Sweet potato and chickpea soup

 
I really love this soup. This is my second time around the block with it and I still can't believe how easy and tasty it is.

You literally throw all the ingredients in the pot and boil for a bit. The recipe calls for canned chickpeas but I used dried. They take way more effort but I think they taste nicer. Plus they're dirt cheap, easier to store than tin cans and a doctor once told me they are less likely to make you gassy. Sounds good, eh?

 To prepare dried beans, soak them for 12 hours in cold water (overnight works well). Change the water a few times while they soak. (I usually put beans in to soak in the afternoon, change the water every few hours as I'm popping in and out of the kitchen and then leave them to soak overnight.) When you're ready to boil the beans, drain the water, throw them in a pot with more fresh cold water, bring to the boil and then boil rapidly for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam that's created (I love doing this bit - it's very satisfying, hence my photo below where the middle bowl is skimmed foam... scum to some). If you're going to use the cooking water in your recipe (good for soups!), after 10 minutes of rapid boiling, drain and cover with at least an inch of water (fresh and cold, you guessed it!), bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer for at least an hour. Or you can choose to just lower the heat and simmer.

Different beans require different cooking times - chickpeas can take up to 2 hours. Once beans are cooked though, you can drain off the water (or keep it to top up stock in a soup) and keep them in the fridge until you're ready to use - I'd do this quite quickly though so they don't spoil.

I was quite sure why you needed to do the 10 minutes of rapid boiling so I googled it... and found this aptly named guide which has some really good tips about cooking beans, even if you're not particularly worried about flatulence (great word, flatulence).

Anyway - on to the recipe! This comes to you courtesy of the October 2011 Sainsbury's Magazine

Sweet potato and chickpea soup
Sainsbury's says: 'Sweet potatoes give a lovely smooth texture to soups.'

Prep 15 mins, Total time 35 mins, Serves 6

750g sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (this is about 2 largeish sweet potatoes)
1 onion, chopped
2 tsp grated root ginger (do use fresh instead of dried)
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped (I have a little pot of frozen red chillis - very helpful)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 litre veggie stock
1 x 410g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 3/4 cup dried, soaked and cooked)
handful of flat-leaf parsley to garnish

1 Put the sweet potato, onion, ginger, chilli, garlic and cumin in a large pan. Pour in the stock, cover and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the sweet potato is almost tender. Add the chickpeas and simmer for a further 5 minutes. (I think it takes longer than this to get sweet potato tender. And as I'd already been cooking the chickpeas, I just tossed everything together and simmered for awhile.)

 2 Puree with a hand-held electric blender or in a liquidiser until smooth. Add a little more stock or water if it's too thick. Warm through, check the seasoning and finish with freshly ground black pepper and a few parsley leaves to serve.

Can't beat a soup with two steps! Enjoy...

Cycle: On falling off your bike

 
(This post is from way back in March. I never got around to posting it then, but will now because I think it's funny.)

I wanted this post to be about sunshine and spring time and purple crocuses and how I've got my bike back (again) after taking it in to the bike shop because the gears were acting up (again).

But instead, this post is, I'm sad to say, about falling off your bike. Sigh. I'll try and get the pity party out all in one go.

I'm sitting on the sofa to write this, my legs on the footstool because I can't bend my knees and my hands resting rather comfortably on the keyboard due to the gauze and tape. My boyfriend Steven likes to watch me slowly go up and down the stairs because he says it's entertaining to laugh at a 20-something who walks like a pensioner and I've taken to calling myself Lurch in my head. (Frankenstein was just too cruel.) Rolling onto my side in bed last night was an absolute luxury because it took bloody ages to achieve.

Adults aren't meant to fall down. And it's why it's such a shock to your system when we do. I experienced that moment of thinking '... oh this is going to end badly ...' yesterday morning on my cycle in to work. I was already sore from my Thursday night yoga class, where I think I got a better grip on what it means to 'grip my outer hips together' but my ride was going well. It was chillier than I thought it would be and I nearly stopped to out my gloves on. *I should have stopped to put my gloves on.*

Have you seen that video of the cyclist in New York who after being given a ticket for not staying in the cycle lane decides to only cycle in the cycle lane to prove how impossible this actually is? My favourite bit is when he rides into a police car (parked, in the cycle lane).

My fall was not nearly as glamorous (?) as a headlong crunch into a police car. I had to move off the pavement (sidewalk to us North Americans) and onto the road to get around a transit van that was parked on the end of someones drive (yes, yes, I cycle on the pavement - but only sometimes and where the road is particularly narrow or where the cars go particularly fast). As I was moving to get back up on the pavement, I hit the curb at too shallow an angle and as the curb was higher than I expected, my wheel caught the edge and down we went. I bounced up pretty quickly - aware that I was wearing tights and a kind of short dress which may have ridden up over my bottom when I fell - too shocked to really remember. I picked my bike up as it was kind of hanging into the road and then felt really nauseated. Falling as a child never made me feel sick - just like crying. Falling as an adult makes me feel sick and like crying - crappy deal.

I took some photos of my ripped up knees and hands but it's kind of gross to share them I think so I'll leave it at summary of my physical woes - not including of course, my bruised ego and slight fear for getting back on my bike.

And now I'll sing my ode to Savlon Advanced Healing Gel and also to the nice man who stopped to see if I was alright. He insisted I call Steven and go home - which I think was a good call. I'm not sure that showing up to work with ripped tights would have made a great day. Nor would have leaving bloody hand prints on my mouse. Though in the large scheme of things, my trauma is peanuts. For example, my friend Hannah went over her handle bars and cracked her ribs - I'm such a wuss! Will aim to get back on it shortly - as soon as I can bend my scabby knees.

(Cleansing) Tuscan Bean Soup

Soup is my saviour these days.

I've decided to do a cleanse to get nice and trim for the summer... and in preparation for my high school bff's upcoming wedding. As I'll be wearing a midriff baring sari for the occasion, it's probably a good idea to shed a few spare pounds before the big day. And my skin has been a bit spotty lately and I figured my innards could do with a bit of a tidy up.

In my last year of uni I did this cleanse but as I was only ever cooking for myself, I don't remember making soup at all. It felt daunting to get a big pot out and make something with - what I imagined to be - huge amounts of leftovers. How wrong was I! I don't know how I managed a cleanse without making soup! Soup is so brilliantly healthy and easy and it makes eating a variety of things simple so you don't get bored and give up on the cleanse.

(As I write this, Saturday Kitchen Best Bits is on and Lorraine Pascale has just made triple chocolate cheesecake... omg it looks nice... and sooooo not cleanse friendly... How does she stay so skinny while eating brie and pancetta toasties? Some people just have it all.)

Yesterday's dinner was Tuscan Bean Soup - a modified version from The Soup Bible.

I've omitted the potato - potatoes, tomatoes and mushrooms aren't allowed on the first 10 days of my cleanse. All my food has to be cooked as well (no salads) so this soup gave a good chance to get some healthy greens in. (I've used curly kale instead of Savoy cabbage.)

I went a bit o.t.t. with the dried oregano last night. I didn't have any fresh in, but would highly recommend this - think it would be nicer. The recipe says that this soup tastes even better when reheated so I'll be looking forward to this for lunch today.

Tuscan Bean Soup, adapted from The Soup Bible

Ingredients
Serves 4

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 leeks, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, squashed through our new garlic press (Steven broke the old one and I'm sure glad he did)

5 cups veggie stock
14 oz can cannellini beans, drained and liquid reserved
6 oz Savoy cabbage, shredded (I used curly kale instead)
3 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
salt and pepper to taste

1 Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently cook the onion, leeks, potato and garlic for 4-5 minutes until they are just beginning to soften

2 Pour on the stock and the liquid from the beans. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

3 Stir in the cabbage, beans and half the herbs, season and cook for a further 10 minutes. Spoon about one-third of the soup into a food processor or blender and process until fairly smooth. Return to the soup in the pan, adjust the seasoning and heat through for 5 minutes. (I just used the hand mixer to blend about a third of the soup. This worked fine too.)

Step 4 of this recipe has you make some garlic toasts to go with the soup. (Rub oil-drizzled bread with garlic and then toast the bread.) I'm not allowed wheat or yeast on my cleanse (or dairy or alcohol or...) so bread that matches this criteria is quite difficult to come by. I was in Whole Foods in London last week and got some amazing German rye bread but it's so tasty I'm going through it quite quickly. The expiry date is in 2014 but it will definitely be gone long before then... So absolute joy of joys when I found proper bread at Waitrose yesterday without wheat or yeast! Two varieties and it doesn't break the bank at about £1.70 a loaf. Though I haven't tasted it yet, I'm going to big this bread up simply for existing - Whole Foods sells loaves of spelt bread for more like £5.00 a loaf - not cool. I'm doing this cleanse by choice, but it really does make me feel for people in the UK who have food allergies. The gluten-free ranges at all the major supermarkets carry something that sure looks like bread, but it's crammed full of potato or maize starch (gross) and a long list of ingredients I can't pronounce. My bread from Waitrose has three ingredients - and I've heard of everything on the list. Sounds good to me.

On the left is bread from biona, available at Whole Foods and on the right bread by The Village Bakery, available at Waitrose. The bag looks funny here as it had just come out of the freezer for this photo shoot. Love the statement on it: ' More than 80% agree Rye leaves you less bloated...' It's only day 5 of the cleanse, but I would have to agree.