Leek and Potato Chowder

Today we will make Leek and Potato Chowder

in a gougère ring.


 

We also made Alice's tea scones which turned out light and fluffy,
 a big hit.



As an easy standby we made some cinnamon palmiers
    
and puff pastry christmas trees.
    





Lots of baking and all worth of being in the 3rd cookery book!

Beetroot soup and mushroom and goat's cheese gourgere

In the summer I entered a competition and gave my favourite vegan recipe: ie. Vegan Smoked Salmon and during my holiday I received an email that I had won an organic vegetable box from Cofco.I was delighted and grateful for this prize, but as I was away on holiday and my allotment was giving us so much produce, I asked if I could postpone the delivery until the Autumn.

Well, I felt that a bit of variety in our meals was preferable so I called them and they delivered a gorgeous box of organic fruit and vegetables.

With the beetroot we will be making Beetroot and orange soup


The mushrooms will go into the mushroom gougère

                  

and we will do the japanese Milk jelly with the kiwi's that were in the box, making good use of this lovely box and sharing the joy.

Japanese Milk Jelly

Ingredients 

400ml water

200ml milk

50g sugar

20g honey

4g agar

Fruit like satsumas, oranges, pineapples, kiwi

Method 

1. Bring water to a boil in a small pan, then turn down the heat to simmer. Add in the agar and stir well until it has dissolved.
2. Add milk, sugar and honey then stir every few seconds. Continue until the agar and sugar dissolved completely.
3. Pour it into 1 large or 2 small shallow dishes with fruits and let them cool down before placing them in the fridge to chill. (it will take 30-40 minutes to firm up).

GOATS’ CHEESE & WALNUT GOUGÈRES:

1. A very simple mixture of goats’ cheese, crushed walnuts, finely chopped pears and seasoning gets spooned into the split (and cooled) pastry choux: the juicy crunch of the pear works well with the flavour of the cheese. Blue cheese also works excellently here.

MUSHROOM GOUGÈRES:

Ingredients

Rapeseed oil

½ red onion finely chopped

300g mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 garlic cloves, chopped

½ teaspoon thyme leaves

1 tablespoon dry sherry

100g crème fraîche

1 tablespoon lemon juice

½ tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

1. In a large frying pan  heat the oil and fry the onion until soft but not coloured. 
2. Add the mushrooms, garlic and thyme. Cook over a high heat, stirring often, until the mushrooms are reduced in volume by about half, are buttery and soft and their liquid has evaporated.
3. Add the sherry and crème fraîche and simmer until the sauce has reduced. Stir in the lemon juice and parsley and season with salt and plenty of black pepper.
4. Cut each choux bun fully in half, fill with the warm mushroom mixture and serve.

Experimentation and adaptation

Today there was one recipe that I really wanted to do and that was Erika's demonstration of the agar agar that was given to me by a Japanese friend but I did not know what to do with it as the instructions were all in Japanese. In came our hero and Erika arrived with a pre soaked amount of agar agar and showed us how to make a delicious Fruit Jelly

Erika pre soaked the agar agar for 2 hours before she came to our kitchen.
She then drained it and chopped it fine.

Erika chopping the Agar Agar

.

Ingredients 

400ml water

200ml milk

50g sugar

20g honey

4g agar

Fruit like satsumas, pineapples, kiwi

Method 

1. Bring water to a boil in a small pan, then turn down the heat to simmer. Add in the agar and stir well until it has dissolved.
2. Add milk, sugar and honey then stir every few seconds. Continue until the agar and sugar dissolved completely.
3. Pour it into 1 large or 2 small shallow dishes with fruits and let them cool down before placing them in the fridge to chill. (it will take 30-40 minutes to firm up).

Thank you Erika for showing us how to make it!

As autumn as well and truly arrived,  this morning I harvested all the late (July) sown carrots in my garden.
   
 They were small but enough to make a tasty Carrot and Ginger Soup (VG)with. Melendra chopped some almonds as a topping for the soup

For the recipe we needed butterbean but as there were none in the shop we used rinsed baked beans and the recipe turned out lovely and creamy.
We used some of the carrot tops to make a pesto with and stirred through the soup.  There was loads of it which I put in the freezer for future use.

The pesto called for parmesan cheese, as we were trying to make it as much plant based as possible, we made the parmesan cheese with cashew nuts, garlic powder salt and nutritional yeast.
The nuts we used were hazel nuts (picked from Michael's garden) (thanks Li  and Melendra
for shelling them all!)


We even had time to have a walk to the allotment, harvest the Spinach in the sunshine

and make the polpette for our main meal, Orzo and spinach Polpette, a tasty and colourful dish.

The frost got the Butternut squash, so we need to eat it soon.

For the last few weeks the large pots in the garden was filled with a combination of butternut squashes Uchiki Kuri pumpkins, and a variety of ornamental gourds. It looked so colourful and cheerful. And then, the frost arrived. I totally forgot to take them inside so lost most of them.
I rescued the lovely deep orange Uchiki Kuri pumpkins, composted all but the butternut squash.
With only a small patch affected, I decided to turn it into a Thai Butternut squash soup.


We made some faken bacon which went down very well.













We made some oven roasted Spicy Brussels Sprouts with Thai Peanut butter sauce.
First we made the peanut butter, and then added the lime, chili flakes, sesame oil, soya sauce, coconut milk, garlic and ginger. We all agreed it was a winner of a sauce.



After a damp and chilli start of the session, the sun came out, so we took this opportunity to have a walk in the garden. Rurie spotted the last handful of apples on the stepover trees. We all had a mouthful each (very small apples) but they were sweet and juicy. Next year I will thin them out more so we get a few more mouthfuls each!.

As the brussels sprouts and the cranberries reminded June of Christmas, we talked about Christmas traditions and in my case Sinterklaas, how we celebrate it and what food we eat.
We enjoyed our meal very much and look forward to the next meal together.

Pumpkin Soup, falafels, sweet chilli jam and beetroot wraps

Melendra brought the pumpkin flesh from Halloween which we turned into 5-spice pumpkin Soup
We felt the soup came out a little watery, but after adding a whole can of coconut milk, it became a deliciously creamy soup.

We then made falafels followed by sweet chilli jam  we used 3 chillies in this recipe and even after taking out the seeds, it still had a kick. So depending on hot you want it to be, adjust the chillies to taste.

We served some beetroot wraps (vegan and gluten free) the stuffing we changed a little and added freshly pick spinach, kidney beans, sweetcorn, some of last week's smoked' salmon and a pumpkin puree.  Personally I thought it was rather dry and would have been great with some cream cheese to stick it all together.

We went to the allotment for some fresh air and a few handfuls of spinach

The group liked it though, so that is the most important issue.

Ingredients  for the falafel: 

1  can chickpeas  

2 tablespoon minced garlic   

1 medium finely chopped onion   

2 tablespoons fresh finely chopped parsley

1 teaspoon coriander 

¾ teaspoon cumin 

½ teaspoon salt

Pepper (to taste)

2 tablespoons flour

Oil for frying

Method

1. Combine chickpeas, garlic, onion, parsley, coriander, cumin, salt, and pepper (to taste) and  flour and combine in a blender. You want the result to be a thick paste.
2. Form the mixture into small balls, about the size of a ping-pong ball. Slightly flatten.
3. Fry in until golden brown (2 to 5 minutes).
4. Serve falafel with couscous, in a wrap  and is delicious with a sweet chilli sauce.

A recipe for glue to put on labels:

Thick Glue

Pour 5 cups of water into a saucepan. Bring the water to a full boil.

Place 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour and 1 cup of cold water in a bowl. Stir the ingredients until smooth.

Pour the flour mixture into the boiling water. Reduce the heat and gently boil the solution for 2 to 3 minutes until it thickens.

Remove the glue from the stovetop. Allow the glue to cool before you use it. Store the glue in a covered jar or bowl for 2 to 3 days.

Setting up the vertical garden

The weather was lovely, chilly but sunny, so we took the opportunity to fill the plastic 2 litre water bottles with the strawberry runners. Hopefully they will give us some deliciously sweet and juice strawberries in June.

Afterwards we made rice and  a mung bean curry with flat bread.
          

We brushed the flatbead with butter, garlic and parsley (fresh from the garden)

and another lovely afternoon with some great friends.