actual ingredients can be varied to your own personal taste.  I bought as many different kinds of root vegetables as I could lay my hands on at the time!

For three or four serves I used :

1 medium leek

½ a medium swede (rutabaga)

1 large carrot

2 small turnips

2 ribs of celery

½ large celeriac (celery root)

1 large parsnip

100 g soup mix

Vegetable (or chicken) stock

Seasoning to taste

If you are going to use the soup mix, you will need to give it an overnight soak.  Then simply drain and cook according to the instructions.  Mine needed a good 10 minute boil and then 40 minutes rapid cooking.  I started cooking it while I prepared the root vegetables.

Halve the leek and then cut the halves into slices.  Peel and dice the swede, carrot, turnips, celeriac and parsnip.  Chop the celery ribs into rough pieces.

When the soup mix has had the required cooking time add the prepared vegetables to the pan and top up with boiling water if necessary.  Add the stock cube/pot/powder to the water and stir, season to taste with salt and pepper.  Cook the vegetables gently for 30 minutes or so (depending on size), until cooked through.

This was good on the first day, even better on the second.  Sadly, there wasn’t a third day!

Cheesy Sage and Onion Stuffed Chicken Breasts

This recipe came about because I had some leftover sage and onion stuffing that I wanted to use up, and was inspired by Delia’s lovely recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls. 

For two people

2/3 slices of stale bread

½ small onion, or a shallot

½ tsp dried sage

Salt and pepper to taste

1 or 2 tb grated cheese (a mix of strong cheddar and parmesan is very good)

2 chicken breasts

4 slices of parma ham/prosciutto

To make the stuffing simply pop the first four items into a small blender/mini chopper and process.  Add to a bowl with the grated cheese and mix together.

Lay the slices of parma ham/prosciutto out on a chopping board, butterfly the chicken breasts and place in the middle of the slices of ham/prosciutto.  Add half of the stuffing mix to each breast fillet, fold up and wrap in the ham.  Pop into an oven proof dish, season with black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  Cook at 180^oC (350^oF / gas mark 4) for 30 to 35 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through.

  

The link to Delia’s recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls is :

(http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/pastry/vegetarian-sausage-rolls.html)