Roasted pumpkin seeds

As it is getting towards Halloween you see pumpkins everywhere, in every farm shop and greengrocer.

I thought that I would make pumpkin soup this week and then the Bear had the brilliant idea of also making our own roasted pumpkin seeds to have as a snack. They are full of fibre, high in protein and anti oxidants so they are, actually, a health food… despite tasting absolutely delicious.

First of all, get your pumpkin!                               Beans and belly pork 036

Cut it open ……

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 and start scooping out those seeds! They are your bonus – you’re making soup with the flesh and what you would have discarded you are now going to make into tasty little bites. Put the oven on to preheat at about 150 degrees

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 You need to scrape the fibres off

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And then give them a good rinse under the tap because they are very slippery and the gloopy bits rinse away easily enough

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Put them on a clean tea towel and rub them dry… well, you won’t be able to do that but you can get a lot of moisture off them

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You need to think about how you want to flavour the seeds – I fancied spicy ones and looked to see what was in the cupboards that I could use. I regularly make chilli oil by popping chillies into a bottle and topping it up with grapeseed or sunflower oil. It’s not particularly hot but it just adds a hint of heat. Worcestershire sauce would be nice too and I also found some Jerk Seasoning which I thought would just fit the bill as a flavouring dust to help crisp things up

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The oven should now be hot, so get a baking tray and put one of those silicon sheets on…. or cover it with tin foil, sprinkle that with the oil, pour on the pumpkin seeds, add a teaspoon or so of Worcestshire Sauce,  salt and then shake that Jerk Seasoning over the whole lot.

Roasted pumpkin seeds 020 Into the oven with it and that’s where it will stay for the next 15 – 30 minutes.

You need to keep checking though and stirring them round because they can burn easily but you’ll see them turn a lovely toasty colour. Put them onto some kitchen towel to absorb any extra oil

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Let them cool  and then serve those crunchy morsels up. If you served them with a glass of wine, I reckon you’d be hitting every health button there was!

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There you have it – tasty snacks from the stuff you would otherwise throw away. I think we deserve medals for being so creative and cost concious. Cheers!

Butter bean mash

Sometimes I just get fed up with the ordinary things I make to go with a meal. Sometimes I just don’t have time to make the ordinary things… mashed potaoes? All that peeling, boiling, draining and mashing? What if you are late in from work and need something quickly? Or, quite frankly, if you are fed up to the back teeth of mash?

At times like this I make butter bean mash. I always have tins of beans of various sorts in the larder because they are a brilliant standby and you don’t always have the time to soak the beans overnight.

First of all, get a couple of tins of butter beans, open them and rinse the beans till all the gloopy stuff goes

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Then, while they are draining, get some herbs if you have them

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I found some thyme, chives and oregano in the herb boxes on the balcony and, after stripping the leaves from the stems, chopped them roughly

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Then, as I heated some butter in a pan, I squeezed in some lemon juice to sharpen things up a bit

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And if you look closely you will even see a drop of lemon juice perfectly captured as it falls into the pan.

I’d like to say that shot was planned that way, but really it was just sheer luck.

By now the beans were well drained so they were added to the buttery lemon mix and stirred round, with the chopped herbs thrown in to soften in the heat. Once they were good and hot, I gave them a bit of a bashing with a potato masher

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Not too much though because you don’t want a smooth puree, you need something of the butter bean left

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And there you have it… a good, roughly smashed dish of butter beans

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Just right to serve up with whatever you fancied.

On this particular night, what I fancied was some delicious stewed beef and mushroom that I had made a few weeks ago and frozen ready for a night like this….. and served it in a good old Yorkshire Pudding

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It was gorgeous. The butter beans made a lovely change from ordinary mashed potato and were quick and easy. The buttery, lemony, herby tang livened them up brilliantly… and for a side dish that took less than 10 minutes? Perfect.

Well, what else could you ask for on a cold and dark night?

Eggs for breakfast?

When it comes to weekend breakfasts, there’s something very nice about having eggs of one sort or another. I was a bit bored with scrambled eggs and boiled eggs didn’t quite seem to hit the spot and what about fried eggs? Well, you needed bacon to go with fried eggs. What if you didn’t have bacon? What could you do then?

I liked the idea of baked or coddled eggs, where eggs are cooked in a little pot, usually in a bain marie in the oven. Thing about that was, first of all, I didn’t possess an egg coddler and secondly, even if I did, I didn’t want to be standing around in the kitchen waiting for the water to gently simmer round my little pots. I like breakfasts to be good and tasty I know… but I don’t want to spend hours trying to do it.

Normally I use the microwave only rarely – to reheat vegetables say or defrost something  – but I wanted to work something out. Eggs and microwaves can be tricky with the yolk going rubbery and the white staying runny. Not an appetising start to anyone’s day.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I tried this. You wouldn’t believe the variable results I have had from this… but now I can finally share with you one of our favourite Sunday breakfasts. A breakfast that can be made in just about ten minutes and then taken back to bed to eat while you read the papers and enjoy the fact that it is Sunday.

And what do you need?

220See that bread? That’s No Knead Bread, that is. Brilliant for using with Eggies because the bread has a great strong texture that holds the eggs well. And that butter? Well, I made that too!

In my many experiments I realised that while eggs can go in the microwave, they need some kind of insulation in the pot to stop the dreaded rock hard yolk scenario which clashes so badly with the gloopily wet white.

So, first of all, slice some bread

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Then scrape some butter over the slices… this sort of waterproofs the bread

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(The butter was straight from the fridge so it was hard, but really these are thin scrapes of butter)

Then, using a small pot with a lid, roughly line the inside with the bread

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The aim is to get a layer of bread round the outside of the pot so the eggs can drop into the middle. If you have any cream, just put a spoonful in the bottom with a pinch of salt

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Then, crack in a couple of lovely eggs….

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See how the eggs are kept in the middle of the pot? Protected by the bread?

You can put another teaspoon of cream on the top and then… well then you scrape the tiniest anount of butter over the rest of the slices of bread, sprinkle with salt  and lightly put the bits of bread on top – no pressing down! You are making a little lid for your bread liner

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Then, lid on and then put one at a time in the microwave.

First of all – ONE minute on medium and then 30- 40 seconds on high. Take out the pot and do the other one…..

They will still cook a little bit in the residual heat.  Lift the little bread lid and look…

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You can see the white is cooked… but what about the yolk?

Well, The Bear, being devoted to tomato sauce insists on his egg being squirted with it and then he shoves his spoon in….

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PERFECT!  Breakfast in less than ten minutes… 

Benefits? You have sort of baked/coddled Eggies; with no messy frying, or boiling, or poaching;  using the timer so you can lean against the bench while your cup of tea brews…. and the Eggies are cooked in the pot you eat them from, saving you washing up later!

It’s not the most elegant of breakfasts but it is fast and tasty and oh so comforting. The kind of breakfast a person might need if they had had a lively night and needed something restorative…….. some of you may know the feeling……

No Knead Bread update

Today is a Saturday and that means I have, within easy reach, dear sweet neighbours who come to help when I ask them nicely. Last night D & L and I spent a great evening sitting around eating and drinking until the early hours (which may explain my headache today) and while we were talking and laughing they said they would try the No Knead Bread.

Now, as some of you ( ahem, C ) have commented, the No Knead dough, at the point of tipping out of the bowl, is incredibly wet and sticky… I did say that but I couldn’t take a picture as I was doing it because there are only so many hands a person has…. and I am slightly reduced in that department anyway at the moment.

And so… a plan was born. We would make bread and, with the help of my dear friends, take the missing pictures for the blog and also show them first hand how easy it was to make!

There we were, measuring out, in a slightly unsteady way, the flour, yeast, salt and water. We mixed it together and reckoned that it would be ready for “doing stuff to” later that afternoon… yes, it was after midnight, but hey, it was the weekend and we were having a good time.

That meant that D or L would be around to watch and help at the tricky moment, because try as I might, I hadn’t been able to describe well enough what this wet and sticky dough looked like… and also be there to help me take a photograph.

So… I have inserted these pictures into the original No Knead bread post so that you can follow it from start to finish, but for those of you who faltered at this point, THIS is what I mean by wet and sticky..

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Yes, that is what anyone would call wet and sticky…

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Look at the way it pulls. See the bubbles, stretching and expanding? That is going to make your bread beautifully chewy and tasty.

This dough doesn’t roll out of the bowl, you have to scrape it out

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And that’s it.  A big, sticky lump  that is going to be rolled around, with your hands on that floured board where it magically becomes a normal looking piece of dough.

Does that make you feel better, C?  Will you try again? Have D & L’s efforts and help with photography inspired you?

Breakfast for a Bear

I do my best to make sure that Bear is fed properly and the most important meal of the day, as my Granny always said, is breakfast.

What else would I make The Bear, then, but porridge? But it is no good just making him healthy food – it has to be delicious as well….. so here is how to make Porridge for a (sometimes) Grizzly Bear!  This sweetens an early morning start and makes sure he starts the day properly, because boys and mornings aren’t always the best mix

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First, get your oats….. and your spurtle.

A spurtle is, as I am sure you are aware, a porridge stirring stick. Surely you have one? And if not, surely you are now inspired to get one? It makes the porridge smooth and creamy…. There’s even a porridge making championship where the winner of the most delicious porridge is awarded The Golden Spurtle.

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A tiny pinch of salt added when you put the milk in rounds out the flavour.

Porridge is all well and good but to make it delicious then you have to add good things to it

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At the moment, one of the Bear’s favourite things to have in there are sweened, dried cranberries

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And I always have frozen fruit in the freezer so as the porridge nears the end of the cooking I add a handful of cherries, blueberries, raspberries and redcurrants to the bubbling mix… the heat from the porridge thaws out the fruit to perfection

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Another gentle stir with the spurtle and you are ready to put it in a bowl

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… but not quite ready to serve…..

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A dollop of yoghurt on the top

And then the finishing touch

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I used to put syrup on his porridge but I have started using Agave Nectar, which a natural sweetener from the Agave cactus… less calories but really, really gorgeous, rich and deep, sweet and delicious

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So there you have it.. healthy and delicious. Guaranteed to feed even the hungriest Bear and keep him going for hours.

And it takes maybe 5 minutes to make. Oh the brownie points you can score with this…..

Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia

Well, if you are going to make soup then you need bread to go with it. You could buy stuff, I suppose, but as we are becoming Domestic Goddesses and nothing fazes us… obviously, the way forward is to make the world’s easiest bread.

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All you need is less than an hour,

250 g of strong bread flour

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7g of instant yeast (that’s a sachet or a teaspoon of instant packet yeast – yes, you eagle eyed baking detectives, I am using a different packet from the  last time. Just thought I’d give it a go, that’s all)

Olive oil

Garlic

Rosemary

Salt – you know I love that lovely, crunchy, large crystalled Maldon.

In a large bowl, put the flour, yeast and a teaspoon of salt and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.  I did it in my food mixer because (am I boring you with this? I only have one working arm you know) I needed to give it a good mixing and there’s only so much I can do…. add in 150 ml of warm water and mix it till it becomes a smooth dough.

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Get it out onto a floured wooden board and knead it till it looks smooth and bouncy. Then, on a clean surface, put down some olive oil, flop the dough onto it and using a rolling pin, roll it out…

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It just needs a rough roll to get it smoothed out.

I use silicon sheets – you can get them anywhere nowadays – I even got some in a Pound Store.  Absolutely brilliant for baking and cooking with. Anyway, put a silicon sheet on a baking tray and put your oiled dough on there.

Chop some garlic and rosemary leaves finely

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… then scatter it over your dough, then sprinkle it with lovely crunchy salt

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You need to let the dough rise in a warmish place for half an hour or so. Cover it in greased cling flim and let it rise.

I have been known to help it by standing the baking tray on top of the soup pan. Apart from anything else it frees up bench space so you can have a quick wipe down…

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Then, when it has risen up and become puffed up and bouncy. turn the oven on to 200 degrees and while that is heating, peel back the cling film, poke the foccacia all over with your fingers and drizzle it with olive oil

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Into the oven with it for fifteen or so minutes until it is golden brown

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Let it cool just a bit and then…. serve it up. Beautiful garlic and rosemary focaccia, perfect for your soup…. in fact, just perfect.

Mmmmmm…. Mushroom soup

 

So. It’s cold. I’m bored and then H rings to tell me I have some temping work when I can work again. That cheers me up immensely but I feel even happier when H says she has been reading this blog. And she has a request – H wants soup, mushroom soup in particular. Well, what H wants, she can have… and that also solves the dinner dilemma. I hadn’t the faintest idea what to cook and now I know.

I set off to the greengrocers to get the necessary ingredients… mushrooms! Mushroom soup is easy and simple but it can equally easily be given extra bits to make it more luxurious.

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I got mushrooms – a brown paper bag full.

An onion and some garlic.

Some single cream

I already have dried mushrooms at home – but you don’t have to add them if you don’t want to.

Chicken or vegetable stock cubes or granules.

And my added extras – I have yoghurt in the fridge and from the cupboard some porcini powder and truffle oil for drizzling

First of all, chop onion and saute it

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Putting salt in keeps the onion soft. You don’t want crispy brown onions as the basis of the soup.

Chop your mushrooms roughly – it doesn’t matter because you will be whizzing them later to get a deliciously smooth soup. Add that to the softened onion and throw in a couple of chopped garlic cloves. You’ll see all the juices start to come out and it starts to smell gorgeous. Add a couple of stock cubes, crumbling them into the mix.

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The next bit isn’t essential but it’s what I’m doing today… I have decided to add dried mushrooms to the soup for extra flavour. Packets of dried mushrooms usually contain, amongst other varieties,  porcini mushrooms which have a deep, intensely mushroomy flavour. Get a jug and put some dried ‘shrooms in… top up with boiling water and let it steep

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Now that soup base is coming along beautifully – how about making it even more delicious?

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Yup. Add some cream.

(But here’s a handy hint.. you can use milk instead or… and this is so handy to know… always keep some dried milk in the larder. It is always skimmed milk powder and that means lower fat, obviously. If you add the dried milk powder to the liquid of the soup, whisking it well, or using the hand blender, then you keep the liquid balance right but add flavour whilst not adding fat! It does make it taste creamy and rich and unlike a pot of cream, it stays in the larder without going off! Result eh? Try it. It works. )

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Then this is when those brilliant hand stick blenders come into their own. Start whizzing it to make a lovely smooth base…

 

 

 

 

Now, if you are using the dried mushrooms, this is where you add the mushroom water

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See how it has taken on the colour of the rehydrated mushrooms? Stir it all in and check the taste… it might need a bit of a lift from something.. salt? Pepper?

I leave the rehydrated mushrooms mainly whole, those I do a quick whizz round to partially chop them (The Bear tells me he prefers it all whizzed smooth but I like pieces of mushroom in it. It’s up to you. Do what makes you happy)

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Now for some added extras – if you want to add them do so. If you don’t……then don’t.

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The truffle flavour oil can be drizzled across the top to give a really heavenly truffley, mushroomy scent and the porcini powder dusted over the top of that for another layer of ‘shroomy luciousness.  Drop a spoonful of yoghurt in the middle, drizzle and dust away and you get this…..

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 So, mushroom soup – as simple or as layered as you’d like.  If you make the foccacia bread to go with it you can expect yet more declarations of love from those around you.

Going to do it then?

Cracking crackling

What can you get for £3.50 these days that will feed everyone? Not an awful lot unless you are prepared to put just a little bit of effort in… and when I say a little bit of effort that’s all I mean. That and planning to start things maybe 5 or so hours ahead. When  I went North, one of the things I did was go to the  butcher’s and I got a lovely piece of rolled belly pork.

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Belly pork… with crackling…. that has to be good. And the effort involved?

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Pat it dry… and then rub salt in the scored skin. The butcher will do that for you to save you having to run amok with a sharp knife – and let’s face it, he will have sharper knives than you will. Then, put the oven on as high as it can go and get it really hot. Only when you are sure that the oven is heated properly, put the pork in and let that meat sizzle! What you are doing is making a start on the world’s most delicious crackling!

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See? Half an hour or so and it has started to brown and crisp. There’s your  effort… you turned the oven on and kept an eye on the time. Now you can turn the oven down to 120 degrees or so and just leave it to cook slowly for the next 5 or so hours.

You can do what you like for a while then although, I suppose, you do need to think of vegetables to go with it. Not too much work there, either……I decided that shallots and apple would be just the thing to go with the pork – the shallots would be lovely, cooked slowly till they were soft and savoury and some apples (scrumped from my aunt’s tree) added to it to sharpen things up a bit and offset the richness of the pork… and maybe some roast potatoes just to make it all come together?

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       I’d also bought some broccoli that I thought might come in handy … well, I do so love it and if I slide some on the Bear’s plate, he will make a vague attempt to eat it … and I was thinking that maybe steamed and with a sprinkle of oil and lemon juice on? Hmmm? See that WOULD be nice, wouldn’t it?   

We have rosemary and sage growing in pots on the balcony so I went and got a few snippets, stripped the leaves from the stems and chopped it roughly

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 Then I peeled the shallots and the apples, sprinkled them with some salt, oil and the herbs… oh and a red onion peeled and quartered (well, it was just sitting there, asking to be included)

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The potatoes were put in round the meat about two hours before we were ready to eat (remember this is a low oven you have the meat on so they will need a bit longer to cook) … I’d normally steam them and peel them and then roast them in hot fat but all this carry on with my poor old arm meant that I was taking short cuts. They could get in there alongside that meat and cook alongside it.  And cook they did…….

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The broccoli….steamed for 4 minutes then sprinkled with oil and lemon juice…. salt and pepper…

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And now things were coming together.

The pork had been in for 5, maybe 6, hours… it had had that scorchingly hot start that makes all the difference to the crackling and then it had the rest of the time, cooking gently, the fat slowly basting the meat until it was soft and tender.

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Get that out and let it rest while you turn the heat up on the vegetables in the oven to get them beautifully coloured

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Then… slice your meat

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The crackling… oh my word… the crackling………..

So there you have it. Minimal work,  just a little bit of preparation – again, for less than a fiver you have a meal that would serve 4 easily and even leave some meat over for sandwiches the next day. Or, if you were any kind of a friend, you would make sandwiches for your friends who were drooling over this……and had had to listen to you crunching on the crackling.

So… get cracking for the best crackling ever! The meat’s not bad either 😉

The Bear steps in

Today has not been a good day for me – my arm is hurting and I have just idled around, wanting sympathy. Thinking of what to cook for supper was beyond me so The Bear (who got home at midnight, last night) took matters into his own hands and rummaged through the cupboards for something to make.

I haven’t been shopping for ages so the cupboards and fridge are empty……. except for basics….

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He grabbed some pasta – a lovely large, snail shaped pasta shell that catches the sauce you serve with it – and then started to look for something to make sauce with.

In the fridge he found the last few baby pomodorino tomatoes and some parmesan cheese. There were chillies growing on the balcony, some garlic in the vegetable box and… on the shelf at the back of the fridge

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Of course, the tin wasn’t opened then.

That was it. He started boiling the pasta and while that was going, he roughly chopped the tomatoes and garlic, with half a chilli (to give it a bite) and sauteed them in some chilli flavoured oil. Then (this is the hidden masterstroke) he put in half the tin of anchovies and stirred them all together

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By now the pasta was ready so he drained that, adding a couple of spoonfuls of the pasta water to the tomato sauce to loosen it all up a bit

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A quick stir round, then into the bowls with the pasta, and then top it with the sauce and a grating of parmesan

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And there you are. A perfect supper. The anchovies dissolve away and give the sauce a gorgeous depth of flavour and the chillies give it a bite. All from scraps and bits and made in minutes.

Delicious. Everyone should have a Bear who can serve up dinner in minutes from the bare scrapings of the larder.

Thai Chicken Soup – the work of moments

When I first started cooking for the Bear I would assure him that whatever I was doing, it was merely the work of moments. You know how it is when you have just met someone? You want to spend as much time with them as possible……and you also want to impress them with your speed at preparing wonderful food. This soup, though, really is the work of moments.

I call it Thai Chicken Soup as it does use Thai flavourings. It’s not authentic – I made it up and I dare say people might complain that I haven’t followed a real Thai recipe but I don’t care. It has got Thai ingredients in and it tastes just like Thai soup. I love this soup. It is possibly my favourite soup … though there are many contenders. It is definitely my favourite soup that can stand alone as a meal, put it that way. It has the perfect mix of savoury and sweet flavours, the creaminess of coconut milk, the meatiness of the chicken and the gloriously golden, juicy pop of sweetcorn kernels.

Probably that’s where people might complain.. after all, corn is South American and this soup is supposedly Asian. I don’t care though. If you are to use that argument then no one but Peruvians can use potatoes. Or tomatoes…. We don’t care though. All we care about is making a deliciously tasty soup that will delight everyone.

Anyway…. ingredients. I have a selection of Thai ingredients now, so I will list them for you – but to do the soup you don’t HAVE to have them all. I just think that you probably will go out and get them.

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Thai Green Curry Paste

Chicken thighs – boned and skinned

Tin of coconut milk, or coconut milk powder

Thai fish sauce (Nam Pla)

Chicken stock

Palm sugar

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Sweetcorn on the cob

Onion

Ginger

Garlic

Lemongrass (you can get these last three ready chopped, which just adds to the speed of making this)

I also add, though the soup can be done well enough without, some Kaffir lime leaves and some Thai basil and a scraping of Thai shrimp paste. Maybe if you love the soup as much as we do you might go out and get the extra bits for the next attempt.

First, peel and chop your onion and saute in a little oil until it is translucent. While that is cooking, cut your chicken thighs into bite sized pieces.

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Put in a teaspoon or so of Green Curry paste, a squeeze of garlic, ginger and lemon grass and then put the chicken in and stir it round so it gets coated…. keep the heat medium to low, you don’t want to burn it. Add some Kaffir Lime leaves (which come shredded) if you are using them

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Chop your coriander and add the stalks to the chicken and spices.

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Make up some chicken stock – a pint or so and when the chicken is cooked though (it looks opaque) add that.

Then the coconut milk and a splash of fish sauce.  Add a teaspoon or so of the Thai Basil if you are using it.

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Cut the kernels off the sweetcorn cobs and put them in to cook

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Then add the coriander leaves and stir in a tablespoon of palm sugar…… taste the soup…..

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The thing is, you really do has to taste this to get it right…. does it need more salt? Could you add more chicken stock? Or is it the chillies… need a bit more? Just chop a little bit finely and add that. Perhaps you want just a little bit of extra sweetness…. all of this is up to you.

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You can add those lovely, flat, translucent rice noodles if you want to make it more substantial… but remember to snap them into smaller bits as there’s nothing worse then getting started on a spoonful and having to keep on sucking at a never ending noodle!

And there you have it.  Beautiful soup with lovely fresh ingredients, ready to eat in under 45 minutes. And the taste…. ohhhh the taste…  that will make anyone who eats it love you.

Ask the Bear.