Parsnip and carrot soup

Just thought I'd make a quick note of my simple recipe for carrot & parsnip soup (it really is that simple that I should be able to remember it and anyone else would quite adequately be able to invent their own recipe, but what is the internet for if not for pointless information - plus I've posted soup recipes before, so why not continue with it - plus, plus I don't need to justify myself to myself on my own blog!)

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots
• 2 parsnips
• half onion
• 1 clove of garic
• fresh stem ginger
• 250 ml stock (I used chicken, but you could use different stock if you want)
• 125 ml single cream
• nutmeg
• lemon juice (a bit!)
  
• salt + pepper

Method:
Peel carrots and parsnips and chop into small pieces. Finely chop garlic, ginger and onion and put in saucepan. Sweat off onion, garlic and ginger in a little oil. Add carrots, parsnips and stock, and as much lemon juice, nutmeg and seasoning as your tastes require. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 mins(ish). Take of the hob, stir in the cream and then puree with one of those electric spinny-bladey things. Pour into bowl and eat.

Matt's jumbo jambalaya

After seeing Rick Stein make a rather nice looking Cajun jambalaya at the weekend I decided to take myself on a taste trip to the deep south and make one myself. Here's my recipe below - note that I had a slightly sacreligious jambalaya as I wasn't able to use the complete "holy trinity" of onions, green peppers and celery.

Ingredients

• 400g chicken breast
  
• 1 large smoked sausage
  
• 1 large onion
  
• 1 large pepper (as noted above this should be green, but I had to make do with a yellow one)
  
• 4 pieces of celery
  
• 1 green chilli pepper
  
• 2 heaped teaspoons of hot chilli powder (approximately - vary as to your liking)
  
• half a teaspoon
  
• 4 cloves of garlic
  
• 2 large tomatoes
  
• 2 large mushrooms
  
• sweetcorn
  
• 1 mug of rice
  
• 1 chicken stock cube in a pint of boiling water (or you could use proper chicken stock)
  
• oil
  

Now the majority of those ingredients were just what I decided to put into my jambalaya, but you can play around with the meat and vegetable combo of your choice (Rick Stein had fresh prawns in his as well as the sausage and chicken, which adds to the whole Creole-ness of it.)

Method
To cook this first you will need a large deep pan (generally a larger one than the one I had to use). Slice up your sausage into and place into your pan and fry in the oil for a minute or two. Dice your chicken and place into the pan and fry until it's white on the outside. Now add your chopped onion, garlic, celery and peppers and fry off for a couple of minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables and spices and again leave to cook for a couple of minutes. Add the rice into the pan and allow it to soak up some of the moisture already in the pan for a couple of minutes. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Cover and leave to simmer for about 25-30 minutes. This should be enough to serve about three people, or two if both of those people are me.

Chili time

I've not written down a recipe for a while, so here's a new one for the chili con carne I made today (it's a fairly standard recipe, but it did come entirely out of my head and it did taste very good, and is in fact the first chili I've ever made from scratch!)

Ingredients

• 750g lean beef mince
  
• 1 large onion
  
• 3 garlic segment things
  
• 2 peppers (one green and one red for more colour variety
  
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  
• 2 tablespoon of tomato puree
  
• 1 small tin of kidney beans
  
• 1 small tin of sweetcorn
  
• 4 closed cup mushrooms
  
• 1 beef oxo cube
  
• 2 tablespoons of hot chili powder (you should probably use real chili's, but I didn't get any!)
  
• half tablespoon of cumin
  
• half tablespoon of paprika
  
• salt and pepper
  
• splash of lemon juice
  

Method
Chop up the garlic and onion and fry it up with a bit of oil in a large saucepan until golden. Add the mince beef and fry until brown. Add the oxo cube, spices, lemon juice and seasoning. Add the tomato, sweetcorn, kidney beans and chopped mushrooms and stir it all together. Put a lid on the pan and simmer it for about 20 mins. Serve with rice, a jacket potato, tortias or whatever you want. This recipe should make enough for about three fairly substantial portions (I've have quite a bit left!)

DIY curry

Yesterday I made my first curry from scratch. Previously I've always used curry sauces, or pastes, from a jar - often adding my own ingredients to give them a bit extra - and these have in general been very nice. However, the other week I went out and bought a selection of spice in an effort to create the whole curry experience myself. Here's my recipe (to serve one):

• 1 chicken breast fillet
  
• half an onion
  
• 2 cloves of garlic
  
• half an aubergine
  
• 1 tomato
  
• 3 tablespoons of yoghurt
  
• half a teaspoon of hot chilli powder (Ok so I didn't use fresh chilli's!)
  
• half a teaspoon of tumeric
  
• half a teaspoon of cumin
  
• some finely choped corriander
  
• salt and pepper
  

Chop the chicken into medium sized chunks and fry until brown. Add the chopped onion and garlic. Add in the spices and mix in thoughroughly. Finely chopped tomato, chop the aubergine into medium chunks, and add to the pan. Continue to fry on a low heat for a couple of minutes. Add the yoghurt and leave to simmer for about five mintues. And you're done! Serve with naan bread and/or rice (I had a naan although admittedly I didn't make that from scratch - I just put it in the oven to heat up.)

The curry looked, smelled and tasted really good, although was not particularly hot - I might add more chilli powder, or use some fresh chilli's next time. Cooking the curry from scratch actually took hardly any more time than making it from a jar, but is far more satisfying and allows you to alter the taste as you see fit - also once you've got all the spices and stuff it'll end up cheaper than buying jars of sauce. I'd highly recommend giving it a go.

Flipping out

Just a quick pancake based post this having just been Shrove Tuesday, aka pancake day, and all. This evening I made up some pancake batter with about 4oz flour, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt and half a pint of milk (as described here - normally I just add stuff until it looks about the right runniness, but I decided to use other people's empirical experience this time round). This was all mixed together to the prerequisite consistency and then blitzed with a hand held spinny-bladey thing to remove any lumps - last year I did all the mixing by hand, but the electronic help made things a fair bit quicker. As is the way with pancakes you have to make sure the pan is helluvah hot before you try and cook one, or else it just become some sort of mess. I let the pan reach temperatures that would make the devil sweat before pouring in some mix. Normally I have one duff pancake to start with, but this one turned out fine. My pancake flipping skills were still there and hadn't atrophied from a year of not being used. I made a savoury filling of bacon, red pepper, onion, mushroom and tomato fried up, to go in my first two pancakes. With this went a liberal helping of grated mature cheddar and it turned out to be damn tasty. I can't have a pancake day without having the classic lemon juice and sugar pancakes though, so the remainder of my batter went on these - I was even generous enough to make one for my flatmate.

Soup of the day

The other day I made a nice chicken broth, so I thought I'd jot down the recipe for future reference (although it's actually rather simple and doesn't take too much remembering).

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast
  
• 1 parsnip
  
• 1 carrot
  
• 1 sweet potato
  
• 1 leek
  
• 1 tomato
  
• half an onion
  
• a chicken stock cube
  
• mixed herbs
  
• salt and pepper
  

Method
Chop up all the vegetables into fairly large chunks. Cut up the chicken into small pieces and lightly fry, in a large saucepan, until cooked through but not too brown. Add in the onion and leek and also lightly fry. Add in the tomato. Add in the water, chicken stock, herbs, seasoning and other veg. Bring to the boil, cover and then leave to simmer for about an hour. Eat! Other veg could be added, but the ones I went for this time work very well.

In brief diversion into football Watford were cruelly beaten by Portsmouth yesterday. A controversial late penalty gave Pompey the win, after Watford had previously been denied a couple of penalty decisions. Aidy Boothroyd was none to happy with the referee. Our next game is a week on Tuesday against Sheffield United, so hopefully we can get our second win against our fellow newly promoted team.

Fishy recipe

This evening I decided to make a nice fish pie. I did my usual recipe search on the BBC food website and found many a recipe. I sort of created an amalgam of two of the recipes as described below:

Ingredients:
A couple of fish fillets (I used cod, but I think you could use other things like Haddock)
1 carrot
Half an onion
Peas
Stick of celery
Fresh Parsley
Butter
Flour
Milk
Potatoes
Salt/Pepper
Nutmeg

Method
Pre-heat your oven to 200 C. Peel your potatoes and boil them. Mash them and add some butter, seasoning, and a bit of grated nutmeg (!) - yes, nutmeg. Flake/cut up you fish fillets and spread into a greased baking dish (I just splashed a bit of oil on the bottom). Add you chopped up onion, peas, celery, and carrot into the baking dish and mix around a bit with some seasoning. Now to make a roux - melt some butter in a saucepan on a low heat, add your finely chopped parsley into this and stir for a bit. Next add some flour (I don't really use exact measurements, so just add enough until the consistency seems right), and stir vigorously until the roux thickens. Boil the milk in a separate saucepan. When it comes to a boil add it to the roux a bit at a time and mix vigorously to get rid of any lumps. When the white sauce reaches the right consistency pour it into the baking dish over the fish. Spread the mashed potato over the top of the fish mixture making sure to cover everything. Place in the over for 30-35 mins. If you want you can grate some cheese over the top. Eat!

Et viola, a lovely fish pie.

Worrall Thompson eat your heart out

Today after a morning watching food programs I decided that I should make an effort to produce some fancy food for myself. After racking my brain I decided that I would make a pork casserole - it being fairly easy. I checked out a few recipes online, but they were all rather shit so I just made up my own recipe, which I will reproduce below:

• 400 grams diced pork
  
• 1 onion
  
• 1 red pepper
  
• 1/4 clove of garlic
  
• 2 carrots
  
• 1 leek
  
• a few closed cup mushrooms
  
• 2 tomatoes
  
• 1 pork stock cube (knorr)
  
• 1 can of strongbow - preferebly left over from a house party, but make do with buying some if necessary
  
• salt and pepper
  

This is very easy to preper, just chop up all the veg, put everything in a casserole dish, add the cider and stock, cover and place in preheated oven at 175 C for 1 and a half hours. This dish is accompanied by a sweet potato/normal potato mash as follows:

• 2 medium sized potatoes
  
• 1 sweet potato
  
• some butter
  
• coarse ground pepper
  

Boil the potatoes, then mash up and add the butter and pepper, et voila! This casserole should serve two - or if your eating it on your own like I was :( - then will leave enough to keep for another day. The mash is especially nice even if I do say so myself. Now get to your kitchen's everybody - I want to hear those pots and pans rattling. Send me your comments and suggestions on what you think of this or alternates to this recipe.

That end todays cookery corner - I may change the supposed nature of this blog from astrophysics to cooking, but then again we all know that I've never really kept up on the astrophysics news side of things so we'll see how long this new fad lasts!