So!

Today's Colourful Food Tip: slice half a fresh beet into pan juices when you're reducing them down to make a jus. Purple sauce = win!

Potatoes!

I'll skip the whole 'ooh, haven't posted in aages thing' to say: Sometimes potatoes are exciting!

Anyway. Circumstances have *really* come together to create awesome lunch today, so I decided to share. To start with: Dutch Cream Potatoes.

These are the best potatoes ever. (Argh, if I type 'potatoes' too many more times, it's gonna start lookin' really funny. Heh. Potatoes.) If you've never had 'em, I highly recommend you fix that ASAP. 'Cause potatoes are awesome, and Dutch Creams are the best.

Right. So. My realisation of the day: there's Greek-style yoghurt in our fridge, and heaps of chives & mint in the garden. These are actually easier circumstances to achieve than getting hold of Dutch Cream potatoes, so don't go gettin' intimidated - if you have room for a couple of pots, you have room to have both chives and mint. They both grow like nobody's business, and require very little by way of gardening skill or intervention. Just water 'em semi-regularly and they'll be fine.

Right, so. Clean and cook some potatoes (heh, potatoes. Apparently 'potatoes' looking funny taps into the same part of my brain as fart jokes. Go figure). You can peel 'em, or not - if you're using something like a Lady Christl, don't bother, but the skin on Dutch Creams can get a little flaky, so if you don't like that... well, make your own damn mind up. Anyway.

Stick some yoghurt in a bowl, and finely chop in some chives & mint - enough to make it pretty obvious that they're there. You can stir some honey through too, but I like the tangyness of the yoghurt with the fresh oniony-mintness of the greens, so whatever. Keep in the fridge til you need it; this keeps fine for several days. It's also pretty tasty as dip, or used instead of mayo for tuna sandwiches. The possibilities, they are endless!

Hard-boil some eggs (obviously, proportions for all of this depends on how much potato salad you wanna make).

Wait til everything's cool; peel & chop the eggs, and combine. If you're going all out, cook some bacon til it's nice'n crispy, and crumble that in too. Feel free to also add some snow peas, or corn kernels, or whatever. You can also season this with whatever you like; sometimes I want chili flakes, and sometimes ground pepper, or maybe freshly grated nutmeg, or parmesan, or sometimes no seasoning at all, or... you get the picture. Be creative, it makes for tastiness.

Food, glorious food

So. How d'you feel about cauliflower? It's very possible that if your answer is 'ew,' you're doing it wrong.

On the other hand, p'raps you love the stuff and want to convert someone. Either way, roasting is your friend - that goes for broccoli, to. In fact, there are plenty of veggies that benefit from this treatment, so experiment! It brings out a depth of flavour that can be pretty surprising.

Anyway. What you want to do here is roast your (dry!) veggies at a high temperature, so they caramelise (omnomnom). I'm a bit laissez-faire when it comes to washing veggies (shhhh), but if you do wash 'em, either leave them to air-dry for a good long while, or obliterate that surface moisture with extreme prejudice. You don't want anything going on here that'll make the veggies squishy.

Right.

Spray a roasting sheet with oil & put it in a hot oven (about 220 C) 'til the oil's nice & hot. You want it to sizzle when the veggies hit.

Carve your cauli/broccoli into florets - don't go too small. If you're using cauliflower, halve the bigguns. Toss with olive oil, salt & pepper - or any seasoning that takes your fancy- (get everything coated), then add some sliced garlic. Take out your hot baking sheet, chuck on the veggies (if you've got oil pooled from preparing them, don't add it) and return to the oven for 20 minutes or so. Don't panic when you start getting crispy brown bits - they're the best part.

This on its own makes a pretty awesome snack, but I'm also a fan of prepping soup veggies like this. It adds a nice depth to the broth, and when you hit a mouthful of veg, it's blissful. If you want to use it as a meal component, jazz it up a little more - drizzle a little more oil over the top, chuck in some toasted nuts (pine nuts or slivered almonds work really well), and some lemon juice. I'm considering going a bit crazy next time I do this and tossing a few currants in.

Composing a witty title is too taxing for my marshmallow brain.

My sympathy for those suffering from the flu is considerable, but the fact remains: being surrounded by sick people sucks. Today's tasty snack is brought to you in the spirit of cheering up the winter sickie (and making them less annoying) by feeding them tasty things. Feeding people tasty things fixes many problems.

So I present: Steamed Pumpkin (with whatever aromatics you damn well feel like).

Take a pumpkin. Doesn't matter how much. Peel & de-seed said pumpkin, and chop it into bits. Doesn't matter how big. Peel some garlic cloves (generally I use 1 head of garlic per pumpkin, but it depends on how garlic-y you want your end result, so experiment) and slice up some ginger - don't bother peeling. Steam the whole lot until the pumpkin is tender. Take the ginger bits out, but leave the garlic in.

Mash the steamed pumpkin-y goodness; depending on the consistency you're after, go ahead and add some or all of the steaming water (or not).

As a snack on its own, this is pretty tasty. It's also a good way of infusing pumpkin (or whatever) with flavour before you make soup out of it, and there are plenty of other options: it's pretty damn easy to turn into a bunch of other things (i.e. add to a hummus recipe for sweet-tangy chickpea awesome; hold off on the water, drain some salmon & add a beaten egg or two, & make patties... use your imagination).

Cake!

In keeping with my apparent 'winter food' theme, here's the tastiest, most cold-day-satisfying cake I have ever come across. It's in my recipe notebook as 'Lydia's Gingerbread Cake' - I have no idea where the original recipe came from, but I have the esteemed Dr. to thank for it. Tēnā koe, Lydia.

100g butter

1cup milk

2 1/2 cups self raising flour

3/4 cup golden syrup

1 cup sugar

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

3 tsp ground ginger

3 tsp mixed spice

pinch salt

Oven - 180°C (NOT fan-forced)

Place butter, milk, syrup & sugar in a large saucepan, bring almost to the boil. It's a good idea to stir more or less constantly, to avoid burning the sugar & syrup. Add the salt & baking soda, stir well. When the mixture is frothy, turn off the heat, sift in the flour & spices, & stir until combined. Bake for approx. 45 minutes.

The sugar in the crust will caramelise, giving you a shiny, crunchy crust over a surprisingly firm-but-soft inside. I've only ever baked this in my good cake tin; 45 minutes gives you a ginger-bread-y cake that's springy & has an almost honeycombed texture at the edge, but stays pretty gooey at the centre. In a normal cake tin, it's impossible to get the centre cooked through without burning the edge, and since I like the changing texture anyway, I don't mind.

If you do mind, try experimenting (honestly, it's fun!). Best bet for even texture is probably a ring cake tin, the kind that look like a giant doughnut; spreading the batter across a slice tin will probably give you something more gingerbread-y, and I'm not sure what baking it in a loaf tin would do. Probably the centre would still be a bit gooey, but less than with a traditional cake tin.

In terms of recipe experimentation - a small handful of currants make an awesome addition, and it could probably take walnuts, too. Last night I discovered we had no ginger, so I used cumin instead - awesome variation, and I'll bet ground coriander'd be pretty damn tasty too. I also tend to be kinda freehand with adding the spices, the batter never quite tastes like I want it to.

Warm, this goes really well with thick custard, cream, icecream, whatever. A yoghurt-based sauce would probably suit it well, too. It really doesn't need any help on the sweetness, though. It's also an excellent accompaniment to tea or coffee.

...also the cats really like it, but they don't get any. Nyer nyer...

Go forth & bake!

Winter - soup time!

This is, for my money, the best vegetable soup ever. Well, the best stuff-in-broth veggie soup ever. Anyway.

I mostly make this with chicken stock of the home-made variety, although for years I made it using Massel's chicken stock powder, 'cause my sister's a vegetarian. If I'm feeling extravagant, I'll also add actual chicken to it. So it's not out & out veggie soup, but eh.

I cook in fairly large batches, but this is easy to make, say, 4 servings of; just scale down the ingredients. It doesn't freeze all that well, though - the texture of the veggies tends to get a bit weird. Anyway, I'm very good at over-catering, so I can't swear how many servings the following instructions make, but it's a large pot of very tasty soup - at least 12 servings or so

Ingredients:

2-3L chicken stock, 2-3 carrots, 1 head of cauliflower, 1/4 of a head of cabbage, 1-2 bunches of bok choy, 1-2 stalks of celery, 4 tsp minced ginger, 6 cloves of garlic (peeled but whole), soy sauce & sweet chili sauce to taste, 2tsp turmeric, 2-3 small cakes of rice noodles, 4-5 chicken thigh fillets, cut into strips.

The vegetable combination is pretty flexible (I don't like celery, & often omit it; if you're using stock cubes/powder, it might be an idea to simmer an onion in the stock to flavour it up a bit) and the flavourings are hard to measure 'cause the soup works best flavoured to taste. The ideal combination balances the heat of the turmeric & chili with the sharpness of the ginger, with the soy sauce rounding out the flavour. You really do have to add, taste & modify with the flavourings in this, so under-estimate at first & keep adding more of each in turn until it seems right to you.

So. Take the stock, bring to a low boil. Chop the veggies into whatever shapes you prefer, but don't cut them too small - the carrots work well in 1cm-ish thick rounds, the cauliflower in medium florets. You're going to cook them slowly, so the pieces need to be big enough not to fall apart, but small enough to soften through.

Add the carrots, celery & chicken to the stock, cook for 5 minutes at a very gentle simmer.

Add the garlic cloves, ginger, turmeric & cauliflower, maintain the simmer until the cauli has nearly softened.

While the veggies are simmering, soak the rice noodles in hot water. Add the noodles, cabbage, sweet chili & soy sauce, simmer for a couple of minutes - the cauliflower & cabbage should be cooked, but not mushy.

The bok choy will cook very quickly, so only add it at the very end - if you're making enough of this for leftovers, it's best to add the bok choy to each serving so it doesn't over-cook as the soup cools.

The flavour of the soup will change as the various veggies cook, and you don't really get an accurate idea of its character until you've added the cabbage and noodles, so it doesn't hurt to be conservative with the spices & stuff, and add more at this point if you need it.

You should be able to taste the characteristics of each flavour, but they should also be balanced - it shouldn't taste like GINGER soup, but you should definitely be able to identify the ginger in the flavour. Adding a little of the noodle-water also improves the flavour, but don't add more than a couple of ladles of it - you don't want it to taste starchy.

More Soup!

I can't remember which cookbook this one came from, but it's awesome - 'specially for winter.

Potato & Leek Soup

Ingredients:

60 g butter, 1 large onion, 2 large leeks,

750 g potatoes (cut into 1.5 cm cubes),

1/3 cup oats, 2 cloves garlic,

2 cups chicken stock, 2 cups milk, ground pepper, nutmeg, chopped chives for garnish (if you want). It's best to use waxy potatoes (like kennebecs) for soups & stews.

Method:

Melt the butter in a large pan, cook onions and leek til they're transparent. Add the potatoes & cook til they're golden brown. This can take ages, especially if you don't have a really large pan, so if it's irritating, just soften the spuds up a bit. Stir through the oats & cook for another minute or so; add the garlic & cook for another minute. Once you've softened the potatoes, make sure the pan isn't so hot that the oats & garlic burn, since that tastes awful.

Reduce the heat a little more, stir in the stock & milk. Simmer for 30 minutes or until the veggies are well & truly tender. Once it's cooked, season to taste with pepper & plenty of nutmeg; garnish with chopped chives to serve.

This is a chunky soup, so no blending (yay)! If you feel like adding bacon or ham chunks, just stick 'em in when you add the oats. There is no better home-food-y flavour combination than leek, potato & pig. It also works fine with low-fat milk or soymilk, and you can soften the onion & leeks in oil rather than butter if you want.

I tend to mix up the amounts of this a fair bit - when you add the oats, you make a porridge-y base for the soup, and I tend to put in more than the recipe calls for, 'cause I like the flavour. Do yourself a favour & use proper rolled oats for this, not the chopped up minute microwave shit. I once forgot to put the potatoes in, and it worked out well, so if you've got some anti-potato philistines you need to feed, it's very adaptable. This always gets eaten pretty quickly here, so I've never frozen it - I'm not sure how the texture of the potato chunks would be, post-freezing.

May I present...

So, apricot chicken is one of my all time favourite home-foods. I'd say 'dinners', but since I'm bad at actually having dinner at dinnertime and frequently eat this for breakfast, we'll go with foods. Foods is good.

Anyway, it's not just my favourite 'cause it tastes awesome (and it does taste awesome), but 'cause it's cost-efficient in many ways. I'm cheap, and pretty much always buy meat on special (and in bulk-ish amounts), and on top of the actual money cost efficiency going on here, this doesn't take long to prepare, and is basically a one-pot meal. It's also an incredibly easy way to feed quite a few people - the amounts in this recipe easily feed 6, and the last time that happened we still had plenty of leftovers (mmm, breakfast chicken). Anyway, this is how I do it:

Take enough chicken for the number of people you're going to feed. I prefer thigh fillets for this, but it's up to you. If you're using thigh fillets, chop 'em in half. Season some plain flour with whatever you like (my seasoning tends to be salt, pepper, cayenne, sage, basil), and coat the chicken pieces. Grab some veggies (enough to balance out the meal - I tend to use carrots & parsnips, root veggies seem to work best) and chop into sticks. Slice an onion and some garlic. Layer it all in a casserole dish, and cover it with apricot nectar. Or you can go half & half chicken stock / nectar, but straight apricot is very tasty. Put the lid on the pot (or just cover with foil) and stick it in the oven. Cooking time will depend on the amount you're making, but it'll take at least 45 minutes. The flour you coated the chicken in will cook into the liquid, & it thickens up into a really tasty sauce; the chicken won't dry out, and the veggies add some variation. You could even stir some bok choy or other suitable greens through and let it stand for a couple of minutes before serving, just to up the veggie content a bit.

I serve it with rice, but if you've used lots of substantial vegetables, you might not need the accompaniment. Rice does help with the sauce, though.

If you only want to make enough for, say, one or two meals, you can stick it in a loaf tin, cover with foil and cook - this doesn't have to produce a massive amount of food. On the other hand, it's an awesomely easy way to produce a massive amount of food. If you've got a slow-cooker, you could set this to cook overnight or before you leave for work, or whatever.