Tomato and mascarpone soup

With my workplace's limited catering arrangements, investing in a food flask was one of the best decisions I've ever made. And one of my favourite things to put in it has been this tomato and mascarpone soup. It's simple, cheap, quick, and keeps me in work lunches for the best part of a week. As with most of my cooking, this is a recipe that can be adjusted to include the flavours you like.

Recipe (enough for around 4-ish lunchtime portions):

400g tin of good quality chopped (or whole) tomatoes in juice
1 tinful of water
1 tblsp tomato puree
Small handful of roughly chopped fresh tomatoes (optional)
1 medium leek, finely sliced
1 large clove of garlic, chopped
A bay leaf
0.5 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp mixed dried herbs (or a larger amount of freshly chopped, soft herbs like basil)
Around 125g mascarpone cheese
Few tblsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Gently heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a medium sized saucepan, and put in the leeks and bay leaf. Leave the leeks to soften for around 10 minutes or so. When they are cooked through, add the garlic, chilli, and herbs, stir for a few minutes and then put in the tomatoes. The fresh tomatoes really are optional, and I tend to chuck them in if I've got some that need to be used up. Fill the empty tin of tomatoes with water and pour this in too, along with the puree. Stir everything, add a bit of salt and pepper, and simmer for around 15 minutes or so. At this stage what you should have is basically a slightly thin tomato sauce. Turn the heat off and then add the mascarpone cheese. Stir this in, and leave the soup to cool for a bit. Once it's just warm, rather than piping hot, blend the soup with a stick blender (or equivalent) and check the seasoning again.

I then heat up portions of soup in the microwave and take it to work in my food flask for desk consumption. The mascarpone makes this surprisingly filling for a soup, and the whole thing is just very warming and tasty. This soup would also work well over the Christmas holidays, when you might want something you can make in bulk and re-heat as needed. And on that note, I'd like to say merry crimbo readers and see you in 2013!

Leek, mushroom, fake chicken and tarragon pie

I don't eat many pies, but suddenly had a hankering for one last weekend. I think it must be something to do with the clocks going back. I thought I'd stick to the classic combination of leek, mushroom and chicken, but as I don't eat meat, I used Quorn pieces instead. As the Quorn adds no flavour, I added a range of other things to make up for this. Though this could have made everything taste quite muddled, it was actually very good.

Recipe (enough for four hearty portions):

3 medium leeks, finely sliced
Around 8 chestnut mushrooms, quartered
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 heaped tblsp chopped tarragon leaves
300g Quorn pieces, or another vegetarian equivalent
Around 300ml double cream
1 tsp English mustard
1 tblsp pecorino cheese (or a vegetarian equivalent)
2-3 tblsp olive oil
1-2 tblsp butter
Salt and pepper to season
1 pack all butter, ready-rolled puff pastry (320g)
A little milk to glaze

To make the filling, melt around a tablespoon of butter and a little oil, and when it's warm put in the mushrooms. Cook over a high-ish heat until the mushrooms start to brown, and then add in the Quorn, garlic and tarragon. Turn the heat down a little, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the garlic is cooked through and the tarragon wilted. Once it's all done, tip it out onto a plate and allow to cool. Put the rest of the butter and oil in the same pan, and cook the leeks over a medium low heat. Add about 0.5tsp salt and leave the leeks until they are soft, giving them a stir every now and again. Once fully cooked through pour in the cream, grind in a bit of pepper, add the cheese and mustard and stir well. Take off the heat and allow the leeks to cool a bit, then mix the mushrooms and Quorn back in. If the filling is ridiculously thick, stir in a little milk to loosen it. Once the filling has completely cooled, you can assembly the pie.
Spoon the filling into a suitably deep, oven-proof dish and lay the pastry over the top. Trim the edges and make some fancy shapes with the extra pastry if you want to decorate the top. Make a small cross in the centre of the pastry to let any steam escape, and brush the top with milk. Bake at gas mark 6 until the pastry is a rich golden colour.

You should end up with a richly savoury, vegetarian pie, with a crisp topping. Serve piping hot with lots of vegetables.

Sticky ginger cake (or pudding)

I had a sudden hankering for dark ginger cake around Christmas time- a proper version with real stem ginger in it. I found this excellent BBC Good Food recipe, which contains both stem and ground ginger, golden syrup and black treacle, and produced a dark, rich, sticky cake (which I felt didn't need icing). I cooked this in my cupcake tray primarily because I couldn't find my regular cake tin. But in fact cooking individual cakes turned out to be an excellent move, as these cakes freeze incredibly well. I had about twenty in total, half of which were eaten just as cake and the rest were frozen for later.

A couple of months later, after defrosting overnight in the fridge, they were still moist and sticky, and this time they were eaten as pudding with warm vanilla custard (nb Sainsbury's Taste the Difference custard is very good). An excellent warming pudding for a winter's night.

Cauliflower soup with cheese on toast

So as I continue to spend my days wrapped in a scarf and unwilling to leave the house except for essential activities (shame going to work appears to fall into this category), the need for hearty fare for dinner persists. I would include this cauliflower soup with it's cheese on toast accompaniment in this category, as it was warming, rich and luxurious. And pretty quick to make too.

Recipe (enough for around four)

1 medium cauliflower (cut into small florets)
1 small white onion
1 medium clove garlic
1 medium potato (chopped into small cubes)
Around a pint of vegetable stock
sprig of thyme (optional)
good grating of nutmeg
small knob of butter
salt and pepper to season
single cream to finish (if you want it)

Slice the onion thinly and gently sweat it in the butter until it softens. Crush the garlic, add to the pan with the thyme (if using) and continue to cook for a few more minutes. Add in the cauliflower and potato, give everything a good stir and then pour in the vegetable stock (as with previous soups I always use Marigold bouillon powder). Simmer for around 20-30mins until the vegetables are completely soft and falling apart. Wait for it to cool a bit, fish out the thyme and then blend in the saucepan with a stick blender until it's smooth. Grate in some nutmeg, and however much salt and pepper you like. Re-heat gently and pour into bowls. Swirl in some cream if you want (it tastes quite rich even without this) and serve with cheese on toast while considering if you have actually made some sort of highly innovative, de-constructed cauliflower cheese.....

Fully loaded butternut squash skins

With the current weather conditions it's all about hibernation and hearty fare for me at the moment. These butternut squash 'skins' are a variation on the traditional potato version, but make nice a change from the trusty spud and are still incredibly simple.
Halve the squash lengthwise, scoop out any seeds from the centre, and score the centre a bit to help it cook faster (be careful not to slice all the way through to the skin though). Place on a baking sheet and cook for around 40mins in a medium hot oven (gas mark 6). Once the halves of squash are soft and full cooked through, carefully scoop out the flesh making sure to keep the skin in tact. You may want to leave the squash to cool for a bit before starting this. Once you have all the flesh in a bowl stir in a couple finely chopped spring onions, a tablespoon of butter, a good handful of cheddar cheese, and some finely chopped chives. You could also add some fried mushrooms or regular onions, or a different cheese like mozarella. Carefully place your chosen mix back into the squash skins and top with a bit more cheese. Return to the oven for around 20mins or until the cheese is melted and golden brown.
Shovel into face while wondering if it would be wrong for one person to eat an entire butternut squash. Or show more reserve and allocate a halve per person and serve with some steamed brocolli and a couple of spicy tuna fishcakes (a.k.a. fish chop).

Spiced pumpkin and potato soup

So this is what I did with the remaining third of my culinary pumpkin. It was getting towards the time of year when soup weather becomes more common so that seemed the obvious thing to make. This soup is lightly spiced with some Indian flavours and is thick and full-bodied from the vegetables. This isn't something that you need particularly accurately measurements for so everything can be scaled up or down depending on what ingredients you have and you can also increase the spicing if you want to.

Recipe (just about enough for four)

One third of a small pumpkin (peeled and chopped into small pieces)
2-3 medium potatoes (peeled and chopped into small pieces)
1/2 inch piece of ginger (peeled and crushed to a paste)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 fat cloves garlic (crushed)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground corriander
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground chilli
1 pint of vegetable stock (approximately)
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Few tbsp double cream to finish

Warm the oil in a large pan and add the ginger, garlic and spices. Gently fry them for a few minutes and then put in the pumpkin and potato pieces. Stir thoroughly until all the vegetables are coated in the spice mix, and leave them to sweat slowly for around 10minutes.
Add the stock (I use Marigold vegetable bouillon powder) and leave the soup simmering for around 30mins until the pumpkin in tender. Give it a stir every now and then, and if it looks like it's becoming too dry then add some more stock or hot water. When everything is cooked through leave the soup to cool for a while and then check the seasoning. Blend with a stick blender to whatever consistency you like- I prefer my soup with a bit of texture to it rather than super-smooth. I think both the cooking method and blending got over my issues with the texture of this pumpkin that were a bit incongruous in the lasagne in my previous post. But it actually worked really well in soup, with its delicate flavour being complimented by the spices and somehow feeling quite decadent but healthy.

Gently heat the soup up whenever you want to eat it and add a bit of double cream for some extra richness. Serve with crusty bread, while gazing out over a wintery landscape.

Culinary pumpkin
I rate it 8/10 for soup making purposes
Cost: Around £0.70 for a smallish one