Mushroom Soup (without the sherry)

Oh how wonderful to finally be able to drink mushroom soup in the land of clam chowder. I took the recipe below and made it without Sherry (donno where to find) and it still tastes fine, heartwarming and nice! And so simple to make!

Jeff's rating: 8/10 (he says sea salt is crucial)

Beef and Bean Hotpot

From GoodFood magazine, 101 One-Pot Dishes

750g of minced beef
1 beef stock cube
2 large onions
450g carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
1.25 g potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 cans of baked beans
Tabasco sauce
parsley

Heat a large non-stick pan, add the beef and fry over a medium high heat until browned, stirring often and breaking up any lumps with a spoon. Crumble in the stock cube and mix well.

Add the vegetables, stir to mix with the beef and pour in enough boiling water to cover. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and stir well. Cover the pan and simmer gently for about 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Tip in the baked beans, sprinkle with tobasco sauce to taste, Stir well an heat through. Taste for seasoning and sprinkle with the parsley.

This is the perfect winter comfort food, warm, peppery and extremely easy to cook. I have three portions in the freezer now, along with the many packets of food I have squirrelled away for winter.

Sausage and leek hash

From GoodFood magazine, 101 One Pot dishes

2 tbsp olive oil
6 plump sausages
6 potatoes, thinly sliced
350g thinly sliced leeks
1 tbsp creamed horseradish sauce
100g mature grated cheddar

Heat half of the oil in a large heavy-based frying pan. Add the sausages and fry gently for 8-10 minutes until well browned. Remove the sausages, then slice them on the diagonal and set aside.

Turn the heat to medium and add the remaining oil. Add the potatoes and leeks and give everything a good stir. Cook until the potatoes and leeks are tender and beginning to brown, turning them over from time to time. It should take 15-20 minutes.

Toss the sausages back in along with the horseradish, to taste, and heat through for a further 2-3 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, sprinkle in the cheese, season well and stir gently to combine

I added one more step to the recipe which I thought completed it, as well as to ensure that the potatoes and sausages are completely cooked. I popped into my toaster oven for 30 minutes. I really like this dish as the horseradish sauce gives it a distinctive taste. It is also essential that good quality sausages are used, mine is Tesco Finest! pork and leek sausages.

Mushroom soup

Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook

Ingredients

6 tbsp/75 g butter
1 small onion, thinly sliced
12 ounces/340 g button mushrooms
4 cups/900 ml light chicken stock or broth
1 sprig of flat parsley
Salt and pepper
2 ounces/56 ml high-quality sherry (don't use the cheap grocery-store variety; it's salty and unappetizing and will ruin your soup)

Method

In the medium saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons/28 g of the butter over medium heat and add the onion. Cook until the onion is soft and translucent, then add the mushrooms and the remaining butter. Let the mixture sweat for about 8 minutes, taking care that the onion doesn't take on any brown color. Stir in the chicken stock and the parsley and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce the heat and simmer for about an hour.

After an hour, remove the parsley and discard. Let the soup cool for a few minutes, then transfer to the blender and carefully blend at high speed until smooth. Do I have to remind you to do this in stages, with the blender's lid firmly held down, and with the weight of your body keeping that thing from flying off and allowing boiling hot mushroom purée to erupt all over your kitchen?

When blended, return the mix to the pot, season with salt and pepper, and bring up to a simmer again. Add the sherry, mix well, and serve immediately.

Improvisation
To astound your guests with a Wild Mushroom Soup, simply replace some of those button mushrooms with a few dried cèpes or morels, which have been soaked until soft, drained, and squeezed. Not too many; the dried mushrooms will have a much stronger taste, and you don't want to overwhelm the soup. Pan sear, on high heat, a single small, pretty, fresh chanterelle or morel for each portion, and then slice into a cute fan and float on top in each bowl.

And if you really want to ratchet your soup into pretentious (but delicious), drizzle a few tiny drops of truffle oil over the surface just before serving. Why the hell not? Everybody else is doing it.


I first learnt about Anthony Bourdain from the book:"Kitchen Confidential" which describes how he came to be a chef in New York and now a celebrity chef making his rounds on TV. It was a most fascinating book, which as was said by one of the reviewers, makes Jamie Oliver seem like a choir boy. I strongly recommend that anyone with any interest in cooking or food in general read that book.

I went to Borders after that to check out his cookbook and the one I found was his Les Halles cookbook, recipes during his stint at Les Halles restuarant in NY. Most of his recipes required expensive ingredients which befits the status of Les Halles, I guess but I managed to find one that was cheap and incredibly easy to make: Mushroom soup. I love the fact that it's healthy too. Aside from the butter which you can substitute with olive oil (i guess), there's nothing fattening or unhealthy in the ingredients, in particular, no cream needed.

Cranberry Walnut Loaf

The cranberries craze continue...with bad photo from iphone because I can't find my memory card...

Cranberry, Oatmeal and Choc Chip Cookies!

Steamed Butter Fish

Asian supermarket rocks.
Zipcar rocks.

Steamed fish super rocks!