Tag: winter food

Cooking for sharing

Cooking for sharing

One of the reason I like cooking is to place the dish in the middle of the table for everyone to share.  Of course when you go to a restaurant, you get the dish you selected from the menu.  At home, at friends, I love when the dish is put on the table.  This may sound obvious to some of you if you haven’t been in countries where plates are plated in the kitchen and brough to the guests.

Our family lives on a small island in the northern part of Sydney. As our children and their friends from next door were all day coming back and forth between the two house, we decided to have a common dinner. Each family brought their dish and, …wahoo, what a feast we had: soup, salmon, flat bread, curry, dal and chocolate cake for dessert!

table to share
Dishes to share served with flat bread (fresh from the pan!)

The soup of the day

The soup of the day was a vegetable soup, a French classic: the potato leek soup.  Here you go: one big potato (or 2 small), 1 small leek, 2 carrots, rock salt and water just covering the vegetables. Simmer until cooked then blend.

You can use other vegetables and add a little complexity, this is a base recipe.

The soup can be served on its own or with a teaspoon of creme fraiche.  Add an egg or a little fried Haloumi and here is a meal!

Baked Salmon with capers, red onion and chestnuts

I have already posted about that simple method of preparing fish. I enjoy it because it is simple, full of flavours, looks good and results in a very light dish.  You will find the recipe HERE.

pot de saumon

And for breakfast we had fresh croissants

And for breakfast we had fresh croissants, so did two other families nearby. I hadn’t made croissants for a long long time. It had something to do with not being satisfied of how the flakiness had been.  The idea of baking viennoiseries had been in my mind for a few weeks, I had a good ides what I had to improve.  I had been making sure to have the right butter available at home just in case I felt like taking the dive. Somehow, my youngest daughter asked for some Saturday morning. Here was  the excuse I needed.

When making croissants, it is difficult to make a small quantity because you need a minimum volume of dough for the lamination process (the process that makes those flaky buttery layers).  I used a recipe based on dry yeast, this at least was not to be left to good luck.  I had been quite unlucky with fresh yeast recently, and anyway, I did not have any.

From 500 g of flour, I got 15 pieces, mostly croissants , a few pains au chocolat and a few  torsades (think braids) I made using long strips cut from the sides of the dough when first rolled.   I am quite pleased with the result.

The recipe needs a fair documenting with photos which I do not yet have, it is not on my blog for now.

 

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soup of the day!

And the soup of the day is: the turnip soup!

Yes, from chocolate mousses (last week) to soups, what a change!  We can’t eat chocolate all the time as we all know.

What do you think of this little menu: a soup, a small pasta dish and a chocolate mousse. Sounds like a balanced menu to me!  Anyway, winter here marks an increase in the amount of soups I prepare.  Soups are mega healthy and easy, so no excuse, get the big pot out!

The turnip soup

turnip soup

I bought turnips. What? Yes, turnips!  For the French followers who may hesitate on the translation, I am speaking of “navets”).  I have ever been a fan.  What is the story here?  Not being a fan, I never buy turnip, except extremely rarely while preparing a large dish of couscous (the whole dish from northern Africa, not just the semolina part).  The rarity is that I don’t do couscous very often, good merguez are hard to find and when I do a couscous, I don’t necessarily add turnips.  Makes me feel like making a couscous soon.  🙂   I had always had that repulsion to turnip and wanted to give it a second chance.  So I decided on a soup.  I looked into the fridge, perfect I had some carrots and some fennel.

ingredients soupe au navet

The above (half of the fennel shown) serve 3 people.

  1. Peel you vegetables
  2. Place them in a large saucepan or cooking pot
  3. Add a little rock salt (the quantity will depend on the volume of soup), for the quantity pictured above 1/2 teaspoon is enough.
  4. Cover with water and cook until the vegetables are soft.
  5. For the turnip soup, if you don’t want the bitterness of the turnip you need to drain the cooking water or part of it unfortunately.  If you like the bitterness, keep as such. Blend the soup.  Add to it a couple cheese triangles (you can substitute for cream or cheddar cheese).
  6. Eat warm and fresh with toasted buttered bread.

The 3 ADVICES FOR SOUPS

ADVICE 1: if you don’t want to eat the same soup for the whole week, make small batches!

It is very easy getting carried away by adding a lot of vegetables or adding a few items of each sort, but here I should advise against it:

  1. You may have a wonderful soup but if you wanted to have a dominating taste, this will not be the case.
  2. Trust me, after two meals your taste buds will ask for other flavours.

ADVICE 2: Add a little rock salt while cooking to avoid packing on salt when you eat it.

Include some salt to your cooking pot.  The photo below is from a different mixed vegetables soup (kale, carrots, potatoes, celeriac branches). Why?

  1. You will have less rush for excess salt when you eat it.
  2. Some vegetables, such as carrots, cook better with a pinch of salt (apparently salting the water raises its boiling point, making it boil hotter, so that your carrots cook faster).

soupe saler

ADVICE 3: Tips on ingredients

In the choice of vegetables, you can go for a unique vegetables or a mix. When doing a single vegetable soup:

  • you want a vegetable which has a little bit of character.
  • You may also often choose to boost the flavours with a roasting process (it brings out the sugars in the vegetable by caramelising them) or some garlic or added cheese.

The mix vegetable soup is either a choice or a practicality:

  • The mix vegetable soup uses all those veges left in the fridge which need eating!
  • When combining vegetables, I would always ensure to have a less watery vegetable, this gives body to the soup, typically I would use a couple potatoes.
  • That soup is pretty easy to prepare.

Now, to the question do you need a litre of stock to make a soup, the answer is NO (exception of the onion soup).  This is particularly true for the mix vegetable soup, you are basically creating  a stock! For the single vegetable soups like cauliflower and pumpkin, if you want to use a good stock, by all means use it. Just watch out for added salts and flavours.

Soups’ Ideas!!! Yes, please!

The soups below are blended except if advised otherwise. Single vegetables soups that we make at home are:

  • the zucchini soup: boiled zucchini in very little water, pinch of salt, processed with a soft cheese such as “Vache Qui Rit” (cheese triangle) or works well with cheddar too.
  • The cauliflower soup: cauliflower steamed or partly roasted, partly steamed if time allows, with head of roasted garlic (keep only the cloves), thickened cream.
  • Pumpkin soup: with a little cumin or nutmeg. Served with chilli. Sometimes cooked with carrots. Also try the Thai pumpkin soup, love that one!
  • The onion soup (not blended), the preparation requires a good broth if possible, a bit more work to prepare than the other soups but really worth it.
  • The chestnut soup. See the recipe HERE.

Mix veges:

  • the leek soup, “soupe au poireau” made of one leek (white AND green bits), 3 large potatoes, 2 carrots.
  • The minestrone.  This is great when you have plenty vegetables. Cut them in small sizes. Plan to add small size pasta at the end. This soup is not blended.

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