on the monkey trail

kitchen and garden diaries

Category Archives: Soup


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sweet potato, chili and red lentil soup

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Do rats eat spiders? I guess I could google it easily enough, but it might shatter the idea that has somehow formed that the unpleasant rodent sentries that prowl the land are at least doing something useful. Is starting a recipe blog post with talk of rats and spiders a good idea? I would imagine it definitely doesn’t make the top 10 tips for food bloggers.

Shall we talk about music instead for a moment? On Sunday I downloaded Yazoo ‘Only You’, Human League ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ and Wheatus’ Teenage Dirtbag’. I then listened to them on a loop while pottering in the kitchen making soup and apple brownies (which I will put up on the blog soon – definitely the best use of apples from the tree so far). The stresses of the week, which were numerous, and less worthy of blog-space than spiders, melted away.

Ingredients
One super hot fat chilli from the garden
4 -5 cloves of garlic
Butter
Cup red lentils
2 large sweet potatoes
Enough stock to cover everything
Turmeric
Sour cream

Method
Fry the garlic and chilli in butter, add everything else except the sour cream and simmer for 40 minutes or so. Blend with the sour cream. Hope the chilli was one of the super hot ones rather than the crazy, little red beasts. Ponder whether rats eat spiders, whilst singing along to Teenage Dirtbag.


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why I’m a lazy blogger and some good simple food we’ve eaten this week

I have a confession to make. I’m a lazy blogger and I don’t plan on changing. I don’t do any of the things you’re supposed to do.  I don’t comment on other blogs very often at all. I don’t proof test my recipes. Sometimes I don’t even write the recipes very clearly. My grammar is patchy.  I waffle on about random things. I don’t style the food. I don’t style anything actually. I’m not consistent. I don’t index my photos so they can be picked up by search engines. I don’t send witty and original tweets. I don’t link up very often. I am still baffled by widgets (possibly why I don’t link up much). The thing is, that all the ‘blog’ side of the writing feels like a bit too much like work. I really just like messing around with food, and messing around with words.

My mother had (and still has) numerous postcards on the wall of the downstairs loo. They made a big impression on all of us (my two brothers and I). I know this to be true, because we still reference them. One of them said ‘Life’s too short to iron your underpants’. I’ve always vaguely had that in my mind, but the last couple of weeks have really reinforced it. Another one said, ‘Women need men like a fish needs a bicycle’. That one I’m not sold on. I like a man around. In fact I like having five of them around (and I count myself beyond lucky that I have all my boys .. big and small, in my life).

Why am I writing this post? Because a few things have happened recently. Big things. Things that make you realise that every second is precious. That it’s OK to carve your own way. To please yourself. There is no formula. No right or wrong. It’s just putting one foot in front of the other the best way you know how.

Enough waffle for you? Ready for some actual food.

How about some creamy, spicy, roast pumpkin, chicken and corn soup with fresh parsley.

Pop a whole chicken in a pot covered in water and simmer slowly for a couple of hours with some salt and pepper, a little turmeric (why not) and perhaps a stalk of celery, a carrot, and some fresh herbs if you have them to hand.

Roast some small chunks of pumpkin. Take the chicken out and shred it. Strain the stock. Chop some onion and garlic and fry with chilli powder (to taste, I used about 1/4 teaspoon). Add some shredded chicken, the pumpkin and the chicken stock. Throw in some corn and cook for a few minutes. Stir in a couple of spoons of sour cream and chop over fresh parsley.  Perfect for an autumn day – It’s spring here of course, but I sometimes find myself eating for the English seasons rather than the NZ ones. I’m a little weird like that.

And now for a salad.

Buttery pan fried sweet potato chunks, raw raddish, pear, raw courgette, a few garden greens (baby spinach and parsley). Dressed with olive oil mixed with pomegranate molasses and a little apple cider vinegar.

The final offering of the day is this. Excellent with simple roast chicken.

A couple of cloves of chopped garlic, a little chili powder and turmeric, 2 fat shaved courgettes, a handful of bean sprouts, a cup of frozen peas, the juice of a lemon and some crumbled feta cheese.

Just before you go, here’s another little ‘thought for the day’. My six year old has a sweater that has ‘think of your own ideas’ printed across the front. I hope he grows up to realise you don’t need to run with the herd. Being your own person is the biggest favour you can do yourself.


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beef, barley and silverbeet broth

Beef broth. If nothing else it rolls off the tongue like nobody’s business. Beef, barley, silverbeet, Sometimes I wonder if I put stuff together as much for how it sounds on the page, as how it tastes.

Ingredients:

1 or 2 beef shin steaks

1 onion (chopped)

3 -4 cloves of garlic (chopped)

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp turmeric

1 cup barely

1 cup red lentils

A handful of silverbeet leaves (chopped)

Method

Make the beef stock by simmering the beef shin for as long as possible. (I cooked mine for 6 hours) Add a splash of apple cider vinegar to the water, salt pepper (I also added some celery leaves and had a bunch lurking around).

Strain the stock and pull the meat off.

Cook the onion and garlic with the spices until soft, add the beef and the stock, barely, red lentils and silverbeet. Make sure there is plenty of liquid and if in doubt add more water. Turn to a low simmer and   cook for half an hour or so (or leave simmering for a couple of hours until you want to eat it.. it’s all good).

To read more about my love of bones read this post I wrote earlier in the week for Munch.


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roast garlic, pumpkin and turnip soup

More pumpkin soup this weekend. This time with extra roasted garlic – a whole bulb of fresh local garlic roasted until sweet and then each clove popped out of it’s skin.

A whole pumpkin made enough for two weekend lunches. Saturday topped with roast beetroot  and goat feta and Sunday topped with crispy bacon.


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slow cooker lamb, pumpkin soup, crumble and sweet confessions…

It’s been a busy week, but there’s always time for cooking. We still need to eat midst the chaos of  the day.

Slow cooker lamb curry/broth ; bone in lamb steaks, cinnamon, star anise, cumin, coriander, chilli, grated fresh ginger, garlic, carrot, chick peas, carrot, pumpkin, chopped dried apricots, cider vinegar, water.

Pumpkin, sweet potato and red lentil soup

Apple, black currant and gooseberry crumble with gluten free almond, hazelnut and sunflower seed topping

Finally, here’s a copy of a post I wrote for the big swell yesterday.

the white stuff; sweet confessions from the parenting from line

If you’ve read my blog you’ll know I spend a fair bit of time thinking, making, photographing (dreaming) of food. I figure with all that going on it’s best to try and keep the worrying about food to a minimum (with 4 young kids I’m eager to keep the worrying to a minimum full stop). I do my best to give my kids a nutrient dense diet of real food and if some days my best doesn’t quite look like the stuff food-dreams are made of then I try not to sweat it. The small people appear to be thriving even if I’m not soaking their grains, or giving them too many second helpings of leafy greens. However, there is one food that I do stress about a little, and that’s sugar.

As a reader of Nourishing Traditions’ (Sally Fallon) and a real food activist I feel like I am confessing a sin saying this, but here goes…‘I feed my kids sugar (in moderation)…but probably every day’. There, I’ve said it.

I’m aware sugar is at best an empty food (nutrient wise), so should it have any place in a family diet? Why not cut it out completely?  Maybe in an ideal world then yes, but in (my) real world, whilst I’ve found it easy to keep sugar to a minimum, I haven’t cut it out completely.  I’m not even sure if I want to.

It’s been easy to;

Stick to water and milk for drinks.

Ditch processed yogurts and have live natural yogurt topped with fruit.

Ditch highly sugared cereals.

Stick to real food, cook stuff from scratch, stay away from most processed stuff.

 But the sugar creeps in here…

-      Baking. Baking is at the heart of our home. It’s the answer to ‘what can we have next?’ as well as, in my opinion, to many other questions. I do make some sugar free stuff but generally a few spoons of sugar will make a cake. You can read more of my love of cake here along with some great nutrient dense cake recipes like prune, chia, chocolate and beetroot cake.

-      Baked beans. We love beans on toast. Especially awesome after a morning playing sport. Or for a rainy lunch. With cheese.

-      Jam. The kids love jam. If allowed there would only be one sandwich filling and it would start with J.

-      Chocolate. We just have it around. We don’t gorge on it but we’re no strangers to it.

-      Cafe treats. I like to go out for a mid morning coffee sometimes (often). It helps with sanity. The kids get fluffies with marshmallows… and then there are the cute little kiddo cupcakes, barely the size of a postage stamp, lolly on top….and the not so postage stamp sized brownies… I think I’d rather just skip the coffee and stay at home than go in there and not let the kids indulge a little. That’s just me. This post is not about what’s right and wrong (which isn’t my style anyway) it’s about being honest about my reality.

-      Parties.

-      Ice creams on sunny days.

-      Ice creams on days when we all need an ice-cream

-      Ketchup

So that’s my family life in terms sugar. I’m still figuring out if I’m happy with it or if I need to cut it back further. But for every time I read an article that makes me feel that feeding my kids the sweet stuff is akin to letting them pop outside for a smoke, then I think of the simple joy of seeing a little face covered in ice-cream on a sunny day. It might be empty nutritionally but it sure can be good for the soul. I think someone once said something very profound about moderation.. perhaps we just need to get back to that?


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‘rollover’ slow cooked pork with chickpeas

I wrote a post yesterday over at barefoot and soul about real food , which addresses writing about food in a way that’s helpful and inspiring and accessible. Tone is a big deal to me.   I’m sharing my kitchen diaries because they’re real and because I care about real family food, and I hope in some small way that writing about is useful.

So on the theme of being useful …. here’s a tip that will make your life easier, give you a big injection of bone broth magic and save you some cash…. Include some ‘rollover’ meals each week. A ‘rollover’ is just my way of saying ‘leftovers’ but I like to think of it more as one dish rolling into the next bringing all the goodness and flavour with it. We have a lot of rollovers here. Top of the rollover pops is the slow-cooker casserole into broth.

This started as a slow cooker casserole; Bone in pork steaks, garlic, cinnamon stick, turmeric, star anise, bay leaf. cardamon pods, carrot, pumpkin, persimmon (yes, I put persimmon in everything last week) tin of chick peas, cider vinegar, water, salt, pepper – probably a slug of red wine … so basically a totally random array of stuff thrown together in complete haste during the pre-school chaos that is our house. I didn’t even bother to cut up the meat or brown the meat or really think through the flavour combinations – literally just chucked it all in and hoped for the best. As it happens it tasted absolutely fabulous – pretty much everything does that goes into the slow cooker I find, especially if there are some bones in the meat and some spices).

Reheated the leftovers with water and some fresh baby spinach (and yes those are more lacto-fermented ginger carrots on the top…for more on the lacto-fermenting fandango read this post).


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lamb and pumpkin broth with lacto-fermented ginger carrots

Hard to think of a healthier lunch, and it was pretty tasty too (at least the adults of the house thought so – kids were more into their post footie pastries and fair play to them).  Made with left over slow cooker lamb casserole (bone-in lamb leg steaks, pumpkin, carrot, garlic, onion, fresh ginger, red lentils, a random selection of spices that included turmeric, star anise, cinnamon stick, paprika, cumin and possibly more besides but was throwing things in pre-school drop off so wasn’t exactly keeping notes. Seem to recall a tin of chopped tomatoes going in, some cider vinegar, red wine….you get the idea, slow cookers are seriously forgiving of general acts of randomness)

Leftover casserole mixed with some leftover pumpkin soup (see last post) with some fresh baby spinach leaves added just before serving,  topped with lacto-fermented ginger carrots (recipe from Nourishing Traditions). For more on lacto-fermented veg read this post. The ginger carrots are just made with grated carrot and ginger using same method.

Now, must be time to think about chocolate cake again after all that crazy healthy stuff….


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un-artisan pumpkin

At a farmers’ market I visited recently (not in Wellington) they were selling ‘artisan’ pumpkins by the slice. Now I think that’s a bit of a stretch. These pumpkins were are beautiful deep orange and I’m sure they were quite fabulous, but artisan pumpkin? Perhaps I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate it’s potential.

What I am very appreciative of though is the abundance of super-cheap and extremely good un-artisan pumpkins in season at the moment. We are literally trucking through the stuff at every opportunity.

Last night roasted in a ‘roasted and raw salad’ ; You just roast up a pile of veg (I used pumpkin, kumara and parsnip) and grate some raw veg (I used carrot and courgette) and then you toss it all together with  some grapes and feta and a honey / roast garlic dressing (roast the garlic in with the veg and then mash it into olive oil with some cider vinegar and a little honey). No photo (dinner was a little hectic last night) but it was rather good alongside a roast chicken.

Roast chicken last night of course means chicken stock today… and therefore I was able  to make very quick simple pumpkin soup a little bit special, with the addition of the fresh stock. Just chopped pumpkin simmered with garlic, red lentils, garlic, turmeric salt and pepper and then blended with a little sour cream.

I just wish they weren’t such a pain to hack up – or maybe I  need some new knives…

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