Borscht (beetroot soup)

My mum came round the other day and handed me a plastic bag. It contained a couple of bunches of beetroot and a small bag of potatoes. I looked at her quizzically. "I was going to make you some borscht," she explained, "but I couldn't be bothered, so I just brought you the ingredients instead." I was still mulling over what to do with the beetroots and whether to obey my mother's instructions, when my veggie box turned up on the doorstep with another instalment of beetroots. Apparently somebody up there was trying to tell me something.

There are lots of different types of borscht: Russian, Polish, Ukrainian; hot or cold; meaty or meat-free etc. This version is adapted from the one in Evelyn Rose's New Complete International Jewish Cookbook.

Ingredients
1 kg fresh beetroots
one carrot
one onion
1.5 l chicken stock
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
to serve
cream cheese

Method

1. Peel and very finely chop the beetroots, carrot and onion. Put in a large saucepan with the stock, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat to minimum and simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft.
2. With a stick blender, blend the soup in the pan until it is smooth.
3. Add a generous spoonful of cream cheese to each bowl of soup as you serve.

Carrot and lentil soup

Carrots and lentils are a great combination, but I often find that carrot and lentil soup is either a little bland or suffers from unsubtle spicing (usually due to a heavy hand with the cumin). I made this soup with great care and was really happy with the outcome - the celery gave it a little spiciness, the peppers added sweetness and depth, while the smoky paprika and the dried mushroom stock provided an earthy kick. Unfortunately I didn't measure anything so the quantities are somewhat approximate.

Ingredients
olive oil
half a head of celery
1 red pepper
2 tsps smoked paprika
4 large carrots
handful of dried mushrooms
1 vegetable stock cube
1 litre of boiled water
2 handfuls of lentils
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in the boiled water, and add the vegetable stock cube.
2. Finely chop the celery and red pepper and fry gently in plenty of olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the peeled chopped carrots, continue to fry for a few more minutes before adding the paprika.
3. Strain the stock into the pot, add the lentils, bring to the boil and simmer gently until lentils and carrots are cooked, then add the salt.
4. Allow the soup to cool a little, liquidise with a stick blender, check the salt and season with some freshly ground black pepper.

Parsnip and ginger soup

Santa brought me the new River Cottage Veg every day! cookbook. I haven't seen the TV programmes yet, but the book looks great and I'm hoping it will inspire me to find new ways of turning my veggie box into delicious meals.

The first thing I cooked from it was this delicious parsnip and ginger soup. I've toned it down a bit as the version in the book was a little zingy, and left out the milk because the soup already seemed thick enough at that stage.

Ingredients

olive oil

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon of finely chopped fresh ginger

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp chilli powder

500g parsnips

800ml vegetable stock

salt

pepper

2 tablespoons of flaked almonds

Method

1. Finely chop the onion, and gently sautee in plenty of olive oil. When it is just about done, add the finely chopped garlic and ginger and fry for another minute or so.
2. Add the cardamom, cumin and chilli, fry for 30 seconds, then add the parsnips.
3. Fry for a few seconds more, add the stock, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 20 minutes until the parsnips are cooked.
4. Allow to cool, then liquidise with a stick blender. Test for seasoning and add salt if necessary.
5. Reheat, and serve with a sprinkling of the toasted almond flakes and some freshly ground black pepper.

Taiwanese beef noodle soup

I was in the butcher's today and saw what was described as "runner beef". I'm not quite sure what cut it is (should have asked) but it was cheap and looked as if it would add plenty of flavour to a soup.

When I got home, I did a bit of googling, and came up with a recipe for Taiwanese spicy beef noodle soup or niu rou mian, which I adjusted a little bit both to reflect the contents of my cupboards and in an attempt to please the delicate palates of my children.

Ingredients
vegetable oil
1 kg runner beef (or another cheap cut)
1 large leek, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp red chile bean sauce
4 tbsps rice wine
1/2 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp allspice berries
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsps light soy sauce
2 litres of water
plus
500g of broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
250g of thick egg noodles noodles

Method

1. Heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pot and brown the beef thoroughly.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients (except for the broccoli and noodles), bring to boil, cover and turn to minimum, and simmer gently for 2-3 hours until the meat is completely tender.
3. Set lid ajar and allow to cool, then strain the broth into a large bowl. Take out the beef and set aside. Discard the other contents of the strainer (spices, leeks, garlic, ginger etc.).
4. Return broth to pan, bring to boil, add broccoli and noodles and cook until tender.
5. Meanwhile, remove beef from bone, trimming off the fat and any gristle, and cut into thinnish slices.
6. Ladle the broth with noodles and broccoli into soup bowls, add beef slices and serve.

Three cheers for Taiwan
Apparently this is the national dish of Taiwan. To do it justice, I decided to buy the most expensive noodles in my local Chinese supermarket - a Taiwanese brand which cost somewhere between two and three times as much as the alternatives. I was not disappointed, as they were also at least two to three times as good! If you can get hold of them, these are the ones to go for:

Carrot, lentil and red pepper soup

Since our weekly veggie box started arriving, I have been inspired to start making more soup. I've always loved soup and as a kid, I often had a tin of Baxter's soup for breakfast or lunch. Below, you can see me posing with two of my childhood favourites - cock-a-leekie and oxtail - in the Baxter's shop at the Ocean Terminal centre, in Edinburgh.


Anyway, back to the recipe. Looking into the fridge, I realised I still had 500g of carrots waiting to be used, together with a slightly wrinkly red pepper, so this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
1 large onion
1 red pepper
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
2 tsps cumin powder
500g carrots, peeled and sliced
100g red split lentils
1 litre stock
1/2 tsp of chilli sauce
salt to taste

Method

1. Chop the onion, red pepper and garlic, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil until the onion has softened.
2. Add the cumin powder and fry for a few seconds.
3. Add the carrots, lentils, stock and chilli sauce, bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 45 minutes.
4. Allow the soup to cool a little, blend with a stick blender, check for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Serve with plenty of crusty bread.

Underage drinking
When I was growing up in Stirling, I would sometimes make a big pot of tomato and potato soup for me and my friends to eat when we had got back from the pub after a spot of underage drinking. There was a more or less recognised hierarchy of places where you could drink: you started off in the Allan Park, whose downstairs bar would serve 15 year olds at a pinch, while the upstairs bar was curiously a policemen's local, then graduated onto another place at 16 (whose name I have forgotten), before being ready for the trendy Barnton Bar & Bistro at 17.

Carrot soup

The other day my kids bought a big bag of beautiful carrots, complete with their green leafy bits, all contained in a lovely bag with a picture of the very farmer who had grown them and a little eulogy to the wonders of the English countryside and to the virtues of the large supermarket chain supplying us with these goodies. A week later, the carrots were still sitting in the bottom of the fridge looking almost as lovely as the day they had been bought, and I was beginning to feel guilty as I read about Farmer Roberts for the third time and imagined just how disappointed he would be with me if his carrots ended up in the bin. So I made this soup.


Ingredients
1 head of celery
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
750g carrots
500g potatoes
2 tsps cumin
2 tsps smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
1 glass white wine
2 tbsps tomato puree
1 litre of vegetable stock

Method

1. Wash the celery, separate into stalks and cut into thinnish slices. Peel and chop the garlic. Top and tail the carrots, peel if necessary, and cut into chunks. Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks.
2. In a large saucepan, gently fry the celery. When it is nearly done, add the garlic, fry for another minute, then add the cumin and paprika, and fry for 10 seconds or so.
3. Add the carrots, potatoes, salt, wine, puree and stock, bring to a boil, turn heat to minimum, cover and simmer gently for 40 minutes, until the carrot and potato pieces are nice and tender.
4. Allow soup to cool, then liquidise with a stick blender.

Celeriac and beetroot soup

I really like celeriac, but I'm never quite sure what to do with it, apart from mixing it with potato in a celeriac mash. Soup is one option, and as part of my campaign for more (naturally) pink foods, I chucked some beetroot in too. The result was really good - a nice balance of slightly bitter celeriac, sweet beetroot and acidic lemon juice. And it even matched Carmela's clothes.



Ingredients
1 head of celeriac
1 large onion
2 large potatoes
olive oil
beetroot (pre-cooked)
1 glass of dry white wine
1 litre of vegetable stock
juice of 1 lemon
salt
pepper

Method

1. Peel the celeriac, onion and potatoes. Chop the onion roughly and chop the celeriac, potato and beetroot into chunks.
2. Put the onion in a large pan with some olive oil and fry gently until softened. Add the celeriac, potato, beetroot, white wine and stock, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat to minimum and simmer until the potato and celeriac are cooked.
3. Allow to cool a bit, then puree with a stick blender or food processor. Add the lemon juice, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper.

Courgette and roasted garlic soup

I have lifted this almost directly from the Painted Garden Cookbook, just adjusting the amount of garlic downwards a little and adding a good splash of white wine.

Ingredients
1 kg of small courgettes
300 g of onions
1 head of roasted garlic
olive oil
1/2 glass of white wine
1 litre of vegetable stock
salt

Method

1. Peel and chop the onion, top and tail the courgettes and chop into small chunks. Put in a large saucepan with plenty of olive oil and gently sautee until done (about 15 minutes).
2. Add the white wine, roasted garlic and stock, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool a little, whizz with a stick blender, check for salt and add more if necessary.

Jerusalem artichoke and apple soup

I only realised after I had started making this soup that my blender was on the blink, so I ended up having to use a potato ricer, hence the slightly lumpy appearance of the soup in this photo.

Ingredients
4 small leeks (or 2 large ones)
olive oil or butter
750g Jerusalem artichokes
500g potatoes
2 tart apples
1 litre of vegetable stock
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Slice the leeks and simmer gently in a large pan in some olive oil or butter.
2. Peel and dice the artichokes and potatoes, and add to the pan. Add the hot vegetable stock.
3. Peel, core and dice the apples and add to the pan. Cook for 30 minutes or so, until the artichoke and potato is done.
4. Allow to cool a bit, then blend until smooth. Add the thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.

Kitchen safety
One of the reasons why most kids' cookbooks are so bad is because you aren't allowed to let kids chop things or handle anything hot. As a result, cookbooks for children are stuffed full of recipes for cakes and biscuits (with mum or dad dealing with the oven), and the odd bit of exotic sandwich making and pizza decoration tacked on at the end. All so that in 10 years' time we can complain that our kids are obese and don't know how to cook. Far better to hand your kids a razor sharp knife and a boiling hot kettle and let them get on with it ...

Puchero gaditano - Cadiz chicken soup with chickpeas, vegetables and noodles

Chicken soup or stew with chickpeas is central to Spanish food. The most famous version is the cocido madrileño (Madrid stew) which is a chickpea stew with a selection of meats and vegetables. The Cadiz version is called puchero and is a little lighter than its Madrid counterpart.



Butchers in Cadiz always have a couple of trays on top of their counter containing various strange-looking items which are used to make the caldo or stock for the puchero. These include salted lard, ribs, vertebrae and trotters, and sections of ham bone. The butcher also sells pre-soaked bags of chickpeas, in case you've forgotten to put your chickpeas in to soak the night before.



Greengrocers also provide a little selection of vegetables for use when making puchero: leek, celery, carrot, turnip and some fresh mint. Collectively, these are los avíos del puchero.



There are lots of recipes in the Sephardi Jewish repertoire for chicken with chickpeas, and it is quite possible that the Spanish versions are Jewish in origin, with the prominent use of ham bones and other pork products ensuring that cook and diners would be safe from any accusations of backsliding from the Spanish Inquisition. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition ...!) This somewhat overstated use of blatantly unkosher items is a feature of Spanish food. I guess it is the culinary equivalent of a closeted gay man constantly talking about cars and girls.

Ingredients
300g dried chickpeas
1 piece of salted lard
1 piece of salted pork rib
1/2 salted pig's trotter
1 piece of ham bone
2 leeks
2 sticks of celery
2 carrots
1 small turnip
1 small bunch of mint
8 skinless chicken thighs
100g fine soup noodles



Method

1. Put the chickpeas to soak in plenty of water the night before.
2. The next day, place the chickpeas in a large pot, cover with plenty of water, and bring to the boil.
3. Meanwhile, finely chop the leeks, celery, carrots and turnip.
4. Once the chickpeas have reached the boil, skim off any scum, then add the lard, rib, pig's trotter and ham bone, bring back to the boil, reduce to a low heat and cover and simmer gently for about half an hour.
5. Add the chopped vegetables, add a bit of water if the soup looks to dry, and simmer for another hour or so. Check to make sure that the chickpeas are very nearly done.
6. Add the chicken fillets and simmer for another half an hour or so.
7. Add the noodles and simmer until they are cooked.
8. Remove the lard, rib, pig's trotter and ham bone, and serve the puchero in a soup plate.

Authenticity
I have made a couple of changes to a typical puchero gaditano, replacing whole unskinned chicken leg with separate, skinless thighs. I have also not included one of the traditional ingredients, which is a large chunk of boiling beef. In my opinion, this makes a cheap dish expensive, while the beef itsel ftends to come out a bit dry and tasteless.



There's nothing wrong with trying to produce 'authentic' versions of dishes, but I think this is something we can get too hung up on. It is often little more than an excuse for buying expensive imported ingredients instead of cheaper local ones, and can be a barrier to creativity. If you are making this soup in the UK (or anywhere where funny bits of salted pig are hard to come by), then just use a good chicken stock or substitute with something you think will work. After all, the presence of pig in this dish is itself probably the result of an earlier innovation.

Talking of authenticity, in the modern Spanish home this would almost always be made with a pressure cooker. In that case, you just bung all the ingredients in at the start (apart from the noodles) and cook until the chickpeas are done.

Cock-a-leekie
If I was more given to crazy ethnographic theories, I would suggest that Scotland's cock-a-leekie soup has its origins in a small group of Sephardic Jews who made their way north after being expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, bringing with them their love for chicken soup. No chickpeas being available, they substituted with barley, and helped create one of Scotland's national dishes: a chicken soup containing leeks, potatoes, barley and prunes.

Thick, roasted sweet potato soup

Sweet potatoes are one of those things I buy then never know quite what to do with. This thick soup works very well, as they are mixed with other vegetables, and you can offset the sweetness with a bit of salt and vinegar.



Ingredients500g sweet potatoes
500g of potatoes
125 g of carrots
1 leeks
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1.2 teaspoon of oregano
balsamic vinegar
olive oil
freshly ground pepper
500 ml vegetable or chicken stock (or water)

Method

1. Peel the sweet potatoes, the potatoes and the carrots, and chop them into largeish chunks. Spread across a large baking tray, drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar and plenty of olive oil, and sprinkle with the salt and oregano. Roast in a medium oven (200 C) until they are cooked (about 45 minutes).
2. Meanwhile, chop the leeks and saute in a large saucepan until they are nearly cooked, then add the garlic and fry for another minute or two.
3. Add the roasted vegetables to the saucepan with the leeks and garlic, top up with the stock, and add the mustard. Blend the soup with a stick blender or in a liquidiser, add a little more stock if it is too thick, taste, adjust the seasonings and simmer gently for another 5 minutes.

Soup versus puree
This would be called a 'puree' in Spain, not a soup. (And the recipe above produces something which is thicker than anything that would be described as soup in the UK.) Soup, in Britain, is often intended as a light first course, and even the heartier soups tend to combine chunks with a lighter broth.

In Spain, a puree would tend be served either as a nourishing first course, to be followed by some more or less unaccompanied meat or fish, so the puree is doing the job of the 'two veg' in a typical British main course. An alternative to soup would be a plate of lentils. This approach reaches its logical conclusion in a cocido or stew, where the meat, veg and pulses are cooked together, but the veg and pulses are served as the first course, with the meat served separately as the second.

Salmorejo (thick, chilled tomato soup)

This is a bit like a more substantial version of gazpacho, thickened with bread. The recipe comes from the second Moro book, but I have adjusted the quantities a bit.



We've just started home schooling our kids, Sammy and Carmela, and part of our plan is that they help make lunch a few times a week. This was one of the first things Sammy helped to make.

Ingredients
tomatoes
white bread - 1/10th of the weight of the tomatoes (after removing crusts)
olive oil - a little bit less than 1/10th of the weight of the tomatoes
salt - 1/100th of the weight of the tomatoes
vinegar - 1/30th of the weight of the tomatoes
finely chopped garlic - about 1/2th a clove per 500g of tomatoes

Method
Cut the tomatoes into quarters and break the bread into small pieces. Combine all the ingredients in a blender and whizz until smooth.

Ham, ham, ham
The habit of including some pork in almost everything, even to the length of sprinkling a little ham on some tomato soup, is almost certainly a throwback to the Inquisition and the need that many Spaniards obviously felt to prove that they were not secret Jews or Muslims. Indeed, the ostentatious public consumption of ham is a major feature of Spanish life. Oddly enough, another sure sign that someone might be kicking with the wrong foot in 16th century Spain was the use of olive oil. (Animal fat was the approved cooking medium for Christians.)

The tables, however, are beginning to turn, as can be seen from the photo below. If you look carefully at the red awning, you can just make out the words 'El Rincón del Jamón', Spanish for 'The Ham Corner'. The sign below advertises the new Moroccan restaurant which has replaced it, 'El Andalusi'.



Update
Apparently El Andalusi was too exotic for Gaditano habits. It fairly quickly went out of business, to be replaced by a ghastly Argentinian restaurant. "Sobre los gustos, no hay nada escrito".

Cullen skink

This is a lovely simple soup which me and Sammy made for our friends Kevin, Ros, Laila and Aisha when they visited us in Edinburgh. Cullen is a village in the north east of Scotland; skink, apparently, is the Scots word for a shin bone used for making soup. There are no shins in this one, though, just Arbroath smokies, which are delicious whole smoked haddock.



Ingredients
2 Arbroath smokies (whole smoked haddock)
1 bay leaf
whole peppercorns
1 small onion
1 lb of potatoes
salt
mustard
milk

Method
Stage 1: preparation

1. In a large pan, cover the haddock with boiling water, add the bay leaf and a few peppercorns, simmer gently for five minutes, remove fish from the pan and allow to cool, reserving the water. Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and boil them in a little water. Once they are cooked, strain them and mash them until fairly smooth. Or use a ricer.
2. Chop the onion very finely and fry gently in a little vegetable oil. Remove the skin and bones from the fish and break the flesh into smallish pieces.

Stage 2: assembly

1. Combine the fish and onion in a large pan, with a little of the stock. Add the mashed potato, and then enough stock and/or milk to make a thickish soup. (No measurements or proportions here. It's up to you how thick or thin you want it to be, and whether you want it to be more or less smokey or creamy.)
2. Stir in a teaspoonful of English mustard, check the seasoning and add salt if required. (The smokies are quite salty, so you may not need much if any.) Gently reheat the soup, being careful that it doesn't stick.

If you can't get hold of whole Arbroath smokies like the ones above, you could replace it with good quality undyed fillet. Whatever you do, don't use the nasty yellow dyed fillets. Far better to just use plain haddock (or cod or whatever else you fancy) and bump up the flavour with some herbs and spices. It won't be Cullen skink, but it will still taste good.

Courgette soup with lemon and basil

This is a really simple soup I came up with today. The ingredients were just what happened to come to hand, but I think the sharpness of the lemon goes really well with the smoothness of the courgette. And the basil gives it a bit of extra interest without overwhelming the other flavours.



Ingredients
olive oil
1 leek
3 medium-sized courgettes
600 ml of good quality stock
juice of 1 lemon
a good handful of basil leaves
salt

Method

1. Chop the leeks quite finely, and sweat in plenty of olive oil in a large saucepan. Cut the courgettes into smallish pieces, add to the leeks and continue to cook for 10 minutes or so.
2. Add the stock, bring to a boil, cover, reduce to minimum and cook for another 20 minutes.
3. Add the lemon juice, chopped basil leaves and about quarter a teaspoon of salt. Turn off the heat and allow to cool a little before liquidising. Taste and add a little more salt or lemon juice if required.

Not all lemons are the same. These rather ordinary looking ones were given to me by the mother of Sammy's schoolfriend, Martín, who has a lemon tree in his garden. They have lots more flavour and are much juicier than anything I have ever managed to buy, either in Spain or in the UK.

Roast chicken soup with knaidlach

Making your own stock is really easy. Good quality bought stock is fine for general cooking purposes, but for soup you really need to make your own.

Knaidlach are just little dumplings, made from matzo meal. There is a lot of debate about the best way to make these, including all sorts of ridiculous magical ingredients (club soda, ginger ale etc.), and endless family anecdotes about Auntie So-and-So, whose knaidlach were like cannonballs, as opposed to Auntie-Such-and-Such, whose knaidlach were as light as a feather. Actually, they’re very easy to make, and it’s quite hard to go wrong. My recipe is adapted from the one which appears in Evelyn Rose’s Jewish Cookbook. If you want to, you can add other embellishments – some chopped parsley, a bit of ground ginger or whatever.




Stage 1: making your stock

1. Put your roast chicken carcass and the juices from the roasting dish in a large pot. (Don’t worry if the juices are oily.) Set aside any leftover meat from the bird (breast, legs, oysters from the back) but remove any skin and bones to add to the pot. Cover the carcass with water (but only just). Bring to the boil, reduce to minimum and simmer for at least an hour.
2. Allow to cool, strain the stock through a colander or sieve into a large bowl, cover and leave in the fridge. Discard the carcass. The next day you should have a bowl of jellified stock, covered with a thin layer of solidified fat.

Stage 2: rendering your chicken fat

1. Skim the fat off the top of the bowl and place in a small saucepan, for which you have a lid. (This chicken fat is the original schmaltz which has made its way into the English language with the meaning sentimental.)
2. Place the saucepan over a low heat, and as soon as it starts to spit, place the lid over it, but leaving it slightly off so that the steam can escape as any water trapped in the fat evaporates. Once the fat has stopped spitting (probably after about 10 minutes), pour the fat into a small bowl, leave to cool, and transfer to the fridge so that it solidifies completely. This chicken fat was a basic cooking ingredient (as were a range of animal fats across Europe, including goose, pig and beef fat). It’s not the healthiest cooking medium, but helps adds flavour to the knaidlach below.

Stage 3: making your knaidlach

Ingredients
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of chicken fat
4 tablespoons of chicken stock
1 teaspoon of salt
4 tablespoons of ground almonds
10 to 12 tablespoons of medium matzo meal (in Spain, I use breadcrumbs, which are sold in all supermarkets and bakeries)

Method

1. Fill a large saucepan with water, add salt and set to boil.
2. Beat the eggs thoroughly with a whisk. Stir in the rest of the ingredients with a spoon, leaving out the last two tablespoons of matzo meal, just in case. The mixture should now be just stiff enough to easily be formed into balls. If the mixture is too loose, then add some more of the matzo meal. If it is too stiff, then add a little more stock. (It’s important that the mixture is not too stiff at this stage.)
3. Once the water in your pan is boiling, reduce the heat to medium, roll the knaidlach mixture into marble-sized balls, and add them to the water as you go. Once you have added all the knaidlach to the water, cover the pan, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 30 minutes before adding to the stock (see below).

Putting it all together

1. Heat the stock in a large pan. Using a slotted spoon, remove the knaidlach from the water in which they have been cooked, and add to the chicken stock. Simmer gently for another couple of minutes and serve.

(You can add carrots and other things to the stock if you want, but I think it is best served just the way it is.)