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.

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.

Lemon chicken with egg-fried rice

This took under an hour, which considering I've not made it before (well, the lemon chicken bit, anyway) is nothing short of phenomenal. A normal person who doesn't keep returning to peer at the (very simple) recipe and moving stuff around the kitchen for no reason could probably do it much quicker. The hour also included a fair bit of boiling/marinading time, during which you could accomplish something useful, like dusting the mantelpiece.

I adapted the lemon chicken recipe from Fresh Chinese by Wynnie Chan (Hamlyn), without necessarily having all the right ingredients (I've no cornflour in, for example), so if you want to do it properly, best read that.

Serves one, but there were easily enough chicken pieces to set aside for a roll for tomorrow's lunch.

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 clove of garlic, chopped, crushed and generally mangled
2 small pieces of unwaxed lemon rind
Juice of ½ lemon
1 chicken breast fillet, cut into strips as thin as you can manage
1¼ tbsp plain white flour
A fair bit of olive and sunflower oils
3-4oz jasmine rice
½ small onion, chopped
Soy sauce

• Cook the rice. Jasmine rice takes half an hour. Other rices take less, which is desirable, and maybe some take more, which isn't. Rinse with cold water and set aside.
• Meanwhile, combine the garlic, lemon rind, a little lemon juice and just over ¼ of the egg mixture in a bowl, and marinade the chicken strips in it for 15 minutes, then add the flour and mix thoroughly.
• Now you want some kind of big, heavy non-stick pan, and some kind of wok. Put about 1 tbsp oil in the pan, and more than that in the wok, and whack 'em both on a high heat.
• Add the onion to the wok and stir frenetically for a minute or two, then add the egg until fairly scrambled, and then the cooked rice, keeping on stirring the while, and a few dashes of soy sauce.
• Meanwhile, tip the chicken strips into the pan and spread them out. Give them two minutes on either side until nicely browned, then stir fry for about another minute. Add the rest of the lemon juice, stir it about, and that's that. Serve the chicken strips atop the rice, in a bowl, maybe. I've got a bowl with a picture of a pig on it but I don't generally eat out of that one.

Soft white rolls

The breadmaker is often viewed as one of the most-purchased and least-subsequently-utilised items in the modern kitchen, along with the pasta machine and the prawn pudding broiler, but I wouldn't be without one. The household breadmaker belongs to my housemate, K, but the day she finally loses her patience and ups sticks, it's high on my list of essential purchases. I can't remember the last time I bought bread in a shop. Generally I just bung in the ingredients and put it on the basic loaf setting, and bingo, a few hours later there's a hot tasty loaf o' crusty bread with a paddle in the middle, simple.

I've never yet got round to making proper, non-cheaty bread solely by hand, but I came a step closer recently with the recipe for soft white rolls included in the breadmaker's manual, because you just use it to make the dough which it's then your responsibility to do something with. Crivens!

You put in the following ingredients, all together, water first, yeast last. If you weren't using a breadmaker I imagine you could achieve the same effect by mixing it all together in a bowl and then, erm, doing something. Looking at the manual, the breadmaker kneads it three times and lets it rise at 30°C and 38°C in the two gaps, so I'd do that if I were you.

Water (tepid)                  1¼ cups
Skimmed milk powder     1 tbsp
Butter (melted)                2 tbsp
Sugar                              2 tbsp
Salt                                 1½ tsp
Strong white bread flour  3¼ cups
Fast action yeast             1½ tsp

When the dough's ready, you can knead it and shape it into six rolls, but it will stick to you like a limpet so sort out the other stuff you'll need first otherwise you'll get dough all over the Goddamned kitchen.

• Oven on, 190°C
• Greased baking tray
• Floured surface for kneading
• Full flour shaker or open bag of flour (add a fair bit at will while kneading, so dough becomes less sticky)
• Non-sharp spatula or similar implement(s) for scraping your hands
• A sink half full of hot soapy water
• Your biggest and most impressive knife (for dividing up the dough).

Once divided, they go on the baking tray, as far apart as you can to allow for expansion, and then cover for 20-25 minutes (with a damp teatowel, foil, a newspaper etc. If using a newspaper, try and get one you've bought yourself rather than one you found lying around on the bus, because hygiene is important). Then into the oven it all goes, for 15-20 minutes. And there you have it. They look and taste much as you'd expect, that is, if you were expecting them to be tasty.