Farmersgirl Kitchen

Thursday, 26 February 2015

Join me for Celery Soup and a Spring Four Course Dinner

I've been shopping at Aldi again, picking up some great deals on spring produce and making them into an amazing four course dinner for you.

The Soup Course
Let's start with some delicious Celery Soup, I found this lovely recipe for dairy-free Cream of Celery Soup on Pinterest, it comes from the very talented Erren's Kitchen and uses potato as a thickener.

The Fish Course
A very simple four ingredient Smoked Mackerel Pate is whizzed up quickly in the food processor and is very moreish. I've served it with large slices of toast but it would be ideal on cocktail oatcakes or thin slices of french bread at a more refined dinner party.

The Main Course (Entree)
Pot Roasted Scotch Beef with Roast Potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and Spring Greens. The beef was cooked in the Slow Cooker doused with a bottle of dark beer and enough stock to cover three-quarters of the meat, then cooked on low for 8-10 hours. Once cooked, I reduced the cooking liquor by half , by boiling it on the stove to make an intense and delicious gravy.

Dessert
Okay, so pears are hardly 'spring' produce but I couldn't resist these pears, they looked so good and when I peeled and quartered them to make the Pear Upside Down Cake, they were indeed perfect and perfectly ripe. I'll be posting the recipe for the cake very soon, it comes from the latest book Hummingbird Bakery - Life is Sweet which I'll also be reviewing.

Aldi Shopping List
Celery - 65p
Maris Piper Potatoes - 2.5kg - £1.89
Smoked Mackerel Fillets - £1.59
Silverside Scotch Beef Joint - £8.10
Spring Greens - 59p
'Specially Selected' Yorkshire Puddings - 99p
'Best in Season' Pears - £1.29

Many thanks to Aldi for providing me with vouchers to purchase the ingredients for these recipes. I was not paid and all opinions are my own.

Labels: Aldi, cake, celery, Pears, Produce, Scotch Beef, Smoked Mackerel Pate, Soup, Spring Greens, Srping, Yorkshire Pudding

Sunday, 8 February 2015

Lentil and Vegetable Soup

It may not look particularly exciting, but this was one of the tastiest bowls of soup I have made for some time. I usually use red lentils in my lentil soup, but this time I used Crazy Jack Organic green lentils, as they were included in my box of goodies from Knorr for the Knorr Flavour Pot Product of the Year Challenge.

Lentil and Vegetable Soup

1 tbsp sunflower oil
3 carrots, chopped
4 sticks of celery, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
4 Knorr vegetable stock cubes
3.5 litres of water
250g green lentils, washed in a sieve
salt & pepper to taste
1 Garden Herbs Knorr Flavourpot

1. Heat the oil to a medium heat in a large soup pan (I use my pressure cooker).
2. Add the carrots, celery and onion.
3. Add the water, lentils, vegetable stock cubes and Garden Herbs Flavour Pot.
4. Cook for 20 minutes in a pressure cooker or around 40 minutes in an ordinary pan, until the vegetables and lentils are soft.

The soup improves on keeping and I make such a large pot as it provides lunch for several days after the weekend, but you could scale it down.

I'm entering this soup for No Croutons Required, the blog linky for vegetarian soups and salads run by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa at Lisa's Kitchen. Jac is hosting this month.

Knorr Flavour Pots have just collected first prize in the Sauce and Seasoning category for this year’s Product of the Year awards. Knorr Flavour Pots allow you to easily infuse your cooking with the flavour of fresh herbs and spices but with the handy convenience of dried. The range features nine different tantalising flavours, including Mixed Herbs, Three Peppercorn, Curry, Garlic, Mixed Chillies, Garden Herbs, Ginger & Lemongrass, Paprika, and Mexican.

Labels: carrots, celery, Garden Herbs, green lentils, Knorr, Knorr Flavour Pot, Lentil Soup, Vegetables, vegetarian

Saturday, 10 August 2013

Summer Soup with Herbs

Even in the summer, you sometimes feel the need for a bowl of soup. This weekend I decided to make a pot of soup using summer vegetables and herbs. It's not a million miles from minestrone and was created with what I had available in the fridge and the garden.

Summer Soup
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 stalks of celery
2 medium courgettes (zuchinni),cut into large chunks
200g carrots, peeled and diced
4 ripe tomatoes, deseeded and chopped.
1 ltr vegetable stock
salt and pepper
bouquet garni of rosemary, thyme, marjoram and chives
2 tbsp Orzo pasta (or other small pasta)
4 tbsp chopped flat leaved parsley

1. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion, celery and carrots. Put the lid on, turn the heat down to medium and let the vegetables sweat for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the courgettes and tomatoes, put the lid back on for another 3 minutes.
3. Add the vegetable stock and bouquet garni and season with salt and pepper.
4. Simmer for 15 minutes then add the pasta and simmer for another 5 minutes until it is cooked.
5. Add the chopped parsley just before serving.

I'm entering this recipe for Cooking with Herbs run by Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

I'm also adding this to No Croutons Required. No Croutons Required is a monthly vegetarian soup and salad challenge.
It's hosted by Jac at Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa at Lisa's Kitchen.This month Jac is hosting and the theme is 'Seasonal'.
My seasonal ingredients are courgettes, tomatoes and herbs.

Posted with Blogsy

Labels: celery, Cooking with Herbs, courgette, herbs, No Croutons Required, Soup, summer

Monday, 27 May 2013

Raw Rhubarb and Rosemary Tabbouleh for the Aero Perfect Pairing Challenge

The good people at Aero HQ set out a challenge to create some wacky and wonderful flavour pairings to celebrate the two-toned bubblicious makeover of Aero with it's delicious flavour combinations of orange or mint with bubbly milk chocolate.

To help me with the challenge I was sent a box full of cooking equipment, a flavour thesaurus and some bubbly Aero chocolate to help inspire me! In fact, I found my inspiration in the Flavour Thesaurus where I spied an amazing combination of raw rhubarb and rosemary marinated in honey, I thought this would work well in a Tabbouleh providing the acidic element to a classic salad.

Raw Rhubarb and Rosemary Tabbouleh (Serves 4)
2 sticks young rhubarb, very finely sliced
2 tbsp runny honey
2 sprigs of rosemary, bruised
250g bulgar wheat
4 spring onions, finely chopped
2 tbsp chopped mint
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
2 tbsp celery leaves roughly chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
juice of half a lemon

1. Finely slice the rhubarb, preferably on a mandoline using the finest setting. I used the OXO Good Grips Mandoline for this.

2. Place in a non metallic bowl and add the honey and rosemary, leave to marinate for several hours or preferably overnight.

3. Place the bulgar wheat in a bowl and cover with boiling water.

4. When the wheat has swollen and absorbed all the water, add the rest of the ingredients and mix through.

5. Finally add the rhubarb and marinade, cover the bowl and leave to sit for at least an hour for the flavours to mingle, season to taste. You may wish to add a little more finely chopped rosemary if you would like a stronger rosemary taste.

If you didn't know it was rhubarb, you would be hard pushed to recognise it, the honey has softened the sharpness to a pleasant bite and a subtle flavour of rosemary permeates the Tabbouleh.

Many thanks to Sophie for the Perfect Pairing Aero Cookery Kit.

Labels: Aero Perfect Pairing Challenge, celery, chocolate, mint, rhubarb, Rosemary, salad, Tabbouleh

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Summer Vegetable Soup with Granary Bread

Summer is not really a time I associate with soup, however, it has been rather chilly recently and as I was going away for a few days, I realised I needed to use up the vegetables that I had received in my Farmison Vegetable Box. Soup is the perfect vehicle for any kind of vegetables and with some beans added it makes a the soup into a meal.

So here are the vegetables: celery; carrots, onion, quarter of a fennel bulb; 2 courgettes, 2 potatoes and about a third of a head of broccoli. It doesn't matter what you have although onion and carrots are always a good base. Oh and there was on runner bean that had escaped me when I cooked those the other day, so that went in too.

Summer Vegetable Soup

1 onion, peeled and chopped
4 stalks of celery, finely chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 potatoes, diced
1/4 fennel bulb, chopped
bunch of thyme, rosemary and marjoram tied together
2 courgettes, diced
1/3 head of broccoli, chopped
4 tomatoes, seeds removed and chopped
100g canellini beans, soaked and cooked for 20 minutes until just tender
3 litres vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

1.Heat the olive oil in a pan. Add the onion and celery and cook for 2 mintues, add the carrots, fennel and potoatoes, cook for another minutes. Add the stock and herbs, season well and cook until the carrot is soft (20-30 minutes)
2. Add the chopped courgettes, broccoli, tomatoes and canellini beans and cook for a further 10 minutes.
3. Remove the herb bundle, adjust seasoning and serve with a sprinkling of fresh chopped thyme and rosemary and some Granary Bread.

I'm entering this soup for Karen's 'Herbs on Saturday' blog challenge, it was a really good tasty soup and the flavour of the herbs came through stongly without overpowering the flavours of the different vegetables.

Granary Bread

500g Granary Bread Flour
1 1/2 tsp easy blend yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
50g butter
275g lukewarm water

I put all of the ingredients into the bread maker on the dough setting, then shaped the dough onto a baking tray, left to rise again and baked for about 30 minutes at 200C. If you don't have a bread maker, follow the recipe on the Granary Flour packet.

Labels: Broccoli, celery, courgette, Farmison, Fennel, Herbs on Saturday, onion, potatoes, Rosemary, Soup, thyme

Saturday, 14 January 2012

Haddock Mornay Layer Bake - keen as mustard!

All of this little lot came to me from Kelly Atkins at Food Matters. They are working with Henry Harris and Grey Poupon to show the versatility of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard as an ingredient in cooking. Grey Poupon is one of the finest Dijon mustards, it’s the white wine in the ingredients that makes it superior to its competitors and the flavour it creates when used as an ingredient is very unique.

I opted to make a fish dish and only specified some spinach, the rest of the ingredients were a surprise to me a bit like doing 'Ready Steady Cook'!

So here is what came in my bag:
2 Haddock Fillets
260g bag of Spinach
220g Blue Stilton
300ml Creme Fraiche
2 Leeks
3 potatoes
215g jar of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard

You will also need:
2 tbsp olive oil
75g butter
1 tsp cornflour
50g Gran Padano cheese, grated
100g mature cheddar, grated
salt and freshly ground black pepper

After much thought and some inspiration hunting through my cookbooks, I decided to make a layered bake.

Put 1 tbsp olive oil and 15g butter in a large pan, add the leeks when the butter begins to sizzle. Saute the leeks gently until they are soft and slightly golden. Tranfer them to an ovenproof baking dish, season with salt and pepper.

Put the other 1tbsp of olive oil and 15g butter into the pan and add the whole bag of spinach leaves once the butter begins to sizzle. Cover the pan (I used a sheet of foil and cook gently until the spinach has wilted, about 5 minutes.

Place the wilted spinach over the leeks in the ovenproof dish, season with salt and pepper.

If the fish has skin, remove the skin and cut the fish fillets into chunks and spread over the spinach and leeks. Season with salt and pepper.

Put a tsp of cornflour into a bowl and add about a tbsp cold milk, mix together. The cornflour will help the creme fraiche not to split when the dish is baked.

and now for the mustard, add a generous teaspoonful of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard to the milk and cornflour and mix thoroughly.

Add the Creme Fraiche and the two chesses and mix together.

Spread the mixture over the fish and vegetables layers.

Peel the potatoes and slice thinly, parboil in a pan of boiling water for about 5-10 minutes until soft but not breaking up. Top the ovenproof dish with the potatoes. Melt around 20g of butter in a pan and brush the potato slices with the melted butter.

Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes until the sauce is hot and bubbling and the potatoes are golden brown.

I was really pleased with the taste of this dish, you could taste all the ingredients but no one overpowered the others and the crispy texture of the potatoes was a nice contrast to the creamy sauce and soft vegetables.

Now the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I did not use the Stilton. I felt that it would have overpowered the taste of fish and I wanted the mustard to be the dominant flavour. However, I thought it might be nice to accompany the Fish Bake with a salad and a little Blue Cheese Dressing.

Blue Cheese Dressing

100g Blue Stilton

2oz cream cheese

1 tbsp mayonnaise

100ml single cream

Crumble the blue cheese, set aside about 1/3 of the cheese and mix the rest with the cream cheese until well blended.

Stir in the mayonnaise and the single cream, then stir in the remaining blue cheese.

Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 3 hours to blend the flavours

I made a simple Waldorf salad with Romaine lettuce, chopped celery, sliced apple and chopped walnuts, combined with the Blue Cheese dressing this was very good and a complete contrast to the fish bake.

I'm not convinced these are ideal parnters but the Blue Cheese dressing would make an outstanding dip to have with crudites as it really complimented the celery (especially when I was testing it out before serving!)

Labels: celery, cheese, creme fraiche, Dijon Mustard, fish, Grey Poupon, haddock, Leeks, lettuce, potatoes, salad, spinach, Stilton, waldorf salad, walnut

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