Mushroom, Celery and Garlic Soup

Last Monday I said that this week’s soup would have pasta in it. I lied.

I have chosen a nice sounding pasta soup (with an ingredient in it I had never heard of before - oooo), but that’s now coming to you next week instead.

Funny story – I glanced at the recipe for this week’s soup before going to the grocery store for ingredients. Good to know note number 1: pay more attention to the recipe before you shop. I went shopping for and bought 4 and half pounds of mushrooms when the recipe actually called for 4 and a half cups. That’s roughly 6 times more mushrooms than I needed.

Good to know note number 2: you can return mushrooms to the grocery store.

Mushroom, Celery and Garlic Soup

A robust soup in which the dominant flavour of mushrooms is enhanced with garlic, while celery introduces a contrasting note.

Ingredients

Serves 4

350 g/12 oz/4½ cups chopped mushrooms

4 celery sticks, chopped

3 garlic cloves

45 ml/3 tbsp dry sherry or white wine

750 ml/1¼ pints/3 cups chicken stock (I used veg)

30 ml/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

5 ml/1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (mine wasn’t freshly grated)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

celery leaves, to garnish

1 Place the mushrooms, celery and garlic in a pan and stir in the sherry or wine. Cover and cook over a low heat for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

(I was pretty sure I’d read this wrong. Only 3 tbsps of liquid – I thought this had to be an error and was sure the vegetables would stick to the bottom of the pan! I was super wrong. The mushrooms release so much liquid that this step doesn’t even need you to stir periodically.)

2 Add half the stock and purée in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return to the pan and add the remaining stock, the Worcestershire sauce and nutmeg.

(I used my hand blender and didn’t even take the soup out of the pot. Dead easy.)

3 Bring to the boil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve hot, garnished with celery leaves.

This soup was ridiculously easy to make and tasted really lovely – 4.25 out of 5. We dunked some crispy tortillas in, but garlic bread would be really nice too. And p.s., this soup was from - you guessed it - The Soup Bible.

Carrot and Coriander Soup

This soup calls for home-made chicken stock (though you can use cubes) and I actually happened to have some in the freezer. I’m a vegetarian, but my partner eats meat – we try to buy happy chickens i.e.: from a local organic farmer – and I made this stock from the carcass of a whole cooked chicken a couple of months ago. Stock is ridiculously easy to make and you can get raw chicken bones and bits from a butcher if you prefer. Throw the chicken in a big pot with some onion, garlic, carrots, celery and herbs like rosemary and oregano, top up with water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for a couple of hours, occasionally skimming off the foam. Strain and discard all the bones and veg. Tada – stock! You can let it cool thoroughly and then freeze. Anyway – on to the recipe. My comments are in bold.

Carrot and Coriander Soup (from the Soup Bible)

Use a good home-made stock for this soup – it adds a far greater depth of flavour than stock made from cubes.

Ingredients

Serves 4

50 g/2 oz/4 tbsp butter

3 leeks, sliced

450 g/1 lb carrots, sliced

15 ml/ 1 tbsp ground coriander

1.2 litres/2 pints/5 cups chicken stock

⅔ cup Greek-style yogurt

salt and freshly ground black pepper

30-45 ml/2-3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander, to garnish

1 Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the leeks and carrots and stir well. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to soften.

2 Stir in the ground coriander and cook for about 1 minute. Pour in the stock and add seasoning to taste. (A bit of low sodium salt and some pepper was good.) Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the leeks and carrots are tender. (I accidentally over did it at this stage and simmered for about 30 minutes. Oops! There wasn’t all that much soup left and I could have added some more water, but left it as it was with the result that I had a thicker soup and a little less than I would have otherwise.)

3 Leave to cool slightly, then purée the soup in a blender until smooth. Return the soup to the pan and add 30 ml/2 tbsp of the yogurt, then taste the soup and adjust the seasoning. Reheat gently, but do not boil. (I puréed right away so I didn’t bother to reheat again as it was still hot.)

4 Ladle the soup into bowls and put a spoonful of the remaining yogurt in the centre of each. Scatter over the chopped coriander and serve immediately.

This was a really yummy soup. The coriander and carrot are sweet and the bit of cold yogurt on top was a really good contrast. I wasn’t super happy about the colour of the soup – which to be perfectly honest, looked a bit like sick. (In my experience, lots of puréed soups do ;-) The stock pictured in the book is really clear and their soup is bright orange and my home-made soup was quite brown which I’m sure is why. I give this soup a 4.5 out of 5 and a big thumbs up for being super easy. Next week’s soup is going to have pasta in it – yum!

Sprouts

I went to Jamie Oliver's The Big Feastival in June and one of the restaurants featured, Wahaca, was giving away what I thought were colourful matchbooks (sorry, no pics of how cool they were, but their website gives a bit of an indication). I don't smoke, but I took one anyway (who's not a sucker for free kit!). It turns out they were little packs of seeds with instructions on how to grow chilli peppers. For 0.98p, I got these little pots full of compost from Wilko’s (and basil seeds to boot – why not?) and have been watering twice a day. The basil came out in about 3 minutes (makes me wonder what weird genetically modified seeds they are, but oh well) but the peppers (10 seeds in total) had been stubbornly avoiding my advances. Until a few weeks ago. The absolute glee on my face when I came down one morning to see one teeny little green sprout in one of the chilli pots. To start, only one sprout graced me with its presence, but I decided I was going to be patient. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I was killing them with too much water (my thinking: that soil looks so dry and the pots are in the sun so they need a bit of a spritz… but chilli peppers equal dry climates, oh damn, I'm going about this the wrong way) but I think they like it.

Since that first little green sprout, I've had 4 more come up. My partner saw some chilli plants in someone's house recently and they were about 4 feet high after only a year. AND they were producing green chillis about 5 inches long! I haven't thought about what I'm going to do with these sprouts when they get to that point (i.e. where will they live?), but I love the idea of being able to cook with something I've grown. And chillis boost your metabolism ;-)

The basil (pic above) has its ups and downs - literally. Some days the sprouts are leaning horizontally to the point where I'm pretty sure they're dead and other days they are perky and looking promising. I think I need to thin them out as maybe they're competing for space (I'll get another pot from Wilko's and try to transplant - my partner got a kick out of that appropriateness of that word) but they are perplexing me. I saw pots of herbs in Sainsbury's the other day - a more mature properly recognisable basil plant for about £1.50 and I sighed and thought 'I could just buy that...' but I'll stick with them. Patience is a virtue. Which I lack.

There is something to be learned here which is applicable to the 'something else' in life... I guess this is just about the simplest version of creation, isn't it? Nothing god-complexy about it (I had nothing to do with the sprouts from that perspective and don't claim that genius), but I think it's neat that where there was nothing but a seed, there is now something green and growing. I think that's pretty awe-inspiring and as we're starting small, growing plants is this week's contribution to getting in touch with my creativity.

Cycle Week 0.1

It's Wednesday! Cycling news!

(p.s. You'll be happy to note that I kept my word about exercising... for exactly 1 week. I jumped rope, I did zumba, I walked more than 10 miles up and down a coastal path [and even ran up some of the steps- go me!], I kayaked... and then I came home from holiday and have done nothing since. I hear you sigh. I'll get better, I promise! From now until next week, I'll do at least 10 minutes of cardio 4 times and will report back on the hilarity that is me, in my living room, doing zumba.)

So on Monday, I started my new job. My employer participates in two cycling schemes: the aptly named Cycle Scheme and Evans Cycles Ride 2 Work. Essentially, here's how they work:

• I find a bike and get a quote
• I pass the quote to my employer and register some paperwork
• (Hopefully) my employer approves my request
• I sign a hire contract with my employer which details a 12 month salary sacrifice agreement
• A voucher is sent to me to redeem for the bike and accessories (I'm sooo getting a cool helmet like the one in the pic above which I found on the very great London Cycle Chic)
• After 12 months if I want to keep my bike and accessories, my employer can transfer ownership to me (I'm then taxed on a benefit in kind at the end of the tax year). If not, my employer collects my bike and accessories

I'm not super savvy at the whole tax thing, but I do understand that:

• I get to pay for a sweet bike over 12 months instead of up front
• Because the salary sacrifice (payment for the bike) is taken off my gross salary (before taxes), I'm taxed on less income each month which means I save money

I'm a bit unclear as to what happens after the hire period as some other schemes would have you pay a fair market value for the bike at the time of taking ownership. I've emailed my employer's Environment Team to find out about this and the tax I'll have to pay on the benefit in kind (will this mean my savings over the year on Income Tax and National Insurance will go down the drain?) but have yet to hear anything. I'm going to forge ahead with looking at bikes (I've already done a bit of wish listing) and get a quote and see what happens! I'm more keen to do this as I've discovered that even with a discount card it is costing me £4.20 to get to work and back on the bus when it was previously costing just over £1 on the tram! Bloody murder! Also, and potentially even more annoyingly - there are crying babies on buses and assuredly there will not be on my bike.

In the meantime, cycling is everywhere! The mayor of Vilnius drove over a car parked illegally in a cycle lane the other day, I've seen ads to take part in this Life Cycle thing, and there's a poster up at work about getting a free cycling information pack from Sustrans. I already knew of Sustrans for the great advice on cycling for women available (Bike Belles); I think they're working hard to change our lifestyles. I'm getting there and so can you!

Soup Number 1: Broad Bean and Rice Soup

Soup Number 1 comes to you from The Soup Bible (I’m afraid quite a few soups may come to you from this bible as there are plenty of great looking ones and let’s face it, I don’t have many cookbooks.)

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to manage making a soup last week as we were going away and had pretty much cleared the fridge, but I pulled the cookbook out anyway and to my delight and surprise found that there were loads of recipes I could have made. Great point number 1 about soups: the ingredients for soup are often already in your house (even if you don’t know it).

Also (I knew this, but often forget it) great point number 2 about soups: soups are easy to make

Heck yes: they are easy, they often don’t take long and they can sit on the stove bubbling away while you do other things. (Like laundry. Or packing for a holiday to Wales. Or in my case, both.)

So, the recipe: (my comments are in bold)

Broad Bean and Rice Soup

This thick soup makes the most of fresh broad beans while they are in season. It works well with frozen beans for the rest of the year. (I didn’t read this. Are broad beans in season? Who can be bothered with the double shelling? Yes, you must shell fresh ones twice. P.s. they’re called fava beans in the US. Nice chianti anyone?)

Ingredients:

Serves 4 (I’ll vouch for that though they are generous portions)

1 kg/2 ¼ lb broad beans in the their pods, or 400 g/14 oz shelled frozen broad beans, thawed

90 ml/6 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 medium tomates, peeled and finely chopped (I used 1 tin)

225 g/8 oz/1 cup Arborio or other non-parboiled rice (I used brown rice because it’s all I’ve got and is nice and healthy)

25 g/1 oz/2 tbsp butter

1 litre/1 ¾ pints/4 cups boiling water

salt and fresh ground black pepper (I used low sodium salt)

grated Parmesan cheese, to serve (optional)

1 Bring a large pan of water to the boil and blanch the beans, fresh or frozen, for 3-4 minutes. Rinse under cold water. If using fresh beans, peel off the skins.

My ‘dependable, always in the freezer to make me feel like a good vegetarian’ frozen broad beans have skins on. I could easily slide the skins off when they were thawed. (I shelled some like this and blanched some as well to see if that was easier but it didn’t really make any difference.)

To shell or not to shell? Ordinarily I probably wouldn’t bother in the interests of laziness and that there’s probably more fiber in un-shelled beans, but in the interests of ‘follow the recipe and see what you get,’ I did. It was actually exactly the kind of thing I love to do – monotonous, fiddly and deeply satisfying. And the beans squirt bean juice at you. That sounds disgusting, but it was hilarious.)

You can see here how they're a way better colour when they’ve been shelled.

2 Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and cook over low to moderate heat until it softens. Stir in the beans and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring to coat them with the oil.

I’m making it a mission to find the best way to finely chop an onion. My chef-like friend Tyler in university told me that to minimize the tears, keep one end of the onion intact. Here’s a pic of my onion technique. I make parallel slices toward the intact end but not all the way through then rotate 90 degrees and do the same (creating a checkerboard) and then turn it on it’s side and slice all the way through which results in lots of little bits.) Better technique? Let me know. 

3 Season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes more, stirring often. Add the rice and cook for a further 1-2 minutes stirring constantly.

4 Add the butter and stir until it melts. Pour in the water, a little at a time. (Don’t know why, so I did it all at once.) Adjust the seasoning to taste. (I actually did this – I usually don’t. I added more pepper. The soup was ok – not convinced, thought it was a bit bland.) Continue cooking until the rice is tender. (I was using brown rice which takes longer than white to cook so my soup cooked for a good 30-45 mins. Arborio rice would probably not have taken as long. I stirred it a couple of times throughout to be sure the rice wasn’t sticking to the bottom of the pot. I wasn’t sure whether to put a lid on or not while cooking – I did.) Serve with grated Parmesan, if liked. (I love Parmesan, but I didn’t have any – I think the soup could have used the cheesy kick. I also didn’t have any bread to eat this with – woe is me – but did find some giant Matzo crackers in the cupboard – good times. They are about the size of my head ;-)

I was afraid this soup was going to be bland and it definitely would be without that bit of butter (butter makes everything taste nicer). I was kinda tempted to throw more ingredients in to up the healthiness and flavour (I’ve got frozen spinach next to the broad beans in my freezer to make me feel like a good vegetarian), and I hear cayenne pepper revs your metabolism but I resisted in the spirit of ‘follow the recipe.’ The hubby gave it 4 out of 5, I was thinking more like 3, we compromised and gave it 3.5 out of 5.

Great point number 3 about soups: making soup means leftovers to take to work for lunch the next day. Next day it was more stewy than soupy, but I quite like a good thick soup. I’m going to freeze the remaining portion and will let you know what it’s like when I thaw and re-heat. Are you not supposed to do that with rice? I’m not worried.

This was really fun and easy. I made voice notes on my iPhone while making the soup which were hilarious to listen to while writing this (I’ll plan to include these in my posts in future) and taking photos makes the time go quicker while you’re waiting for things to cook. Soup number 1 = success.

Check in next Monday for Carrot and Coriander Soup. It's on a menu everywhere, sounds posh, but guess what - dead easy to make and a great way to use up that bag of carrots in the frigo. You don't even need fresh coriander.

Something Else (or The Things I Think Make Life Worth Living)

This section of my blog is the wiliest and hardest to capture – the part I have the most trouble defining, but also, the real reason for writing at all.

Once upon a time, I was a dancer then a singer then an actor. Now, I’m none of those things. For the last three and a half years, I haven’t performed and frankly, life seems the better for it. However, I know that for me, being a performer was more than just a job or a hobby, it was both how I defined myself and it formed my view of the world. Theatre – the arts – was something I was passionate about. I thought good theatre should make people aware of the ‘something else’ out there – to instill a sense of awe in them, to make them believe that anything was possible. (This, in my opinion, is why Harry Potter is huge and why Cirque du Soleil draws massive crowds.) Being a performer in a production that created that awe, or that sense of possibility to an audience was just about the best thing I thought anyone could ever do and for awhile, I was happy to be a part of shows that didn’t do this in the hope of landing one that did.

Sadly, there were times when being involved in the arts brought me into contact with horrible people that shook my confidence (sometimes in myself and sometimes in people in general). I’ve always remembered a couple of particularly encouraging things people told me that made me believe that I was talented and worth watching, but forcibly being told the opposite was debilitating. (Therapy has helped, though I still fantasize about what will happen when what goes around comes around.) I’ve told myself since then that maybe I just didn’t want it badly enough, maybe I didn’t have a thick enough skin (something I’m sure of), maybe I just didn’t have enough heart. Ultimately it was the combination of knocks to my confidence and lack of faith in good shows out there that made it easy to just stop performing.

While I enjoy life more without the heartache of being a performer, the passion I previously felt is also missing from my life. I find myself working really hard at admin jobs, trying to get validation from work that doesn’t mean anything more than the black and white on the computer screen and then getting depressed about ‘my purpose in life’ when I realize it.

A few weeks ago, Steven and I watched a documentary on Eddie Izzard (Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story). I vaguely knew of him as a celebrity – mostly because last year for Sport Relief he ran 43 marathons in 51 days (crazy!) – but I didn’t know that he was a comedian and an actor and mostly, I didn’t realize how ridiculously hard he’s worked to become those things.

He says in the documentary that we only get one life so he believes we should live it, which isn’t something new to me, but I’m inspired by how fully he acts on this belief, and how in practice, living life means visibly working through the rough patches and sometimes failing. (Eddie decided he wanted to do comedy in France, so he learns French. At one point, he blanked on the French words for the punchline of a joke and had to ask the audience. He also wants to do comedy in Arabic. He currently knows one word. I don’t think I do his persistence justice – just watch the film and you’ll understand.)

I think what struck me most was his bravery. He wasn’t afraid to put himself out there (as a busker in Covent Garden! Just about the hardest job a performer can have…) and look bad when he wasn’t very good. In being brave, he’s created the career (and life) he wants. I wish I were that brave. My hope is that this blog is going to keep me accountable to examining my creativity and in doing so, I’ll find more passion and have a more fulfilling life.

I do know that I love stories and I think telling them and sharing them (through whatever means reach people) is important. It’s why history and old buildings give me goosebumps, and why there’s pretty much nothing I’d rather do than read a good book or watch a good movie. And then tell people about it afterwards so maybe they do the same.

I’m keen to try working in publishing, not so keen to be a part of an industry that isn’t very profitable because fewer and fewer people read. Screenplays? (I’ve started a list of books I think would convert well to film, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.) Who knows at this point, but let’s start small. Next week you can read all about my basil and chili pepper growing adventure. (I hear you scream ‘Ohmygod!!!’ like middle-aged women at a Take That concert.) Yes, I’m that exciting, but I do get a kick out of seeing little green sprouts come out of the ground. 

Cycle Week 0

Even before the glut of Pizza Express I consumed today, I was thinking that I should perhaps prepare for the whole 'bike to work' thing.

It's been awhile since I've really exercised (hmm, I can remember trying to get fit before going on holiday... in May) and very sadly, I found myself huffing and puffing on the very slight inclines in town today as I shopped for something to wear on Friday night (Leaving Do - mine).

Starting a new job equals a great chance to start something new - for me, this blog, which includes, among other things, cycling to work. Plus my new employer does that Cycle Scheme thing so I can get a better bike for less and pay for it monthly. Or something. (I'm thinking about getting one of those retro styled Dutch bikes with a basket on the front. Oh sorry - a pannier as I understand they are actually called :-) but more about this in another post.)

Over Pizza Express (dough balls, garlic bread, 2 pizzas [one had salad in the middle and I'm assured by the menu it was only approximately 500 calories] and raspberry gelato. And a beer.) my partner Steven told me about his conversation with biking-guru Darren earlier in the day.

Darren has a road bike and takes cycling holidays. And does 35-40 miles on a leisurely weekend ride. (hurl) His friend Colin cycles to work and does 7ish miles (my trip is probably 6) and it takes him about 25 minutes. But he's been doing it for 25 years. And you can guarantee he's one of those guys with the padded shorts and hi-vis vests on who is well into getting there quicker than the cars. I intend to breeze into my new job fresh-faced and glowing. Oh and I'm going be wearing a skirt and heels. So I'm thinking: a) it's going to take me longer than the 30 minutes I was planning on and b) I'm going to need to get into shape before this venture even starts if I'm going to be able to make it up any hills. (And there are a few.) Particularly if I'm not going to break a sweat.

SO. Until I get my bike and start the adventure for real, I'm committing to exercise 3.. no 4! times a week. This is something I found awhile ago and I really love it because it's quick (10 minutes), makes you work hard (well, it's hard for me) and you can feel yourself getting better at it because better equals less stopping:

Skipping

Coach Nicole's 10 Minute Workout makes me giggle (I hate American accents) and happily I don't even have to look like an idiot in my back garden as I have enough open space to do this inside. I promise you (and I promise me) that Coach Nicole and I are going to get skipping 4 times between now and next Wednesday. But not right now as I'm still bloated from my dough balls.