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! :)

Disaster Day

Do you ever have days that seem to be a complete and total disaster?
I think I'm having one of them.

The first clue was just after lunch, when I was making some no-bake yummies to take with me when I go to volunteer tomorrow (because charity shops and cakes are an excellent combination).

Yummies.

The recipe called for the chocolate to be melted with butter (I used Stork margarine instead) which meant I had to do it on the hob in a glass bowl, over a pan of hot water.
To save time, I boiled water in the kettle first, to pour into the pan. When the kettle was boiled, I lifted it up and managed not only to clobber the top of it on the bottom of the overhead cupboard, but knocked the bowl of the scales flying too! Luckily the bowl was empty, but it made a real clang when it hit the floor!

Anyway, the 'cakes' themselves went well enough, thank goodness.

I went to make another Monstar and managed to sew the arms on the wrong way around...No picture of this, because it's a present for somebody who might read this blog!
...admittedly I rectified the mistake by sewing the legs on backwards too...

Moving on!

This afternoon we heard a loud bang from the back door and Howie (our cat), ran into the kitchen...closely followed by Alfie (another of ours). We could easily guess that Alfie tried to attack Howie through the cat flap...

Alfie has no bothers to give.

...the cat flap which is now in pieces. Alfie clearly does not care (but did know he was in trouble).

I unscrewed the cat flap from the back door, as there were bits of sharp plastic hanging from the flap. Alfie didn't want to pose with it, surprisingly!


As for this evening? This evening, I decided to make soup to take with me tomorrow, too. To be precise, butternut squash and ginger soup. 
I'd read online that using cashew nuts in soup can make it creamy, so I thought I'd try that out! I also had to use a different stock to the one I normally use in soup.

I prepared and boiled up the butternut squash and an onion, and tossed in a load of pre-prepared ginger, the stock, and some herbs for good measure. As the bubbled away and the squash softened, it smelt quite delicious! 

When I first blended it up, it was too thick. I returned some to the pan and added water to the soup remaining in the blender, put the lid back on...and hadn't put the lid on well enough.

Basically I managed to explode soup all over the place. That soup was hot. Boiling hot. Most of what hit me landed on my clothes, but I have a burn on my wrist now. Owie!


To add insult to injury - quite literally - the soup tastes disgusting. The cashews obliterated the taste of the vegetables, and the stock is so disgustingly salty that the soup tastes of nothing more than liquified, oversalted nuts.

And I have a whole jug of the stuff. :(


(At least the cakes turned out okay...)

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…

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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!


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