LEMON SYLLABUB

 

A little while ago I made lemon posset for a dinner party dessert.  You can read about that here.  I served it in a variety of small, dainty cups and glasses.  

Then a couple of months ago I acquired some more small Pyrex glass cups at a village brocante which would also be perfect for the dessert.  You can read about that here.  My thinking was white china cups for the ladies, plainer glass ones for the gentlemen, corny and old fashioned I know but I didn't have a full set of either so a mix and match would be fun.  They are both roughly the same capacity.

The next time I had it in mind to make lemon posset I was looking for the recipe and came across one for lemon syllabub instead.  I wondered what the difference was.

Essentially, for lemon posset you cook the cream and mix in lemon juice.  For lemon syllabub the cream is not cooked but you make a lemon syrup and also include some sweet white wine which appealed to me!  (Other recipes I have seen online suggest just using ordinary white wine.)

Mary Berry's recipe for it is in her book "Classic Mary Berry" and also on the BBC website as a video which you can see here.  Interestingly in the book the recipe suggests leaving the syrup to infuse for at least an hour or even overnight whereas in the video you combine it with the whipped cream as soon as the syrup has cooled.  

To whisk it up I used what I call my "spider whisk" because it reminds me of the ginormous spiders we get here in France.  You push the handle up and down and the spider bit twizzles round at huge speed, making it very effective as a hand whisk.  I was pleased to find that even French double cream whipped up quickly using it.

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The other day I found a set of ten of these little glass sundae dishes in a UK charity shop. 

They cost next to nothing and are perfect for the next syllabub!

(Or ice cream, or chocolate mousse.)

Ingredients

1 lemon (well scrubbed if not unwaxed) rind and juice

100ml sweet white wine

75g caster sugar

300ml double cream

Method

First, make the syrup by peeling strips of rind from the lemon as thinly as possible using a vegetable peeler or small sharp knife.  Put the rind into a small saucepan with the lemon juice, sugar and wine.  Bring to the boil gently and once the sugar has dissolved simmer for a few moments.  Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Strain the cooled syrup into a bowl but reserve the peel.

Add the cream to the bowl and whisk until it just holds its shape, ie until thicker but still floppy, not stiff.

Divide the syllabub evenly between six cups, glasses or ramekins,  dropping a dessertspoonful at a time into each one.  

Cut the lemon peel into thin strips and use to decorate the syllabub.  Chill in the fridge for a minimum of two hours.  The dessert is ideal for making the morning or day before you need it.

You could also decorate it with a sprig of mint, a few raspberries, sliced strawberries or edible flowers such as violas.

Serves 6.

VEG DRAWER SOUP and the death of a soup maker

This very basic vegetable soup has always been one of my favourites.  It uses all the bits and pieces in the veg drawer that could very easily be destined for the compost heap but instead you get a very tasty virtually free lunch.  You can use more or less any veg you have as long as it has something that will thicken the soup such as potatoes or any root veg.  My selection is influenced by the very first vegetable soup I ever made, years ago, to a recipe by Nigella Lawson.

Unfortunately during the cooking programme my soup maker seems to have died.  When it got to the blending stage there was just a weak humming noise.  😞

I bought both of my soup makers in 2021, firstly a Morphy Richards in the UK just after Christmas then one in France a few months later, almost identical but quite a bit cheaper in a sale.  The French one has been used a lot over the years so I suppose for what it cost I've had my money's worth.

When we next go to the UK by car I will probably bring the Morphy Richards one back to France as it doesn't get used very often, only a handful of times per year.  In the meantime, I can use the broken French one on the "chunky" function, mainly used for soups like minestrone, which cooks the soup just the same but doesn't finish it off by blending.  On this occasion I just fished my stick blender out of the depths of the kitchen drawer and used that to finish the soup.  The deep shape of the machine made the blending very easy, probably easier than in a saucepan which would be wider, and much easier than transferring to a separate blender or food processor.  Just one extra piece of washing up, the stick blender wand, so it will do for now.

I notice that I can get a very similar new one for about 50€ on Amazon but would rather not spend the extra money as long as the heating element is still working and cooking the soup.

Update  I made a red pepper and tomato soup yesterday on chunky, got my stick blender ready, and thought I would try the "blender only" function on the soup maker, just in case.  It worked!  Maybe it just needed a rest!

Ingredients

4 small carrots

2 small potatoes

1 leek

a handful of radishes

1 large tomato

1 stick celery

1 chunk of cauliflower

3 broccoli stalks, woody outer layer removed

dry sherry and grated nutmeg (optional)

cream or crème fraîche for serving (optional)

Method

Wash, trim and roughly chop enough veg to fill the soup maker to the bottom line.

Add 1 vegetable stock pot and water to the top line.  Cook on smooth (or cook on chunky and finish with a stick blender).

Stir in a splash of dry sherry and a sprinkle of nutmeg before serving, and a swirl of cream in the bowl.

Makes 4 generous bowls of soup.

SUNDAY DINNER SOUP (soup maker recipe)

We are very much fans of Sunday Dinner Pie in this house.  It's very similar to Christmas Dinner Pie which I wrote about here.

Last weekend we roasted a small joint of loin of pork in our usual way, which is in a covered roasting tin, sitting on a layer of sliced onions and covered with a herb crust (breadcrumbs with a few added mixed herbs).  We are not fans of pork crackling on account of it being "rather bad for you"!

Afterwards there were two small slices of pork, two potatoes and a few florets of broccoli and cauliflower left over, but no gravy.  Gravy is an essential element of Sunday Dinner Pie so I decided to turn the leftovers into soup instead.

It was delicious and quite thick because of the quantity of leftover potatoes but none the worse for that.  If I didn't own a soup maker I probably would have persevered with the pie option, making some extra gravy and using ready made pastry, or maybe turned it into some kind of gratin, or had a roast pork salad with the potatoes and discarded the rather tired looking veg.  Or, perish the thought, maybe even a roast pork sandwich and discarded everything else.  This was probably the easiest and quickest option that made use of all the leftovers.

It would probably work with any leftover roast meat.

Ingredients

2 slices of roast pork (with any attached herb crumb) chopped

1 onion (use the one that had been roasted with the meat if you have it)

leftover potatoes and veg

1 large carrot

1 small potato

1 leek

1 garlic and thyme stock pot (or a veg stock cube)

a splash of dry sherry (optional)

Method

Peel and roughly chop the carrot and put it in a layer in the bottom of the soup maker.  Put the Sunday dinner leftovers on top and then add enough prepared leek and potato to fill to the bottom line.

Add the stock pot or cube and enough water to fill to the top line.

Cook on smooth.  Stir the sherry into the finished soup.

Makes 4 generous servings.

RUSTIC FRUIT TART and a brilliant little gadget!

 

What do you do when a rapid dessert is called for?  You make one of these tarts from whatever fruit you have in!

I used a pack of ready made, ready rolled sweet pastry (called pâte sablée), a few sticks of rhubarb and two apples.  This pastry comes as a circle in France which is handy.  In the UK it's usually an oblong which is more awkward, in which case it's probably better to buy the pastry in a block and roll it out yourself into a circle.

I have made tarts like this before but this time I used a suggestion from Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's excellent book "Love your leftovers".  I used less sugar to sweeten the fruit and spread some strawberry jam on the pastry before filling it instead.  It took very little time to make and was on the table in well under an hour.  Delicious!

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Now would be a good time to mention my latest kitchen gadget.  A Jar Key.

I think I first heard about it from Angela over at Tracing Rainbows who mentioned it in a post some time ago.

I spotted one in Zodio in France recently.  This is a chain of stores selling kitchen ware, craft stuff and home wares, like a cross between Dunelm Mill, Hobbycraft and The Range.  It's a fabulous shop and an Aladdin's cave for enthusiastic cooks, crafters and people who need gorgeous new towels!!

Jar Keys are not cheap but by jove they are worth every penny (or centime).  They take all the effort and frustration out of getting the lid off a glass jar.  AND they leave the lid undamaged so that you can reuse the jar.

As time goes by the fight with jam jar lids has become increasingly more difficult and I have tried everything.  I have tried running them under hot water with the consequent scalding, gripping with bits of bubbly rubber stuff, crushing with one of those lid removers that look like a cross between a tin opener and a medieval torture instrument and, ultimately, asking a neighbour or passer by for help!  Nick is able to get them off with a certain amount of grunting and cursing but if he's out I have no chance.

Well, this little gadget has solved that problem.  It has a neat little grip that tucks under the edge of the lid and with one slight tweak the vacuum is released and it comes off effortlessly.  No more dreading the new jar of olives, jam or compôte!  All the stress is now gone!

Every home should have one.  They should be available on the NHS to prevent jar related high blood pressure and minor accidents in the home!  Brilliant!

You can get them from Amazon, Lakeland and I'm sure many other places.  Don't buy any alternatives, this is the one that works!

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Ingredients

1 pack of ready made, ready rolled sweet pastry (or plain shortcrust pastry)

4 slim sticks of rhubarb

2 eating apples

2-3 tblsp strawberry jam

2-3 tblsp ground almonds

1 tblsp granulated sugar

1 beaten egg or a little milk

demerara sugar for sprinkling

Method

Remove the pastry from the fridge 15 minutes before you want to make the tart.  

Preheat the oven to 190° / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Place a sheet of baking parchment on a baking sheet.  I usually use the paper that the pastry comes wrapped in.

Unroll the pastry and spread the jam in a circle leaving a margin of about 5cm (2").*

Sprinkle the ground almonds over the jam.  This helps to absorb any juice from the fruit and avoid the dreaded soggy bottom.

Wash and trim the rhubarb and cut into smallish chunks.  Peel, core and chop the apples.  Arrange the fruit on top of the ground almonds.  Sprinkle the granulated sugar on top.

Fold the pastry over the fruit, overlapping as if to form pleats.  

Brush the pastry with either beaten egg or a little milk and sprinkle demerara sugar over the whole thing.

Bake for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the fruit bubbling.

Serve warm with cream, ice cream or custard.

*You can use a narrower margin and use more fruit, which results in a larger tart with less of an overlapping edge to the crust and will make more servings.

Serves 5-6 portions.

PLUM FRANGIPANE TART

A friend in the village has a tree loaded with very small plums and invited us to help ourselves.

I don’t know what variety they are but they’re about the size of a large cherry.

They are slightly sharp, not quite sweet enough to eat like cherries, but are excellent when cooked.  The only problem is the stones.  Plums make a delicious pudding but the stones take the edge off the pleasure of them I think and more so when the fruit is small and the number of stones even greater.  (I also love damsons but the zillions of little stones definitely spoil a damson pie or crumble for me!)

With over a pound of them in the bowl I decided to try using my pink cherry stoner. It worked a treat and I whistled through the whole bowlful in no time at all.  (I put the egg in the picture so you could gauge the size of the plums.)

I decided to use some of them for a favourite recipe by Mary Berry and the rest went into the freezer.

The base is made from slices of brioche and a basic ready sliced brioche loaf from the supermarket is ideal.  It creates a slightly cakey base that has a definite patisserie style to it.  (If a brioche loaf is not available you can use brioche finger rolls.)

The frangipane (almond) filling is quickly made using a food processor but a stick blender and mixing bowl would work.  Then you arrange the fruit on top as randomly or precisely as you fancy.

It looks good when it comes out of the oven but brushing it all over with melted apricot jam to give it a nice glaze is the finishing touch which definitely makes it look the business.  

I have made this recipe many times, or at least my own adaptation of it, using various different fruits.  It makes a great large dessert to feed a crowd and always goes down well.  Hence I make no apology for re-posting it and giving the recipe again.

Here are a few more versions:

I made it recently using apricots.

You can see how the brioche turns into a nice cakey base.

I made it with rhubarb, which you can see here.

It was very good when I accidentally made it upside down - see here.

It was delicious when I made it using apples as per Mary Berry's original recipe - see here.

Ingredients

4-5 slices of a brioche loaf

175g spreadable butter or baking spread

175g caster sugar

1 tsp almond extract

150g ground almonds

3 eggs

50g plain flour

300-400g small plums, stoned and halved

2 tblsp apricot jam for glazing the pie

Method

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Butter a large, shallow baking dish about 28cm dia.

Press slices of brioche into the bottom of the dish, filling in gaps but not overlapping.  (You could also use 5-6 brioche rolls, in which case slice off the top and bottom crusts then slice in half horizontally.)

Put the butter and sugar into a food processor and whizz until light and fluffy.  Add the extract, almonds, eggs and flour and whizz again until nice and smooth.  

Spread the mixture evenly over the brioche base and arrange the fruit on top.  

Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown and the centre is firm.  Warm the jam in a small saucepan to make it runny then brush it all over the top of the pie to glaze.  

Serve warm or at room temperature, with cream, ice cream or custard.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

PEA AND MINT SOUP (soup maker recipe)

I have only had my Morphy Richards soup maker in the UK for a couple of years but it feels like for ever!  It’s become one of the most useful kitchen gadgets I have ever owned and I wouldn’t like to be without it.  In France I spotted a very similar model in a shop called Zodio and swooped when it was on offer for a bargain price of about £28.

The weather in our part of France has been odd so far this year.  Thankfully we haven’t yet had the heatwaves of the last couple of summers.  There have been a few days when the temperatures reached the low thirties but nothing like the high thirties and forty plus degrees that we endured last year. 

So much so that when friends came round for the evening recently, plans for chilled cucumber soup and a bbq were quickly shelved and I made this soup instead!  

Funnily enough, the friend who first recommended getting a soup maker told me this was her favourite soup to make in it but until now I never had.  So, with a bag of frozen peas in the freezer and a robust mint plant in the garden a rapid change of menu was easily achieved!

I found the recipe on the Morphy Richards blog which, at the time of writing, you can see here.  It has a few really nice, basic soup recipes which I shall no doubt work my way through - sooner rather than later if the weather continues to be a bit iffy this summer!

It was absolutely delicious! So easy to make that having a supply of frozen peas available has to be the easiest way to rustle up a super soup as a starter with the minimum effort ever!

Ingredients 

1 onion

700g frozen peas

2 cloves of garlic

1 medium potato 

2 vegetable stock cubes (I used one veg stock pot as that’s all I had)

A handful of fresh mint (or 1-2 tblsp dried mint)

700ml boiling water 

A squeeze of lime juice (optional - I omitted it as I didn’t have a handy lime in stock)

Salt and pepper to taste

Method 

Peel and chop the onion and garlic.  Peel and dice the potato.

Put everything into the soup maker machine and cook on the smooth setting.  Thin with a little boiling water if it’s too thick.  (You could also add a swirl of cream or crème fraîche for extra glamour before serving if you fancy!)

Makes 4 generous main course servings or 6 smaller portions as a starter.

SPICED PARSNIP AND APPLE SOUP (soup maker recipe)

I spotted a recipe for something similar to this in a magazine recently.  The recipe included, like so many often do, chilli.  Chilli no longer agrees with me so I have to avoid it, which is a real shame because I do enjoy a nice curry - or at least I used to.

There seems to be chilli in everything these days and it turns up unexpectedly all over the place.  Goodness only knows why it ends up in some foods, such as the cauliflower cheese served in a local pub.  Cauliflower cheese is one of those foods that is perfect just as it is and definitely does not need any chilli.  The UK food scene seems to have gone chilli mad!

To make my version of the soup I used Sainsbury's garam masala because it contains lots of the spices I like but there is no chilli listed in the ingredients.  I also added a touch of fenugreek just for the sake of it.

It was very tasty.

Ingredients 

2 fat parsnips

2 dessert apples

1 onion

1 medium potato 

a chunk of celeriac

2 tsp garam masala

half a tsp ground fenugreek

2 tsp Marigold veg stock powder (or use a stock pot or home made stock)

Prepare enough veg to fill the machine to the lower line.  Add enough water (or stock) to fill to the top line and cook on the smooth setting.

Makes 4 generous portions.

CHICKEN STIR FRY SOUP (soup maker recipe)

Our kettle in the UK died last week.  Actually the kettle still boiled water but the catch holding the lid broke and my other half declared it unfixable so we went to buy a new one.

Curiously, exactly the same thing happened to our kettle in France last month; the lid broke on that one too.  How bizarre to have both give up the ghost at the same time, for the same reason!  As it happens both kettles were at least ten years old so didn’t owe us anything.

In France we got a new decent one from a small selection at our nearest supermarket.  In the UK the choice in our local Tesco, usually quite extensive, was poor.  In fact since their recent refurb they have changed the way they display their small electricals and it’s not good.  Previously they had a top shelf with each item on display so you could pick it up and look at it, with sealed boxes of them stashed on shelves underneath for you to buy your selection.  Now, nothing is on display.  There are simply boxes of things piled on the shelves and none that you can look at, only the picture on the box to go on.  Hence there are damaged boxes of the things where people have ripped them open so they can see what they actually look like. We looked at a couple that had already been opened and gave up, eventually ordering one from Amazon.  

However, I suggested that it might be worth looking at the sale shelf, where they dump items for clearance.  They had no kettles but they did have a wok, reduced to less than £10.  I have never owned a wok in my life and have never tried making stir fries at home but my OH reckons he has.  He mentioned it in the same wistful way that he refers to all his awful 1970’s clothes that filled his wardrobe when we met and that were expunged when we got together and combined our two households in the 90’s.  The implication being that I took it to the charity shop along with his flares and skinny rib jumpers.  I can honestly say I don’t remember doing that.

Anyway, I am on a mission to lose a bit of weight* and thought a wok might help, stir fries being generally lower in calories than say sausages and chips for a midweek dinner, so we bought one.  We picked up a bag of stir fry veg, some noodles and chicken fillets, and that evening Nick made a delicious chicken stir fry, making a sauce with garlic, fresh ginger and soy sauce.

There was a good portion leftover and about a third of the pack of veg so I turned it into soup.  It was also delicious!

The soup maker makes four good portions and as there are only two of us I store the remaining half in the fridge.  Having experimented with various ways of storing it I have finally settled on using the ancient Tupperware jug that belonged to my mum.  It was found at the back of the cupboard when we cleared Dad's flat after he died and I'm pretty sure neither of them ever used it.  It was no doubt a rogue purchase from one of the Tupperware parties that Aunty Vera used to drag Mum to in the 1970's!

*There will be no cake posts for a while, sadly.  If I make it I will eat it and we have even decided not to make a Christmas cake this year, which is the first time ever in my whole life that there will not be a home made Christmas cake in the house.  

Ingredients 

one portion of leftover chicken stir fry, including the noodles

the remaining unused stir fry veg in the pack

three small potatoes

1 carrot

1 leek

1 stick of celery

Method

Add the stir fried chicken and veg to the machine and prepare enough veg to fill to the bottom line.

Add enough water to fill to the top line and cook on smooth setting.

Makes four generous portions.

MIXED FRUIT CLAFOUTIS and some gadgets.

A clafoutis is one of my favourite desserts and the recipe I most often use for it (well I have only experimented with a couple of others) is this one from my friend Susan.

The traditional clafoutis would be cherry and another favourite of mine is apricot.  I looked in the fridge and found a few of each so I decided to put them together.  Why not!

It's important to have the right size of baking dish, not too shallow nor too deep. I find this 20cm Pyrex dish is just the right size for a single layer of fruit and the batter. 

The batter is simple to make and quite forgiving in terms of ingredients.  This time I had a tub of Elmlea single (which is largely buttermilk) and some whole milk.  I often add a sprinkling of flaked almonds which is not really traditional but we like it!

Another essential piece of kit is a cherry stoner.  Some say that the cherries should not be stoned because stones add flavour.  For me, spitting out cherry stones takes away some of the joy that is a clafoutis so I always stone them.  The problem is in finding a good cherry stoner that works.  I have had several that don’t, that have been a real pain to use and ended up in the bin.

So, having decided to make an apricot and cherry clafoutis, I went looking for my cherry stoner but the cupboard (drawer actually) was bare!  So I had to go and buy one.

First I headed to my absolute favourite shop, the hardware shop in the little town two miles away.  They have everything and what they don’t have they can get for you.  Sadly, the owner rummaged through boxes of ancient stock and was gutted to find that a cherry stoner was one of the few items they did not have!  

I couldn’t wait two days for their next trip to the wholesalers so I headed into the big town.  Actually to the retail park just on the outskirts of town, to Dunelm Mill.

On the way there I pondered how much our town has changed and how much I miss it.  It's now becoming a ghost town of charity shops and cheap clothing stores, the only decent shops left being M&S, Boots, Wilko and W H Smith’s.  I do wonder how much longer they will last, they must be hanging on by the skin of their teeth. 

Ours used to be a wonderful small market town. It had a BHS, Richard Shop, a small department store called Turner’s, with creaky floorboards and wrinkly carpet, a bigger furniture store, M&S*, Littlewoods, a myriad of independent shops and, best of all, the Co-op.  The Co-op was in a fabulous Tudor style timbered building, and you could buy everything there that you could possibly need, from beds to shoes and cosmetics. 

The household linens dept was wonderful, selling curtain fabrics, dress fabrics and a huge range of knitting wool.  The toy department was magnificent and best of all was the kitchenware department where you could buy absolutely everything.

When it closed some years ago I was so sad.  I knew a couple of the assistants, ladies whose whole careers had been working for the Co-op, and they said it was the internet that killed the shop.  People would go to the Co-op to choose something, ask the assistants for their advice based on years of product knowledge and experience, then go home and order it online.

Now these shoppers can no longer see what they’re actually ordering, they have to gamble that it’s something like the description on the website then send it back and wait for a refund.  Still, it keeps all those van drivers in a job and saves the online retailers from having to have too much capital in the bank, they use their customers money instead, hanging on to it for a couple of weeks before they send the refund!

Anyway, for £5 I bought the only cherry stoner that Dunelm had and, believe or not, it actually works -without smashing the cherry to bits or splattering juice everywhere!  The question is, would I have ordered it if I had seen it on the internet?  Probably not, as its bright pink colour makes it look more like a toy than a serious piece of kit!

Another gadget needed is a whisk.  Did you have one of these?  We did.  My mum used one for making pancake or Yorkshire pudding batter, and for whisking up Instant Whip.  It was one of the many things that vanished after she died.  Dad probably thought he would never use it so got rid of it, along with her cake tins and mixing bowl.  It never occurred to him that his daughter might like to have them.

I recently treated myself to one of these, having seen it recommended in a blog somewhere. It’s an Oxo Good Grips modern version of the old fashioned hand whisk and it’s brilliant for beating up batters, whisking up cream and anything for which the electric version seems a little over the top.  The business end comes apart and the bits go in the dishwasher too!

A clafoutis is nice served slightly warm or at room temperature, dusted with a little icing sugar if you like and with a dollop of cream or ice cream.  Or just plain, like this one.

(*I just discovered yesterday (27th June) that our M&S is moving from the town centre to a vacant building in a nearby retail park, one that was previously occupied by Debenhams.  This will happen in a few weeks' time.  It’s a good move for M&S as it’s a big, modern building and good news for shoppers as the parking is right outside and free. I will probably shop there more often as a result.  It’s very bad news for the town centre and the other shops as M&S is the only reason that many people go into town at all.)

Ingredients

50g plain flour

50g ground almonds

100g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

250 ml of liquid consisting cream, plain yoghurt and whole milk

a handful of apricots and cherries

a spoonful of flaked almonds

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter a suitable baking dish.

Use enough fruit to make a single layer in the bottom of the dish.  Remove the stones from the cherries and apricots and cut the apricots into quarters.

Put the flour, ground almonds, sugar, liquids and and eggs into a medium bowl and whisk until well combined.  Pour the mixture over the fruit and scatter flaked almonds over the top if you like.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and firm.

Serve warm or at room temperature, dusted with icing sugar if you like and with a dollop of cream or ice cream.

Serves 6.

CHICKEN, LEEK AND POTATO SOUP (soup maker recipe)

 

One of the recipes I regularly cook for dinner, for ourselves or guests, is Rachel Allen's chicken open pot roast.  You can see it here and I first wrote about it here.

This time I had one portion left over.  1 chicken thigh, a few chunks of potato, a few slices of leek and a tablespoon, or thereabouts, of the delicious sauce.  So I decided to make a soup.  It was yummy!

It also shows how easy it can be to turn not very much in terms of leftovers into a tasty lunch for next to nothing.

Ingredients

1 cooked chicken thigh

a few chunks of cooked potato

a few slices of cooked leek

Any remaining sauce from the dish

1 medium potato

1 onion

1 large carrot

1 chicken stock pot

Method

Put the cooked veg into the soup maker.  Remove the meat from the bone of the chicken thigh, discard the skin, tear the meat into small pieces and add it to the veg.

Add the uncooked veg, peeled and cut into large chunks, enough to fill to the bottom line.

Add the stock pot and water to the top line.

Cook on smooth.

Makes four generous portions.

NEW YEAR, NEW GADGET

 

My friend Gaynor mentioned that she was having great success with a new gadget, a Morphy Richards soup maker.  Apparently she was served a delicious mushroom soup made in one by a friend (in the days when you were allowed to meet socially distanced in the garden) and was so impressed that she got herself one.  She now uses it two or three times a week.

I am very much a fan of home made soup but am not always well organised enough to make it in time to have for lunch.  (The recipe I normally use is a Nigella one which you can see here.)  When Gaynor mentioned how easy her soup maker was to use and how rapidly it made soup I was very tempted.  When she told me what a bargain hers was I needed no further convincing and dashed off to buy one.  Various models turn up on offer in the usual discount shops all the time.

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I was a bit concerned where it would live in the kitchen as worktop space is filling up with other gadgets (since I got my lovely Kenwood KMix food mixer - did I mention that already?) but it is not all that big, just a bit bigger than an average kettle.  My kettle that you see above is quite a small one.

In fact the soup maker is effectively a large kettle with a hand blender inside it.  The liquid you put in the pot cooks the veg and the blender bit processes it smooth.

All you have to do is put peeled and diced veg in the pot with the right amount of water and a stock pot or cube and switch it on.  You can choose to have the soup chunky or smooth and hey presto you have home made soup about twenty minutes later with hardly any washing up.

I was a bit concerned about the washing up part as the components, all two of them, are not immersible.  In reality I found that if I rinsed the top under the tap, filled and rinsed out the pot with clean water, wiped over with a clean cloth, rinsed again and dried, it was dead easy.  Quicker than  trying to wrestle the bits of a food processor into the dishwasher in fact.

For the first use today I used the recipe in the booklet that came with it to make my usual soup.  It was delicious.  There are numerous tweaks and changes I can do to experiment with it which I look forward to immensely.  Highly recommended.

There are several soup maker recipes on the Good Food website here.