Soup 2

Another soup in this occasional autumnal series of soup and today it is pumpkin and mascarpone soup from 'The River Cafe Easy Two' by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. The ingredients just shout "AUTUMN!":

800g pumpkin, cut into 2cm chunks
3 medium potatoes, cut the same
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 tsp fennel seeds
250g plum tomatoes (I used a tin of plum tomatoes)
500ml stock
salt, pepper
150g Mascarpone
Olive oil to finish
50g Parmesan

Using a heavy bottomed saucepan, put the pumpkin, potato, tomato and garlic in and cover with the stock, seasoning with salt, pepper and the fennel seeds. Simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Mash with a potato masher and serve with spoonfuls of mascarpone, drizzles of olive oil and shavings of Parmesan.

Soup 1

Inspired by lunch at the Griffin Inn and the onset of Autumn, the time seems right for soup. For tonight, as a starting point, we thought we'd revisit the French classic soup a'l'oignon. There are possibly as many recipes for this soup as there are onions in France, but we used one of several from the brilliant soup book, A celebration of soup by Lindsey Bareham. This is a pretty definitive book to turn to when you want a soup recipe. There have been others since but to me, this is the best soup book you can buy.

1 tbsp olive oil
40g butter
700g onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
pepper
pinch of sugar
40g flour
150ml white wine
2l stock
3 tbsp brandy
slices of toasted bread
100-200g cheese (e.g. Gruyere, Emmental or Parmesan)

Heat oil and butter in a heavy pan with a lid. Add onions and cook very gently for 15-20 minutes. Remove lid, add salt and sugar and cook for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the onions a deep golden caramelised colour but not burnt. Stir in the flour and cook for a few minutes before adding the white wine and stirring through. Add the stock and bring back to the boil before simmering for a further 30 to 45 minutes. When ready, place the slices of toast in the bottom of soup bowls and top with the cheese. Add the brandy to the soup and serve over the toast slice in the soup bowls.

A recipe for onion soup from 1802 is relatively terse in its instruction as recipes of this period tend to be, unlike the title of the book; The art of cookery made easy comprising, ample directions for preparing every article requisite for furnishing the tahles of nobleman, gentleman and tradesman (second edition) by John Mollard:

Onion Soup.
TAKE eight middling-sized peeled onions, cut them into very thin slices, pass them with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter and flour till tender; then add three quarts of veal stock; make it boil twenty minutes; skim it, season it with salt, and add a leason; mix it well with a whisk, make it simmer, and serve it up.

Roast potatoes

I've recently (over the last several months) been reading Harold McGee's McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture, one of the benchmark books for "molecular gastronomy" and fortunately I'd reached the section on potatoes a few days before Christmas. Armed with some new science I attempted Christmas day's roast potatoes a new way.

McGee mentions that cooking the potatoes in water at less than 100 degrees C, around 70C, allows the potato to retain its shape whilst cooking to a more even texture. It takes longer, but you don't risk potatoes that are falling apart on the outside when the middle is cooked. So instead of the normal par boiling of the roasties, I held them at 70C for around 20 minutes and then transferred them to the oven.

The result? At first taste, they almost tasted like canteen, mass cooked roast potatoes, but after a few seconds they seemed to taste vastly better. A consistent creaminess to the texture, lacking in the slight graininess that potatoes can sometimes have. Perhaps the main disappointment was that the outer crispy roast layer wasn't quite right. This is probably due to the very thing this method avoids, i.e. the breaking up of the outside of the potato, which gives a fluffy surface for the roasting.

So an interesting experiment that has some use. It might need some adaptation to improve the outer crispiness, but it's definitely worth following up. Only trouble is, now I want a temperature controlled water bath to experiment with...

And now another cook book!

Dough just arrived from Amazon today. Looks like I've got some holiday reading stacking up nicely.

A cookbook preview

I didn't think Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries was due to be published until October 3rd, the date given by most on-line retailers. Yet I managed to pick up a copy yesterday, some two weeks early, though not as early as a friend, Sara, who knows Nigel¹. She got her copy personally sent several weeks ago. And I had to pay for my copy.

Some intial thoughts on it; very nicely presented, beautifully laid out, great photography, even nice paper and one of those little strips to mark your page, all very old-fashioned in some respects. The writing is it's usual chatty, informal style, filled with asides and comments. Whilst touting some 300 new recipes, it is not a cookbook as a collection of recipes, but more of a journal of buying, growing, sourcing, preparing, eating and enjoying food in all it's stages and all it's forms. From cheese on toast to slow cooked pot meals (and that's just January), it is about real food as made in the home. No allusions to restaurant food, no showy dinner party stuff, just everyday food.

1. The sounds of names dropping...

Cookbook review #1

My bookshelves groan when I come back from a bookshop, as it usually means a new addition to the already stuffed bookcase of cookery books (and yes, I am that sad that I have a separate bookcase just for cookery books). Recent additions have included the latest River Cafe, Two Easy. I must confess to some disappointment with earlier River Cafe books, but with the latest two (Easy and this one) Rose and Ruth seem to have hit their stride, or at least matched pace with mine. It's not that I shy away from non-easy recipes but in these two they seem to hit a better balance of ingredients in the dishes; maybe the focusing in on simplicity forces one to work harder at what remains, somewhat like a short story. There is the usual emphasis on using top quality ingredients, and when there are so few, they need to work that much harder. I feel though that the dishes go further than that - I especially like the starters and simple small dishes (broad bean, pecorino and mint bruschetta from the first easy book is a favourite) that work well as both appetisers and simple suppers.

So this will do to bide my time until the next expedition reaps more weight for the bookcase. Imminent books to look forward to are Dough: Simple contemporary bread by Richard Bertinet and Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.