corn·ed corn chow·der

Hot and steamy, but nothing to focus on . . .

When I made corned beef and its delicious silky sauce there was a fair bit of cooking liquor left, and it was too good for this frugally amused gastronome to throw away. The liquor in which the modern corned beef has been cooked is not as overly salty as that your Mother or Grandmother would have known, thus opening rafts of possible future uses. On tasting the liquor before making the mustard sauce, I immediately saw visions of a damn tasty soup. At the time I thought lentil, but as it transpired, the soup was to be corn chowder. And isn't that so fitting, a corn chowder made with corned beef liquor?

Corned Corn Chowder
Serves 4

1 medium onion, chopped finely
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
6 cups of liquor from cooking corned beef, or chicken stock
500g frozen corn kernels
salt
white pepper

Saute the onion and garlic in a little olive oil until soft. Add the potato and stir to coat in the oily onion mixture. Add the stock and corn and simmer until the potato is soft, approximately 15 minutes. Puree with a hand held blender or similar and season with a little salt and white pepper. Reheat to serve piping hot.

Brus·sels sprout soup

I can't change thyme, but thyme can change soup.

For not having a scrap of cream in it, this soup is surprisingly creamy and satisfying. And full of the good flavours of Brussels sprouts. It is the brief 10 minute cooking of the sprouts that has prevented the little beauties from turning into the grey and bitter slop of many a childhood nightmare. I think this could be the recipe that could turn a Brussels sprout hater into a Brussels sprout lover, providing you don't tell them what the soup is made from before they have complimented you on your kitchen skills. The onion sweetens the soup, and the thyme gives a lovely savoury note, but of course substitute another herb you have handy if you have run out of thyme.

I don't think you necessarily need bread with this soup, but then again a piece of hot buttered toast never goes amiss.

Brussels Sprout Soup
serves 2 generously

1 large onion, halved and sliced
1 tablespoon of butter
250g Brussels sprouts, trimmed and cut in half, or quarters if especially large
500mL chicken stock
2 good sprigs of thyme
Celery salt and white pepper

Melt the butter and cook the onion over a low heat with the lid on for about 30 minutes or until very soft and almost melting. Remove the lid, raise the heat to medium, and cook until the onions just start to colour. Add the Brussels sprouts, stock and thyme and cook at a simmer for about 10 minutes or until the sprouts are tender. Remove the thyme and puree the soup. Season with celery salt and pepper, reheat and serve.

cream of to·ma·to soup

Takes on and beats the best of the cans.

We left it as late as possible to harvest the last of the tomatoes and pull out the plants, finally giving into the cold that was about to hit. When we did we had a huge pile of tomatoes ranging from all green to ripe and wonderful. I tried to ripen the green ones on the window sill, just wanting the hugest pile of ripe redness before I set to boiling them up to pop in the freezer. I did sneak a few from the pile to make my favourite soup - cream of tomato.

Cream of tomato soup is something else mass produced that I like to try to imitate. And I am always very happy when it doesn't match up.

Hot and smeared with butter.

Cream of Tomato Soup
Scale to feed your crowd.

Fresh tomatoes
Parsley stalks, leaves reserved for garnish
Garlic
Tabasco
Salt and Pepper
Cream

Cook the tomatoes with just a dash of water, the parsley stalks and the garlic until completely fallen apart into pulp. Puree then pass through a sieve into a clean pan. Add water and cream to reach the thickness you prefer and reheat without boiling. Season with a dash of Tabasco and salt and pepper.

Serve, of course, with hot buttered toast.

mush·room soup

A bowl of grey-brown goodness.

I love mushroom soup, and this is a particularly good one, and interesting too. It is thickened with wholemeal bread instead of a roux or other thickening agent. Apparently, using breadcrumbs to thicken soup is a technique which has been used since the Middle Ages. I think it is a much easier and reliable method as well, no fussing about really, just pop the crustless slice in the soup.

A thick soup is a great comforting and warming meal, just right for these Autumn days. Over at Nihowera we are featuring soup this week - have a look!

Mushroom Soup
from Tamasin's Kitchen Bible by Tamasin Day-Lewis Serves 4

340g brown mushrooms, sliced
55g unsalted butter
2T chopped parsley
2-3 sprigs of thyme
a glove of garlic, minced
salt and pepper
nutmeg or mace
1 thick slice wholemeal bread, crusts removed
1L chicken stock
150mL cream

Stew the mushrooms in the butter, adding half the parsley, thyme, garlic and seasoning when the mushroom juices start to appear. Soak the bread in a little stock. Add the break and stock to the mushrooms. Simmer for 15 minuted. Puree, add the cream, then reheat and check the seasoning.

Serve with a trickle of cream and the rest of the parsley sprinkled on top.

I also added a dribble of truffle oil, because I love it!

chest·nut and len·til soup

It is getting cold here now. The last couple of days have certainly been wintery. Just the weather for a lovely, thick and wonderfully tasty soup. Soup to put in a bowl to wrap your hands around. Makes winter something to welcome.

I am really enjoying lentils and pulses at the moment, a phase perhaps, but a good one. So with the thought of lentils in my mind and the image of a bag of chestnuts before me the perfect soup to make had to be chestnut and lentil.

Chestnuts really give a soup a richness that is hard to beat. The only problem is the peeling of that furry skin within the shell that makes your teeth feel funny if you decide that is close enough while you are peeling. The peeling of chestnuts is not something I can [now] recommend for a whole dish. They are fine, and even fun, to peel as you eat them roasted and dipped lightly in salt. This way you can take your time and know that the reward for your patience and exactness will very shortly be the reward of a delicious roasted chestnut kernel. But for a whole dish of soup your fingers will be sore well before you have finished the pile. I am yet to experiment but I think perhaps this is the time for canned unsweetened chestnut puree, or frozen chestnut crumbs. But then again it could be a labour of love for a small batch just enough for two . . .

I made the soup like this, which was incredibly good ; a great benchmark for experiments with pre-prepared chestnuts :

Lentil and chestnut soup
enough for 4 good portions

450g whole chestnuts, roasted as per this post, and peeled of shell (AND furry inner skin!), chopped
1 cup of red lentils, rinsed
1 litre of water
1 onion, finely chopped
1 stalk of celery, peeled and finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
some parsley stalks
olive oil
fresh chopped herbs, such as parsley, marjoram, thyme
a good pinch of fennel seeds, lightly crushed
1/2 cup dry sherry or wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste

Put the lentils to cook with the water, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, bay and parsley stalks. Add more water as they cook if you think it is getting a bit dry, we want a soupy texture, but not too liquid. When they are almost cooked heat a soup pan with a bit of olive oil and sauté the chestnuts and herbs for a few minutes. Deglaze with the wine and add the tomato paste. Remove the bay leaves and parsley stalks from the now cooked lentils and add lentils, vegetables and their liquid to the chestnuts. Simmer briefly then purée to your preferred consistency, either in a blender or with a stick blender. Season to taste with salt and pepper and bring back to the boil. Serve piping hot, with toast if you like.

game soup

If a pheasant galette is not enough frugality, here I present game soup ; a sure fire way to make yourself feel good. Good because this is a delicious, refined and just as restorative version chicken soup. And good because you have used almost all the parts of the pheasant you roasted earlier in the week. And the barley, not quite the same as the noodle in the chicken noodle soup but barley in the game soup is in many ways better. Barley in a soup makes the soup more of a meal. And this is a great meal with some hot buttered toast!

Game Soup
Adapted from a recipe in Meat by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

The pheasant carcass from the roasted bird, cut into pieces
1 carrot, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
a splash of brandy
a large splash of port
a small glass of red wine
500mL of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and bashed, but not minced
1 bay leaf
a sprig of thyme
1 tablespoon of chutney
100g of pearl barley, rinsed

Sauté the vegetables in some fat or oil until they start to caramelise. Add the carcass and sauté briefly. Add the rest of the ingredients except the barley. Bring to a boil then turn down to simmer gently for an hour and a half. Strain well, ideally once through a sieve and then through some muslin. At this point you can chill the soup and then remove the fat from the top before you reheat it. Bring the soup back to a boil and add the barley. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until the barley is cooked.

Lovely!

white bean soup

This is a very simple soup that can be made quickly with very little effort. It becomes amazing with just a few drops of a flavoured oil added as it is served. I recently bought a small bottle of white truffle flavoured olive oil and a few drops of that, as you might expect, really makes this soup devine.

The key ingredient is white beans. The specific type does not really matter, and even the whiteness is probably optional, except that part of the charm is in the colour. I often use butter beans, but haricot beans are another good option. I generally use dry beans that I soak and cook, but I am sure a ready-to-go tin of beans would be just fine too. This soup tends to appear when I have cooked some beans just a bit too much and they are starting to fall apart.

There are options in the degree of effort you want to invest :

The simplest is to just purée the beans, some of their cooking water and some salt and pepper, serving with a drizzle of flavoured oil.

A nice middle ground between no effort and some effort is to add a bit of stock or garlic to the purée.

And the whole hog involves sweating some aromatic vegetables then adding the beans and stock, puréeing and then passing the mixture through a fine sieve to make the soup even more velvety and smooth.

This is real frugal food with great pay off in nutritional value, percieved effort and depending on the flavouring used, variety!

fish soup

If you have some fish stock you can make fish soup, fish stew or a sauce for fish. Myself, I love fish soup. My favourite is the smooth kind served with rouille, croutons and Gruyère. But when you want fish soup for a week day dinner rouille is most definately out of the question, croutons are pushing it, and the Gruyère, if you have some, will probably be eaten as pudding. Fish stock is easy, rewarding in its homemade-ness, and quick enough to make before making an equally quick soup.

Once you have a great base like homemade stock, a soup is as simple as sautéing some vegetables, deglazing with a bit of wine, adding the stock and maybe some other vegetables like tomatoes, then simmering for a wee while. If you would like a more substantial main course soup, then poach some meat, fish or heat some pre-cooked pulses in the soup for the last few minutes. Simple! This is the sort of autopilot cooking that I find so thereputic at the end of a day at work : a bit of chopping, a bit of stirring ; nothing too urgent. Especially so, if things, like the stock, are premade and everything else is ready to go.

I make fish soup like this :

1/2 an onion, chopped
1/2 a fennel bulb, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 dried red chilli, chopped
the leaves from a sprig of thyme, chopped
a pinch of saffron
white wine to deglaze - a glass or so.
a cup of fish stock
a tin of whole peeled tomatoes, pureed with a stick blender and then sieved (poor man's passata!)
400g of mixed white fish fillets, cut into chunks. For example trevally, tarakihi or gurnard- as many or few different kinds as you fancy.

Sauté the onion, fennel, garlic, chilli, saffron and thyme in olive oil until the onion is soft and starting to turn golden. Pour in the wine and scrape any bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the stock and tomatoes. Bring to the boil then reduce to a low simmer. Adjust the seasoning as you like. Cover and leave to simmer for fifteen minutes or so. When you are ready to eat drop in the fish pieces, they will only take a few minutes to cook.
Serves two generously with some crusty bread to accompany.