French onion soup

Slow-cooker special to make a French classic. The original recipe I used (available here) doesn't require caramelising the onions. However, I think it would be that much better (and it was excellent when we made it in the winter) if you do take the extra effort to caramelise them. Here's my adaptation of a French classic.

Will serve lots. Recipe designed for a 5.7-litre slow cooker:

1.5 kg onions, thinly sliced (use a mandolin if you have one)
100g butter for frying
2 tbsp sugar
6 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1.5-2 l beef stock
1/2 cup sherry (or use wine vinegar)

Salt and pepper to taste

Baguette, sliced lengthwise

2 cups grated cheese (Gruyère or something similar)

Caramelise the onions in a big pan or two for about 30-45 minutes. To do this, slice the onions into rings or half-rings. Put a big pan on a medium heat with butter, thyme and bay leaves, then leave to cook, occasionally stirring. After 10 minutes, add the sugar and sprinkle salt over the top. (This step can also be done directly in the slow cooker, in which case at everything at the start and leave the onions ot cook for 6-8 hours, stirring occasionally).

Next, move everything into a slow cooker. Add the onion mix, stock and sherry, season with salt and pepper, cook for an additional 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally. At the end, discard the bay leaves and thyme. 

Switch on the grill in the oven. Put the baguette under the grill and cook for 1-2 minutes either side. 

Dish up some soup into an oven-proof bowl, top with a baguette slice or two, then top the bread with cheese. Put back into the oven and grill for around 2 minutes until the cheese has melted and is cooked.

Watermelon gazpacho

Another excellent find from this summer. The original is courtesy of Saveur, and a very nice place it is too.

1 kg watermelon, rind removed and roughly chopped
big bunch coriander
a third as much mint (or to taste)
3 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 Noa or English cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
1 chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 big tomato (I used coeur de boeuf, but it's up to you), roughly chopped
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Throw everything into a blender or food processor. Chill for a few hours and serve.

Excellent on a hot summer's evening. 

Beetroot and cherry soup

Despite the odd combination, this is actually very good. Allegedly, it's meant to be an effective anti-inflammatory, but even if it doesn't work as the original recipe intended, it is very tasty.

500 g beetroot (raw, not pre-cooked)
4 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped into halves or thirds
2-3 cloves garlic (not in the original recipe, but I thought it worked well)
1-2 onions
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, roughly chopped
1 thumb-sized piece turmeric root (or 1 tbsp dried, powdered turmeric, which is what I used)
1 tbsp cinnamon
250 g tart/sour cherries (you can probably buy them frozen; they should be depitted in advance)
400ml tin coconut milk (or to taste)
750ml - 1l stock (vegetable or chicken)
salt, pepper, cayenne or chilli to taste
olive oil

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Wrap the beetroot in foil (if you like, you can peel it first, which is what I did, although I understand it cooks better in its skin and then you can peel it). Put the beetroot and carrots on a baking tray and cook for about 45-60 minutes (the carrots might be ready before the beetroots, depending on the size). When ready, take the beetroots and carrots out of the oven, and, if applicable, peel the beetroots. Chop the vegetables up into smaller pieces.

While the root vegetables are cooking, gently cook the onion, ginger, garlic, and turmeric in a large pot. When ready, add in the beetroot and carrots, cinnamon, cherries, coconut milk, and about a cup or 2 of stock, plus the seasoning and olive oil, and blend it all together using a hand-held blender. Add in more stock as desired to thin the soup.

Bring to the boil and simmer for about 5-10 minutes or so. Serve with some bread on the side.

It's very good. Really.

Thai gazpacho

It was a very hot summer here, so we ate a lot of cold soups. This one turned out very nicely, although if you want it to have a reasonably attractive colour, make sure you use yellow tomatoes, not red ones. Otherwise, though, it's all very tasty. Based on this recipe.

Ingredients:
3-4 large yellow tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 full Noa cucumber, or 1/2 English cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 onion
1-2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp lemongrass (paste, fresh, or frozen)
1 thumb-size piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
juice and zest of 1 lime
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp chilli paste OR 1 chilli (or to taste)
mint, (Thai) basil and coriander to taste (should be about 1/2 cup or so)
1/2 a 400ml tin of coconut milk (you can use more too, but keep some for serving)
seasoning

Throw the tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, and onion into a blender and blend. Add the garlic, lemongrass, ginger, lime juice and zest, fish sauce, chilli, herbs and seasoning, and then as much coconut milk as you want (less is more, add little by little until you have as much as you want). Blend the mixture until smooth.

Put in the fridge to cool for a few hours. Serve with some bread on the side. 

Vegetarian buckwheat, mushroom, ginger and lemongrass soup

After cooking, cooling down. Lovely stuff.

This is a simple soup that we made to use up some buckwheat. It was inspired by a fantastic soup we had in Pärnu at Mahedik, and then adapted using this recipe as a basis. The main thing is not to overdo it with the buckwheat, as it absorbs quite a bit of liquid:

1 leek, cut into 1-cm chunks
2 celery stalks, chopped up
2 tbsp lemongrass, or 2 stalks chopped up. If you're using fresh lemongrass, don't cut it up too thinly, as it doesn't really soften much
2-cm piece of ginger, minced or finely sliced
2 carrots, chopped up
500g mushrooms - use a number of varieties for a more flavoursome dish
1 cup (250ml) buckwheat, raw or toasted. Don't overdo this!
8 cups (i.e. 2 l) chicken or vegetable stock
Thyme, to taste (about 1 tbsp)
Juice from 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, fry up the leek, celery, lemongrass, ginger, and carrots for a few minutes. Add in the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes more, then add in the buckwheat, stock, thyme, lemon juice and salt and pepper, bring to the boil, then simmer for about 15 minutes or so. If you need more liquid, add it in during cooking, or you could feasibly add it afterwards too.

One-pot Thai chicken noodle soup

Mostly courtesy of Carlsbad Cravings. Do be careful with the spice. It is very nice, though - very recommend.

Ingredients:
500g chicken fillet, sliced to make very thin fillets
2-3 onions, diced
2 carrots, diced
2-4 tbsp Thai red curry paste (to taste)
2cm piece fresh ginger, minced
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 chillies, minced (optional)
1l chicken stock
2 400ml tins coconut milk
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar
5-6 lime leaves
1 tsp basil or Provencal mix
Pepper to taste
250 g mushrooms, sliced
2 red peppers, sliced
150 g rice noodles, broken up into manageable pieces
handful roughly chopped coriander, plus extra to serve
juice of 2-3 limes, plus extra to serve

Brown the chicken in a big soup pot and then remove and put on a plate. Add in the onions and carrots and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add the curry paste, ginger, garlic and chilli and cook for 2-3 minutes. Return the chicken to the pot, then add the stock, coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar, lime leaves, basil and pepper. Bring to the boil then simmer for around 15 minutes or until the chicken is tender enough to shred. Remove the chicken from the pot and leave to cool until it can be shredded. In the meantime, add the mushrooms and peppers, bring to the boil again, add the (uncooked) noodles to the pot and simmer for around 4 minutes. Add the chicken, coriander and lime juice. Mix and serve with bread and wine on the side.

Cream of celery soup

What to do with extra celery. This was an emergency recipe that's turned out quite nicely:

Ingredients:

Around 500-600 g celery (the better part of a head of celery), sliced
A large potato, diced
A large onion, diced
A red pepper, diced
A chilli or 2, diced
50-100 g butter
750 ml chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
100ml cream or creme fraiche

Melt the butter in a large-ish pot. Add the celery, potato, onion, pepper, and chilli, season with salt, and cook for around 10-15 min over a low heat. When soft, add chicken stock and pepper, bring to a simmer, and cook for another 10-15 min on a low heat. When ready, take off the heat, add cream/creme fraiche, and blend. Serve with extra cream if so desired.

Mulligatawny soup

I guess this is an Anglo-Indian recipe that came about under the British Raj. It raises some interesting cultural questions, but it also works well as a relatively quick and simple dish. This one is adapted somewhat from the Wanderlust Kitchen's recipe. Good stuff all told.

Ingredients:

1 biggish onion, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 chilli or to taste, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cm or so ginger, diced
1 biggish or 2 small apples, peeled, cored, diced
1 or 2 400g tins tomatoes, depending on taste
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp Provencal herbs (or thyme)
1/4 tsp cardamon
Pepper to taste
2/3 cup red lentils (uncooked)
1 litre chicken stock
1 can coconut milk
Spring onions and coriander to serve

Cook onion, carrot and chilli for 5 min or until onion is soft. Add garlic, ginger, apples, and tomato and cook for a few minutes, then add spices and mix in. Add lentils and stock, bring to boil and then cook for 30 minutes on low heat. Once done, add coconut milk, heat once more, then serve with spring onions and/or coriander. Add bread of your choice too.

Gazpacho

This is a cold tomato soup perfect for summer. Very nice too. It's a slight adaptation of a recipe I found on food.com.

Ingredients:

800 g flavoursome tomatoes
Tomato juice
1/2-1 cup cucumber, peeled, deseeded and chopped up
1/2-1 cup red pepper, deseeded and chopped up
1/2-1 cup red onion, chopped up
1 chilli (or to taste), finely chopped
Garlic to taste (usually 1-2 cloves), minced
Olive oil
Lime juice to taste
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Coriander, to serve

To peel and deseed the tomatoes, cut a cross into the top or bottom of the tomato and then drop it into boiling water for 15 sec. When deseeding, put the remains into a sieve over a pot or bowl and try and get as much juice as you can from it, and then top up whatever juice you get with the tomato juice until it is about 1 cup. Put everything into a blender or food processor and blend until quite smooth. Leave overnight in the fridge, or serve with ice cubes and coriander.

Goulash

Something from a while back. Very rich, very filling, very good.

Ingredients:

500 g stewing beef, cut up into 1 cm cubes
50 g oil
100 g onion
5 tsp paprika
1 chilli (or to taste)
2 litres water
2-3 potatoes
1.5 tsp salt
2 carrots
Parsley to taste (although I left this out and replaced it with celery)
1 tsp caraway (also known as fennel or cumin, I guess, or harilik köömen)
25 ml thick cream
For the dumplings:
1 egg
150 g flour

1) Dice onions and fry until soft.
2) Add 1 tsp paprika and the chilli.
3) Add beef, mix well, then add carrot, parsley/celery, cream and caraway seeds. As the mixture cooks, top up with water if it dries out.
4) Once the beef has cooked, cover with water and add diced potatoes and salt. Cook until soft.
5) Once potatoes are ready, mix the egg and flour together, break off small pieces to make dumplings, and boil the pastry until ready.

Mushroom soup

We had people over today, and the planned pumpkin soup didn't pan out, due to there being a dearth of ripe pumpkin in the shops for some reason. So we had a mushroom soup instead, which worked out quite well, in my opinion. The original recipe is for 4-6, but I doubled the quantities, as we had people in and out the whole afternoon (oh, aren't we popular?).

Anyway, here goes:

500g mushrooms, finely sliced (I used a mixture of portobello and white button mushrooms (champignons), but you could add others, like chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, etc etc)
2 onions, finely diced
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, finely diced
about 90g butter (2 tbsp)
2 tbsp flour
1 litre chicken stock
a bay leaf
1/2 cup cream (the thicker the better)
salt and pepper to taste

In a gigantic pot, fry the onion and garlic in the butter until translucent, then add the mushrooms and fry for a few minutes while stirring. Add the flour and make sure the mushrooms are well covered. Pour in the stock, bring to the boil, then add the bay leaf and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. When done, leave to cool for a bit, then blend using a food processor or handheld mixer thingy. Add the cream, mix in, season to taste, and serve, perhaps with some bread, or Tabasco, or tomatoes.

Enjoy.

Butternut soup

It's miserable here, so we made a good traditional South African butternut soup yesterday. Don't use pumpkin unless you absolutely have to: this is a butternut soup, with all the fun that entails. Here's the recipe:

Should serve about 6

1.5 kg butternut (muskaatkõrvits or pähkelkõrvits in Estonian), peeled and cut into 5cm blocks
2 large onions, finely chopped
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
a chilli (or to taste), finely chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 litre chicken stock
2 tbsp lemon juice
250ml cream
1tsp nutmeg, ground
1tsp cumin, ground
1/2 tsp mustard seeds, ground
salt and pepper to taste
coriander leaves to serve

In a large pot, melt the butter, and fry the onion, garlic and chilli at medium heat until transparent. Add the spices, and stir around a bit until everything is well covered. Add the butternut, stock, and lemon juice, stir again, bring to the boil and then simmer for about 30 minutes or until the butternut is soft and ready. Puree it using a food processor or handheld mixer thingy, then add the cream and carefully heat it again. It should then be ready.

Serve with an extra dollop of cream and some coriander. And bread. And wine. And freeze the rest for winter.

Tom Yum Soup aka Hangover Cure

This is the first soup I've ever made. It was nice. It was tasty. It packed a punch. And its name is not my invention, although I'm pretty sure it would live up to its reputation in the event of its being needed. I've cheated and used store-bought paste, although you can obviously make it from scratch. If anyone does, please let me know the recipe.

This is a Thai fish soup, flavoured to be hot and sour. With a bit of bread it is lovely. Even without the bread it's lovely. The recipe below is one I adapted, cutting it down to a serving for 2-3. Still very nice and tasty.

Ingredients (feeds 2-3):

2-3 diced shallots (or an onion)
about an inch of galangal or ginger, diced
3 or 4 diced garlic cloves
1 or 2 chillis (with or without seeds according to taste)
3 stalks of lemongrass, or 1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemongrass paste
1 1/2 tbsp tom yum paste, store-bought or homemade (sorry, find your own recipe for this one)
1 small (approx 140ml) tin of coconut milk, or a big can for creamer soup (your choice) - I used a little tin and it was fine
1 litre chicken or fish stock
zest of a lime (with lime juice if you fancy)
sliced mushrooms (or brinjals, peppers, or other vegetables of choice)
fish or seafood (I used 200g of salmon, but most recipes allow for prawns or other seafood. Go wild)
Fish sauce and Thai basil to taste
Coriander, asparagus to serve

In a sufficiently large pot, fry up the galangal, shallots, garlic, lemongrass and chilli for 1-2 min. Add the paste and fry for a few more minutes. Add the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 3-5 minutes. Add coconut milk, bring to the boil again, add mushrooms or other vegetables and the fish or seafood. Cook until ready. Use fish sauce rather than salt to season. Serve immediately with coriander and asparagus.

Very good. Cannot recommend this enough.