Stockless Soup

I promised a post about soup, didn't I?
Unlike when I last posted about soup, this one was successful!

Have you ever been looking for soup recipes, found something that sounds delicious, only to read something like this in the ingredients?

 "2pts vegetable stock"

Do you then groan because you know you used the last one and haven't bought any more yet?

Yeah, me too.

So one day, I thought 'screw the vegetable stock!'
And I made Stockless Soup. Handy if you have no premade stock, but plenty of herbs and spices.

Here's how:

 
Gather your desired vegetables (seen here: pumpkin, onion and carrot).
Also gather various condiments, herbs, spices, etc--whatever floats your boat. (pictured: pepper, himalayan salt, garlic, horseradish, ginger)

Heap your prepared vegetables into a big saucepan and add your herbs/spices/whatever else. I always put in far too much horseradish, therefore my soup could also be known as 'Sinus Clearing Soup'!

Add water and cook until the vegetables are cooked through. Taste occasionally during cooking to see if you need to add more salt/pepper/other flavourings you might have knocking around.

Once done, give it a whizz through a blender if you prefer your soups thick and smooth :)

Extra tips from Kei's Gung-Ho School of Cookery:

How to tell if something will taste good in your soup: Wait until the veggies and a few basic additions are cooking. Smell it, smell what you're unsure about, and smell the soup again. If the two smells 'match', it will be a good addition. If not, don't do it!

Amounts to add: For things like ginger, garlic and horseradish, I go for about 1 tsp per litre. For everything else I use to the old fashioned measure, 'shake a bit in and see how it tastes'

What to add: See what you have in the cupboard! In the past I've used various combinations of five elements salt, pepper, curry powder, garlic, ginger, horseradish,black pepper, himalayan salt, regular salt, a lemon pepper mill thingy from Marks & Spencer, ditto chilli mill thingy, basil, marjoram, rosemary and parsley. Our cupboard for these kind of things is right next to the cooker, so I tend to open the cupboard and add things as I'm going :)

I prefer cooking soup this way to using readymade stock. The first soup I made this way tasted like the homemade soup my Mum sometimes buys from the deli, so I knew I was on to a good thing! Also, from a nutritional standpoint, by cooking in this way you know exactly what has gone into your soup! :)

Hot Stuff

It's time for a 100% NOT sponsored post :) 

To be honest, it's kind of lame that I feel the need to write this on posts where I want to talk about a product I enjoyed. But I want you guys to know I'm not being paid to glorify any products here!

Whilst on a shopping trip to Bluewater, Mum picked up this chocolate for me.

 Mitzi Blue ‘Hot Stuff’ by Zotter

(dark chocolate with chilli and strawberry chocolate)

Isn’t the packaging cute?

The inside of the carton states that the packaging comprises a CO2-neutral carton and 100% biodegradable organic plastic. Great, right?

As for the chocolate itself, it is delicious!

The strawberry flavour reaches your taste buds first. Then your mouth is assaulted by the heat of the chilli as you swallow! Add that the chocolate is organic and fair trade and you have a big mouthful of yum.

The chocolate bar is round and there’s a mini circular chocolate - called a ‘Mini Mitzi’, apparently - in the centre. I would have taken a picture, but my bar was smashed to pieces! Boo!

Zotter seems like a pretty awesome company.  Right now for every ‘Yummy! Meals for Schools’ chocolate bar sold, they will ensure a Burmese refugee child will receive a school meal.

Chocolate loaded with good karma? Yes please!

Looking at their web site, there are some utterly mad sounding chocolate bars. Pineapple with Celeriac? Sweet Wine and Cheese? Bacon Bits?

I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of this chocolate as we all need a little indulgent treat sometimes. If I ever get my hands on a bar of Bacon Bits chocolate, you can bet I’ll be writing about it here! (Next up, however, is Wasabi chocolate...)

This is NOT a sponsored post, just me rambling about something that made my taste buds happy!

Pumpkin & Red Pepper Soup

Earlier I posted about my selection of pumpkin cakes. Did it make you hungry?

This time around, I want to share my post-pumpkin-carving Halloween tradition: soup!

Soup is probably the easiest thing to make with the carved-out pumpkin flesh. I started off making it to a recipe with strict measurements, but now I ad-lib a little as I go along!

Here’s what I did this year:

Pumpkin and Red Pepper Soup

Pumpkin flesh (I used around 800g)

1 red pepper

1 small onion

1 vegetable stock cube

Salt

Pepper

Sage/any other herbs you want to use.

Note on measurements: You can basically substitute the vegetables for others, add in others, use less/more pumpkin...it’s up to you really!

1. If necessary, cut the pumpkin into small pieces (mine was already in shreds since I scooped it out with an ice cream scoop!)

2. Place the pumpkin in a large saucepan and add just enough water to cover.

3. Chop up the onion and red pepper into small pieces and add to the saucepan. Put the saucepan on the heat. Stir occasionally.

4. Make up the stock with around 400ml  of boiled water.

5. Once the water in the saucepan has started to heat up, add the stock.

6. Add in a couple of pinches of pepper, salt, sage and/or any other herbs. I only used a tiny bit of salt, but threw in a lot of pepper. After using the pepper mill, I found ground black pepper so added that, and then spotted some lemon pepper so decided to use some of that as well!

7. Cook for around 30-40 minutes, or until the vegetables have all gone soft. (I made rock cakes whilst cooking this soup!)

8. Liquidise in a blender, pour yourself a bowl and enjoy!

The soup I made tasted fairly subtle at first--then you get the bite from the pepper! Delicious!  I ended up with around 2 litres of soup, so have plenty to eat over the next few days!

Hope this was inspiring! I really think soup is a matter of taste, and cooking up a batch is really easy, especially if you use premade stock to add a little flavour.

Now I’m going to light my pumpkin and lie in wait for trick or treaters…

Linking up at the linkys in the side bar :D

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Pumpkin Cake ( + recipe!)

It’s Halloween! Hurrah!

Have you got your house decorated, your pumpkins prepared and your kitchen emanating the devilishly delicious smells of spooky foodstuffs? Are you garbed in creepy costume and armed with a huge container of candy for all the trick or treaters?

I have spent my day doing all the above :)

Obviously I carved my pumpkin yesterday, but today I dealt with all the leftover innards!

In the past I made soup from a recipe, this year I decided to be a little more ‘adventurous’ and try out some pumpkin cake, too. I’ll write about the soup (with a recipe) in my next post, but for now, here are the cakes!

 Clockwise from top: Bleedin’ Cupcake, pumpkin ‘cookie’, pumpkin rock cake

Of them all, the rock cakes came out the best--just sweet enough, light and yummy! Read on for a recipe!

The cookie recipe was one my Mum found on the internet. It didn’t honestly work that well, though that was because it’s all in cups, whereas I measure things in grams. So – after looking online and finding a ridiculous conversion that made no sense – I guessed.

Then halfway through mixing I threw in some more flour and sugar for good measure.

Okay, I added more cinnamon than the recipe called for, too. I like cinnamon.

The cupcakes were the same mixture as the cookies; I had a bit left over and thought it looked more like cake batter than cookie mixture, so I stuck it in some cake cases! Since they looked boring without any decoration, I added some blood-red icing.

I made the rock cakes based on a recipe in my Mum’s trusty and dog-eared copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery.  

Here’s my adaptation of the recipe:

Pumpkin Rock Cakes

Makes 10

200g/8oz self-raising flour

100g/4oz butter

75g/3oz caster sugar

100g/4oz pumpkin

1 egg

2-4 teaspoons of milk (I used 3)

2-3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1. Sift flour and cinnamon into a bowl and mix.

2. Rub in butter (this part is messy!)

3. Add sugar and pumpkin to the mixture

4. Beat the egg and add to the mixture along with the milk and vanilla essence.

5. Mix to a stiff batter (add a little more flour if the batter won’t stiffen)

6. Use a tablespoon to place dollops of the mixture on a greased baking tray, leaving space between since the cakes will spread a little

7. Bake in the centre of the oven at 200°C/400°F (180°C for a fan oven) for 15-20 minutes.

8. Transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

 

The original recipe called for dried fruit and didn’t include the cinnamon or vanilla essence. The great thing with the recipes in this book is that they’re easily adapted--the book itself has plenty of cake recipes that use variations of the same basic recipe; it’s a good way to learn how to cook!

Come back soon to check out my easy pumpkin soup recipe!


Linking up to the parties in the side bar!

Photography Challenge Week #4

It's week four of the photography challenge at A Step in the Journey!

Though I usually post and link up on Thursday, I'm going away tomorrow so probably won't have time to link up!

Anyway, this week's theme is dinner. Here's my picture:

Tasty

I'll admit I struggled with this one--in fact this picture was taken just over two hours ago! It's rather uninspired but it's food photography, I guess! Whilst the knife in the background is whited out in the light, I'm pleased with the ovwerall colours and sharpness of this picture.

And yes, it was as delicious as it looks. My Mum wins at cookery!

Don't Panic: Last-Minute Gifts You Can Make

T'was the night before Christmas,

And all through the house...

Panic set in! You haven't a present for Aunty Nora!

It's not quite the night before Christmas yet, but with a week until the big day, a fair few of us could be engaging panic mode: forgotten presents, relatives difficult to buy for…this time of year can become a nightmare! 

Unfortunately Oh! brings you some suggestions for handmade gifts and stocking fillers that can be whipped up in anything between half an hour and a day.

Pink Peppercorn Chocolate

I was given this chocolate recently! Dolfin dark chocolate with pink peppercorns. It has a very unusual but nonetheless delightful taste and I fully recommend it to anyone that likes to try new things!

...it's particularly good with a cup of tea!