Farmersgirl Kitchen

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Blue and Green Soup with Gluten Free Cheese Scones

That got you thinking didn't it? Blue and Green? Well there is a little bit of Danish Blue in the predominantly Green vegetable soup. However, this is really just another version of what Fiona at London Unattached described so well as 'Stone' Soup. You can read all about it on her blog HERE.

Because I have been eating the Bulgar Salad for lunch, I haven't had my usual sandwiches and therefore we have not used as much lettuce as before. I was blissfully unaware of this when I ordered the shopping online and ordered up another pack of Romaine lettuces. We also seemed to have a head of broccoli left over. I know, I really should check the fridge before doing my shopping.

The No Waste Food Challenge run by Kate at Turquoise Lemons also asked us to use up left over Fennel. Now, I love fennel and rarely have any left over, but it was a good excuse to go and buy some so I have included at little of it in this recipe.

Blue and Green Soup

1 head broccoli chopped

2 Romaine lettuces, chopped

The stalky ends of a bulb of fennel chopped

1 large onion chopped

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 litre of vegetable stock

200ml milk

30g of Danish Blue cheese crumbled

Put the oil in the pan at a medium heat, add the onion and saute for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the chopped broccoli.

The fennel,

and the chopped lettuce

and stir to coat with the oil and onion. Add the stock, I use Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon but you can use any stock.

Season and cook until the vegetables are soft. Take off the heat for about 10 minutes and then blitz with a stick blender or in a liquidiser. Add the milk and the Blue Cheese to taste and blitz again.

While the soup was cooking, I thought I'd make something nice to have with them. I had bought some gluten free ingredients for the guest who was expected last weekend but was unable to come. So I thought I would 'use them up' making some scones.

I turned to my standard scone recipe from Mary Berry's Fast Cakes, it's never failed me yet, even when I change the ingredients as much as I have here!

Gluten Free Special Scones
225g White self-raising Gluten and Wheat Free flour
1 level tsp gluten free baking powder
50g Pure Sunflower dairy free margarine
1/2 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
50g grated cheese
1 egg
milk or natural yogurt

Heat the oven to 220C and lightly grease a baking sheet
Put the flour and baking powder in a bowl and add the margarine, rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the mustard powder and the grated cheese.

Crack the egg into a jug, lightly beat it and then make up to 150ml with milk or yogurt. Stir the egg mixture into the flour and mix to a soft dough.

Turn onto a lightly floured table and pat out to about 1.25 (1/2 inch) thickness.
Cut into rounds, I made my big as we were having them as 'rolls' with our soup. Place spaced out on the baking sheet and brush the tops with milk or yogurt and sprinkle with a little more cheese.

I'm showing you this so you can see how thick they are cut.

Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes (depending on how big you made them) until they are pale golden brown. Remove and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Not only was the soup good, although dominated by the broccoli and blue cheese flavours, but the scones were excellent. A little more chewy in texture than the wheat flour ones, but definitely good and a very acceptable substitute. They could also be adapted to be dairy free by using substitutes for the milk/yogurt and cheese.

I'm entering this recipe for Bookmarked Recipes run by Jac at Tinned Tomatoes and founded by Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments

Labels: Bookmarked Recipes, Broccoli, cheese, dairy free, Fennel, gluten free, lettuce, No Waste Food Challenge, Scones, Soup, Tinned Tomatoes, Turquoise Lemons

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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Farmersgirl Kitchen

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Blue and Green Soup with Gluten Free Cheese Scones

Saturday, 14 January 2012

Haddock Mornay Layer Bake - keen as mustard!

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