Spiced Soup

We were lucky enough to get free tickets to a day of racing at Ascot yesterday (did you know the Queen owns Ascot?!). Though it is a gorgeous lush green track with a very stylish modern grandstand there is little to be said about the food available there. Obviously I'm not talking about the exclusive restaurants, but the kiosks for the hoi poloi.

The sandwiches looked OK, some pre-packed and some freshly filled (though the odd radioactive colour of the Coronation Chicken filling made my stomach turn a tad), but were pretty expensive, at £3.50 - £4, for what you got. We ended up sharing a doorstep of a gammon sandwich, the meat freshly cut from a lump of hot gammon and slathered with piquant piccalilly. It was good, but at £6.50 it ought to have been!

After a pretty abysmal day (we didn't have one winner, or even a placed horse between us - bloody lucky we didn't have to pay for the tickets, is all I can say) we returned home feeling chilly and knackered. First things first - cup of tea, but then we needed something savoury. I really didn't want to eat more bread, so had a look in the larder and seeing what I had I decided to put together a nice warming spiced soup. We ate it watching Top Gear and felt all the better for it.

Spiced Soup
1tbsp oil
1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1tbsp tikka curry paste
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1.5cm chunks
1/3 block creamed coconut
750ml hot stock
2 small potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
1tsp mustard seeds
1tbsp green cardamoms
pinch chilli flakes

Topping
Small handful coriander leaves
1/2 red chilli, finely chopped
1 or 2 spring onions, cut in half lengthways and sliced

Heat the oil in a heavy based pan, add the onion and garlic and cook over a low heat for a few minutes until softened slightly. Stir in the curry paste and sizzle for a minute before adding the squash. Cook for another couple of minutes then add the cremed coconut and pour in the stock. Stir to dissolve the coconut as much as you can then add the potatoes, mustard, cardamom and chilli. Bring to the boil then simmer for 20 minutes until the potatoes have broken down into the soup to thicken it. Season to taste and serve in warm bowls with a scattering of the fresh topping.

I'd post a picture, but we ate all the gorgeous warming soup before I could even think of taking one!

Gooseberry and Elderflower

I feel terrible because I've not blogged for so long. I've just been so busy though! Not only have I moved in with the lovely Southern Chap, but I've been on a trip to France to look at some Florette lettuces in their fields and been slogging my guts out testing loads of recipes for a huge new cook book.

The move was so hard, but we're settled in now and have even had a succession of people over for dinner. Which has been a great way to get to know my new oven (which I'm rapidly warming to after an initial worry when I found out that it was only a fan oven). First A friend of SC's came and I fed him a pot roast chicken with tarragon gravy, then my pal Ruth came and I made a huge veggie pizza and finally this weekend we entertained 3 boys! A BBQ was planned, but we had 2 problems with this, 1) the weather is crap and 2) we actually don't have a BBQ yet..... so I had to change my menu. I was flicking though the Ottolenghi cook book and came across their gorgeous recipe for roast belly pork with a gooseberry and elderflower sauce. I had a punnet of gooseberries in the fridge, and had just bough a bottle of elderflower cordial, so decided this would be what I'd try out.

Now, I realise that the last recipe I wrote about cooking was also for pork belly, so I'd like to say that I do actually eat other things, but obviously I'm having a fatty phase.

Anyway it was all pretty easy to prepare: the gooseberries cooked down slowly in a pan with elderflower cordial, sugar and a little muslim bag of sliced fresh ginger and mustard seeds. Eventually becoming a sharp, sweet mixture that was actually reminiscent of apple sauce!

Meanwhile I heated the oven up to 250C (230C in my new super hot fan oven), smeared the underside of my huge bit of pork (2.5kg)with a blitzed mixture of rosemary, thyme, garlic and oil, then turned it over and lightly salted the skin that my butcher had beautifully scored. My piece of meat then needed only 40 minutes for the skin to crisp nicely, before turning the oven down, adding a bottle of wine to the bottom of the pan and cooking for another 2 hours. All the while we sat outside and salivated at the gorgeous smells coming from the kitchen!

I must say that this is the best piece of roast pork I have ever eaten. Though the meat had a long cooking, the liquid in the bottom of the pan meant that the meat didn't dry out. It was not only moist, but had the very best crackling ever, which was crispy, salty and perfect! I served it with some simply boiled new potatoes, tossed in a little butter and lots of chopped mint, as well as some stir-fried runner beans, that I dressed with a little red wine vinegar (which sounds a bit odd but was really good, especially since the sharpness of the vinegar cut through the fattyness of the pork a little).

It was a great meal and to keep the perfectly seasonal tip going I offered my gooseberry and elderflower cupcakes as dessert!