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

Jamie Oliver’s Chilli con Veggie

 We possibly had our last BBQ of the year yesterday, with 13 family members to celebrate Sprout’s 10th birthday.  So today, with the arrival of rain, we are having a big veggie chilli to compensate for all the meat we consumed yesterday.

The recipe is courtesy of Jamie Oliver’s website, and Kerryann’s Chilli con Veggie.  Do note, the recipe is for 10!  I made halved the ingredients and still have a massive chilli for our family of five.  I also only added 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika and even this might have to much of a poke to it for my generally foodie kids.

Serves 5 (Halved from the original recipe which serves 10)
1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 large stick of celery
1 large clove of garlic
1 small leek
Half a fresh red chilli
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp smoked paprika (I only used 1 level tsp)
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp dried oregano
Nutmeg
2 tbsp tomato purée
125g dried green lentils
125g dried red lentils
1 tin red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 tin tin of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tin chopped tomatoes
500ml vegetable stock

I chopped all my vegetables in a mini food processor, frying the chopped onion and garlic first in the olive oil, and then adding the chopped carrot, celery and chilli. Fry this for about 5 minutes or until the onion starts to look translucent. Stir in the spices and herbs and then the tomato paste and fry for another minute or so. Add the beans, tomatoes, stock and lentils. Bring to the boil then leave to simmer gently for about 30-45 minutes, stirring from time to time, and adding more liquid if it starts to get too thick. It is ready when the lentils are tender. Season and serve over rice or baked potato with a dollop of soured cream or greek yoghurt.

7pm – Kids have had their tea and wolfed it down. A success.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry
Instagram: sunhillmakesbakes

Homemade Tomato Ketchup

A tomato glut is something I never had, but when a friend posted on Facebook that she had too many beef tomatoes so the idea of trying to make ketchup came to mind. There are loads of recipes on the web, but this is the one from www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk was the one I settled on, partly because it coincided with the weight of tomatoes I was given.

Ingredients
2kg tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
150ml red wine vinegar
100ml water
½ tsp black peppercorns
1 blade mace (I didn’t have any so I used 1/4tsp ground nutmeg instead)
4 allspice berries (Didn’t use any as ones I thought I had were juniper!)a
2 cloves
½ tsp crushed dried chillies (used only 1/4tsp as our chilli flakes are really hot, then saw the note about omitting this if making for children!)
2 bay leaves (forgot to add them!)
1 tbsp light brown sugar

Put tomatoes, garlic, 50ml of the vinegar and the water into a large saucepan and simmer gently for 40 minutes until the vegetables are soft and pulpy.

Whilst the tomatoes are cooking, put the rest of the vinegar into a little saucepan together with the  all the other ingredients apart from the sugar.  Simmer over a low heat for 10 minutes then turn off and leave to one side.

After 40 minutes, puree the tomato pulp with a stick blender then strain and rub the pulp through a sieve into a clean pan.  Make sure you get as much of the tomato pulp through the seive as possible, only leaving the seeds and skins behind.

Strain the vinegar and spices into the pan with the sieved tomato.  Add the sugar and simmer over a medium heat until thickened and reduced to a thick consistency, about 500ml.

Remove from the heat and season to taste. Pour the ketchup into a jug and use a funnel to transfer it into sterilised bottles or jars. Seal immediately and cool completely before labelling and storing.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry
Instagram: sunhillmakesbakes

Tomato Chutney

A chance discovery of some 600g punnets of tomatoes reduced to 50p a punnet in my local Co-op and I am now the proud owner of some tomato chutney for the first time ever.

My base recipe came from the BBC Good Food website.  It says use ripe tomatoes but I don’t see why you couldn’t use green ones if you have loads.

1kg ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped

750g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped

375g light muscovado sugar (I just used white granulated)

250g onions, chopped

250g raisins

1 green pepper, deseeded and chopped (I didn’t use any as I don’t like it in chutney)

2 tsp salt

½ tsp ground ginger

350ml cider vinegar (I used pickling vinegar)

Place all the ingredients into a large heavy based saucepan.  Bring to the boil and boil gently for 45-50 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the chutney has thickened.  Seal into sterilised jars.  This doesn’t say how long to leave it to mature before using but most chutneys are 2-3 months to let the harshness of the vinegar mellow.

I dutifully followed the recipe and peeled and chopped the tomatoes and apples.  Next time, however, I think I’ll just core the apple and place the tomatoes, apples, and onions in the food processor.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry
Instagram: sunhillmakesbakes

Madhur Jaffrey’s Green Bean Curry

A glut of green beans, even though I didn’t manage to grow any of my own this year, together with the decision to have a curry night this week had me googling bean curry.  But in the end the recipe I chose was from my mother’s 1987 edition of Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘An Invitation to Indian Cookery, first published in 1976.

There were several recipes for beans (Green Beans with Ginger and Green Beans with Mustard) in this book, but I settled on ‘Green Beans with Onion Paste’ as I wanted a curry with more of a sauce.

1 1/2 pounds fresh green beans (I used 500g and this was plenty)
1 medium-sized onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
A piece of fresh ginger, about 1 inch square, coarsely chopped
1 medium-sized canned tomato, coarsely chopped (I used a tin of chopped tomatoes)
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
10 tablespoons vegetable oil (Err, used about 2 tbps)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole black mustard seeds (I couldn’t find any so used onion seeds)
Optional – 1 or 2 whole dried red peppers OR 1/2 hot fresh green chili sliced in half OR 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I used 1/2 tsp hot chilli flakes)
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
2 teaspoons lemon juice (I did not add any, yet the curry had a surprisingly light lemony taste?!)

Slice the beans into 1cm thick slices.

Peel and roughly chop the onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric and blend together with the tomatoes to a smooth paste.

Here Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe fries the onion paste and beans separately, frying the paste in 6 tbsp of oil for 5 minutes adding 1 tbsp of water at a time if it starts to stick and then adding the ground coriander and cumin.  She then fries the cumin and mustard seeds in the remaining oil until they pop then adds the beans and onion paste from the other pan together with the remaining ingredients to taste.

Having cooked all day, I could not be bothered with two pans and opted for a one pan option, choosing to fry the green beans as above with the cumin and what turned out to be black onion seeds, and then poured over the paste and added the other ingredients.  I also added a can full of recently boiled water to make more sauce.

I simmered the sauce for about 20 minutes.  Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe, however, says 35 minutes, saying “In India we tend to overcook [green beans]…mainly to kill germs and because we love spices.  We like our spices to permeate a vegetable and this cannot happen unless a vegetable is allowed to become fairly tender.  When you finish this recipe, your beans with not look bright green, nor will they be very crisp.  They will be a brownish dark-green, smothered in spices, and utterly delicious.’

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Sweet & Sour Vegetables with Noodles

A quick Sweet & Sour dish I learnt in Thailand. It’s a great way to vegetables into kids, even if you have to resort to selling it as ‘it’s got ketchup in’.

Below is the recipe as taught to me but I often use different vegetables depending on what I have left over. I always use carrot and pineapple, plus sometimes pak choi, cabbage, kale, red pepper. The list is endless. And again I usually add noodles, but you could serve this over rice.

Serves 2 greedy adults or 4 children

1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
100g cauliflower, cut into bite sized pieces
1 carrot
1 cucumber
8 baby corn
220g pineapple chunks (keep the juice)
70g snow peas or green beans
1 chopped red chilli (optional) or 1 tsp hot chilli flakes
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped (optional)
1 tbsp cooking oil
2 layers of noodles

Sauce
2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
6 tbsp tomato ketchup
50ml reserved pineapple juice + water or stock

Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet. Drain when cooked and leave in cold water to stop them cooking and sticking.

Mix the sauce ingredients together in a bowl apart from the juice/water.

Prepare the cauliflower, carrot, snow peas, and baby corn and chop into bite sized pieces.

Put the oil into a wok and fry the garlic over a high heat until it starts to turn brown. Add the onion and stir fry. Add the cauliflower and carrot followed by the cucumber, baby corn and pineapple and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the chillies, tomatoes and peas and stir fry for another minute until all the vegetables are cooked. Add the sauce ingredients and noodles and stir to combine. Add as much or as little of the reserved juice/water to make it the consistency you like. Serve immediately.

Cooked chicken or pork can be added at the start with the garlic if wished.

The trick is to prepare everything before hand as once you start stir frying the dish is pretty much done in a matter of minutes.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Sweet Runner Bean Pickle

My partner returned from rugby training last week with a carrier bag full of runner beans, 1.5kg/3lb to be exact. One of the players works on a country estate where they are cooked lunches by a chef (very nice too) and was given these ‘leftover’ beans by the chef. OH seemed not to know that the only thing I have managed to grow in the veg patch this year is runner beans.

A straw poll of the old dears at the WI inspired Country Market simply resulted in Runner Bean Chutney.  I googled it and turned up several recipes but they all seem to boil down (pardon the pun) to the same thing, so I largely followed Delia’s recipe for Spiced Pickled Runner Beans in the hope that hers has been tried and tested.

The time of writing it is approximately 5 hours since bottling this pickle and it is not supposed to be eaten for another 4 to 6 weeks.  So I do not know how well it will work out, but I am hopeful.  My  only criticism so far is that it does not taste very mustardy and I had quite a lot of sauce left over after bottling but I found a home for that as a ketchup substitute in today’s stir fry.  And as the stir fry seemed very successful I will be freezing the remainder for another stir fry another day.

Ingredients

900g runner beans (after trimming & slicing)
700g onions, chopped
850ml malt vinegar
4 tbsp cornflour
1.5 tbsp mustard powder
1 tbsp turmeric
700g brown sugar

Makes about six 0.5 litre jars (To sterilise the jars, wash them thoroughly in warm soapy water, rinse and heat in a moderate oven for 5 minutes).

In your largest saucepan, simmer the onions with 275ml of the vinegar for 20 minutes until the onions are soft.  Meanwhile boil the sliced beans in salted water for 5 minutes, then strain and add the beans to the onions.

In a small bowl mix the cornflour, mustard and turmeric with a little of the remaining vinegar – enough to make a smooth paste – then add this paste to the onion mixture.

Pour in the rest of the vinegar and simmer everything for 10 minutes. After that stir in the sugar until  dissolved and continue to simmer for a further 15 minutes.

Pot the pickle in warmed, sterilised jars, and seal and label when cold.

Keep for 4-6 weeks before eating.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

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

Kids Spag Bol with Hidden Vegetables

I’ve made spaghetti bolognese sauce this morning, to give it as long as possible to stand and let the flavours develop.

I hit on the idea of hidden vegetables, partly to sneak vegetables past my children, plus stretching out 500g of minced beef to feed 5+ of us.  By doing this, if you only used a served the bolognese sparingly (1-2 large serving spoons) as the Italians do large, I reckon you’ve got enough pasta sauce for 8-10 people!

As Big Boy, my youngest at 6 years old, still tends to fish suspicious objects out of his food and cross-examines them, I chopped the vegetables up really small in a food processor to both to hide them, and make them the same size as the minced beef.  When I served this last, although he said he didn’t want seconds, he didn’t seem too reluctant to clean out the last remaining sauce out of his bowl after all the pasta had been eaten.

Liver or bacon seems to be a modern traditional ingredient in many spag bol’s.  I add it if I have it (today in fact I don’t) because it is a great source of iron for the kids plus it add another layer of flavour.  Finely diced and covered in a rich tomato sauce the children don’t seem to notice.  But if you don’t like handling it you could always puree it with the tomatoes.  The liver and tomato cocktail looks disgusting but it cooks down just fine!

Today I have also added 6 mushrooms, finely chopped in the food processor, just for the hell of it!

Wine too is an optional extra.  I know some people don’t like the idea of alcohol in children’s food.  I do, in the hope they might fall asleep quicker of a night, not that it ever seems to help.

Serves 8-10 depending on how high you pile your sauce!

500g beef mince
100g lambs or chicken liver, or smokey bacon (optional)
6 mushrooms (optional)
1 large leek or onion
1 stick of celery
2 medium carrots
1 large clove of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 glass red wine (optional)
1 tin of tomatoes
1 tin of recently boiled water (1/2 if you are using wine)
1tbsp tomato paste (optional)

Finely chop the leek or onion (I used a sprouting leek from my veg patch in mine) and garlic in a food processor and fry in a large saucepan with the olive oil over a medium heat. Finely chop the carrot and celery in the food processor, and mushrooms if using and add these when ready.  Stir and put a lid/plate on for a few minutes to let the vegetables sweat.  Push the vegetables to one side in the pan and fry/break up the mince as best you can.  Puree the liver and tomatoes in the food processor and add these to the pan, together with the wine if using and hot water.  Add a little salt and pepper and simmer with a lid on for 1 hour.

After cooking, leave to cool with the lid off if possible to help the sauce reduce a little.  When cool enough, put in the fridge until needed.  Overnight is best, but half a day is better than nothing.

Reheat when needed with the lid off to further reduce the sauce.  Stir in the tomato paste if you have any and simmer for a few minutes to help further thicken the sauce.  Serve over any shape pasta with parmesan cheese if you have it. Or cheddar.

Twitter: Leesa@sunhillcurry

Kids Tomatoey Paella or Fishy Rice

Dad made a delicious fish stew over the summer holidays which the kids loved, so I thought I’d try to make a paella/risotto version of it to get some fish into my kids.

I made a kind of paella when we got back and the kids still like it.  And I took better note of the ingredients this time!

Serves 5-6

300g paella or risotto rice
1 large onion
1 red pepper
1 large clove of garlic
Half a glass of white wine or sherry (optional)
1 tin chopped tomatoes
3 fillets frozen white fish
Large handful frozen prawns
Large handful of chopped green beans or frozen peas
1 chicken or vegetable stock cube
2 bay leaves (optional)
1 tbsp olive oil

Blitz the onion, garlic and red pepper in the food processor to make an unidentifiable rubble.  Fry gently in the olive oil until it starts to brown.  Add the rice and stir around to coat with oil.  Add the wine/sherry if using, then add the tomatoes, a crumbled stock cube, and a can full of boiling water.  Bring to the boil.  If using frozen fish add it whole together with the prawns.  Simmer gently with the lid on for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time – this will break the fish up into small pieces.  If the pan starts to catch or dry out, add a little boiling water.  Add the peas/beans 10 minutes for the end of the cooking time, scattering them across the surface and stirring them when the rice is cooked.