sundays are for soup

In the orange corner, we have day-old sweet potato, parsnip and rosemary soup. I wasn't going to make a creamy soup until I smelt one of my neighbours making potato soup... I couldn't resist.

In the green corner is the beginnings of another soup. I've been craving a spicy korean hotpot soup, which actually comes in a tetrapack, but the shop that stocks it is a million miles away (okay, boxhill, but it is out of my way). So I am improvising with hatcho miso and some chilli paste. Not sure what the results will be.

You can never have too much soup in winter (even though the flowers say spring is finally here).

sweet potato, parsnip and rosemary soup
Qualities are for 2 - 3 serves.

A 5 inch length of sweet potato, diameter is about 8cm. You can also use regular potato, about 3. Chopped.
4inch length of parsnip
2 sprigs of rosemary
half an onion

Fry everything lightly in 2 tbsp olive oil, add about 2 bowls of water when it is sizzling. Let it cook over a low flame for at least 30min. Blend. Salt to taste. Because I am trying to go dairy free at the moment (except for yoghurt), I haven't added any cream or milk but you could.

little green giants

Last year I grew cabbages, this year, looking at the price of veges, I decided to grow broccoli. Organic broc goes for $8 to $10 per kg. It took forever to grow, at least 3 months from seedings, and they are still pretty tiny. Then again, I am growing them in an overcrowded recycled styrofoam fruit box, so I guess I can't expect giants. I'll just eaten the last of my store-bought broccoli, so I'll probably harvest a few of my own in a week, so that the rest have a bit more room to grow.

Another big welcome to another pickle sister, the person who gave me the idea for the title of this blog, Mon. Mon is an amazing and inspiring cook and will be posting soon!

Recycling

I bought gluten free soy flakes, apricot and almond flavour, but what it really tasted like was cardboard. Maybe the manufacturers anticipated this, as they had 3 recipes on the box. Thankfully the cookie recipie is much better than the flakes.

Soyflake cookies ( I suppose you can use any type of cereal that you don't want to eat)

3 tbs butter, melted

2 tbs honey, 2 tbs maple syrup , 2 tbs brown sugar but I used 7 tbs brown sugar

1 egg, lightly whisked

Add sugar/syrup to melted honey. Stir in egg. Then add

2 cups flakes

1 cup flour

Any additional almond/fruit/chocolate

Make into cookie shape. They don’t expand by much. Bake 20 min or golden brown in oven preheated to 160C. It says you can make 20 cookies. The first time I tried it my cookies were bite sized so I had more than 20, this time I got 15 bigger cookies. You'll figure it out.

cooking for two

What does love taste like?

Like bacon apparently.

Joe is very fond of bacon, and even more so of the double smoked pancetta I get from my regular butcher down the road. This Serbian couple set up shop 45 years ago and the smoked stuff is to die for. Fried till crisy or just to flavour a soup, both work.

We have also eaten many pizzas, souvlakis, desserts (my killer chocolate and pear muffin), hot chocolates. Joe reckons nothing is better than the Lambs outlet in Northcote for souvlakis, and as for pizzas, the $4 dinner special at the Lucky Coq can't be beat.

For a treat, he made his signature buttered prawns, only this time he added dried coconut and fried it in oil, instead of butter.

He was meant to fly off on Sunday night, the plane had technical difficulties - they had to reboot the flight computer and it still didn't work. So thank you malaysian airlines, for all the wrong reasons, for giving us an extra 60 hours together.

fancy apple pie

I know someone who is embarrassed about saying the word tart in public, even though we are referring to pastries and not the other kind. Anyway this is a tarte tartin, or fancy french apple pie. It came from here and tastes best freshly baked. I could have let it caramelise a bit more but I was late for meeting someone (not the mr-embarrassed-about-saying-the-word-tart) for lunch.

The trickiest bit is flipping the tart out of the pan, which is why this picture was taken over the sink.

Also made a great breakfast - lentils, sliced grapefuit and yoghurt over toast but it doesn't photograph as well as it tastes.

And most recently, baked cherry and chocolate muffins, which both joe and I agree is a keeper. This recipe is not exact, because I don't use measures, so feel free to modify it. It is based on a recipe for friands.

1 and 1/2cups almond meal
1/2 cup wheat or spelt flour
2-3 tablespoons baking powder
125-150g butter, melted over the stove
2 eggs or 3 small ones. You are actually meant to use 5 whites if this was a traditional friand recipe but I hate to waste 5 yolks.
Fresh cherries - pitted. Watch the squirting juice.
2/3 of a 200g block of cooking chocolate, dark or milk if you like.
1/2 cup milk or juice
1 to 1 and1/2 cups sugar - i used a mix of icing and regular sugar.
vanilla essence
dash of port or sweet alcohol

Mix all the powders in a bowl. Add in melted butter, and let it cool before adding eggs otherwise they will curdle. Add in the liquids till you get a good batter consistency, and more milk/juice if needed. Stir in the cherries and chocolate. I think you will get 6- 9 muffins with this, and don't fill the muffins all the way to the top, cos they will rise and leak all over the tray.

what do you eat in a week?

what the world eats in a week - time photo essay. Check out the amount of packaging in the developed world! Then again, I rather have tim tams than boiled fresh sheep soup... maybe lentil would be fine...

you can't say no to chocolate cake

4 great cake recipies at the age website.