Linda's Roasted Veggie Soup

My friend Linda (The Souper) has sent me her own special soup recipe for a roasted vegetable soup. So I made some today and I must say she has managed what I have never been able to do, make a mixed vegetable soup and get all the different flavours to balance. Basically you roast all your veg. then blend them with stock and add some spices as you reheat it. I particularly liked the fun and artistic way she pops all the spices on top of the soup like an artists palette as it is reheated. The full recipe is here and she has even included some photos as well, putting my chuck it in/ taste it and see style to shame.

Linda says she would love some feedback about her creation, so if you try it let me know by leaving a comment or by email and I'll pass it on to her.

Leek, Bacon, and Feta Pie

Sometimes when your wife has been ill for over a week with a stomach bug and is now bunged up with flu and rather grumpy, it's best to do what she says. And so when she said leek pie instead of the suggested pumpkin and bacon thats what I made. Luckily leek and bacon is my favourite pie . . . .

First make some pastry. I use two cups of plain flour to 4 ounces of butter, salt and a couple of tablespoonfuls of cold water.
- Put the flour in a bowl with a pinch or two of salt.
- Slice up the butter, add it in and rub it between your fingers with the flour until the mixture has the texture of breadcrumbs.
- Add a tablespoonful or of cold water and mix again (I use a table knife for this) until the mixture sticks together when gathered up with your fingers. Depending on the weather and your flour you may need more or less water, I usually use two tablespoons on average. Less is better than more.
- Wrap the pastry in gladwrap (clingfilm) and pop it into the fridge while you make the filling.

- Put the oven on to hottish, say 200 degrees.
- In a pan or covered frying pan fry some bacon, say six rashers chopped up into half inch slices, until browned.
- Add in two leeks halved and sliced into quarter inch slices along with two or three sage leaves sliced thinly, and a quarter inch slice of butter. Turn the heat down and cook until the leeks are soft and translucent.
- When the leeks are almost down take the pastry out and roll it out to about an eighth of an inch.
- Lay the pastry into a buttered pie dish, cut off the excess and roll it out again for the lid.
- Stir a dessertspoonful of plain flour into the leeks and leave to cook for a few minutes longer.
- Put the leeks into the pie base, tuck in some chunks of creamy feta and lay the lid over squashing the edges together to seal, and cut a little slot in the middle to let the steam out.
- Put the pie into the oven until the pastry is nicely brown, twenty minutes maybe. The filling is already cooked of course so no need to worry about it, it just needs to warm through.

We had ours still warm with some salad and a mustardy french dressing. It is also great cold - so guess what I'll be having for lunch tomorrow!

A big pan of Pumpkin soup

It is late in the evening. You have just returned from a few days away, been picked up at the airport and have not had time for anything to eat on the way. So what is it you want? Well something easy and quick of course, but if you are anything like me, after a few restaurant meals what you really crave is some comforting home cooking. Such a thing happened to Nicola recently on her return from Christchurch after delivering our eldest to university. In our house there is nothing more comforting and homely than pumpkin soup. So to the freezer we went, but disaster! - there was none. An alternative was found, digestive biscuits and philadelphia cheese if I remember rightly but now a couple of weeks later our first pumpkin is ready in the garden so time to restock the freezer. I say "pumpkin" but actually it is an Australian Blue Squash which happens to be similar. Having been brought up in Scotland where we only ever saw pumpkins proper for a few days at halloween, the only other squash ever seen were butternut squash at ASDA which are orange as well. So I tend to call all squashes pumpkins. To be honest I don't think it matters - I'll make soup with whatever comes my way and just adjust the other ingredients to suit, this is home cooking after all.

Home cooking, not restaurant cooking, the two styles are different but equally valid and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.This is important because once we leave home we learn cookery from chefs, and great though they are, they are professionals and work in professional kitchens. Every restaurant has a different style, yes but within that restaurant you know what you are going to get. The chefs have all the ingredients in front of them, their ovens are on all the time, the dishes are portion controlled and timed and hence reproducible so that you enjoy what eat without waiting forever and at the end of it all the owners make a profit and the restaurant is still there next time you go out. You only have to watch Hell's Kitchen or the contestants on Masterchef crumbling when placed in a professional kitchen to see what it is really like. My teenagers may disagree but my home is not a restaurant. It is a place of creativity where I cook with what I have in front of me, what the weather is like and by how I feel that day. It is a place of experimentation and of learning, sometimes by choice and sometimes forced upon me, as in when I add too much black pepper or the chillies turn out to be hotter than expected. Suddenly I have a choice, eat it anyway and sweat it out or fix it somehow (drink more beer perhaps or add something cooling like coconut milk or cucumber). This is where new recipes come from of course, running with an idea that just pops into your head, or having to fix a mistake now because what you have cooked is all you have and time is running out.

Because of this, I find I rarely cook the same soup twice. I have my favourites of course but even these will change slightly depending on how I feel at the time. The pumpkin soup I made today came from this recipe but I added ginger and thyme to it as it cooked. The result is a flavoursome but plain soup which is perfect for freezing in quantity because you can add other things to each portion when you defrost it, roast tomato sauce perhaps or today it was coconut milk and lemongrass.

Home cooking - something to be celebrated.