A warming soup

If, like me, you're ill with the sniffles, chances are you'll be wanting some nice hot soup. But which soup to make? Well, this is a good source of recipes - I'm particularly taken with Ainsley Harriott's Sweet Potato, Chickpea and Spinach soup, and not just because of my unhealthy obsession with Ainsley Harriott. Times are, though, I've leafed through that book and been faced with a whole load of recipes I don't have the ingredients for, and a whole world of worry.

Soup can be simpler and the following recipe is as simple as it gets, yet wonderfully hearty and spicy. Any of the root vegetables can be substituted for whatever you happen to have in and you can probably do the same with the spices, so if you haven't got enough ingredients to have a stab at it, it's probably high time you got yourself down the grocers anyway.

1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 potato
1 white beetroot
1 carrot
Olive oil
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp dried chili flakes
Boiling/hot water
2 tsp bouillon powder (or vegetable stock cube)
Lemon juice
Salt

• Heat a generous slug of oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion and garlic until the onion is soft.
• Peel the veg and cut into 1cm cubes. Add to the saucepan with the spices and continue to fry for a few minutes.
• Add the bouillon powder and cover with enough water for the vegetables to start to float. Simmer until the toughest of the veg are cooked (the carrot, in this instance).
• Remove from the heat and have at it with a hand blender until you achieve the consistency you require (I like to stop just short of smooth, so that tiny chunks of veg still remain). Add more water or simmer longer depending on the consistency you'd like.
• Add salt and a few generous dashes of lemon juice (the lemon really rounds it off; try it before and after). Stir. Serve!

Soupy twist.

Dorset apple cake

Needing to find a use for a really big cooking apple from a friend's garden, I decided on a cake, and used this recipe from the Channel 4 website. As always, there were differences, due variously to availability or otherwise of ingredients, personal preference, and lack of competence:

• I didn't have quite enough butter, and the remainder was made up with vegetable oil.
• My giant apple was a shade underweight too. Remainder made up with a tasty eating apple from the Dig box.
• No lemon. Zest of a very old tangerine I found skulking in the bottom of the banana tree (yes, I continue to call them tangerines.What of it?) Juice of a bottled lemon.
• I get a bit confused about sugar. The types of sugar I have are brown sugar, and white sugar, both of which I used.
• Ground mixed nuts, not almonds. There may have been some almond in there.
• No cinnamon? I should coco. 2 tsp of cinnamon, my good man.
• I don't even know what dredging is, so that didn't happen.

I reckon it could have withstood 15 minutes or so further baking (at fan 160°C) which I suspect may have given it a bit more solidity. That said, it was in two silicone loaf tins, not the recommended cake tin, and furthermore I don't know the first thing about baking so who am I to say. As it was, it needed to be cut into fairly thick slices to maintain its integrity. This was, of course, a real shame.

It was tasty. Exceptionally scrumptious and moist. I may do it again the next time a really big apple rolls into town.

No more Globe

Well, I said a few posts ago I would write about Globe Delivery, the local takeaway, but I wasn't expecting it to close down in the meantime.

I think it's closed down, anyway. You might think it'd be easy to put a note on the outside of the shop; something on the website; even just a sentence on the wall of the Facebook group, but that's never been the Globe way. They've always had two main roles; to provide delicious food from various world cuisines, and to baffle and frustrate those who might wish to buy it from them. During the nationwide freeze in January, during which various people found it difficult to get to work for a few days, Globe stayed shut for several weeks. They once shut for two or three months due to an 'electrical fault', clearly of unprecedented and inexplicable severity. For about the last year, whenever you tried to order by card, the machine was out of order, unless you claimed not to have any cash and said you would have to order from elsewhere, in which case, it was miraculously and instantly fixed.

However, the food was delicious. They offered Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Thai and Japanese food, and seemed to do all of it extremely well. The pizza wasn't the normal deep-pan, stodgy takeaway fare, but thin, crispy and Pizza Expressy. The starters were all lovely, with the Suppli and Chiles Con Queso particular favourites. The jewels in the crown, however, were their burritos and wraps. It's hard to get a good burrito round these parts (the only place that springs readily to mind is Barburrito on Piccadilly Gardens) and Globe's were as good as I've had. I really want one of their Beef Chimichangas right now. Them boys was tasty.

It's difficult to see why it would have had to shut down, if well-managed. It was always busy, and everyone I know loved Globe. Friends from further afield in Manchester were known to come round purely on the proviso that there was Globe in the offing.

Farewell, Globe, you magnificent idiots. You are already missed.

More vegetable stew

Meat Free Monday is a campaign to raise awareness of the environmental impact of meat production and consumption. It encourages everyone to go meat free for one day a week and is a JOLLY GOOD IDEA.

This week I actually remembered about it. I bought lunch in the work canteen; an egg mayo sandwich, Quavers, a banana and a slice of sponge cake.

And it was all yellow.

In the evening I volunteered to tackle the new surfeit of vegetables, and settled on a veg stew, because you can just bung everything in it, innit. That's the magic! The magic of stew! I used this as a foundation, but I didn't have some of those vegetables, or those beans, and ended up changing it a fair bit. Makes round about enough for four. I served it with brown rice.

 
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1 (big) clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 medium carrots
1 kohlrabi
2 medium potatoes
1 beetroot
1 small courgette
A small pile of broad beans, removed from their pods, if pods is the right word
2 big tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 normal sized tin baked beans in tomato sauce
½ tsp thyme
1 tsp Marmite
2 tsp Bouillon powder or 1 vegetable stock cube
A big squeeze of tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste

• Pre-heat oven to 160°C
• Heat oil in a large casserole dish.
• Fry the onion and garlic together for 5-10 min on a low heat.
• Scrub and sandblast/peel all vegetables.
• Chop kohlrabi, potatoes and beetroot into 1cm cubes. In they go.
• Slice carrots and courgette. In they go.
• Add tomatoes, puree, thyme, marmite, broad beans and baked beans.
• Add stock/bouillon and enough water to cover, stir it about, lid on, oven, 45 min. I added too much water so finished off with 10 minutes' intense hob action and a little cornflour to thicken.

Vegetable stew

K made this and jolly nice it was too, but I'm just experimenting with uploading photos from my fancy-schmancy new phone.

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Dough

After an exhausting, fun and somewhat unusual day catwalk-modelling and lugging stuff about in the Arndale (for Bike Fabulous), I went for some eats with some Friends of the Earth. Initial plans had been to go to the Cedar Tree in the Northern Quarter (a delightful Lebanese restaurant containing a... questionably delightful grotto set into one of the walls) but the Cedar Tree was full (with no room even in the grotto) so we ended up nearby in Dough.

I'm not sure how long Dough has been there, because I'm not very observant and I'm not cool enough to be allowed in the Northern Quarter that often, although I vaguely recall it used to be an architect's office. It's an Italian chiefly specialising in pizza, quite large, yet still spacious and roomy, though the selection of 80s music played put me in mind of a singles bar frequented by middle-aged divorcees. They have a reasonable selection of lagers (some relatively exotic) but no proper beer, and there is wine, and a selection of expensive Bellinis, whatever a Bellinis are. The crossroads location and large picture windows make it ideal for watching the girls in their summer clothes pass you by, especially if you're Bruce Springsteen.

The menu covers all yer usual classics but there's some real odd stuff on there and I decided to 'go inauthentic' with the West Indies pizza, a dish that would surely have the inventor of the pizza, Julius Pizza, spinning in his mausoleum. It was topped with curried lamb, red onion and peppered banana, which is clearly wrong, but was no less delicious for it.

The Friends of the Earth all had lettuce pizzas. I don't know if they enjoyed them; they were too pale and weak to be able to tell me.

Afterwards we tried to take our drinks downstairs, but discovered that when the chairs are all up on tables, there's a reason for that, and were shooed next door into the adjoining bar, Apotheca, which had a fine selection of beers but was too noisy.

Very little

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. After a flurry of initial blog activity I have been busy, busy, busy, and generally too busy, and too gosh-darn hot, to cook properly, although I made a rhubarb clafoutis and have eaten SEVERAL sandwiches. This evening, feeling somewhat akin to a baked potato and in no mood to do anything at all, thank you very much, I succumbed to a takeaway from Globe. Globe is simultaneously the best and the worst takeaway in Manchester. More on that later, I daresay.