Sweet Potato and Roast Cashew Soup

I have always wanted to make a really tasty spiced soup. I have tried before, but haven't got the balance right, generally shrinking away from making it too spicy at the cost of flavour. This recipe is care of Mr A's SIL, but where she got it from, I do not know. She made it for us the night we arrived in Adelaide and it was wonderful, spicy and welcoming. It claims to be a wonderfully filling African soup, and it is indeed wonderful.



500g Sweet potato sliced
1 litre vegetable stock
25g butter
1 tsp chopped red chillies (I couldn't get fresh so used flakes)
1 tbs chopped root ginger
1 tbs chopped garlic (about 4 or 5 cloves)
175 g carrots sliced (about 3 medium)
175 g onions, sliced (1 medium)
50 g plain flour
3 tbs soy sauce
175 ml coconut nut milk
A hand full of coriander, plus extra for garnish
Salt and white pepper
250 g Cashew nuts.

Put the sweet potatoes and vegetable stock in a pan and boil for 15 minutes (or until soft). Melt the butter in a large pan, add the chillies, ginger, carrots and onions and fry over moderate heat until soft. Mix in the flour with a wooden spoon.

Add the onion mix to the sweet potato and whiz with a stick blender until smooth (or put in the food processor, but that is too much washing up). Cook on a low heat for 15 minutes, adding half the soy sauce, all the coconut milk at some stage during this time and the coriander roughly chopped, and seasoning to taste at the last minute. (I only added a little pepper, as the cashews covered in soy sauce along with the soy were salty enough.

Preheat the oven to 200'c/180'c. Pour remaining soy sauce over the cashews in a shallow bowl, mix thoroughly until they are all coated. Bake for about 10 minutes, turning them occasionally to ensure they are browned evenly and don't stick together.

Serve the soup with a garnish of coriander leaves and the cashews sprinkled on top.

Serves 4



HH

When good cakes go bad...

I am insanely busy at the moment, thesis, tutoring, life in general, all hectic. Despite all this, I couldn't miss an opportunity to celebrate with my good friend and her boyfriend, who got engaged last week. This saw me rush home from work with slight detours at the shops to make a cake, have it cooled and iced all in 3 hours. I also wanted to get some marking done, eat lunch, and write a job application. It doesn't need saying that I got very few of those things done, and with mixed results.

I decided on Nigella's chocolate Guinness cake, which I have made numerous times, as it is easy and involves no beating of butter, sugar etc as it starts its life in a saucepan. Something went wrong in the baking process as it rose gloriously, and then sunk, terribly, so much so that no amount of icing could have filled the void. I thought I would turn it over and ice the bottom - sweet. No, it didn't come out of the tin well (I rushed it, I know, and it was a new tin, silly me) - it was ugly, ragged and sunken and it was an hour before I had to leave - no time for a new cake or baked goods.

Then I remembered trifle - the saviour of cakes gone bad. From trifle I turned my thoughts to tirimasu, as the cake has a cream cheese icing - and from there the decision was easy, and the result I must say delicious (possibly better than the original).

Chocolate-Guinness Tirimasu
1 Chocolate Guinness Cake
1 packet of cream cheese
250 ml or so of thickened cream
(though you easily could use 1 1/2 or double the amount of cream/cream cheese)
100 g Pure icing sugar
Splash of Brandy (or whatever is left in the bottom of the bottle from Christmas cooking)
Sweet Sherry to douse the cake
Cocoa for dusting
1 packet of Frozen Raspberries thawed slightly in the fridge

Cut the dishevelled cake into thin slices.

Beat together the cream, cream cheese, icing sugar and brandy with an electric beater until smooth and fluffy.

Add a layer of cake to a trifle/any bowl. Douse with sherry, as the cake is quite dense I think you can be quite heavy handed with this.

Add a layer of the cream cheese mixture.

Repeat with the cake, sherry and cream cheese. (If you do double the cream cheese, you could do another layer of cake as you will have some left over) Dust over a generous layer of cocoa.

Leave in the fridge to do its thing until you are ready to eat.

Top with raspberries before serving.




HH

Poached Pears

Since my last post nothing has been done on my thesis, which is a terrible thing. The stress of having too much to do prevents you from doing anything, which compounds the stress you already feel, which in a vicious cycle, makes you do even less.

On the upside, I enjoyed, immensely, my time house sitting, getting into the Balmain lifestyle, making friends with the Gourmet Grocer, watching too much of the food channel, drinking, and having people over for dinner almost every night. My bank balance will, I am sure, be suffering for this extravagance, seeing I am only working one day a week at the moment, but, what is money when good friends and good food are to be had.

The highlights of the two weeks were a curry made with ginger, chili, turmeric, coriander, cumin and cardamon and chicken, pumpkin, and eggplant; Roast beef, which made delicious sandwiches the next day; a beef, eggplant and zucchini tagine, made with Herbie's Moroccan spice mix. I added dates and then honey at the end, it really was lovely with just the right amount of heat and fragrant spice; Moussaka, made with beef and pork mince, a bottle of white wine, beef and chicken stock, plenty of garlic, onions etc...and apart from almost dropping it on the floor as I took it out of the oven, it was amazing.

I didn't deprive my guests of dessert, and after making some more crumble topping, I made apple crumble one night, followed by mixed berry crumble the next. The berry crumble was by far the winner. I just used frozen mixed berries, a splash of vanilla, and a little brown sugar, let that sit whilst I finished dinner, and then topped it with the crumble and baked.

The overall winner, however, was poached pears. I have never made them before, and I couldn't find a recipe that I liked. Jamie's recipe wanted me to bake them in the oven, I didn't have time for that. Nigella doesn't seem to have one in the books I have, briefly looking on the BBC site, I couldn't find one that I wanted. I had, however seen Valentine Warner on his show What to Eat nowpoaching some pears, so armed with that and Jamie's recipe I proceeded.

Poached Pears:




1 Bottle of red wine
4 pears (though I could have fitted 6 or even 8 at a push)
Around a cup of caster sugar
Rind of half a lemon in thick strips
Juice of the lemon
A couple of Star Anise
A couple of Cinnamon sticks
A xouple of good slugs of vanilla
Knob of butter
Creme Fraiche

Peel the pears (slightly better than I did)
Add all the remaining ingredients to a saucepan big enough for the pears. Bring to the boil. Add the pears and cook for about 20 minutes until the pears are tender, turning the pears a couple of times if they aren't covered in the liquid. (My pears were pretty soft do didn't need a great deal of cooking). Leave to cool slightly in the warm liquid.

Divide the creme fraiche amongst the bowls. Place the pears on top. Meanwhile, reduce some of the poaching liquid, adding a bit more sugar to help sweeten and thicken it. Once reduced, add a knob of butter to make it silky and glossy. Pour over the pears and put any remaining syrup in a jug to add as you eat.




The (almost) best part of poaching the pears, however was not the delicious deep red pears, it was the remaining, unreduced poaching liquid, which I reheated, added a little more sugar to, and poured into a tall glass with a couple of shots of cointreau. Delicious, citrusy, peary, spicy mulled wine.



HH

Zucchinni and Mint Fritters

In a break with tradition, my title is not a quote from Jane Austen, as I really don't have a lot to say that relates to Jane Austen, but am mainly posting because of the delicious lunch/dinner that I made myself today!

I am still in the throws of marking, though the end is nigh, sort of. Mr A is off to Paris for the Bank Holiday weekend, so I am very jealous and wish, more than ever, that I could be there too! Perhaps next year.

Back to food. I came home from work hungry as I normally do on a Saturday as I work 8-2.30 without lunch. I wanted something substantial but light at the same time, as well as being quick and easy, also making use of the zucchini's I had the the fridge. I picked up some goats cheese feta and some labneh on my way home, and decided that Zucchini and mint fritters were the order of the day. The recipe is based on one that a friend, P from mdw, posted ages ago and it has since been languishing in my "recipes I must try" folder. Today was its day.

4 small zucchini's (about 400g, grated
150 g feta, crumbled (or goats cheese, as I said I used goats cheese feta, so the best of both worlds)
Small handful grated Parmesan
Small handful of mint, finely chopped
Half an onion, grated finely
2 eggs
about 90 g plain flour
A generous amount of cracked black pepper

Combine grated zucchini with the cheeses, mint and black pepper.
Beat the eggs and add to the mix along with the flour. Mix well.

Heat oil in pan. Add heaped dessert spoon dollops of the mixture into the pan, flatten and cook about 2 minutes each side until golden.

Serve with labneh and more pepper, or they are great on their own. Freshly squeezed lemon would not go astray.
Makes 12-15 fritters.




HH

Lemon Meringue Cake - Recipie

As promised the Lemon Meringue Cake from Nigella's Feast.

125g very soft unsalted butter
4 eggs, separated
300g plus 1 teaspoon caster sugar
100g plain flour
25g cornflour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
zest of 1 lemon
4 teaspoons lemon Juice
2 teaspoons milk
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
150 ml double or whipping cream
150g good quality lemon curd.

Preheat the oven to 200'c or 180 fan forced. Line & butter two 21 cm sandwich tins.
Mix the egg yolks, 100g of the sugar, the butter, flour, cornflour, baking powder, bicarb, and lemon zest in a processor. Add the lemon juice and milk and process again.
Divide the mixture between the prepared tins. You will think you don't even have enough to cover the bottom of the tins, but don't panic. Spread calmly with a rubber spatula until smooth.
Whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until peaks form and then slowly whisk in 200g of sugar. Divide the whisked whites between the two sponge-filled tins. Spread one flat with a spatula and make peaks in the other. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar over the peaks. Put tins in the over for 20-25 minutes.
With a cake tester, pierce the cake that has the flat meringue, no sponge should be on the tester. (Meringue will fall back once you take it from the oven). Remove both tins and leave cake to cool completely in them on a wire rack.
Unmould the flat-topped one onto a cake stand or plate, meringue side down. Whip cream until thick. Spread sponge side with lemon curd then cream. Top with second cake,the peaked meringue uppermost.

HH