Soup of the Week: Carrot and Coriander

This weeks Soup of the Week is a repeat of an earlier post. In fact, the original post is exactly a year old. It’s amazing how much my life has changed in that last year, the first sentence of the original post just proves this. Back then, I was in my kitchen back in Geneva, just about coping with the freezing Swiss winter, completely unaware that I was about to receive a marriage proposal followed by the opportunity to move to yet another foreign land and now, here I am in sunny Singapore where it’s a muggy 29 degrees this evening! Anyway, back to the soup, it’s such a great recipe (in my humble opinion!) I have to share it with you all again. So if you haven’t tried it yourself yet, here’s another chance! As far as frequent cooking goes, this one is high up there. In fact, I’m sipping a mug of it right now whilst I’m typing this!

I hope you don’t think I’m being lazy! This one has been a busy week for me. Chinese New Year this Friday means a bank holiday weekend here in Singapore and we have taken the opportunity to skip away to Bali for a couple of nights, our Christmas present to each other. With so much to do before we leave for our short flight tomorrow, this is likely to be the only post from me until next week when I’ll be letting you know how it went with my attempt at traditional Pineapple Tarts. From what it sounds like, these are South East Asia’s version of the much loved Mince Pie and a tasty sweet treat for Chinese New Year!

I almost forgot, here’s the link back to my original post. See you in the (Chinese) New Year everyone!

Soup of the week! Tomato and Lemongrass

This week’s Soup of The Week is slightly inspired by the local food here in Singapore with a pinch of inspiration from a food memory back when I was in my early teens. My older brother is a fantastic cook, it all started when he worked part time in the kitchens at a beautiful hotel restaurant smack bang in the idyllic Wye Valley at Symonds Yat. I never used to like tomato soup as a youngster but the chef at The Royal Hotel had a recipe for Tomato and Lemongrass Soup that was highly regarded by the rest of my family. My memory is of walking into the kitchen to find my brother and dad using as many containers as they could find to store the soup. The chef had given my brother the restaurant kitchen recipe for the rather than a downsized home cooking version so we ended up with enough soup to serve around 20 covers! Since my love for tomato soup has been born and as I am experimenting with a lot of south east asian ingredients I’ve never used before, I have come up with my own version of this soup. It’s a very light soup that works well served as a starter before a heavy meal, possessing superb flavours with a little kick of chilli cutting through.

For four servings you will need:

• 25g Butter
• 1 Onion, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• a pinch of chilli flakes
• 2 Tins Chopped Tomatoes
• 3 stalks of lemongrass, remove outer skins and stalks before finely slicing
• 1 litre of hot chicken or vegetable stock
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Melt the butter over a gentle heat and slowly cook the onion until translucent. Add the garlic and chilli cooking for a further 2 minutes. Next, add the tinned tomatoes, lemon grass and stock and simmer for about 15 minutes to allow all the flavours to infuse. Transfer to a blender until smooth and serve. 

Sausage Rolls

I know I mention quite often about being an expat and missing certain foods at home. Despite this, my passion for food is more about just the cooking and the eating, it’s amazing how a specific smell or taste can take you back to a certain point in your life. For some reason, when I think of/smell/eat sausage rolls, it always reminds me of being at a bakery in Coleford, the small town which I grew up just outside of,  my Mum was treating my dad to some of their freshly made sausage rolls. It’s not a huge event but I remember our conversation and joining the long queue to get our goods.

I don’t make sausage rolls that much as they don’t really fit in too well with all the healthy food I’ve been trying to stick too but for a weekend lunch, soup and a sausage roll is so very comforting it’s one of my fiancé’s favourite things to have over a lazy weekend, although he did admit to me yesterday that he thinks it’s a weird combination. Please can you guys let me know whether it’s just me or is soup and a sausage roll a strange mix?!

I only made these for the first time early last summer, we had friends over for our leaving party in Geneva and I made a batch for the guys whilst they were watching the football. Gone, in, seconds, it was like they all performed a disappearing trick with them! They are so easy to make and pretty quick to cook. You can eat them cold or straight from the oven (my favourite!). All you need is some sausages and a pack of frozen puff pastry. I always throw in some additional flavours too. Here’s the recipe for the ones I made that last weekend in Geneva.

Yield: Two large sausage rolls

You will need:

• Sausages – the type of sausage is entirely up to you but I would recommend using a standard pork sausage. No need to mess around with something that’s already great! I used 4 standard sized sausages. Skins removed.
• 1.5 Tbsp Colmans Bramley Apple Sauce
• 1 spring onion, finely sliced
• Two sheets of frozen puff pastry, approx 20cm x 20cm
• One beaten egg for washing the pastry

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

Get the pastry out of the freezer to defrost, you may want to do this the day before but here in Singapore, I buy ready rolled sheets of pastry and once I’ve taken it out of the freezer it’s ready to go in about 5 minutes! Mash together all your other ingredients except the egg. Lay your pastry on a baking sheet and place half your sausage meat mix in a line down the centre of the pastry. Brush the edges with the beaten egg. Fold over both the bottom and the top edges of the pastry and lightly press down to stick them to the egg wash, this is to encase the ends and ensure no precious filling spills out! Brush your new top and bottom edges with egg before folding each side over to cover the sausage meat. Carefully flip over and place on a baking sheet so that the pastry edges are on the underside and cannot be seen before making some gentle slits along the top with a sharp knife. Cover the top in one final layer of egg wash. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry and the remaining sausage meat. Pop in the oven for about 20 minutes until cooked through and the pastry is golden. You can transfer to a cooling rack for later but they are so much better eaten right away. Simply slice each roll into 5 or 6 pieces for party finger food.

Soup of the week! Harissa Spiked Pumpkin

I always have some homemade soup in the fridge or freezer. It’s often what I’ll have for lunch and I love trying out new combinations. Which is why I have decided to introduce soup of the week!

It was a couple of months ago that I started making this one and it’s become a regular. It’s great if you’ve got the sniffles as the spice from the harrissa paste helps clear out those sinuses. It’s really easy to pull together and good for you to boot! The Pumpkin I use for this soup is ‘local’ Malaysian Pumpkin. I’m not sure if it has a season here as it always seems available and so cheap. You really need a sharp knife to cut through that pumpkin skin but it’s worth the hard work for that smooth sweet taste!

You will need:

• One onion, roughly chopped
• 25g butter
• 900g pumpkin, skin removed and cut into chunks
• 1 tsp of harissa paste, you can add more or less depending on how spicy you want to go. I used green harissa.
• 1 litre of hot vegetable or chicken stock
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Once you have all of your ingredients prepared, heat the butter in a large saucepan on a low heat and slowly cook the onions until translucent. Next, add the harissa paste and sizzle for one minute. Add the pumpkin and stir to coat with the harissa before pouring over the hot stock and simmering with the lid on for 5 – 8 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft. Whizz through a food processor until smooth and serve with your favourite bread.

Happy New Year!

When do you actually stop saying Happy New Year? I’ve always wondered where the line is between being rude not saying it or just plain weird to still be greeting people with such an excitable yelp. Is there an unwritten rule I haven’t heard of where Jan 31st is the stop date? To confuse it all even more, this will be my first year living in a country where Chinese New Year is celebrated, I’m then going to go through it all again, so is it the 28th Feb? Who knows!  I just thought I’d go for it and wish you all well for the new year anyway. I’ve been away for a while, first on holiday, then busy getting my tax return completed for her majesty and finally heading back to blighty for some much needed family time over the Xmas period. But I’m back, settled in after having done god knows how many wash loads (would you believe it takes almost 3 days to dry a pair of jeans in this humidity?!) and back in the kitchen. Before I post my first recipe of the year, I wanted to share with you some of my epicurean adventures back in the UK. I never understand why Britain has got a bad rep for food. I was asked by an Australian expat here in Singapore why you can’t buy fresh vegetables in the UK, she’d seen a Jamie Oliver programme which showed a child who didn’t recognise a potato and assumed, as many other viewers probably did, that they are not available in the supermarkets on our small island. Come on Jamie you’re not helping here! You rarely see british themed restaurants yet French, Italian, German, Beligian, American Diners and Indian restaurants are seen everywhere. I was tempted by so many culinary delights when at home, from fish and chips to roast dinners. I was utterly delighted when I met a friend for a pub lunch and found Gloucestershire Old Spot Sausages on the Menu. Gloucestershire old spot is an English breed of pig, just don’t look at a picture of their cute piglets before you tuck in! Being from Gloucestershire I used to have these yummy sausages when I was growing up so I had to order the sausage sandwich and it did not fail to impress! Next stop was Borough Market, the next friend I was meeting is a big fan of Bratwurst sausages and I was keen to prove to him that you can buy these in the UK! We stopped off at German Deli on Park Street (yes, it is quite simply called German Deli)  before wandering the stalls. I did stop off for some Swiss cheeses on the way but had to pick up some Melton Mowbray Pork Pies and a Cornish Pasty for my fiancé who was staying in Singapore for an extra few days due to work commitments. I couldn’t leave Borough without getting a coffee from Monmouth to walk along the Southbank with, not to be confused with the small town in South Wales, The Monmouth Coffee Company actually opened shop in Covent Garden back in 1978. They make a killer flat white worth joining the long queue for. The staff make their way down the queue taking orders so expect you coffee to be ready by the time you get to pay.

The delights of Borough Market

Unbeknown to us, a few days later we ended up in a pub owned by Chris Evans, TV Presenter and Radio DJ. The Mulberry Inn, just outside of Woking was a real treat – I ordered a superfood salad that was delicious and dove straight in so no pics here I’m afraid. The next day, we were meeting our friends from Geneva and lucky us, my friend had managed to secure us a table at The Hinds Head, Heston Blumenthal’s pub in Bray. I was very excited to try Heston’s Scotch Egg, followed by a delicious roast beef dinner and for pudding, lack of photo here as it looked so yummy I completely lost myself, a treacle sponge with lemon butterscotch sauce and cream. YUM!

The Hinds Head in Bray

The next day we were to visit Smithfield with my Dad, Smithfield Meat Market is in London proper and the biggest wholesale meat market in the UK. It’s an early start as the market is closing by around 9 so to get the best of what is on offer, we jumped in the car at 4am! Christmas day was spent with the in laws to be, a traditional Christmas Dinner being the key part of the day, we then headed to my parents early boxing day morning. I was really looking forward to the rib of beef Dad had bought at Smithfield! He was using one of Heston’s recipes for a 5 hour slow cook and it was definitely worth the wait!!

The couple of days we had left before out flight home, we wanted to spend as much time as possible in the great outdoors. We ventured on some lovely walks near to where my parents live before heading to Heathrow for the long journey back to Singapore.

A walk around Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Carta and memorials to commemorate WW2 Commonwealth airmen and women and the JFK Memorial