Soup of the week: V Day Special! How to present your soup with cream hearts

As all my lovely facebook followers will know, I promised this ‘how to’ a couple of weeks ago.

It’s so cute and with V Day coming up, it’s a fun thing to pop on that soup you cook up for your significant other. It looks even cuter with the red background of my Tomato and Lemongrass Soup  and it’s super easy to do! All you need is some double cream, a cocktail stick, a teaspoon and of course some soup! I used Carrot and Coriander as that’s what I fancied the day I took these pics.

Just start off with the cream and your teaspoon, very gently make a dot of cream in the centre of the soup.

Continue in a spiral of dots working outwards until you reach the edge of the bowl.

Next, take your cocktail stick and place the tip into the soup just before the first dot.

Basically, what you need to do here is to drag the stick through the soup in a spiral shape cutting through the centre of each cream dot on the way and you’re done!

This works well with so many different foods, why not get all romantic and give it a go? If you bodge it up, just stir in the cream and start again! What? You didn’t see the original photo on facebook, it’s never too late to start following me!

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. 

Hello world!

Welcome to SipChompChew, thank you for visiting!

 

I am a twenty something foodie and expat currently living in Switzerland.

 

I have always had a passion for food but previously working a full time office position in London never gave me much time to rummage the internet for cooking inspiration let alone cook it once I had completed my commute back home to Kent. I’m now a supporting spouse, which gives me plenty of time to invest in my foodie passion.  My days mainly consist of working out, walking with my Pug, and researching, buying, preparing and cooking food.

 

I started SipChompChew as I want to share my cooking adventures with others. I am neither a blogger, writer, photographer nor a chef so I would love to hear any comments and suggestion from you, good or bad.

 

I hope you enjoy!