broth – Bangers & Mash

Hot & sour soup with king prawns and salmon

February 7, 2015February 6, 2015Posted in Fish, RecipesTagged broth, chilli, coriander, prawns, salmon, soup, Thai, tom yam, tom yum6 Comments

This is the kind of food I crave if I’m feeling under the weather, suffering after a few too many red wines the night before, or simply have a dose of the blues. It’s clean and soothing, yet at the same time refreshing and a rip-roaring riot of flavour. With each slurpy spoonful you feel your physical and psychological health being reassuringly restored.

The broth has at its base chicken stock and tom yam (or yum) paste. Tom yam soup originates from Thailand and is popular across South East Asia, and the paste is made from galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and chilli. It has an irresistibly spiky, spicy, sour flavour, that wakes up your tastebuds and shakes them out of their doldrums. You can of course make up your own paste but I like to make life as easy as possible and generally have a pot of ready-made paste in the fridge. You can pick some up easily in most supermarkets and Asian groceries.

You can make your hot and sour soup simply with vegetables, or throw in some seafood and fish minutes minutes before serving, or a couple of handfuls of shredded roast chicken. I generally make both a fishy and a chicken version in our house as my husband doesn’t really eat fish, although he does cope with the fish sauce.

And I like to throw sliced chillies, seeds and all, in at the very last moment (after I’ve served the kids’ helpings). I adore that fantastically fiery hit of chilli to really clear the system. Tissues at the ready! You may like to add yours earlier to mellow their impact a tad, or leave them out altogether as the tom yam paste already has quite a kick to it.

Hot and sour soup with king prawns and salmon

1.5 litres chicken stock
1 tbsp tom yam paste
1 stick lemongrass, hard outer leaves removed, finely chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp caster sugar
200g green leafy vegetables, roughly chopped (I used Swiss chard)
1 salmon steak, cut into bitesize chunks
500g shelled raw king prawns
7 spring onions, sliced
3 red bird’s eye chillies, finely sliced
large handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Heat the chicken stock in a large saucepan and stir in the tom yam paste, followed by the lemongrass, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar.

Bring to the boil and simmer gently for a couple of minutes before adding the green vegetable. Cook for a few more minutes then add the chunks of salmon, king prawns and spring onion. Cook for a few more minutes until the salmon and prawns are just cooked through.

Stir in the sliced chillies and serve, sprinkled with the fresh coriander, and revive those senses.

I’m entering my hot and sour soup into the following challenges:

The Spice Trail (Temple Food) – Bangers & Mash
Cooking with Herbs – Lavender & Lovage
Extra Veg – Kerry Cooks, Utterly Scrummy and Fuss Free Flavours

Chicken soup with rice

March 18, 2014Posted in RecipesTagged broth, carole king, chicken, maurice sendak, really rosie, rice, soup22 Comments

I started writing this post about a week ago. Then it got put on hold as life, or rather death, got in the way.

Normally I wouldn’t write about very personal things on this blog; it’s a food blog after all, and people come here for food. But it just felt wrong to publish a new post without marking or acknowledging in some way the passing of my mother-in-law Judith who taught me so much about food.

Judith died last Wednesday and will leave a huge hole in our family in so many ways. She’s the one who taught me the trick to Aga rice, and showed me how easy it is to make soup – I recall the revelatory feeling when during one of our family holidays in France she took one look at what I thought was a sad collection of leftover vegetables and transformed them, with the ease which comes from family cooking for many years, into a truly delicious soup. So this is what proper cooking is really about, I remember thinking.

After my first Sunday lunch at Judith’s house, meat and two veg were never the same again. It is from eating well at Judith’s table that my own values around food developed – the importance of eating as a family, buying the best ingredients you can afford and eating seasonal and locally produced or reared produce whenever you can.

The last time I saw Judith in hospital I told her about having just seen Claudia Roden at the Bath Literature Festival. I was as excited as a school girl. Of course, it turned out that Judith and her husband Tom are actually old friends of hers. I wasn’t surprised.

There is so much more to tell you about Judith. Her family, her career, her art, her love of the countryside and of walking. But this isn’t the right place for a eulogy, people come here to hear about food. So here is the post I started last week.

* * *

There’s been a fair bit of illness in our house in recent months. The girls still have stubborn coughs they can’t shake off. It’s easy to tell when my daughters are genuinely unwell, as they normally have such insatiable appetites, my oldest daughter Jessie in particular. When they say they’re not hungry, you know something’s wrong.

This chicken soup with rice though was one of the few things that did go down well with both girls. My aunt shared some of her tips with me for feeding poorly babies over on Facebook and her suggestion of adding soy sauce and fish sauce to a simple chicken broth provided just the savoury combination of flavours to appeal to wonky tastebuds.

It might also have helped that Jessie has been on at me for ages to make chicken soup with rice. One of our favourite albums to play on car journeys is Really Rosie, Carole King’s brilliant soundtrack from 1975 for an animated short film based on stories by Maurice Sendak, including the fantastic The Sign on Rosie’s Door. There are so many great tracks on this album from the alphabet song Alligators All Around and the counting tune One Was Johnny to the deliciously comical cautionary tale of Pierre, a little boy who finally learns to care when he is eaten by a lion.

Not surprisingly, with our family fascination with food, Chicken Soup with Rice, a song to teach the months of the year, is the one we all love most.

Catchy, hey?

Ideal for using up Sunday lunch leftovers, this simple soup can be made in a matter of minutes from cold roast chicken and homemade stock. And if you don’t have homemade stock, use a really good quality chicken stock cube.

Chicken soup with rice

Serves 4

1 tbsp sunflower oil
4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
150g basmati rice
1.5 litres chicken stock
½ tbsp light soy sauce
½ tbsp fish sauce
120g cooked chicken, shredded
2 handfuls frozen peas

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the spring onions for a couple of minutes to soften.

Stir in the rice and cover with the chicken stock. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce and shredded chicken and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for 10 minutes until the rice is soft.

Add the frozen peas, bring back to a simmer and cook for a couple more minutes. Serve with love.

This is such a quick and easy dish to prepare, I’m entering it into this month’s Family Foodies challenge which I host with Louisa at Eat Your Veg. The theme this month is Fab Fast Food.

Beef broth with rice and vegetables

February 8, 2014February 10, 2014Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged beef, broth, Lea & Perrins, rice, soup, steak, vegetables, Worcestershire sauce4 Comments

While we all love to experiment in the kitchen, every cook has their favourite ingredients they use again and again in their meals. My usual suspects include garlic, chilli sauce, cream cheese and that Great British favourite, Worcestershire sauce.

I love the way Worcestershire sauce gives a comfortingly rich yet suitably spicy note to all your family staples. It makes a regular appearance in our cottage pies, casseroles and Bolognese sauces. But this is the first time I’ve tried it in a broth and it didn’t disappoint. Together with the soy sauce and beef stock, it creates a gorgeous, deeply meaty broth, just perfect with the tender slices of beef steak, crunchy vegetables and soft rice.

This dish was a winner with all the family, although I suspect my husband felt it would benefit from the addition of a little sliced chilli, but then he thinks that about most things I serve up. And it also tasted very good the next day when I heated up a pot in the office microwave for my lunch.

Beef broth with rice and vegetables

1 large sirloin or rump steak
vegetable oil
black pepper
1 litre beef stock
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, and a little more for frying the steak
1 tbsp light soy sauce
4 spring onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 carrots, peeled and cut into thin batons
half a butternut squash, peeled and cut into thin batons
120g basmati rice, rinsed
large bunch of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Heat a large frying pan. Brush the steak with a little vegetable oil and season with black pepper. Fry over a high heat for around 3 minutes on each side, shaking over a few drops of Worcestershire sauce as it cooks. Leave to rest on a warm plate.

Pour the stock into a large saucepan and heat. Add 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and one of soy sauce, and throw in the spring onions, garlic, carrot, butternut squash and rice. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook gently for around 10 minutes.

Divide the broth between 4 bowls. Thinly slice the steak and place on top of the broth. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.

If you’d like some more ideas on how to use Worcestershire sauce in your cookery, you should take a look at Lea & Perrins’ YouTube channel. They have created a series of recipe videos with British YouTubers Sorted Food, bringing all kinds of twists to classic family dishes, such as spaghetti Bolognese and cheese on toast.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Lea & Perrins.

Spicy duck broth with Savoy cabbage and noodles

November 16, 2012Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged booths, broth, cabbage, Chinese, duck, five spice, garlic, ginger, isla negra, merlot, noodles, riverford, savoy cabbage, soup, spice, spicy, star anise4 Comments

While duck isn’t the cheapest meat around, I’d happily eat meat-free for a few days to justify including it on my weekly meal plan. A deliciously succulent meat, it works wonderfully with strong, spicy flavours.

This broth is inspired by a Riverford recipe and features star anise, Chinese five spice, ginger and garlic, as well as that favourite of the veg box at this time of year, the Savoy cabbage. It is the perfect winter warmer, especially when you serve it with a little chilli sauce on the side.

I think the spicy broth would go very well with a glass of Isla Negra Merlot, a soft, easy drinking red wine I was lucky enough to sample the other night during #BoothsCheers,a special festive wine and beer tasting on Twitter organised by the British supermarket Booths. There will be more tastings on Wednesday nights between now and Christmas – maybe you’d like to take part next time? But anyway, enough about the drink and back to the food…

Spicy duck broth with Savoy cabbage and noodles

Serves 4

2 duck breasts
2 tsp Chinese five spice
1 tbsp vegetable oil
dash sesame oil
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
3cm fresh ginger, peeled and grated
half a Savoy cabbage, finely shredded
2 litres hot chicken stock
2 star anise
150g dried egg noodles
chilli and soy sauces to serve

Preheat the oven to 200ºC / gas mark 6.

Score the duck skin and rub in the five spice. Place the duck breasts on a rack in a roasting tin and roast in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to rest somewhere warm.

In a large saucepan heat the vegetable and sesame oils and fry the garlic and ginger for a minute before adding the Savoy cabbage. Stir fry for a couple of minutes and then add the hot stock and star anise.

Bring to a simmer and gently cook the cabbage for a couple of minutes. Then add the noodles and cook for around three more minutes until the noodles are just soft.

Pour the broth into bowls, using tongs to serve the noodles and cabbage. Slice the duck breast and place on top. Serve with some soy and chilli sauces on the side. And enjoy!