Mary Berry's Crab and Sweetcorn Soup

Next on the list of things-I-have-to-use-up-before-next-Tuesday-because-I'll-never cook-with-it-again was a tin of crab meat.  I bought it months ago with the intention of making Leith's Chilli Crab Noodles one night when I needed a store cupboard meal.  That was about eight months ago.  Obviously being tinned, it wasn't too much of a trauma and it didn't take up much space.  But it was sitting there looking too much like a spare can of tuna and it had to go before I decided I wanted a tuna jacket, only to find that all I had was crab meat.

I'd eaten crab a sum total of once before in my life.  That was 25 years ago and then it was only the tiniest morsel as I found it too 'sweet'.  We were on a family trip to Cancale in France - it's a haven of seafood that I'd love to visit now I'm older and would appreciate a plate of fresh-off-the-boat Fruits de Mer but back then all I wanted to do was crack open everyone's langoustines and was then resolutely horrified at the French lady who sat on the side of an oyster bed, picking them out, shucking them and knocking them back like she was doing tequila shots.  It seemed both gross (I was 10) and barbaric at the same time.

The crab dish wasn't at all planned for today.  I had every intention of making Cathryn's savoury strudel from this week's bake off but stuff happened at work and I ended up being dragged along to a free lunchtime Mexican fiesta.  They say there's no such thing as a free lunch.  When you have to walk a mile down hill and then back up it in four inch heels, you certainly pay the price.  But it was worth it to spend time out in the fresh air and laugh at the management team who - replete with fake 'taches - looked like the band from the Doritos ad.

So the soup was the antithesis to the excess of mass cooked, watery fajitas and slightly chewy mystery meat tacos from lunch time.  Storecupboard fodder and simple enough to make when you're also juggling cooking a steak and mushroom ciabatta and fish fingers with Peppa Pig spaghetti.  As I was making it for one I used a whole tin of crab meat so it was much thicker and bulkier than it would have been for two.  The flavours were good although I added some chilli to give it a little heat and that worked really well.

The recipe I used came from my trusty Mary Berry's Complete Cook Book (the original version) but you can find it through this Google Books link.

Spicy Cauliflower and Chard Soup

Autumn is my absolute favourite season.  There's something special about crisp sunny days with a slight chill in the air.  Some people see it as sad because the leaves finally fall from the trees, but (provided it doesn't continue to rain buckets), there are piles of shiny brown leaves, just ripe for kicking.  I have been waiting for Miss A to reach two (and a bit now) just so that I can use her as an excuse for skipping through leaves, looking for shiny brown conkers.

One day, I'd love to holiday in New England in the fall.  I've had several failed attempts at getting there in the past but it's on my (overly long) holiday bucket list and I'm determined to make it there one of these days.

The other good thing about September 1st is that it heralds the start of soup making season.  I love soup and could quite happily live off of it most days - provided it was interspersed with lots of toast.  There's just something comforting about a piping hot bowl of soup that takes me right back to my childhood.  My mum was forever making soup when I was a child.  I think back then I really only liked it because it came with deep fried croutons but as an adult, it takes me right back to the tiny kitchen where I grew up.

My favourite was Mum's cream of cauliflower, closely followed by my Grandma's minestrone.  I still cook both of these regularly but don't really expand my repertoire past that.  I've made a few soups (this is #14) during the course of this blog and whilst they were all very acceptable, none of them really made me want to make them again in preference to the default two.  However, today, I may finally have come up with a contender.

I happened across the Soup Tuesday blog some time ago.  It's written by husband and wife team Dan and Kasari.  It's not just about Soup and not just written on Tuesday.  It's about cake too (this is how I found it as Kasari entered the Weekly Bake Off one week when I was judging it) and lots of other things as well.  Dan then participated in the Olympic Food Challenge, putting us all to shame by really pushing the limits of the game by eating Deep Fried Duck Tongues.  They're a great pair and if you're on Twitter, you should definitely follow them for their entertaining musings.

Anyhoo, this week, Dan blogged about the cauliflower soup and I knew I just had to try it.  So yesterday, I dropped in on one of our local farm shops to get the ingredients I needed and this morning, set about making the soup.  It's dead easy - just roast the veg, simmer it in stock and then blend.  What I liked about the method was that by using a potato, there was no need for the faffy making of roux sauce that accompanies my mother's cauliflower soup recipe.  In fact, next time I make hers, I may try potatoes rather than white sauce to see what a difference it makes.

With the subtle Indian spicing and the aromatic coconut flavour, I really enjoyed this soup and will definitely be making it again.  As I only had creamed coconut, I substituted this for the coconut milk along with a little regular milk although when I served the soup it was still pretty thick.  My chard wouldn't wilt either but the texture wasn't a problem.  My soup was also slightly less piccalilli-like in colour than Dan's because I didn't time how long I roasted my vegetables for and they were a little more brown than 'golden around the edges' but thankfully not burnt (just about) and it still tasted good.

You can find the recipe here, along lots of other recipes too.

Mushroom and Ginger Soup

Today's recipe of choice comes from one of those tomes that you pick up in discount book shops for a few pounds.  It's been sat on my desk for years.  I flick through it at least once a week.  I find something I want to make but yet never get round to making it.  Even though the book is entitled "Quick and Easy" and should be full of recipes perfect for someone as time-poor as myself, I just don't seem to have the time to try them.

Never one to make life easy for myself, in addition to having a two-year-old toddler, a full time job with a ninety minute commute and penning this blog on a daily basis, over the coming month I also have to contend with the following obstacles.  "The Olympic Food Challenge" starting on 27th July, my mother's birthday cake and assorted bits for a celebratory barbecue on August 3rd (you can guarantee rain in Winchester that day), at least two different types of cake for the tea tent at my gorgeous cousin Laura May (aka @BridestockBride)'s Wedding Festival on August 4th, a belated birthday cake for my goddaughter on August 5th, a week long Prince2 Practitioner course and training for the Bristol Half Marathon - which is in late September but the training is going on now.

It took longer to eat than to cook (too hot!)

Oh and planning my new blog too.  Thankfully that's currently in the capable hands of one of my best friends who I've coerced into designing the background and logo for me.  More on that another night.

So forgive me for actually finally choosing a recipe from Practical Cookery: Quick and Easy for once.  It was quick, easy, tasty and meets the current criteria for low in fat too.  It also gave me the opportunity to try out dried mushrooms.  I know they're a little pricey, but given that I'm the kind of person who regularly buys mushrooms and then never gets round to using them and throwing them away when they're slimy, having the dried ones to hand means I won't ever waste them.  Unless of course, I accidentally split the packet and the scatter floor-wards into the mouths of my waiting pooches.

Watching them rehydrate reminded me of some fake worms you used to be able to get from joke shops when I was a kid.  I used to stick them in my grandad's cup of tea and watch them grow.  Highly entertaining to a delinquent eight-year-old.  Just like when my delightful toddler peered into my bowl this evening and announced "Euuuuwww.  Mummy, Dexter's done a pooney in your dinner"  Cue toddler giggles.

I did manage to enjoy the meal despite that image being firmly rooted in my brain forever.

Serves 2 (for a main meal)

• 15g dried mushrooms
• 700 mls good quality vegetable stock
• 1 nest medium egg noodles
• 3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• 1 tsp ginger paste (or 2.5cm root ginger, shredded)
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• handful beansprouts

1. Soak the mushrooms for at least thirty minutes in half the stock for at least 30 minutes.  Drain, reserving the stock.
2. When the are ready, cook the noodles for 2-3 minutes in boiling water.  Drain and rinse.
3. Spray a large frying pan with spray oil and place over a  high heat.  Add the garlic, ginger and mushrooms and stir fry for two minutes.
4. Add all of the stock and the soy sauce to the pan and bring to the boil.
5. Stir in the bean sprouts and cook for 1-2 minutes until tender.  
6. Divide the noodles between the serving bowls and ladle the soup on top.  Serve immediately.

Leith's Carrot and Coriander Soup

Today was one of those rare days when the 'rents take Miss A out, meaning that hubs and I get some precious peace for a few hours.  Of course, I made a lot of noise about welcoming the time to catch up on all the long overdue housework that I don't get time to address (most notably the epic mountain of clean laundry that lives on the bed in the spare room) but having successfully decided to bake some gingerbread butterflies to restock the biscuit barrel, made a fruit loaf and started the soup for my tea, I killed the hour that it took the husband to get organised so only had time to give the floors a cursory mop and off we went for a walk along the Wilts and Berks Canal.

What's up doc? Uninspiring soup, that's what.

A couple of hours later, we returned home to trade wellies and mud-spattered jeans for something a little more suited to an afternoon in Tetbury and let the dogs out for a while.  The spaniel was suspiciously loitering in the corner of the kitchen near a puddle of yellowy liquid and I assumed that he'd had a little mishap (he has a dodgy tummy so sometimes hews up on the floor).  Further floor mopping meant I'd done more housework in one day than I'd done in the last month so consoled myself with insisting we went for a club sandwich at the Blue Zucchini in Tetbury.

I love that place.  It's one of those really cool restaurants-cum-coffee bars where you should go to eat brunch and read the Sunday papers.  When it's sunny, we normally sit outside on the pavement tables and watch the world go by.  In fact, last time we were there, I was on day two of my blog and wondering what the hell I'd committed myself to.  In all honesty, I really didn't expect that I'd still be writing daily by now.  Or at least if I was, I assumed it would be a quick one or two lines saying 'I liked this recipe or this recipe was crap'.  Not boring the world to tears with the trivial details of my life.

Having planned to starve all day to allow me to eat one of their gorgeous clubs, I was....erm....mightily disappointed to see that they've changed the way they serve things and you now get double the amount of chips in a little bucket on the side.  In fact, there were so many that for once, I couldn't finish mine (of course, hubs managed to help out!) and now I feel like I won't eat again for about a week.

Blue Zucchini Club Sandwich Sept '11

Blue Zucchini Club Sandwich May '12

Returning home, I went to put the cooled gingerbread into the biscuit barrel and noticed that the worktops were covered in sticky, wet liquid.  And then it hit, that the dog hadn't made the floor messy - he was cleaning up the liquid part of the soup.  In a vain attempt to be tidy, I'd poured the soup into the blender ready to liquidise later and the stock had seeped out of the jug and run everywhere.  Grrrrrr!  Another black mark against my Kenwood Prospero!

Luckily I managed to salvage the soup by just adding more stock and blending it.  But still being full from lunch, I only had a spoonful to test the seasoning was okay and it's now gone into the fridge for a meal tomorrow.

Wilts and Berks Canal

So the verdict on one spoonful of soup?  Well the recipe is from my Leith's Simple Cookery book.  When I first got the book, I flicked through and was disappointed that a book by an institution such as Leith's should use lots of pre-prepared sauces and the like in their recipes so I've barely looked at it since.  But now I'm so short on time I realised that there can be compromise.  And if some of the recipes call for a shop-bought tomato sauce, there's no reason that I can't make my own if I feel so inclined.  So you will see more Leith's inspired recipes as I crawl towards the finish line of this year.

And of course, soup isn't exactly known for being a complicated thing to make.  I picked Carrot and Coriander because I bought a giant bag of value carrots for a cake I promised one of my colleagues I'd bake this week and needed another way to use them up.  I normally only use one or two carrots a month (hubs doesn't eat veg and Miss A doesn't like carrots - yet) but had a fit of thrift and bought the 1.5kg bag for 50p as it sounded like a good deal.

The flavour was good and nice and light for springtime; although I think I overdid the herbs a bit and consequently, it tasted like a sweet chicken and coriander soup, such was the subtle flavour from the carrots.  I think I would probably make it again if I had a need to use up a massive bag of carrots, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make it if I didn't have any carrots in.

You can find the recipe on this website.

Bacon, bean and pasta soup

I swear that last week, I wrote a list of all the things I was going to make.  And having reviewed what I've actually made, I've managed to miss out falafel and a turkey and mushroom dish.  Goodness knows what I had slated for today - the list was on a post it note on my desk somewhere.  Quite frankly, I am really rubbish at planning for this blog unless it's cake related.

Realising my error, fool that I am, I settled on making myself a nice warming bowl of 'red' soup for lunch. After a chilly six mile run before 7am, and still not having warmed back up at 1pm tonight, I knew soup would do the trick, only to go to the store cupboard and find that I don't actually have anything 'red' to make it with. 

Namely chopped tomatoes.  I found six cans of tuna, five cans of assorted pulses, a tin of condensed milk, some Heinz tomato soup (shudder - it's the husband's), two tins of Branston beans (mine), a tin of Heinz beans and mini reclaimed meat batons (okay they're supposed to be mini sausages, also the husband's) and assorted tins of fruit.

An emergency search on the BBC Good Food website and reccy of my meagre fridge contents turned up the idea of bacon, bean and pasta soup.  Hearty, low fat, and red - through the use of tomato puree.  Thankfully I had just enough of that left.

Really liked this soup.  It's a great alternative to bog standard minestrone and a really good way to use up random things from the fridge.  Not much else to say about it really other than I'm sure it will get me out of a hungry hole some other day in the future.

Gordon Ramsay's Chorizo, butter bean and red onion soup

There are some meals that are best eaten with your eyes shut.  Or at least while reading your Twitter timeline on your phone.  Or if you have decent company at the dinner table, then maybe flattering lighting will be enough to distract you from what's on your plate.  Whatever works for you, I suggest you do it if you try this recipe.

With a flattering Flickr filter it doesn't look so bad

Don't get me wrong, it's very tasty.  It does get boring after about half a bowlful (or maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it) but you just don't really want to look at it while you're eating it.

Although my photography skills leave a lot to be desired (hey, it's not easy finding time to artfully photograph with a rubbish cameraphone when you have to blog every single day), I do appreciate the benefit of flattering lighting and Photoshop.  It's great for hiding things like crows feet and dark circles and grey hairs.  And that the beautifully red chorizo that you lovingly chopped up has now gone all grey and insipid thanks to the paprika leaching out into the broth.  Or that the vibrant red onions, are now equally monochrome and unappealing after being simmered for ten minutes.

My once red chorizo turning grey

The rubbish picture really belies the true mess that was left in my bowl.  Honestly it just looked like nasty grey lumps of insipid gristle.  Kind of how I imagine school dinners to have been before they were Jamie Olivered (although I probably qualified for free school meals, I used to have a packed lunch).

I don't know if it's something I did wrong with the cooking - it's hardly a taxing recipe - or if the picture in Gordon's Fast Food also benefited from flattering lighting and Photoshop.  But honestly, I can't express how manky it looked when I was done with it.  I was hoping for something more warm and red and comforting along the lines of the recipe by the lovely Mr Bridestock that partly inspired this blog.  As I said the other day, if you find a good recipe, stick with it and move on.  There's a lot to be said for not chasing perfection.  Either that or you have to be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.  How many time did Edison fail in his efforts to make a lightbulb?

Anyway I'll stop before I enter into another stream of conscious rambling.  Final thought for the day.  My spaniel really appreciated the leftovers.  Then again, he'll eat anything bar leeks.

Recipe from Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food

• 225g chorizo, skin removed
• 3 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
• 2 red onions, peeled & finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled & very finely sliced
• few thyme sprigs
• 2 x 420g cans butter beans, drained & rinsed
• sea salt & black pepper 
• squeeze lemon juice
• large handful flat parsley, roughly chopped

1. Chop chorizo into small bite size pieces. Put kettle on to boil.
2. Heat olive oil, in heavy based saucepan & add onions, garlic & thyme. Cook, stirring, for 2 mins, then add chorizo. Stir over high heat for a few mins until oil has taken on reddish-golden hue from chorizo.
3. Tip in beans and pour in just enough boiling water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook gently for about 10 mins.
4. Season generously and add squeeze of lemon. Scatter over parsley and ladle into warm bowls to serve.

Lorraine Pascale's Duvet Day Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe has just rocketed to the top of my 'Recipes I'll Make Again' list.  Feeling slightly under the weather again, I was looking for a Friday lunchtime treat that was quick, simple and tasty.  And this soup hits the spot.  It's the kind of thing that in an ideal world, I'd have made for me on days when I'm too poorly to move from under the duvet.

Two problems there.  1) I never get the opportunity to have such a day, no matter how poorly I am and 2) There is nobody else in the house with the culinary nous to deliver such a delightful treat.

Medicine in a bowl

But it's definitely easy enough to make if you're feeling just a little poorly and need something restorative to blow those cobwebs away.  Even the smells whilst it's cooking are amazing.  I'm not a fan of aniseed or cinnamon, but they lend a lovely flavour to this soup.  It's also packed full of veggies to make it nice and healthy and keep it colourful.

The original recipe calls for mint and basil to be stirred through at the end but I only had coriander to hand.  That worked really well with the lovely Asian-style spicing, further enhanced by the squeeze of lime juice at the end.

The recipe is from Lorraine Pascale's Home Cooking Made Easy.  I can't find the recipe online so will be good and not post it here (because I'm a huge fan of this book and Ms Pascale and have posted some of the other recipes).  But you can buy the book on Amazon for £9.99 (at the time of writing) and I really think you should!  Alternatively, try this recipe from BBC Good Food which I blogged about here.

Chorizo and Chickpea Soup

Today was one of *those* days.  I've had worse.  I'm sure I'll have far worse in the future.  So perhaps disappointing is the best way to describe it.

I had intended to make cauliflower biryani tonight.  Before the cauliflower I bought the other day finally goes off.  But what with the pants day and the cold weather, as I drove home, all I could think about was a lovely warming bowl of something red that would give me the equivalent of a food hug and make the end of my day a little better.

Think dishwater with beans and chorizo in it...

This could have been something like gumbo or jambalaya; cream of tomato soup or chilli con carne; my staple larder vegetable sauce over pasta; Mr Bridestock's Chorizo and Butterbean Stew or even the Mixed Bean Chilli I tried back in November.  But no. I stupidly decided several months ago that it might be fun/interesting/challenging/educational/... to try a new recipe every day so bound by my own stupidity, I gave the Chorizo and Chickpea soup from BBC Good Food a whirl.

Nothing doing.  Despite it having a five-star rating after 60 reviews (my one star couldn't tip the balance), I have to say that this was another disappointing waste of ingredients.  The soup was watery and bland.  I should've figured this when the instructions amounted to 'Boil a tin of tomatoes with a tin of water and a stock cube'   I'm not a food snob, but having spent some time learning from all these recipes how to spice a dish like this, the appeal of tinned tomatoes and Knorr's finest is wearing off.

I even threw in some spices and a little touch of sugar to take away the nasty metallic tang of the tomatoes.  But nothing could save it.  It wasn't helped that I had Tiger Bread to eat it with.  Watery, metallic soup or a big doorstop of bread?  It's no wonder the scales resolutely refused to shift in a downwards direction over the past week, despite lots of running.

So to cheer myself up, I will not be cooking the biryani tomorrow.  Instead, I will be participating in the Weekly Bake Off and making Mary Berry's Farmhouse Victoria Sponge for my esteemed colleagues at my new work location.  Not that I'm trying to score brownie points with them or anything :)

If you want to see if this recipe does it for you, you can find it here.

Red lentil, chickpea & chilli soup

Today I have learned to never try to bargain with someone who doesn't yet understand the concept of bargaining.  You see I only work a half day on Friday and so Friday afternoon nap time has always been earmarked for a flurry of housework activities before the weekend.  There is zero chance of trying to do anything whilst Miss A is awake as even the eagle eyes in the back of my head are not good enough to keep her out of mischief if I should attempt to flick a duster at anything.

The list of tasks for this afternoon's nap time included - make lentil and chickpea soup, make granola, dust, tidy, put on the washing, change the beds, do the ironing and watch Stella (the Sky 1 program, not a can of beer).  Miss A had other ideas.  Even a walk before nap time hadn't tired her out.

So I stupidly said 'If you go and do some reading quietly, you can have a piece of cake for your snack in half an hour.'  Cue tantrum because she wanted cake there and then.  It wasn't just any cake, but the banana and lime streusel cake she helped me make yesterday for the husband's birthday.  She hadn't yet had a piece and had been apparently eyeing up the cake tin all morning wondering when she might get some.

Of course, to a 21 month old, an offer of cake means NOW.  Not in five minutes.  Or even two.  It means mummy is going to whip out a plate from behind her back with the cake cut into small squares for immediate consumption.  Mummy didn't deliver.  Cue tantrum.

And on it went.  I left the room and ten minutes later, silence.  Or at least I thought it was silence.  Dusters got flicked, soup and granola hastily made, soup got eaten, beds made, ironing done.  Husband appears.  "She's been awake the entire time" he informs me.  I venture into the nursery.  She's managed to shake half a litre of water out of her non-drip, non-spill cup all over her bed, her floor and herself.  She looks up hopefully and says 'Cake!'  Not a question, a demand.

There are chickpeas in there, somewhere.

I'll blog about the cake over the weekend.  It's the most lovely, softest banana cake I've ever had the pleasure to eat.  Once the child had eaten a slice, she announced 'More cake.'  And every time I asked any food-related questions for the rest of the day, or any question come to that, the request was for more cake.

Even the offer of some soup was turned down with a request for cake.  It must be that good!

As for the soup.  Well I bought lentils yonks ago when I was trying to encourage Miss A's palate.  I made a lentil ragu from Good Food Mag and I hated it.  There was something just so wrong with the texture of it in my personal opinion.  The lentils had been hanging round in the cupboard ever since goading me into doing something with them.  And so I did.

I wasn't expecting much from the soup but it was really tasty and as a bonus for someone still on the healthy eating thing (I lapsed yesterday with the husband's birthday takeaway), it was really filling and it's really low in fat.  I thought this would be a one-off make whilst it was cooking, but I'm surprised to say I will make it again.  And actually go and buy more lentils one day!

It's another Good Food recipe which you can find here.

Sweetcorn and Chilli Soup

The New Year has barely begun and I'm already worried that I've broken one of my New Year's resolutions.  This being the one about not eating the child's leftovers no matter how hungry I am nor how wasteful I might think it is to throw them away.

When I did WeightWatchers 15 years ago, I was childless, but still paid attention to the tips about not hoovering up leftovers and not licking cake bowls.  When I'm being good, the second I've taken the last useable scoop of goodness from a baking bowl, I immediately squirt Fairy round it to prevent any unnecessary licking.  I have, on occasions of desperation, tried to find a route between the random lines of  liquid to savour some of that uncooked cakey goodness (what cake doesn't taste better before it's been cooked??).  It always ends horribly and teaches me a lesson for being a lardy-whatsit.

Jabba the Hut (aged 20) and her Grandad

I really need to apply that same rule to the child's dinner plate.  There's only so much 'watch Mummy eat this one and then you eat one' that I can legitimately get away with.  That is why I have failed over the last year to lose any further weight.  I should know better.

Over these past fifteen years, my weight has yo-yo'd by a stone or two, but thankfully, I've never been in such a bad place that I've repeated the Jabba the Hut look that I was sporting aged 20.  

Me at my slimmest

I've also since discovered that diets just don't work for me. I need to eat healthily, but I need to enjoy what I eat and I need to exercise lots.  Whilst shedding the my Jabba jowls, I used to swim with my mum at the weekends and my reward would be scrambled eggs and bacon medallions.  It's amazing how many lengths I managed to clock up knowing that was what I would enjoy when I got home.

I find I run better when fuelled by a piece of coffee cake (not a regular occurrence!) or knowing that tea will be something really tasty with chorizo in it, that a diet definitely wouldn't allow.  I follow the 3, 4, 5 plus 2x1 principle.  300 cals for breakfast, 400 for lunch, 500 for tea and two snacks of 100 calories (or there abouts) plus cardio 4-5 times a week.  Touch wood, I will be back to my happy weight in the next couple of months.

Ingredients - I ski-ed slightly off piste here

I love nothing more than taking a recipe and working how I can make it fit into my healthy eating regime - although if it's something a bit naughty, I will either make it on a running day or eat a smaller portion with loads of veggies or salad (carrot cake with carrots on the side anyone?).  Hopefully this blog, which has been the cause of the recent ballooning will also help me back in the correct direction as I work my way through some healthy recipes and the odd cake here and there as a treat.

Back to my dilemma about whether or not I've eaten the child's leftovers.  For some reason, Ocado only sell massive tins of sweetcorn.  I opened a tin for her dinner the other night, only to be informed by the 'If-I-hide-my-eyes-then-the-dinner-will-magic-away' stance that sweetcorn is now off the menu for the foreseeable.  So it's been languishing in a tupperware box in the fridge for a couple of days.  Does that make it leftovers? Hopefully only to a pedant.

The idea of warm, tasty soup for lunch after a 3.5 miler at 7am was really appealing so I leafed through my cook books and a few blogs before happening on a suitable sweetcorn soup recipe in this month's edition of BBC Good Food mag - helpfully entitled 'The Healthy Issue'.

Finished soup

It was so easy to make, that the husband pottered into the kitchen while I was cooking and said 'Oh, you're not cooking so I'll do the washing up.'  I can only assume his usually super-astute powers of observation are still subject to a New Year's Eve hangover.

It's really tasty too.  It needed more salt in than I would've expected with the stock to balance the sweetness of the corn.  I used fresh stock left over from Christmas though and it's something I've never used before so maybe it's less salty than stock from cubes.  The parsley and lime gave it a lovely fresh taste and the chilli gave it the needed warmth.

Happy and will make it again.  It's also freezable and contains two of your five a day so all in all, a winning recipe.

 Please note, I even made the effort to use my proper camera today for the picture (mostly because my phone has died already)

Recipe - Serves 6 (they must use tiny bowls, I think 4 is more realistic)

• 25g butter
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 1/2 red chilli, finely chopped (I 1tsp used Very Lazy Chillies)
• 800g frozen sweetcorn (I used tinned)
• 1 litre vegetable stock (I used chicken)
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (I used lime)
• 5tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley, plus extra to serve (I used 2 tbsp Garden Gourmet in the soup and just used fresh to garnish as my little plant was looking a bit sad)

1. Heat the butter and oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and fry the onions for about 10 mins until nice and golden, stirring occasionally.  Add the chilli to the pan and fry for about 5 mins, stirring occasionally.  Add the corn, stock and some salt, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 mins until the corn is tender but still crisp.
2. Transfer two-thirds of the soup to a blender and whizz to a coarse puree.  Add this back to the pan and stir in the lemon juice and parsley.  Season if needed.

Moroccan Spiced Cauliflower and Almond Soup

Cauliflower soup is my all time favourite soup.  Most people turn their noses up at it - especially as it has a bit of a tendency to smell - but for me it's in my top five comfort foods.  My mum used to make it all the time when I was small and I can't think of anything better than a piping hot bowl of cream of cauliflower soup with deep fried croutons.

In fact, I think it was the croutons that got me eating the soup.  She used to make a huge pile of them and then hide them in the cupboard out of reach.  I have hazy memories of snaffling a few each time I walked past the cupboard and then when tea time rolled around, there being none left and trying to explain that it was Herbie Hedgehog who ate them.

Cauliflower itself, has a very delicate flavour and so most people associate it with the watery, overcooked texture of chain carvery restaurants and school dinners.  Or with it being slathered with a pile of cheese sauce (another favourite of mine) thus rendering it as a low fat bulking agent rather than an ingredient in its own right.

Topped with flaked almonds, harissa and chilli oil

Even my mum's soup requires a fair bit of seasoning and the addition of leeks and celery to give it some depth of flavour otherwise it is just bland.  A while back, as part of this challenge, I tried making Stilton and Cauliflower soup.  Quite honestly, it was foul.  The stilton overpowered the subtle flavours of the veggies and all in all it was a complete waste of good ingredients.  Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of stilton with some bread or biscuits for cheese.  But a bowl of runny, smelly-sock scented paste did nothing for me.

That's the other thing about cauliflower based soups.  They can get really thick and require a lot of thinning down.  When I make my mum's soup, I just chuck in piles of veggies, a litre of stock and a pint of white sauce and it usually tastes pretty much the same, regardless of the cauliflower size.  But seeing as how this challenge was to use a recipe, I followed it to the letter.

Ocado sent me the world's largest cauliflower last week and so despite the recipe saying 'One large cauliflower', I feel that this particular cauliflower fell into the same large category as The Enormous Turnip.  The soup was nearly thick enough to cut and I ended up adding another pint of liquid to it, just to get a reasonably soupy consistency.

On the plus side, the flavours were amazing.  Harissa-spicy with the subtle flavour of coriander, cumin, cinnamon and toasted almonds, whilst still retaining the cauliflower undertones this soup really tickled my tastebuds.  And as the husband was having curry, I ate the soup with one of Dan Lepard's Frying Pan Naans which worked really well.

Recipe from BBC Good Food January 2012

• Cut 1 large cauliflower into small florets.
• Fry 2 tbsp oil, 1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander and 2 tbsp harissa paste for 2 mins in a large pan.
• Add the cauliflower, 1 litre hot vegetable or chicken stock and 50g toasted flaked almonds.
• Cover and cook for 20 minutes until the cauliflower is tender.
• Blend soup until smooth, then serve with an extra drizzle of harissa and a sprinkle of toasted almonds.

Loaded Potato Soup

This challenge was inspired by my lovely cousin @BridestockBride.  A while back, she made this very soup and it was the accompanying blog post that sold me on the idea of trying something different every day for a year.

Having bought a huge bag of red potatoes several weeks back to make the soup, I finally got round to it tonight and I must say it was worth the wait and that I should've made it sooner.  It's a really filling, comforting winter-worthy soup and if you're a skinny-minnie, you can load it up with all kinds of goodies, but equally, the lower fat version that I made works just as well.

I'm supposed to be doing the eat-less-exercise-more thing between now and Christmas.  I made a good start yesterday and was going strong until at 7.25am, one of my colleagues presented me with a homemade brownie his young son had made.  Now nobody apart from my mum ever gives me homemade cake (this is an issue that needs addressing!!).  So I felt I couldn't refuse the offer.  Doubly so when I discovered that he'd bought in a box of out-of-date Mr Kipling apple pies to share with the rest of the team.

The brownie was much enjoyed with an afternoon cuppa (see I have SOME willpower) and I think that in the name of nurturing the aspirations of a young boy, I had no other option than to give it my full undivided attention.

Of course, that put paid to my plan to make the original version of this soup.  The one that requires handfuls of cheese.  And of course, despite him refusing to even go near this soup 'it smells', I would've made the husband put his handfuls of cheese in rather than my own.

Fully loaded

When arriving home, any notion of using cheese was scuppered anyway as the husband had used the entire weeks-worth of cheese - aside from a token dairylea-sized piece - to make himself a sandwich.

So I used skimmed milk and half-fat creme fraiche to reduce the calorie count.  Cheese was omitted from the actual soup and I scattered just a teeny bit on top along with some chorizo rather than bacon (no health reason behind this - just had some leftover in the fridge).

I can definitely see how this would benefit from copious amounts of cheese - what savoury recipe wouldn't?  But it was nearly as tasty without.

Also liked the top-tip about why you should only put pepper in at the end - 'the flavour of pepper evaporates the longer it's cooked' - so I've learnt something new today as well.

Mixed Bean Chilli Soup

If I've learned one thing over the past fifty-one days, it's that seasoning can really make a dish.  I'm not talking about bog-standard salt-and-pepper here, I mean the use of herbs and spices.


For certain dishes I will add a dash of this and a dash of that, but my eyes have really been opened to how a simple pasta dish or soup that I may have made before suddenly comes alive with the addition of that little something extra.

Healthy soup, healthy dollop of half-fat creme fraiche :o)

Take tonight's dish of Mixed Bean Chilli Soup.  Sainsburys sell a very good version in their chilled soup range but legend has it that this tasty soup can only be made by means of a secret rite that can be performed once a century when the moon is in the eighth house of Aquarius.  Yes, okay I watched too much 'Count Duckula' as a kid!


But seriously, ever since I took a shine to it, they seem to only sell it in winter months and maybe it's so popular it just sells out quickly but I've only had the odd pot every now and again since I discovered it.


Last winter, I had a whirl at making my own.  Quite often, I steal my recipes from the back of packets of pre-made stuff and it normally works quite well apart from when the recipe in question has quite specific flavouring.  The producer lumps herbs and spices into 'natural flavourings' before listing all the additional e-numbers and a healthy dose of MSG that are also required to give said product a modicum of taste.


So I made my own version using a basic tomato soup and some chilli.  Nowhere near the same.  After a bit of Googling, I came across this recipe on AllRecipes.com.  It sounded okay so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  And the minute I spooned the cumin into the pan, I knew what my previous attempt had been lacking.  It's silly as I use cumin a fair bit but I'd never stuck two and two together that that smell was the same as the chilli bean soup I was so enamoured with.

Top 80s Kids TV!

I am one happy camper tonight and will be making this soup regularly throughout the winter months.  

I didn't use mushrooms as the Sainsburys version doesn't and I wanted to do a like-for-like comparison.  in future, I will also try to find cans of mixed beans that don't contain chickpeas because despite cooking the beans in the soup for twenty minutes, the chickpeas still had a bullet-like consistency and the flavour just didn't really work with the other beans - or I'd just make my own bean mix next time.

Finally for those of you who are too young to remember the Eighties or who weren't living in the UK then, check this site out to find out more about Count Duckula and do watch the intro on YouTube - brings back memories :o)

Chicken Noodle Soup

 I have a poorly bubba.  Poorly bubba = sleepless nights for mummy.  Needed something restorative for tea and to fortify me for the next impending sleepless night which is already underway judging by the levels of crying coming from the nursery (yes I'm a bad mother, I do controlled crying occasionally).

More green needed to glam it up

Had it in my head I was going to cook a lovely pasta dish but the husband insisted on chicken with pesto pasta - the dish he made me on our first date.  I do like it but just wasn't in the mood for so many carbs - it would just make me sluggish and sleepy and I need to be on the ball again tonight.

So a quick Google and check in the fridge saw me cooking another BBC Good Food recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup.  Very flavoursome although I will say the chicken wasn't very tender - maybe it was a duff chicken and would've been tough however I cooked it.  Sadly I didn't have any herbs or spring onions which would have made it a little more tasty and more aesthetically pleasing, but it was good enough.  And the amount of chilli, ginger and garlic should ward off any cold coming within a hundred miles of me for the next couple of months.

Mojito cupcakes tomorrow :o))))  - poorly child permitting!

Tortilla Soup

Baby it's cold outside.  And blustery.  Perfect weather for soup!


I recently read an article about how the State of Texas have banned death row prisoners from requesting a last meal after one inmate asked for 'two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts'.  Rather flippantly, I think that would have been just as likely to kill him as the lethal injection, but in today's straightened times, I can see the State of Texas' point.


It got me thinking about what I would request if I knew I had just one last meal to eat ever.  If I was stuck on a desert island, I'd want to take a toaster and an eternal supply of toastables and butter (I just made that word up - but bread, bagels, waffles, crumpets, muffins....).  But if it was definitely the last meal ever ever ever then I would be stumped as it would depend on my mood.


Most likely it would be something that would bring back memories.  Like cauliflower soup.  Most people blanch at the idea or insist on adding so much stilton that the cauli flavour is lost but my mum used to make cauliflower soup when I was a kid and it is one of my favourite ever tastes.  In fact I had some from the canteen today at lunch and was pleasantly surprised that theirs was passable - but still not a patch on mum's.

Despondent avocado chunks

For main course, I'd have either 'Cheering Up Dinner' - my beloved grandma's roast chicken with all the trimmings or her sausage and potato bake and for pudding my mum's raspberry fool and a chocolate fondant with proper vanilla ice-cream.  And something with toffee in it... and then a Tia Maria coffee to wash it all down.  Because I could.  And I wouldn't care about needing elasticated trousers or looking like a beached whale because I would've enjoyed myself.


And I'm still enjoying myself fifteen days into the recipe-trying.  I made soup for tea too as I am soooo cold for some reason and when I'm cold, I like red soup.  Today, it was Thomasina Miers' Tortilla soup.  If I'm honest, I'd use less liquid as it was a bit to thin for my liking and all the toppings sank rather despondently to the bottom, rather than gracing the top like the picture in the book.  Nevertheless, the flavours were amazing.  Sweet, Italian-inspired tomato soup (this is a Mexican recipe!) with a smokey chipotle-chilli kick on the after-taste, complimented by creamy avocado and salty feta.  I didn't have any coriander to make it look pretty - the one in my garden has finally given up the ghost.


Definitely recommended though.

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 corn tortilla
• 1 heaped tablespoon Chipoltes en adobo 
• 2 x 400g tins plum tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• sea salt and black pepper
• 1.5 litres chicken stock (I'd use a litre next time)

for the garnishes

• 1 ripe avocado cubed
• lime juice
• flour tortilla strips
• chillies, finely sliced
• coriander leaves
• feta cheese, cubed

1. Heat the oil in a large pan and sweat the onions over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and tortilla and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. 
2. Add the chipoltes, tomatoes, sugar, oregano and seasoning. 
3. Cook for a further 5 minutes before adding the stock. 
4. Simmer for 10 minutes then blitz with a stick blender.