Canadian Food

Happy Canada Day!

No we've not cooked a lobster, nor have we eaten it for sometime, but this year we're planning on celebrating Canada Day from afar. In previous years we have made the trip over to Halifax in Nova Scotia to perform in the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo, which begins its run of shows on Canada Day.

We're going to attempt to make some of the type of food we enjoyed over there tonight and update with the successful attempts! Tonight's menu consists of Crab and Spinach dip, Baked Shrimps, (both inspired by The Keg), a little steak (inspired by Maxwell's Plum), Caesar Salad (The Keg and Cheers) and Poutine (practically everywhere). We may even attempt Beaver Tails, but using Gluten-Free flour, who knows if these will work. We might even feature a couple of recipes from the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo 30th Anniversary cookbook and other books we bought on our trips.

Meanwhile, just a few pictures of out time over in Halifax for the Tattoo....

In preparation for our Canadian feast we did make a rather yummy seafood chowder some time ago. It was full of flavour, but sadly missed out on the Nova Scotian delights of vast quantities of lobster and scallops. We used this recipe (copied out below) and used smoked salmon and pouting and a few cocktail prawns at the end.

For the vegetables

10 g butter

1 1/2 large Spanish onions, coarsely chopped
1/2 red, yellow or orange pepper, finely chopped
1 handfuls mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 large leek, sliced diagonally into 1cm thick slices
1 canned sweetcorn

For the chowder

1 tbsp oil
1 - 1.5 kg fish, cut into chunks
50 g butter
50 g flour
milk
water
200 ml double cream
2-3 tbsp parsley, coarsely chopped
1-2 tbsp tarragon, coarsely chopped

1. To prepare the vegetables: heat the butter in a large pan and when hot add the onion, pepper, mushrooms, leek and the sweetcorn. Cook for about 10 minutes until just cooked. Set aside.

2. To make the chowder: heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan and add the fish. Cook until the fish is just cooked. Strain off the juices from the pan and reserve.

3. Heat the butter and when melted stir in the flour. Cook for 1-2 minutes until it becomes a paste.

4. Add the reserved fish juices, a cupful at a time, mixing well before adding the next cup and allow to heat to almost boiling.

5. Add milk and water until the mixture is fairly thin.

6. Gently stir in the cooked vegetables, followed by the fish. Stir gently, to avoid breaking up the fish and season with salt and pepper,

7. Add the double cream, parsley and tarragon and heat through but don't allow to boil. If the chowder is allowed to boil after the tarragon is added, it loses its delicate flavour.

8. Serve immediately and enjoy. 

Gordon Ramsay's Cream of Cauliflower Soup

Gordon Ramsay's Cream of Cauliflower soup

After watching the Hairy Bikers talk about cauliflower on the BBC's Great British Food Revival the other week, we decided to try and find some interesting recipes for it. We've previously only used cauliflower as an accompaniment to a roast meat, or had it with cheese sauce at The Parents'. We were inspired by the recipes from the programme, but knowing full well that our local Morrisons and Lidl would not stock Romanesco cauliflower, we decided to find something else.

I'd previously made cauliflower and broccoli soup, but the cauliflower was overshadowed and just bulked out the soup. I also have memories of a childhood visit to a small bookshop and cafe in St Andrews in Scotland where I had the most lovely cauliflower soup, and I've never properly attempted to recreate it. So soup it was.

A quick search on the internet found this Gordon Ramsay recipe on the Good Food website. Surely a recipe from Gordon would be a safe bet. We didn't do the mushrooms, as we wanted to taste the soup just as it was.

Recipe (directly taken from Good Food, without the mushroom section)

1 large cauliflower (about 1.3kg/3lb), stalks discarded and florets chopped
1 large potato, peeled and chopped into large chunks
1 medium onion , chopped
25g butter
4 tbsp olive oil
1.2l light chicken or vegetable stock
600ml full-fat milk
142ml carton double cream
1-2 tbsp finely snipped chives

1. Put the cauliflower, potato and onion in a large saucepan with the butter and half of the oil. Gently heat the contents until they start to sizzle, then cover with a lid and sweat over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. The vegetables should be softened but not coloured.

2. Pour in the stock and bring to the boil, then pour in the milk and return gently to a boil. This way, there will be no scum forming from the milk. Season to taste then simmer, uncovered, for 10-15 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Pour in half the cream.

3. Blend everything in a food processor or blender, in batches. For an extra creamy texture, push the purée through a sieve with the back of a ladle. Stir in the rest of the cream. (If preparing ahead cool, cover and chill for up to a day.)

4. Check for seasoning and ladle into warmed bowls. Sprinkle lightly with the chives.

This soup was fantastic. The specific yet subtle flavour of the cauliflower came through well. The texture of the potato was there but not too overpowering, and the creaminess was just right.

One thing to note with this soup was that it was rather thin. It would work well as a starter when you don't want anything too heavy, or as a light lunch (especially with no bread). What it lacked in thickness it certainly made up for in flavour. This soup has more lovely cauliflower flavour than any boiled florets alongside a roast dinner. We will certainly be making this soup again.

Again? This leads to another issue. One which was raised in the BBC's Great British Food Revival. British farmers now only receive around 20% of the retail value of each cauliflower which has decreased recently (according to the programme), and most cauliflowers in the supermarkets are imported. Why should this be? Especially since one farmer interviewed for the programme said that cauliflowers were grown all year round in this country.

Our next mission was to find local or British cauliflowers for our next recipe.

Morrisons (at the time) didn't have any British in, but Lidl did, and on offer for 79p. Plus we've since bought local from Kenyon Hall Farm (£1.20) and have noticed that the stock in Morrisons is now British (£1.98).

We will no longer think of cauliflower as a vegetable just to go with a roast or cheese, and we will continue to try different ways of using it.

Green Soup

Green Soup

After being inspired by all the fresh seasonal produce at Kenyon Hall Farm the other week I decided to see what Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says about what to cook this time of year in the River Cottage Year recipe book. In between August and September type time, was a recipe for a soup which used loads of courgettes, and as previously stated, Red Soup was getting a bit monotonous, so I thought to give it a try.

Recipe as follows:

1 kilo of firm courgettes

2 garlic cloves

750ml milk

3-4 tablespoons goats cheese

With such simple ingredients, and the addition of yummy goats cheese, surely this soup is a winner.

Hugh says to chop the courgettes to about coin thickness and to fry gently, with the finely chopped garlic, for about 20 mins, until most of the water has evaporated and they are soft, but not browned. This seemed to take an awful lot longer for me. Then either mash the courgettes or blitz them in a food processor. I chose to blitz.

The next step was to melt the goats cheese in. I'd bought a smallish cheese which was about 3 tablespoons at a guess. Maybe more. But I do like goats cheese.

It did look a bit gloopy, and the rind wasn't melting too well, and for a moment I thought Hugh had gone mad, but I persevered.

Next, was to heat the milk and add it bit by bit to the courgette mixture until it reaches the consistency required. I added all the milk as it seemed to come together well. I did blitz it again with a stick blender to break down the cheese rind and to give it a final mix.

 
 
The soup was lovely, and it was a first for me using milk. I did think it needed quite a bit of seasoning which the recipe didn't suggest, but this would probably depend on the type of goats cheese used, and the amount of it. All in all, very nice, and I think I will be doing it again.

Leek and Potato Soup

Please don't be insulted by me posting such a simple dish as this.  But I made it, it was lovely and thought you should know.  Not much to say about it except that is very quick to cook, satisfying and great for the freezer, which is what I intend to do with the left-overs.

Leek and Potato Soup

My Recipe:

500g Baby New Potatoes (because that is what I had in - skins left on!)
1 Leek
1 Celery Stick
1 Onion
125ml Veg Stock
(Some) Double Cream - to your liking
Salt and Pepper
Grated Cheese (to serve)

Chop everything up and half the larger potatoes
Soften in vegetable oil on a medium heat

Add Stock and simmer for 20 minutes
Blitz with a hand blender
Add cream (to your liking)

Sprinkle grated cheese and serve








Makes about 4 good sized portions.

Red Soup and Grey Soup

Grey Soup and Red Soup

After the recent extravagance of the eating out, even though at last meal was a bargain, much of what we'll be doing in the next week or so will be of the Eating In variety. Kinder to the wallet, liver, and waistline.

Something tasty, healthy and relatively cheap which I've been doing recently is soup for lunches. Although if you ask my work colleagues, this is not recently, this has been for ever! I've generally been making roasted tomato soup, sometimes with added peppers, sometimes pepper soup with tomatoes, and sometimes half and half. Even though you can taste slight difference, this is generally known as Red Soup.
The choices are made basically on supermarket/greengrocer offers and availabilities of peppers and tomatoes, more often than not, the pepper offer wins over, and Red Soup is more peppery.
This week it has been more tomatoey.

Almost Red Soup

This week I started off by roasting 1kg of normal salad tomatoes (or big bag from Lidl), with 1 onion, a couple of bashed garlic cloves, the 2 left over red and yellow pepper halves (from a fish dish) and one whole green pepper. Sometimes I put some thyme in there too, but couldn't be bothered - maybe it was raining and I didn't fancy going out to cut it. Oh, and some balsamic vinegar. All in a big roasting tray with quite a bit of olive oil. I leave it at 200C until the tomatoes have burst and things are turning a little black, and the house has started to smell of lovely roasting things. Then with enough veg stock to make it soup-like I blitz with a hand blender. This time I needed a bit of sugar, but no tomato puree - sometimes the tomatoes aren't very tomatoey - not a necessity for the "other" type of red soup, as peppers don't need to be tomatoey.

I am not one of those people who can't eat the same thing every day, but even with the subtle differences of the different varieties of Red Soup, it was getting a little monotonous, so I fancied re-trying another soup I used to make.

The inspiration for Grey Soup came from the Farmers' Market in Manchester - when it was called Farmers' Market. Since it became the "Real Food Market" the soup man seems to have disappeared. Maybe he'll return at Christmas? He did lots of homemade, fresh tasting soups. All made with proper ingredients, including a Mushroom, Garlic and Parsley soup. Each time a selection of soups were available buy in cups to eat there and then, or in tubs to take home for your fridge. I did notice that the ingredients on the tub for this Mushroom soup were little more than the title ingredients, but with the addition of flour to thicken. Alas, that means even if he does return, I won't be able to eat it. So I tried once more to recreate it.

I chopped up 350g (box from Lidl) of closed cup mushrooms, very small, plus 1 onion (which I don't think was on the soup man's ingredient list) and about 3 cloves of garlic. In previous attempts I think I put too much garlic in, as it mainly tasted of garlic, for the entire day. I then cooked the whole lot, with a bit of oil, very slowly for ages. I don't really time my cooking, I just do it til its done. Not very helpful I know. I then added a handful of chopped fresh parsley.

Nearly Grey Soup

This was then blitzed down with a hand blender. It made just a big mush, so I added about 3/4 pint of veg stock to make it soupy and it seemed to work. One concern I have with mushrooms, is that they can be too mushroomy. Not sure exactly when, or if this occurs during the cooking process, but I know what I mean. But thankfully Grey Soup, on this attempt was neither too mushroomy or garlicky. A success I feel. The only annoying thing is, this amount of mushrooms and cooking time only made 2 portions, whereas Red Soup can stretch to a full week's worth of lunches.

Maybe next week; Green Soup. And perhaps Brown Soup.