Winter warmers.

The nights are drawing in, the heating is on, bonfire night has happened and the leaves are rapidly falling.  The time has come for some serious comfort food. I NEVER seem to be able to make enough dumplings when I make a stew, even once when I made thirty six! And, having said that, I can never make a small stew, it always turns into a massive pot of meaty and vegetably (if that's a word?) goodness that cooks on the hob for a good three hours, by which time everyone is so hungry that they burn their mouths on the gravy... and we have enough leftovers for the next day and then some for the freezer. But no dumplings.

Then there is the joy of a lamb tagine,oven cooked for three and a half hours, with spices, prunes and apricots; served with couscous and green beans. I've also made a slow  cooked beef ragu that took a good four hours to develop all the flavours.

Today's first new recipe of two was another wintry delight -  Chinese Northern Lamb, from a new book called Whole Food Slow Cooked.  A 2kg shoulder of lamb on the bone was balanced on top of chunks of onion and green & orange peppers; and rubbed with a spice paste which smelled amazing!  To make it I toasted Chinese Sichuan peppercorns, cumin seeds and fennel seeds in a pan until fragrant, then crushed and mixed with tumeric, ground ginger, chilli flakes, garlic, vinegar, sugar and salt.  

After three hours in the oven at 160 C,covered with a lid; and another hour uncovered, it looked like this:

We had it with rice and stir fried pak choi, and it was very delicious, but I think I would use a spice mill for the spice paste next time instead of just a pestle and mortar as the peppercorns weren't crushed finely enough and were a bit unplesant if you bit on one. However, it got a good four out of five.

I also did a new recipe dessert.  The Christmas food magazines are out and there are so many fab recipes to try and so little time.  I've also planned the Christmas Day menu today. But back to the pudding: Raspberry and citrus syllabub mini trifles.

These were really easy and yummy, just trifle sponges, raspberries, and cream whipped with a mixture of orange and lemon zest and juice with some sugar dissolved in.  They need to be left for a good three hours for the cream to be absorbed into the trifle sponges, so they are sort of a slow "cooked" pudding!  Even the cat was enthusiastic and wanted to lick the glass out...

More soon, thank you for reading,
Caroline :-)

The story of "Assorted Soup".

On a recent trip to visit family in Scarborough, I paid my first visit to the ingredients paradise that is the Happy Rooster Oriental Foodstore.  Not having anywhere like it close to home, I stocked up on many new and fabulous oriental ingredients, including an interesting-looking (if somewhat overpackaged) collection of strange, wonderful and mainly previously unheard of items entitled "assorted soup mixture". My son was amused by the Fox Nuts, I was perplexed by the Dong Sum Root and Hoantchy, although I HAD heard of Longan, having eaten some fresh ones for the first time the day before - they're a bit like lychees. And what on earth is a Dioscore? If anyone reading this blog can enlighten me about any of these, please comment.

A few weeks later, on a grey and windy November day, my daughter was off school with a headache and sore throat.  It was just the sort of day to make something healthy and warming, and hopefully make her feel better. The time had come to make "assorted soup".

Following the instructions on the packet, I washed and soaked the contents of the packet, added chicken (two free range chicken breasts), several slices of fresh root ginger and eight bowls of water.  It didn't specify what size of bowl, so I went for a "rice bowl" size, thinking that it was easy to add more water later if required, and important not to dilute the flavours.

When going to the fridge for the ginger, I realised I didn't have any.  Shopping list fail!!  Not like me at all!  But the wonderful world of social media came to the rescue.  I posted a request on the village FaceBay page, a friend happened to be in the local supermarket at the time, popped some in their trolley and delivered it to my door within thirty minutes! What a fabulous community I live in.  Anyway,back to the soup making...

It didn't smell all that interesting, in fact it didn't smell of much at all, so I thought I would add some more flavour by adding another of my Happy Rooster purchases, a stock cube with barely any English writing on, but a delicious smell and rather lovely orange colour. The bits I could read said "Product of Thailand" and "Directions: Dissolve 2 cubes in 1 litre of boiling water, add other ingredients such as shrimp, fish, mushroom or vegetable". I thought I would just go for it and chucked it in.  

After some time - two hours - which was the time specified on the assorted soup mixture packet, it was smelling and tasting rather delicious, and looked like this:

I wasn't sure if you were meant to eat the assorted mixture of flavourings or not, so erred on the side of caution and strained them out.  I thought it might spoil everything to bite on a Fox Nut and be left with an unpleasant taste in the mouth!  I considered trying them, but in the end I didn't. The chicken breasts were shredded with a fork and returned to the pan of now strained soup, together with my own assorted other ingredients: a pointed red pepper cut into strips, two carrots made into ribbons with a potato peeler, some authentic Japanese Ramen noodles (another Happy Rooster purchase), two of the slices of ginger cut into matchsticks, and some pak choi and choi sum, chopped up. And a splash of soy sauce. When all the ingredients were added, I decided it DID need a bit more water, so sloshed a bit more in. Four minutes of simmering later and my assorted Chinese/Thai/Japanese noodle soup was good to go:

I thought it looked rather pretty, and it cheered up both the dull day, and my daughter - who gave it 5 out of 5! So all in all, a successful experiment.

Thank you for reading, and if you happen to be in Scarborough, do visit the Happy Rooster at 16 North Marine Road YO12 7PD.

More soon I hope,  Caroline :-) x