A multi-season soup

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. Well, except this year I did. I resolved to make a large batch of soup most weekends, which I would then religiously take to work for my lunches the following week, and certainly not buy any more vastly overpriced, fattening, panini-type things.

The reason I don't make New Year's Resolutions is that I've hardly ever known anyone to actually stick to the things. January has always struck me as a bad time to go trying to make big life changes, just when the weather is telling you to hide indoors, drink lots of strong wine and eat lots of chocolate. But soup... ah yes, soup is for January. And February, as it turned out. I got as far as March before the weather improved sufficiently to slow me down. One of the last batches I cooked before I turned veggie for Lent (and therefore couldn't eat it) was the following, adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe in his Kitchen Diaries. His version (available here for you sorry folk who don't own the book) was more main-coursey, so I did the following.

The parmesan rinds are non-essential but fabulous. Whenever you finish a piece of parmesan, stick it in the freezer and save it for soups like this. The best results will also come if you use some kind of animal fat (so, the stuff you drain off when frying duck breasts or roasting a joint, or buy some lard in a supermarket), but olive oil would do just fine.


A Herb and Barley Broth

100g barley
2 tbs of some kind of fat, preferably animal (I used some duck fat I had hanging around)
1 carrot
2 leeks
3 stalks celery
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
1/2 glass sherry
1 litre chicken stock (or 500ml and 500ml water, or all veggie stock, etc!)
4 or so bay leaves
handful thyme
parmesan rinds, if you have some hanging around
handful parsley

First you need to cook your barley, as the rest of the soup doesn't need too long. The packet on mine suggested 1 hour to an hour and a half, and I think the shorter time is about right - you want it to keep some bite when it goes into the soup. Nigel says it'll be done in 20 mins, but I think that's wildly optimistic.

Meanwhile, chop the carrot, celery and leek into little cubes, and slice the onions thinly from root to tip (so they make little crescents, most still joined at the root). Heat your fat in a big saucepan or casserole, and then saute the veg over a gentle heat, stirring often, until softened but not browned. Slice the garlic thinly, add to the pan, and saute for another couple of minutes.

Once the barley is cooked, tip it into the pan, then add the sherry and simmer until you don't get a whack of alcohol when you inhale the steam. Then add the stock, thyme, bay leaves, and parmesan rinds if available, and bring to a gentle simmer. Pop on a lid, and simmer for half an hour or so. Chop the parsley roughly, and stir in.


A more summery dinner

Two portions of the above have now sat in my fridge for the whole of Lent, tempting but out of bounds thanks to the duck fat and chicken stock. It's now really too warm to have soup at lunchtime, so I thought I'd have one for dinner, but on its own it was a little restrained, so I thought I'd add some fresh veggies. It would have worked well with peas, beans, or maybe some purple sprouting broccoli, but (perhaps predictably, at the moment) I went for some asparagus - about six or seven spears, each cut into three bite-size lengths, and simmered in the soup for seven minutes or so, until tender. I dished it up and grated over a generous amount of parmesan for good measure.

One portion of the soup remains in the freezer. Suggestions for what to do with it warmly welcomed!

Burgers.

I never thought of myself as a meat-and-two-veg kind of cook. That stood me in good stead at the start of my period of being veggie; although I like them, I saw no need to make quorn, tofu, etc appear as regular blocs of protein to mask the absence of a steak or lamb chop from my plate. Instead, I smugly cooked one-pots, salads, pastas...

And then I started to run out of recipes. Worse - I ran out of ideas. I bought a new cookbook (Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian Cookbook, for those who were wondering) and found myself furiously flicking through page after page searching for a dish that could comprise a whole meal. Then I started actually reading the blurb above the recipes. Such-and-such a dish should be served with such-and-such rice and so-and-so salsa. Stir-fry A is good served alongside stir-fry B.

It occurred to me that by excluding plates of food that looked like replicas of meat-and-two-veg, I was hugely narrowing down my range of options. Why not serve one veg dish with a side of another veg dish?

This is basically burgers with relish and salad.


Chickpea fritters

Tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 red onion, roughly chunked
1 clove garlic
1 tomato, roughly chunked
1 egg
2 tbs flour
1 tsp ground cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes

Insert everything into a food processor and whizz until you've got a rough paste - unlikely to take more than a few seconds. Add a little more flour if the mixture looks very wet, although you're not going to form it into patties, so it doesn't have to be very stiff.

Heat a few tbs of oil in a wide frying pan, and swirl to coat. Dollop in heaped tablespoons of the mixture (you should get about six), and leave (don't try to prod them about or they will stick and collapse) until you can see them browning round the edges. Carefully slide under them with a fish slice, and flip over. Leave until equally brown on the other side.


Tsatsiki

1 clove garlic
1 tbs dried mint
3 tbs 0% fat greek yoghurt
1/4 cucumber

If you've got one of those grater attachments on your food processor, this is really easy. Actually, it's pretty easy anyway. Halve your cucumber lengthways and remove the seeds, then grate - either in 3 seconds on your food processor, or 3 minutes by hand. Tip the gratings onto a sheet of kitchen roll, top with another, and squidge to remove some of the water. Crush the clove of garlic very finely.

Tip all the ingredients into a bowl, stir, and season to taste - it will probably want a decent dose of salt.


Greek Salad

1/2 red onion (the other half from the patties)
1/4 cucumber (the remains of the half that you had to buy in a supermarket to make the Tsatsiki)
2 tomatoes
1 little gem lettuce, or similar
handful olives
1 tsp dried oregano
olive oil & red wine vinegar

Very thinly slice the red onion. Halve the cucumber lengthways, remove the seeds, and slice thinly into little C-shapes. Chop the tomatoes roughly. Tear the little gem up into mouth-sized pieces.

Again, combine everything in a bowl, with about 2 tbs oil and 2 of vinegar.


This makes a good amount for two fairly hungry people. If you're one, then cook all the patties, and freeze the remainder - they can be defrosted and then reheated in the oven a month or two later (when you come home just slightly too tipsy to cook); the salad will last long enough to have it for lunch, perhaps with a toasted pitta bread, the next day, with any leftover tsatsiki stirred in.

Chicory and Celery Gratin

So. I feel this is something of a cheat of a blogpost. I wrote about a chicory gratin back in August, and this one isn't all that different.

It is, however, veggie, and at the moment, lack of meat in a recipe is all I care about. It's also just as tasty (perhaps more so, even... though the boy did note that it would be improved with a bit of bacon) and I am pleased with the walnut and thyme crust, which I shall now be using on top of anything I can imagine.

Quantities very easily halved (or just use one, not both, of the veg, which would save having small bits of random vegetables sitting in your fridge for the next week) for one person. You could presumably double up for a dinner party, too, although I'm not sure that this is really dinner party food.

And finally... a useful note about herbs. I've noted here that you can use two tablespooons of fresh thyme, or two teaspoons of dried thyme, and I generally find that to be a useful convertor (1 tbs fresh = same flavour punch as 1 tsp dried) for all herbs.


Chicory and celery gratin

2 heads chicory (aka endive), green or red
half a large head of celery
butter

More butter
Tbs flour
1/2 pint milk
200g gruyere

Four slices brown bread
100g walnuts
2 tbs fresh thyme, or 2 tsp dried thyme
glug of oil

Green salad, to serve


Start off by cutting your chicory in half lengthways, and by breaking off ribs (note: I *love* that celery sticks are called ribs. Something less like these it is hard to imagine.) from the head of celery, trimming any dried or dirty bits from the ends. Melt a decent slice of butter in a large frying pan (preferably one with a lid), and, once it bubbles, put the veg in, cut side down in the case of the chicory. Stick the lid on if you have one, and leave to sizzle for 10 minutes, shaking ocassionally, until they are slightly browned and softened.

I did some washing-up whilst they were cooking, but if you're not the sort to have a pile of 10 saucepans and an ice-cream maker in permanent residence next to your sink, you can make the cheese sauce during this time. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, and stir in a tablespoon of flour. Cook for a minute until it turns deep golden, stirring all the time, then gradually mix in the milk, still stirring. Keep stirring as you heat the sauce, only stopping once it's boiled (when it stabilises). Leave to bubble very gently whilst you grate the cheese, then stir that in, together with a decent pinch of salt.

The final component is the breadcrumbs, which involve simply sticking everything except the oil into a food processor, whizzing until rough, then pouring in a decent glug of oil and whizzing again briefly, just to coat them all.

Construct the dish by putting first the veg, then the sauce, and then the crumbs into a baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes or so at 200 degrees, or until the sauce is attempting to bubble out of the dish and the crumbs have browned.


I don't normally make serving suggestions, but this really does need some kind of fresh green salad to go with it, preferably with a bit of crunch, to contrast with the sticky, rich, gratin. And a very crisp white wine, too.

An omelette for not-quite-summer

After the gorgeous weather at the weekend, I was going to make a really light, herb-filled, summer omelette tonight. It's been just as sunny today, but the temperature has dropped somewhat, and dinner suddenly needed bulking up. I had a couple of mushrooms hanging around from making Nigella's Garlic Mushrooms (see note at the bottom for details...), and it occurred to me that they should add just the rich, meaty note I was in need of. Depending on your appetite, you could serve this as is, or with a piece of toast, or an entire garlic baguette!


Watercress and Mushroom Omelette

Two flat field mushrooms, or two handfuls of little mushrooms
Butter
Two eggs
Tsp dried tarragon (or 1 tbs of something fresh - parsley, dill, basil...)
50g watercress (about a large handful)
Tbs or so grated parmesan

Slice the mushrooms, and saute in plenty of butter and salt for five minutes. They need to go through the stages of absorbing the fat, releasing their juices, and then releasing the fat again; at the end they'll start to brown and this is when you need to whip them out of the pan.

Whilst the mushrooms are sizzling away, break the eggs into a bowl with more salt, some pepper, and the dried or fresh herbs, and whisk well. Chop the watercress and grate the parmesan.

Remove the mushrooms from the pan, tipping it to one side and letting any fat drip off them. Put the pan back on the heat, adding a very small further knob of butter; once the butter is sizzling again, tip in the eggs and shake vigorously (more on omelette skills here) for a minute.

Scatter the watercress and parmesan over, then top with the mushrooms. Turn the heat out, but leave the pan on it and stick either a lid or plate over to keep the heat in. The idea here is to slightly wilt the watercress and just melt the parmesan in the residual heat; it will take about as long as it takes you to get out a plate, knife, and fork, and pour a glass of wine.




PS. For Nigella's Garlic Mushrooms, just make a garlic butter with a tbs of butter, a crushed large clove garlic (use two if yours are only small or average size), and plenty of salt and pepper. Smear this over two flat field mushrooms, then roast at 200 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Serve with toast or (as she recommends) in a ciabatta bap.

Review: The Punter, Osney Island

I have lived in Oxford for nearly four years. I have never been punting.

And one more thing to get out of the way before I talk about the food: I think "The Punter" is a terrible pun of a name for a pub; even if it weren't for the fact (as I am informed by older, puntier, Oxford hands than I) that you can't actually punt on the stretch of the Thames that it looks out over. I am generally entirely in favour of the gastroisation of run-down little dives of pubs, but I fail to see the need to give them silly new names. This isn't an overly pretentious joint, so why the pretentious name?

Now. Food. Actually, no - one more thing first - the actual reason I chose to venture out to Osney Island in the first place. It was the first seriously warm and sunny day of the year, and I'd furiously been trying to think of somewhere to take the boy for lunch where we could sit outside. The best we'd come up with was the Turf Tavern, where, much as I love it, the menu definitely tends towards the cliche and the microwave, presumably thanks to their Greene King overlords. A stray tweet happened to alert me to a new foodie pub, and I managed to establish that it had a little patio overlooking the Thames. Sorted.

Osney Island is nearer than a north Oxford girl would expect, and we were settled in their peaceful little suntrap, staring rapt at the Thames, with a glass of Chardonnay and a pint of Aspall's cider, within a 10 minute walk of the city centre. The menu is short but would normally be plenty long enough for me; being a temporary veggie, though, my choices were somewhat limited. In the end, we decided to share a couple of starters and a main course between us, and all credit to a barman and a kitchen that are totally unfazed when you not only ask for this, but for them all to be served at the same time. So, within 15 minutes, we had on our table a purple sprouting broccoli, fig, and blue cheese salad, a massive portion of bruschetta with peppers and mozzarella, and a mixed veggie mezze platter.

The fig/blue cheese combo was familiar, but the pairing with broccoli was new to me, and it was a brilliant idea, helped along by PSB cooked to the perfection of toothsomeness. The bruschetta was equally an old idea, tarted up to new levels. They could have got away with less basil; less well roasted peppers; cheaper mozzarella; this is clearly the sort of place that cares more about making good food than saving money, though.

I think I might have felt a little disappointed with the size of the mezze platter (supposedly the main course) if I had ordered it alone, but all the components were superb. Ok, so it doesn't take much skill to buy the best feta you can land your hands on and stick it on a plate, but it does take skill to make baba ghanoush. This example was easily the best I've had: voluptuously silky, sweet, and gorgeously spiced. Even the boy liked it, and he claims not to like aubergines. There were also sun-dried tomatoes; olives; bread; hummus; tsatsiki; a butternut squash, goat's cheese, and pine nut pate; and a cumin-spiked carrot salad. I did feel that it could have done with one less dippy thing and one more solid though - a couple of falafel or stuffed vine leaves wouldn't have gone amiss.

I'll be back in future, partly to sample the rest of the menu and use their heaven of a patio again, but also to take advantage of their £5 lunchtime main courses - if the quality of our meal was anything to go by, this must be a massive steal of a deal.

Finally, huge thanks to Jessica Mann, the drinks writer for the Oxford Mail, for recommending the place to me in the first place. Here's to the series on outdoors eateries!


The Punter