52 Week Recipe Challenge 2015: Week 1

So I have been thinking about food a lot recently partly because I enjoy it and partly because we seem to have fallen into a bit of a rut again.  It's very easy to eat find yourself just sticking with the old faithful recipes and eating the same dishes week in week out so I thought it was time to bring back the 52 recipe challenge.  Ok, it's probably a bit of a stretch trying a new recipe every week with a toddler underfoot but I do want to ensure that he doesn't just think there are only 6 or 7 meals that people eat.

To kick things off I decided to make a Broccoli and Stilton Soup something I haven't done before but also don't have a recipe for so I kind of winged it..

To make this recipe I used:

1 Bunch of Broccoli
Most of a big block of Stilton
About 4 Potatoes
1 Red Onion
A sprinkle of mixed herbs
4 Garlic Cloves
A knob of butter
A vegetable stock cube
Lots of boiling water

I started off by chopping up the onion, then I put the knob of butter in my wok and pressed four cloves of garlic on top before turning the heat on and stirring it around. After about a minute I added the onion and gave it a quick mix so that the garlic didn't burn and cooked it on low.

Whilst the onion and garlic cooked I put the kettle on for my vegetable stock and then chopped up my potatoes.  When I had finished chopping the potatoes they also went into the wok and were mixed in with the onions and garlic.

I then put about a pint of boiling water in the measuring jug with the stock cube and dissected/cut up the broccoli.  As I had no idea what I was doing I used it all apart from the bottom centimetre so all of that went into the wok, I stirred it around on a high heat for about a minute before adding the vegetable stock and then realising that I didn't have enough water pouring the rest of the water from the kettle in and letting it cook for about twenty minutes.

After twenty minutes I checked on the soup and the broccoli still didn't appear cooked so I wasn't sure what to do so I added enough water to the wok to cover most of the broccoli that floated on top.  The I tried to get it to boil then simmer but it seemed to take an eternity to boil so after a while I gave up and left it simmering  until everything seemed cooked when I came to it.

Once everything was cooked I turned off the heat, I blended up the mixture, in two batches as I made more than my blender could hold... once that was done I grated my Stilton into the soup.  It turns out Stilton is crumblier than I had anticipated so I  had to break bits off grate them in and then get some more. When all the Stilton was added I poured my tub of single cream and a bit more mixed herbs in and then let it cook until it was all combined.

In the end it made an ok soup, quite tasty and both my boyfriend and toddler ate it.  The main change I'd make next time would be not to use the trunk of the broccoli as it didn't really blend up that well. Still it made loads and it's always good to have some back up soup on a cold winter's day.

52 Recipe Challenge - week 49

For a while I've been thinking about a soup I had at a nice little cafe I discovered with one of my friends on a trip to Manchester.  The cafe was called Sugar Junction and the soup was beetroot, rubarb and ginger.

It intreiged us both and we were won over when we tried it, a few weeks later my friend posted that she has a recipe for this soup so obviously I wanted to try it and asked for the recipe.

About a month passed and could I find any rubarb anywhere? Could I eck. Finally last week I managed to get my hands on some rubarb and try Jen's soup!

To make Jen's Rubarb and Beetroot soup you will need:

1 Red Onion
4 Beetroots (not pickled)
1 Litre Vegetable stock
A sprinkle of Cinnamon
1 Carrot
1 Orange
A glug of orange juice (My addition)
A knob of ginger

To start off I chopped up the onion and fried it.

Whilst the onion was frying I washed, peeled and chopped the beetroots and then fried them with the onion.

I then put the kettle on and got my vegetable stock cubes out before adding roughly 1 litre of vegetable stock and a bit of cinnamon to the beetroot and onion.  I got this lot boiling before reducing it to a simmer whilst I worked on the other half of the soup.

I checked the recipe again and realised I needed to add the carrot so I got it out of the fridge, washed it and chopped it up before popping it in the pan.

After doing that I grated the orange, then I moved on to the rubarb which I wasn't sure if I had to peel but apparently I don't. (Hurrah!)

So once I had chopped the rubarb I stuck it in a .

Then I chopped the orange in half and tried to juice it but it didn't produce a great deal of juice so I added a good glug of some out orange juice of a carton as well.

I then cooked the rubarb and orange mixture until it mashed up.

Before combining it with the beetroot mixture and grating my knob of ginger into it. 
After I thought the flavours had combined I chucked it into my food processor to make it a bit less lumpy.

Once I'd liquidated the soup I poured it all into tupperware containers for my lunch and enjoyed my first batch the other day at work.

I was lovely, nice and tangy!  This is definately going into the repetoir!

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 2.

This week I decided to try something a bit more practical and something savoury.  The recipe I tried this week was a Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall one I found on the Channel 4 food website which intrigued me, butternut and nut butter soup. Recently I have mainly been eating soup for my lunch at work but have got stuck into a rut of the same old leek and potato or carrot and coriander soups so I decided to loo for inspiration.  Now, I’m not a stranger to squash it’s good in curries and even better roasted with garlic and cheese so the idea of finding a new use for this vegetable seemed like a good one.

The recipe I’m going to put down isn’t exactly faithful to the original as I don’t like nuts and one of the main ingredients was peanut butter, so I decided to experiment and use hummus instead...

To make this soup you need:

A  Butternut Squash

A large onion or two small ones

A knob of butter (about two knife scrapings)

Two cloves of garlic one chopped, one crushed

A bit of ginger

Some chilli

1 ltr boiling water

2 vegetable stock cubes

A tub of hummus

Salt

Pepper

Lime juice

In the original recipe they include things to top your soup with  such as yogurt; however, I didn’t have any in my fridge to I left this out.

To start off I chopped the squash in half and peeled it.  (I don’t like peeling squash as it isn’t as easy as peeling potatoes or carrots... but it was part of the recipe so it had to be done!)

After peeling the squash I chopped it into smaller pieces and put them in a bowl to one side.

Next I chopped up the two small onions as I only had small onions, once cut up I put a  knob of butter in my saucepan and when that was melted added the onions. I cooked the onions until they went soft.

  In the original recipe it says use fresh chilli, garlic and ginger but I cheated and used lazy garlic, ginger and idle chilli. When making this soup I added a teaspoon of lazy pre-chopped garlic. I mashed another teaspoon of lazy garlic in my garlic crusher, then I added a teaspoon of lazy ginger and a teaspoon of idle chilli and stirred the lot together.

After that had cooked for a few minutes I added the squash, a sprinkle of salt and pepper then put the kettle on to boil. 

Whilst the kettle was boiling I mixed the squash with the onion and spice mix, once the kettle had boiled I mixed my vegetable stock cubes in the boiling water then added it to the rest of the soup. 

  After doing this I turned the heat up and got the soup to boil and then turned it down to simmer and put the lid on so that it covered most of the pan but let some of the steam escape. 

I then left it for about 20 – 30 minutes whilst I washed some pots and started on cutting things up for my tea. When my tea was bubbling away next to my soup I checked on my soup and decided it was time to stop simmering and start blending.  Initially I started trying to ladle the soup from the pan into the blender attachment but then decided against it and poured it all in over the sink incase of spillages.

I then whizzed it in my blender for a few seconds and put it back in the pan.

My next step was to try to combine the hummus and the soup.  I got the hummus out of the fridge and put it in a bowl and tried stirring it with a bit of soup as was the original recipe advised doing with peanut butter, I wasn’t sure if this was quite successful but put it in the pan with the soup anyway.  I tried stirring it lots but it didn’t mix so I put it all back in the blender and it combined.

Once again I transferred the soup from the blender to the pan and heated it through on a low heat, once it looked all bubbly and hot I turned the heat off and added a splash of lime juice, lots of dried coriander, some salt, pepper and chilli to season.

This Suash and Hummus soup tasted different to all the other soups I have made.  Maybe it was because of the experimenting with the hummus or the lack of potatoes as most of my other soups contain potatoes... but it was rich and tasty with a mix of sweet and savoury notes.  The only down side is I may have over done the chilli seasoning a tad as it made my mouth tingle afterwards.  Must remember: chilli is not a seasoning!

Have you tried any new recipes recently? Or do you have any good squash recipes you’d like to share with me?