Mushroom, Bacon (or Celery) and Marscapone soup

Australia has decided to send a storm across to us and as Spring has gone into hiding, I have gone back to Autumn for inspiration today. Something warm, heavy and comforting is called for and mushrooms and bacon fit the bill here for me, along with some marscapone to add a thick, creamy comfortness. Oh, and a touch of thyme as well, just to remind us that Spring will soon be back again. I used free range smoked bacon but if you are vegetarian I would swap it for a stick or two of celery which will taste different of course but give the same effect.

- Peel and chop an onion and set to cook slowly in some olive oil along with a couple of rashers of bacon chopped up.
- Leave to cook slowly until the onion is soft and turning golden.
- Add in a small palmfull of thyme leaves and a couple of handfulls of mushrooms roughly chopped.
- Pour over a pint and a quarter of vegetable stock and leave to simmer until the mushrooms are cooked, ten to fifteen minutes I should think.
- Blend the soup smooth and return to the saucepan.
- Spoon in a tablespoon or so of marscapone cheese, some salt and ground black pepper if it needs it and reheat gently.

Coursely ground black pepper is pretty well compulsory when I am cooking and the lemonyness is a lovely foil to the mushrooms, and occasionally I’ll squeeze in some lemon juice as well if I feel like it to add in a bit of freshness.

Mushroom and Garlic soup

Upping the amount of garlic in the base and a pinch of nutmeg makes for a comforting and very tasty soup that might just drive away the flu that is just lingering on inside my head. The garlic is cooked slowly to bring out it’s sweetness and flavour. You could roast the garlic as well if you have the oven on anyway for something else. If this doesn’t work I’ll just have to blast it away with some chilli and ginger!

- gently fry and onion, a celery stick and three cloves of garlic ( peeled and/or roughly chopped as appropriate) in some olive oil and a big slice of butter.
- leave them to cook for ages until they caramelise to a golden brown. This will take a good fifteen minutes.
- Meanwhile roughly chop up a couple of good handfuls of mushrooms.
- Add the mushrooms to the onions and stir around. Cook until the liquid that comes from the mushrooms has nearly all evaporated or until you get bored waiting.
- Pop in a pinch of ground Nutmeg and a dessertspoonful of plain flour.
- Stir and cook the flour for a couple of minutes.
- Pour in a pint and a quarter of vegetable stock and a small bunch of parsley, chopped.
- Simmer until the mushrooms are cooked then blend the soup smooth.
- Reheat adding salt and black pepper as required.

Serve with a good dollop of soured cream, sit back, enjoy the mushrooms backed up by a gentle garlicky background and think healing thoughts. At least that's what I did. . .

Simplicity

Sunday 10.03am

Sometimes all you need is one ingredient, cooked and served simply to allow all the nuances of the flavour to come through. Especially if you have spent the day over indulging on alcohol and snack food at a Christmas outing.

For me mushrooms does the trick. Any sort will do, sliced and fried in a little oil and butter until they just turn golden at the edges without being too soft. Served along with some lightly buttered toast the whole thing takes a few minutes to prepare and has an almost zen-like calmness and simplicity about it. Perfect.

Scones

Saturday 11.05am

Muffins seem to have been the thing for the last few years, but having been brought up in Scotland what I like to make are scones. They are just as easy to make, can be sweet or savoury and if you started right now you could be eating warm scones in less than half an hour.

How? Well put 8oz of self raising flour in a mixing bowl along with a pinch of salt and 2oz of butter or margarine. Dip your fingertips in and rub your fingers and thumbs together, kind of smearing the butter between them mixing in the flour. Keep going until the mixture looks roughly like breadcrumbs. Now add any flavourings you fancy - a handfull of grated cheese, some nuts or chives perhaps or any type of fruit, chocolate even if that is your desire. My favourite at the moment is cheese and cumin seeds (about a teaspoonfull), the smell whilst cooking is just glorious.

Next pour in some milk and mix it all together until you get a sticky (but not runny) batter. I always use a knife for this. The amount of milk will vary with the flour, the wetness of your ingredients and the humidity at the time, so just play it by eye, adding more milk or flour as necessary. It is all pretty forgiving really.

Tip the batter onto a floured board and roll it out to half an inch or so in thickness. Now make some shapes - either one big round one scored into triangles or use a pastry cutter. Pop them into a hottish oven, 180 to 200 centigrade, and cook until pale brown on top - 10 minutes or less usually. They will not rise to the dizzy heights of a cafe scone or muffin ( but do I care? ) and will be a coarse-ish texture with a sort of dryness to them.

Bring the scones out of the oven, butter and eat them immediately. Then make some more.

Next day if there are any left - toast and butter them.

Oh and of course they go perfectly with any kind of homely soup - potato, mushroom, that sort of thing.

And talking of perfect - to my mind there is nothing more perfect than a cheese scone still warm from the oven, with butter, sliced tomato and a little salt.

Mushroom and Coconut Soup

Tuesday 7.28pm

Back online again, and back with one of my favourite ingredients - mushrooms. As I have mentioned before Nicola does not eat the stalks of mushrooms, so I am occasionaly left with small boxes of them in the fridge. Using up left overs is a big driving force behind my cookery style, a leftover from my upbringing I think (think of the starving Africans!). So faced with mushroom stalks, what do I do, well make mushroom soup of course. And as my favourite addition at the moment is coconut milk, some of that will go in as well.

- Start with a small onion and a clove of garlic gently cooked in a little olive oil until transparent
- Add in the mushroom stalks, roughly chopped (I had about three handfulls), and leave to cook until all the liquid has evaporated.
- Stir in a dessertspoonfull of flour (plain or wholemeal) and allow to cook for a couple of minutes, stirring so it does not burn
- Add in a pint of vegetable stock and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked, say fifteen or twenty minutes
- Liquidise until smooth, return to the washed out saucepan and add about a third of a tin of coconut milk (100ml), to taste really
- Reheat and check for salt and pepper, I added a little black pepper.

I served mine with some thin strips of ginger root that I quickly fried until golden in a little oil. Carefull though because they can quickly burn.

To be honest the soup was ok, marscapone cheese would have been nicer I think than the coconut. The ginger was certainly a good idea, contrasting nicely with the creamyness of the soup.

Mushroom and Walnut soup

Sunday 8.30am

This is a soup that I have been thinking of for a long time but for some reason have never got round to making. Shame really because it is quite delicious. Walnuts can be quite strongly flavoured but when cooked on top of bread are much milder, so I have roasted them this way first for my soup. - Put the oven on to heat, say 190 centigrade.If you are making bread as well you'll need it on anyway.

- roughly chop a small onion and a celery stalk and put them on to cook slowly in some oil and butter, enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
- make up some vegetable stock - a pint and a quarter.
- put a handfull of walnuts on a baking tray, pour on some olive oil and roll them around a bit until coated. Put them in the oven to toast.
- while everything is cooking, chop up a good couple of handfuls of mushrooms say eight ounces.
- keep an eye on the walnuts because they burn very quickly, take them out as soon as they start to change colour and go golden brown.
- once the onions and celery are translucent and golden coloured as well, add the mushrooms and stir about a bit to mix and let them cook gently until all the liquid that come out has just about disappeared.
- meanwhile put the walnuts in a ziplock bag and whack them with a rolling pin until well crushed and then put them in a bowl covered with some vegetable stock ( half strength rapunzel as usual )
- the rest of the stock goes into the pan and left to simmer gently until the mushrooms are cooked, not long say ten minutes.
- now for the messy bit. Put the walnuts and stock into a liquidiser and whizz them up a bit. Gradually add the rest of the soup from the pan and continue until it is all as smooth as you like.
- and thats it, just return the soup to the now washed out saucepan to reheat.

Mine did not need any salt or pepper but you'll try yours to check. At first the soup tasted quite mushroomy so I roasted another handfull of walnuts and whizzed the whole lot in the liquidiser again. Now it tasted quite walnuty so I suppose you could vary things using anywhere from 2 to 4 ounces of walnuts depending on what you fancy.

I had mine with some bread to which I had added a teaspoonfull of garam masala. It had quite a weird flavour, a bit like hot cross buns but went well with the soup. Some of Nicola's sundried tomato bread would have been great as well.