cookery

Tomato Soup with a Kick

April 6, 2015 by Vicky 1 Comment

After experimenting with cooking sauces and soup from the raw ingredients I sometimes find pre-cooked food is not as nice as it used to be and can sometimes taste like it is full of sugar or salt.

I really like my Pumpkin Soup recipe and was very disappointed when trying a tin of soup from the supermarket this week. I had also bought a tin of tomato soup and didn’t want to experience the same thing so decided to give a home made tomato soup a go.

I wasn’t sure how much tomato to actually use so used fresh, tinned and puree in the recipe! I also added in some pepper (capsicum) and onion for added flavour. Here is my recipe for tomato soup with a kick.

Recipe:
250g cherry tomatoes chopped in half
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 small pot of tomato purée
Half a chopped red capsicum
1 small onion finely chopped
1 teaspoon of chilli (or to your preferred taste)
1 heaped teaspoon of garlic purée
500ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small pot of thickened cream

Method:
Firstly I chopped all of the ingredients up and placed them into the slow cooker on high for about 4 hours. I then let it cool overnight and placed it in the fridge during the day. I pureed it all (in our smoothie maker!) that evening and heated it through until bubbling in a saucepan.

The soup simmered for a few minutes before adding the cream when I brought it back to the boil and left it to simmer for a few minutes before serving with some bread

I also for a bit of luxury put some grated cheese in the bottom of the bowl before pouring in the soup!

This amount was enough for 4/5 bowls of soup and I’ve re-heated it and had it for lunch a couple of times this week too!

Home Comforts

August 28, 2014 by Vicky 2 Comments

I’ve been in Darwin for just over a year now and until 2 weeks ago the fact that we often wouldn’t get home until 6.30/7pm evening and that I only had a BBQ to cook with meant I was a lazy cook trying to cook the easiest and quickest things possible with little experimentation.

I’m actually far too excited about the fact we have a cooker with an oven AND a grill. We also bought a slow cooker which meant I can try to recreate the delicious stews my mum makes as well as casseroles and the like.

Reading this blog post on the Smitten by Britain blog today really got me thinking about the foods I miss from the UK and the dishes I’ve cooked that remind me of home and my mums amazing cooking.

Every winter at home in the UK means stew season and on the weekends I’d often wake to the smell of my mums beef stew being cooked ready for re-heating at lunchtime or for dinner. This stew tastes fantastic the first time it’s cooked but is even better when re-heated especially with dumplings!

I made a Darwin version although called it a casserole as seems strange to call it stew and to be eating stew when it’s about 25 degrees.

Here’s what it looked like :

To make the stew I basically placed the following ingredients in the slow cooker, cooked it on the fast cook setting for 4 hours and then cooked it for a further hour just before serving. The only thing I will change next time will be to add some corn flour to thicken the stock:

Stewing beef
Carrots
Onion
Swede
Turnip
Parsnip
Celery
1 litre beef stock
Worcester sauce
Pepper
Mixed herbs

I also had a craving for my mums cottage pie today and came up with this which we enjoyed a lot

The ingredients were:

Minced beef
One onion
Two carrots sliced
Handful of mushrooms
Handful of frozen peas
Vegetable stock (I used a stock pot and added about a cup and a half of boiling water)

For the topping
8 potatoes
Butter to mix
Drop of milk
Grated cheese

To make the cottage pie I boiled the potatoes and carrots and started them at the same time but only boiled the carrots for about 10 minutes. Next I cooked the minced beef until it was brown, added the onions and mushrooms until cooked then added the stock, Worcester sauce, water along with the carrots and peas and simmered this until the stock reduced.

Once cooked I spooned it into an oven dish and mashed the potatoes with butter and pepper adding a drop of milk at the end. Once mashed I spooned it on top of the mince mixture and spread some grated cheese on top before placing the oven dish into the pre heated grill for about 10 minutes before serving.

This was a great home cooked meal and I’m looking forward to trying some when I get home in just 23 DAYS!!!!

Creamy Salmon Pasta

May 28, 2014 by Vicky 2 Comments

In this post I mentioned that I had tried a delicious Salmon pasta at a restaurant in Darwin and wanted to give it a try and on Saturday night I gave it a go.

I’m not too confident on following recipes as I worry I will get them wrong or it won’t taste very nice because I’ve never tried it before. I also tend to use lots of pre-packaged mixes like pasta sauce rather than try to create it myself as we don’t really have a way of storing the ingredients you would need and it would be too expensive to keep buying them every time.

I started off by following this recipe or at least that is the one I found online standing in Woolworths trying to work out what ingredients I would need. When I looked a bit more I liked the look of this recipe as well so this dish is a bit of a combination of the two!

The ingredients for 3 people are:

Pasta of your choice – enough for the number of people who will be eating the dish
500g of smoked salmon – I used the pre packed sliced version but the salmon fillets would work and probably be a bit better as they would be more flaky
300ml of thickened cream
A spoonful of garlic paste
A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice – but add to taste
A handful of chives
Half a chopped red pepper (capsicum)
Half a chopped green pepper (capsicum)
Half a chopped medium sized onion
A handful of mushrooms roughly copped.

The Method:
I cooked the pasta and whilst it was cooking chopped up the peppers, mushrooms, onion and salmon into smaller pieces. Then when it was cooked I used the olive oil spray to cook the peppers mushrooms and onion altogether in the frying pan until softened.

Then I added the pasta which had been drained back in to the pan and cooked it for a minute with the vegetables before adding all of the cream and cooking for a further minute making sure all of the ingredients were cooked in the cream.

Next I added the garlic paste, lemon juice and chives in to the mixture and cooked for a further minute.

Finally I turned the heat off and in the salmon leaving it to cook for about a minute before serving it up.

The final result was good, it wasn’t like the version I had tried during the week but I think that was because I had added lemon to the dish and I am definitely not a chef. It was tasty and full of flavour which was good as I worried it would taste a bit bland. I might experiment a bit and leave out the lemon next time but we quite enjoyed it and there are left overs which will definitely be eat up over the next few days!

Aussie Burgers

April 7, 2014 by Vicky Leave a Comment

I haven’t done one of my “outback recipes” for a little while now so thought today’s dinner might be a good one for an update.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as an Aussie Burger but when I first visited Australia I had a burger which was very similar to this and called an Aussie Burger and so every often I make it for us. It seems a bit weird because of some of the ingredients but actually tastes so good, it’s definitely comfort food.

The recipe is also so straightforward and goes something like this:

For the Burgers the ingredients per person are…

2 x burgers
1 x burger bun
1 x slice of cheese
2 x slice beetroot
1 x pineapple ring (would suggest using the ones in juice not syrup)

Then just cook the burgers on the BBQ and pile them up with the other ingredients in the bun. I chose a slice of beetroot followed by a burger then slice of cheese, burger and slice of pineapple. You can add sauce like ketchup but it has quite a lot of flavour without the sauce.