Chunky Borscht (Eastern European Beetroot Soup)

I love Borscht. My mum used to make it in the summer for as long as I remember, liquidising it as directed by her 1960s Kenwood Chef booklet. I thought it was the only way to have it, until in my early 20s, once only, I had a chunky version made by a friend’s mum back from Poland.

I had tried googling the recipe in recent years but was overwhelmed by the amount of borscht recipes out there. That was until I watched the Hairy Bikers make their version in their ‘Hairy Biker’s Northern Exposure’ series. With beetroot fresh from my new allotment, I made this for the first time last night. It made exactly 4x500ml pots which have been labelled and taken down to Alresford Country Market this, so other than licking out the pan I had any of this long awaited soup. So I am hoping that beetroot is not to everyone’s taste, and at least one pot does not sell.

1 tbsp vegetable oil
15g/½oz butter (didn’t use any)
1 large carrot, diced
1 celery stick, diced
1 onion, finely chopped
3 medium sized beetroots (around 450g/1lb unpeeled weight), peeled and diced (I used 2 small ones, grated, and still the soup is a wonderful rich reddy purple)
1 large waxy potato, diced (I grated a value white potato)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1½ litres/2½ pints good quality beef stock (I only used 1 litre made with beef stock cubes as i was adding tinned tomatoes)
½ purple cabbage, finely shredded (used 4 large leaves of a green cabbage)
2 tomatoes, skinned, cored and chopped (used 1 tin of chopped tomatoes)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve (Nope, don’t have any of this to hand!)
sour cream
1 tbsp finely chopped dill

Soften the onion, carrot, & celery in the oil/butter in a large saucepan for a few minutes. Add the potato & garlic and fry for a few more minutes. The Hairy Bikers added their beetroot at this stage but I decided to add my raw grated beetroot later just in case it lost it’s colour. Instead I added the tomatoes which they added later.

Add the stock and simmer for 15 minutes, then add the cabbage and beetroot and simmer for another 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve with sour cream and dill if you have it. If I have any soup left to try I might try Greek Yoghurt…

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry
Instagram: sunhillmakesbakes

Vietnamese Beef Pho with Leftover Roast Beef

When a friend, who lived in Vietnam for a while, said she was making a Beef Pho I thought this was something I had to try for myself particulary as I had a little rare beef left from a roast. She texted me a couple of photos of recipes from two recipe books and I muddled through from there.

A lot of ‘proper’ Vietnamese recipes instruct you to roast beef bones and make your own stock. Don’t bother! I came across beef bones by chance (I buy chicken carcasses weekly to make stock for Watercress Soup that I sell to a local farm shop) but it was a long, steamy, and ultimately greasy task. And I think I’ll stick to organic beef stock cubes in future.

Serves 2

200ml wide rice noodles
500ml beef stock
1 star anise
3cm root ginger, shredded
3 bunches bok choy, shredded (I used equivalent amount of sugar snap peas, baby corn, spring onions)
Thinly sliced red onion
Handful thinly sliced raw or rare beef
Half a large bunch of coriander
2 tbsp chopped mint or 1 tbsp dried mint
1/2 tsp hot chilli flakes

Fish sauce and lime or lemon juice to serve

Prepare the vegetables, onion, beef, coriander and mint first. Bring the stock to the boil and add the start anise and ginger and simmer whilst cooking the noodles according to the packet’s instructions.

When the noodles are cooked, drain and divide between two large bowls. Quickly divide all the other ingredients and place vegetables, onion, beef, and herbs into the two bowls and pour over the simmering stock. Add fish sauce, a squeeze of lime or lemon juice, and chilli flakes before eating immediately.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Roast & Rice Soup or Congee

Still can’t be bothered, and thankfully don’t seem to need, to do a big shop yet.  So hunting in the fridge for lunch ideas for the kids I found a duck carcass given to me by my mother after Christmas Eve supper.  As the kids seemed to like my Turkey Noodle Soup I thought I’d work along similar lines but use rice instead of noodles to make it more spoon friendly.  This could also be made with leftover roast turkey, chicken, pork, beef…

It is loosely based on congee, a porridge of seemingly overcooked rice we came across travelling in Malaysia and Thailand.  From memory the Thai congee was lightly flavoured with chilli, garlic and often with fried minced chicken and beaten egg, whereas the Malaysian congee in a Chinese cafe in Kuala Lumpur was served bland for us to pimp up with chillies in vinegar, soy or fish sauce.

The kids reaction was predictably mixed.  Princess and Sprout liked it.  Big Boy said it smelt yuck but tasted nice, toyed with it, and then said he was too full.  He was duly asked to wait at the table without pudding – well if he says he is too full – whilst the rest of us finished ours and had pudding.

Serves 4

Small handful of cooked duck meat (or any roast meat)
1 small leek
1 medium carrot
1 garlic clove
A couple of slivers of fresh ginger (optional)
1 tbsp sunflower oil
Star anise (optional)
1/2 mug basmati rice
3 mugs water
Chicken stock cube
2 tbsp Oyster Sauce (optional)
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
Pinch of chilli flakes

To make this porridge consistency I put all the vegetables and meat in the mini food processor, but you could just finely chop everything by hand,

Clean and mince the leek and carrot and start to fry gently in a saucepan whilst you mince the meat, ginger and garlic.  Add this to the frying vegetables then add the stock, rice, and star anise if using and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the rice is very soft.

Add the oyster sauce and soy sauce just before serving and a sprinkling of chilli flakes if desired.

NB.  Here is a quicker congee you could just add a handful of roast meat to.

Brussel Sprout Minestrone & Other Christmas Variations

I bought some brussel sprouts the 2 weeks ago to decorate a homemade wreath with.  I came across the sad little remainders last weekend and decided to pop them in a minestrone, and no-one was none the wiser.  It got me thinking about all the variations of Christmas minestrone that could be made.  And I think that list is probably endless.

Makes 4 hearty servings

1 medium onion (or substitute with leek)
1 large clove of garlic
I large carrot
1 large stick of celery
100g smoked bacon, or one handful chopped cooked turkey or ham
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 can of beans (haricot, cannellini, kidney, whatever)
1 chicken stock cube + 1 litre boiling water, or 1 litre ham, turkey, or chicken stock
Handful of brussel sprouts, finely sliced or half a small cabbage, spring greens, courgettes, kale…)
1 handful broken pasta or small pasta for soup.
1 tbsp olive oil for frying

Chop the onion and garlic and fry with the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the bacon if using, otherwise add the cooked meat later.  Chop the carrot and celery, or any other vegetables you are using except any leaf/green vegetables (these need less cooking and are added near the end) and add when chopped. Stir and put the lid on for a few minutes to let the vegetables sweat.

Add the beans, tomatoes, stock cube if using, and the stock/boiling water to just cover the vegetables. Add the chopped meat, stir, cover with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes.

Finely slice the brussel sprouts or whichever green leafy vegetable you are using and push down into the soup together with the pasta pieces. Cover and simmer again for 5-10 minutes or until the pasta is soft.

Serve with grated parmesan, or more usually the case in our house, mature cheddar.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Chinese Chicken Noodle Soup

Researching soups last week to make for the Country Market I discovered that Campbell’s No.2 bestselling soup, after Cream of Tomato, is Chicken Noodle.

I have seen a recipe for it on the back of a pack of vermicelli, but it seemed a rather dull insipid affair on yet another chilly day in March, so I perked mine up with some Chinese flavours.  Dad & I thought it was delicious.  But the conservative pensioners at the market were not tempted in the least.

Serves 4, heartily

1 boned free range chicken thigh or small handful cooked chicken
1 litre water
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, grated
Handful frozen sweetcorn
1 small leek, finely sliced
1 chicken stock cube, crumbled
2-3 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil (optional)
1 layer Sharwoods Medium Egg Noodles

Simmer the uncooked chicken in the water for 30 minutes.  Turn off the heat and take the chicken out of the water to cool whilst you prepare the other ingredients. Reserve the cooking liquid.

When everything else is chopped and grated, shed the chicken into small spoonsized pieces. Place all the ingredients apart from the noodles, soy sauce and sesame oil back into the liquid you cooked the chicken in and bring back to the boil.  Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the noodles, crumbling them as much as you can in your hands.  Simmer for another 5 minutes then add the soy sauce and sesame to taste.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Chunky Lentil & Bacon Soup

I posted Lentil & Bacon Soup about a year ago, and probably didn’t make this soup again until a few weeks ago.  I made it for Alresford Country Market and promptly sold out.  I then made it for West Lea Farm shop and they too keep running out.  So now I seem to permanently have some on the go.  The kids, too, were introduced to it this week on balmy October half term day at Alice Holt Forest (soup flask + plastic mugs, butter bread ‘croutons’ + spoon = picnic lunch) and have now declared it their second favourite soup after Minestrone.  Here is my new improved recipe.

Makes 6-8 mugs of thick spoonable soup!
Prep 5 minutes
Cooking Time 25 minutes (I cooked this whilst the kids were eating breakfast on the day we went to the forest)1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 stick of celery
1 clove of garlic
100g smoked bacon lardons or streaky bacon
1 tbsp olive oil
200g red lentils
1 400g chopped tinned tomatoes
1 litre (2 canfuls) just boiled water
2 chicken stock cubes
Salt & pepper to tasteBoil the kettle.  Chop the bacon into 1cm pieces and fry over a medium heat in the olive oil whilst you peel the onion, garlic, and carrot and finely dice along with the celery.  Add the vegetables when the bacon starts to brown, and fry for a couple more minutes with the lid on stirring from time to time.

Weigh out the red lentils and stir into the vegetables, then add the tomatoes, crumbled stock cubes and hot water.  Bring to the boil with the lid on then simmer with the lid on for 20 minutes or until the lentils and vegetables are tender.

When served immediately this is quite a sloppy soup but it will thicken if not eaten straight away into a stew-like consistency, something which goes down well with my kids as they stand a better chance of getting it into their mouths and not down their fronts!

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Classic Roasted Pumpkin Soup

A random tweet about Autumn things, and the fact that slugs had detected a weakness in my kids’ pumpkin’s soft underbelly, found me googling ‘classic pumpkin soup’ the other day.

There are a wealth of recipes out there, some less classic than others, but in the end I settled on an American recipe – and then tweeked it.  I really wasn’t sure about the spices, and cinnamon in particular, thinking I was going to end up with a pumpkin pie affair on my hands.  But it works.  I ended up with a lovely warming savoury soup.  Just what I was after.

Serves 6-8 (It made 4 500ml pots)
Cooking time 1.5 hours

1 medium pumpkin (scrapings from the inside of your halloween pumpkin can be used instead)
1 medium onion
1 carrot
1 stick of celery
1 clove of garlic
1tbsp olive oil
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock (2 stock cubes + 1l recently boiled water)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp sweet paprika
100g full fat soft cheese

Cut the pumpkin into quarters and scrape out the seeds (these can be rinsed, tossed in oil, salt, and paprika, spread out on a shallow roasting tin and roasted at the same time as the pumpkin).  Rub a little olive oil into the quarters, sprinkle over a little salt and roast on a baking tray for about 1 hour at 200C until the pumpkin cuts like butter with a knife.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool whilst you prepare the other vegetables.

Peel and roughly chop the onion, garlic and carrot.  Fry the onion and garlic gently in a saucepan, adding the carrot when it is ready, and then the roughly chopped celery. Stir the vegetables for about 5-10 minutes to allow them to soft but not brown.

Scoop out the soft pumpkin flesh and add this to the softening vegetables.  Stir around and then add the stock and spices.  Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.

Take off the heat and leave to cool a little with the lid off for 5 or so minutes before liquidising with a stick blender.  After a first quick blitz, add the soft cheese and blitz again until the soup is smooth and silky.  I had to add a couple of teaspoons of sugar as the pumpkin had a slightly bitter aftertaste for some strange reason, but hopefully yours will not.

And I have promised to buy the kids another pumpkin to carve next week.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Portuguese Bread, Coriander, Garlic & Egg Soup

I first came across a version of this soup in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the backstreets of the Bairro Alto district of Lisbon, famous for the Portuguese ‘lament’ style singing – fado, when I lived in Lisbon for a year. I don’t think I ever knew the name of the restaurant, and on regular occasions took ages to find it in the maze of backstreets when trying to show it off to visitors from Blighty.

The soup in this restaurant was watery in texture but packed full of the flavours of coriander, garlic, and olive oil.  When I eventually found a version of the recipe for this soup in print in ‘The Taste of Portugal’ by Edite Viera it included stale bread.

Using stale bread to make a porridgy style soup is a Portuguese speciality.  Portugal is historically a poor subsistence economy, and ‘açorda’ (pronounced ass-orda) was a simple peasant dish of rehydrated stale bread beefed up with whatever strong flavours could be found.  It apparently continued to be popular until relatively recently as a stand-by meal for feeding infants!  The ‘Sopa Alentejana’ I found in the backstreets of Lisbon hailed from the Alentejo, one of the poorest and most barren regions of Portugal despite bordering the Algarve to the south.

Despite it’s more common association, in this country at least, with Thai cooking, fresh coriander is a coomon ingredient in Southern Portuguese cooking too.  But this soup can be made with paprika instead if fresh coriander can not be found.  Do not use coriander seed!!!

Serves 1

2 large crusts of stale bread, white or wholemeal
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 large pinches of sea salt
1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander or 1/4tsp smoked paprika
1 free range egg
1 mug boiling water

Beat the egg in the soup bowl of your choice, then add the bread broken as small as you can together with the other dry ingredients.  Pour over a mug of boiling water and stir to cook the beaten egg.  Leave to stand for a couple of minutes for the bread to soften then tuck in.

If undercooked egg is something that concerns you, you could always microwave the soup for 1 minute, or heat it in a small saucepan, or poach the egg in the mugful of water and pour this gently over the other ingredients and leave to stand.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Canja – Portuguese Chicken Broth

Today I’m feeling under the weather.  I have looked in the fridge and the only thing that looks inviting is the chicken stock I made last night.

Canja is a stupidly simple chicken soup for the poorly, or uninspired.

Take 500ml of homemade chicken stock.  Bring to the boil, add a large sprig of fresh mint (or 1tsp dried mint) and either a handful of rice or tiny pasta shapes and simmer for 10 minutes.  If you are feeling up to it, you could always fry a little chopped onion, carrot, and celery first and then simmer the soup for 10 minutes first before adding the pasta.

Eat carefully (it stays surprisingly hot!) and feel better.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Mulligatawny or Curried Sweet Vegetable & Meat Soup

 

Mulligatawny soup popped onto my radar at some point last year when I watched the Hairy Biker’s make it.  As my children like curry, and curried vegetable soup, I thought I would give it a try but never got round to it until my local greengrocer suggested it as a possible soup for this week’s Country Market.

I looked at various recipes, but as ever, ended up taking ideas from several.  And this is what I came up with, with links to my inspiration below.

The kids pulled faces when it was put in front of them, but wolfed it down for lunch on Saturday.

Mulligatawny or Curried Sweet Vegetable Soup with Meat
Serves 3-4

100g lamb mince or chicken or leftover roast
1 large onion, peeled & roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1cm piece of root ginger, roughly chopped
1 large carrot, washed & roughly chopped
1 stick of celery, roughly chopped
1 small sweet potato, parsnip or apple, washed & roughly chopped
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2-3 tbsp medium curry powder
1 litre boiled water
1 handful red lentils
1 chicken stock cube

Fry the  onion and garlic in a sauce pan with the sunflower oil over a medium heat until just starting to brown.  Add the lamb mince and ginger and fry for a few minutes whilst you chop the rest of the vegetables.  Don’t worry about peeling the vegetables and apples, unless the skin is tough, as it is all going to be liquidised. Stir in the curry powder, then the rest of the vegetables.  Add the water, lentils, and crumbled stock cube and simmer for 30 minutes with the lid on.

Liquidise in a blender or with a stick blender.  Great on yet another snowy day!

With thanks to:
Hairy Bikers
Madhur Jaffrey
Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall