Recipe : Butternut Squash Soup (Vegan Option Possible)

Now that we are officially in Autumn here in London, there are lovely squashes and pumpkins appearing in the market. I normally just roast them as a side with dinner, but with today's rain, I decided that what I wanted was a nice hearty soup.

I've garnished the soup with a bit of San Danielle prosciutto and Grana Padano Cheese for flavour, but that's completely optional. Without the cheese / prosciutto / bacon garnish, the dish is vegan.

Ingredients :

1 Butternut squash (about 1kg) - peeled, deseeded, chopped
2 red onions chopped large
6 garlic cloves halved
1 small - medium potato - skinned and chopped
4 - 5 red chillies (you can deseed them, if you don't want it spicy)
1.25 litres stock (chicken or vegetable)
2-3 pinches of rosemary (less if using the dried version)

Salt to taste

Garnish Options :

Use any combination you like, but don't use more than three

2 strips of prosciutto / bacon - the fattier the better 
A few slivers of cheese

Chives - chopped
Fresh cream
Extra Virgin Olive oil or a seed oil

Chilli Flakes

Roasted nuts

Method:
Take a large heavy bottom soup dish and heat it.
Crisp up the 2 bacon slices if using. (Prosciutto is used - as is)
Remove the bacon and let the oil remain in the pan.
Crumble the crisped bacon.

If not using bacon, add a little olive oil to the pan.

Fry the squash, potato, onions and garlic on low heat till they start to char a bit.

(You can roast them in an oven too if that is easier for you)

If you do not have a stick blender, cool the vegetables and puree them in a food processor / mixi with the chillies and rosemary.
Heat the stock in the same pan and slowly add the pureed mixture back to the pan, stirring well.

If you have a stick blender, add the stock to the vegetables.
Add the chillies and rosemary.
Give it a good boil.
Use a stick blender to puree the mixture.

Bring to a boil and cook well.

You can add a little cream or a melting cheese at this point, if you want to make the soup richer.

Serve in bowls, with your choice of garnish.

Freshly crumbled crispy bacon adds fantastic taste and texture.

Roasted nuts will givea good balance of texture too.

The chillies gave just the right amount of kick to elevate the sweetness of this soup.

The rosemary and chives worked well together. Don't overdo the rosemary as it can be quite a powerful flavour, you just want hints of it in the soup.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe in Delicious Magazine.

Without the bacon or cream, this is also a good soup to have on the GM diet.

Serve it with some bread, if you want to make a whole meal out of it.

Recipe : Bacon & Cheese Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms (Veg Option also)

I know I have not posted anything on my blogs for awhile. Please excuse me, we have been in the middle of another International Relocation and this time the paperwork to move our cat with us was quite maddening! It led the dh to exclaim "It would be easier to take a 100 illegal labourers from India to the UK, than to legally move a cat!"

Christmas was extremely quiet after a very long time. We have hosted the family Christmas in our house for the last few years, so it was a bit depressing to be just the 2 of us and the cat for Christmas Day. Especially since Christmas for me has always meant spending it with family. This is the 3rd Christmas of my life, when I haven't been able to spend it surrounded by my parents and siblings.

To make me feel better and snap out of missing everyone at home, we visited the Southbank Christmas Market, went for the Carol Service at St Pauls, Christmas Mass at the 12th Century St James Church next door to our house and finally Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park. Christmas here is very different from Christmas in the US (and also India, Egypt and Dubai) All the locals seem to leave town and the city is filled with tourists from the rest of UK and the rest of Europe.

In all our jaunts across town, I rarely hear English being spoken between people, unless it is a business transaction. The guys from whom we bought our phone connections were from India and Sri Lanka. Our Coffee Shop guys all speak fluent Italian (I still follow bits of conversation) and I had a broken Arabic conversation with an Algerian managing a French Pattiserrie.. We had a brilliant meal last week at Daquise - a Polish restaurant. Our neighbours in the building are from Japan and Australia. Yes, we seem to have landed in the middle of a much larger melting pot.

I've been using the oven a lot here (until our shipment of personal furniture and crockery arrives in February, I am making do with rental stuff and they are more conducive to roasts and baking, than dal chawal type meals)

So today I just quickly whipped up a batch of these Bacon & Cheese Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms in about 20 minutes from start to finish and they were very yum.

Ingredients:
4 Large Portobello mushrooms
salt & pepper to season
Mexican chipotle flakes (my new favourite ingredient, they lend a lovely sweet, spicy, smoky taste to everything - you can substitute with regular chilli flakes)
a handful of bacon lardons - chopped (Marks & Spencer had a special festive bacon lardons on sale which added more flavour to the dish)
a handful of meltable cheese - grated (I usd a mature cheddar)
2-3 drops of oil

Method:
Dab the bottom of the mushroom with a bit of oil to prevent sticking.
Preheat the oven to 200C
Season the mushrooms with salt, pepper and chilli flakes (or any herbs of your choice)

Add a few chopped lardons on top of each mushroom.

Top with grated cheese

Pop in the oven for about 10 minutes (depending on the size of your mushrooms)

Serve hot with bread (to mop up the mushroom juices)

Optional : Garnish with chopped herbs of your choice


Option : 
You can make it Vegetarian, by omitting the bacon and mixing 2 types of grated cheese and some chopped herbs like chives.

If you want more substance, substitute the bacon with seasoned mashed potatoes

Recipe : Bacon Wrapped Roast Chicken

For Christmas this year, I wanted to make a special roast. I'd seen a picture of a Bacon Wrapped Roast Chicken somewhere on the web and thought it was a great idea, especially since everything tastes "Better with Bacon". The picture I saw, didn't have a recipe, so I just decided to upgrade my Roast Chicken with Duxelles

Ingredients:
1 roasting chicken with skin - around 1kg
1 quantity duxelles (from 400gm mushrooms) at room temperature
1 tsp salt
juice of 1 lime
200 gm packet of bacon (with some fat at least)

Method:
Clean the chicken well, especially the inside and dry
Rub the chicken with a mixture of lemon juice and salt, both inside and outside and keep for 10-15 minutes.
Stuff the chicken with the duxelles and if you can get the skin loose, pack some duxelles between the skin and the flesh.
(My butcher here in Ahmedabad, ends up tearing the skin when he de-feathers the chicken and unless I clean my chicken myself, I have to make do with what I'm given)

Note: When making the duxelles for this dish, I added some finely chopped bacon to the mix too.

Wrap the chicken with bacon slices, in any pattern you choose. I tried the checkerboard pattern to try and match the picture that I had seen, but since the bacon I bought wasn't in straight lines, it doesn't look as neat as the original picture I had seen.

I also used 2 extra legs in the dish, so there would be enough thighs and drumsticks to go around the table.

The chicken does not need basting, because the fat from the bacon will keep it nice and moist.

Roast in a preheated oven at 200C for about an hour and a half.
Keep an eye on the chicken as it roasts and increase or decrease the time as needed.

You can serve your chicken completely cooked but moist, or slightly crispy. We liked the bacon slightly crisped up.

Serve hot with a herby Italian bread or a simple pasta.

Variation :
1/2 kg boneless chicken breasts
4 tbsps cream cheese
1/2 tsp black pepper freshly crushed
1 tsp mixed herbs
6 slices bacon
salt to taste

Method:
Flatten & then marinate the chicken for 15 minutes in salt and pepper.
Fold the herbs into the cream cheese.
Layer an oven proof bowl with the chicken, the cream cheese and the bacon on top.
Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for about 45 minutes..

Recipe: Grilled Breakfast Hash & Eggs

I've been extremely remiss with this blog for a couple of months and its only fair to let you - my readers know why. First our cat whom we adopted 4 years ago and who has shifted 3 countries with us was sick with a very serious case of jaundice and we almost lost her. Fortunately the brilliant doctors at CGS Hospital, whom we went to for a second opinion before putting her to sleep were able to save her with intense medication, 6 hourly drips and constant care over a month. Not a very conducive mindframe for cooking, you must admit.

As soon as she was fit to travel, we moved from Delhi to Guwahati and had to live in the guesthouse for a month until we found a place of our own to move into. Couldn't step on the cooks toes, by taking over the kitchen here, could I?

Setting up house in Guwahati has been a challenge because of supply issues. We are now in the North East of India and can completely sympathise with the general feeling of being cut off from mainland India.

Guwahati is a small town, supplies of manufactured products have to come in from Calcutta or Delhi. Basic food items that I took for granted like skimmed milk, 30 liter water jars and yoghurt are just not available here, forget gourmet cheeses and sauces. If I want chicken, I have to buy the whole chicken from the market, no special cuts. (I've finally found a guy who supplies boneless chicken) If I want to buy mutton, I have to take whatever the guy at the butcher shop decides to give me and it is minimum 70% of bones and skin and kidneys and liver.

Fish is river fish and we are sea fish eaters. Vegetables are completely seasonal (a concept I confess I had forgotten) and there are a lot of them that I have never seen before. A couple of trials cooking them and the tastes still haven't grown on us. Food items are expensive. Coconuts are 50Rs a piece. Tomatoes 45Rs a kilo. Mutton (70% bones and skin & spare parts) 250Rs/kilo. And on top of all of this I have a really tiny kitchen. I've never before worked in such a tiny kitchen.

Plus in the last 4 months since we moved, I've made trips to Delhi, Shillong, Canada and London and the dh has been travelling much more than that. So I haven't really found a reason or the inspiration to cook. I'm not someone who decides a menu and then goes out shopping. I go out to the market, see what looks freshest and what inspires me and then I bring it home and dishes suggest themelves in my head as I start prepping my ingredients.

So its been a challenge for me to cook anything more than dal-chawal-sabji and if its just me at home, its chawal and chutney pudi or achaar.

However, its also quite depressing for me to keep eating unimaginative food, so I have to kick myself out of this rut and find ways to work with the limited ingredients I can buy here or carry from Delhi in a suitcase when I visit.

Today the husband asked for something baked with eggs and cheese, so I immediately remembered a recipe for Bacon Hash and Broiled Eggs that I read just yesterday in my quest for online inspiration and thought I could tweak it to accomodate the ingredients that I had in my cupboards. Hopefully I can keep finding enough inspiration to keep our meals exciting, so wish me luck!

Ingredients:

100 gms Bacon (thats all I had left) cut into strips across the grain
2 large potatoes diced (not too fine, but small enough to cook quickly))
1 large onion diced (I kept the pieces large enough to be able to bite into and taste their caramalised flavour in the finished dish)
2 tsp kasundi (local whole grain mustard) for flavour
400gms of corned beef
7-8 eggs
salt & pepper to taste
100 gms of cheese (I used a mixture of smoked cheese and mozarella)

Method:
In a large pan, fry the bacon until it renders the fat.
Then add the potatoes and onions and cover and cook for a while.

When the potatoes are half cooked, add the corned beef and mustard and stir well. I did not add any salt because the bacon and corned beef were salty enough. So test your mixture before adding any salt.
Keep frying till the mixture is dry and starting to crisp up.

Turn the gas off and start plating this mixture into ramekins, leaving enough space on top for the egg and cheese. I got 7 ramekins.

Drop a raw egg on the top of each ramekin and sprinkle with a little pepper (I again avoided salt because of the processed meats)

 

While the original recipe calls for broiling, I set the microwave on grill and grilled the ramekins for 4 minutes.
As soon as the eggs look cooked well enough for your taste (we like them a little runny) take the ramekins out.

Sprinkle cheese on top of the eggs and grill again for 2 minutes or until the cheese melts.

Serve hot.

While this seems like a classic breakfast combination, we had this quite happily for dinner. The dh loved it with toast and I just had it with a salad on the side.

 

Kim's Tips:
From what I saw today, it would be better to make a well in the centre of the mixture in the ramekins. The yolk will then stay in the center. If the yolk does not directly touch the sides of the ramekin, the risk of it splitting open is minimised.

Do not press the mixture in tight into the ramekins, you will lose texture when the ingredients get smashed.

You can cook the mix as long as you like before grilling. Personally, we prefer it crispy rather than soft.


Note: All cheese and cold meat was carried from Delhi/London on my last trip.

Reminiscence: British Style Breakfast

I can eat so called "British style breakfast" at any hour of the day or night. My husband finds it really wierd that I can eat it at midnight, just before settling in for the night. I used to order it at the British Community Association - BCA in Cairo around 8pm and I regularly order the Santa Fe Skillet at the All American Diner at IHC whether its before or after an evening of theatre.

In a strange way, this is comfort food for me. In the days when I did eat breakfast, while I was going to school, Mum would rustle up bread and eggs-to-order each morning. We'd get exotic cheeses or bacon or ham, if dad had just returned from one of his trips. The locally made cured meats (from Farm Stores in Mallikatta or this guy who had a cold freeze near Shedigudda) were extremely expensive in those days and were only bought if one of the 4 of us had done very well in our exams.

So a solid breakfast with baked beans, and cold meats in addition to the bread and eggs either meant that dad was home or we were celebrating a minor scholastic success. It meant all 6 of us gathered around the dining table in our little apartment quickly sharing a meal before running off in our respective directions.

Potatoes were never a part of this morning feast at mums, so I never add hash browns or mashed potatoes or fries when I make this meal at home.

I normally start with a cured meat - bacon, ham or sausages. Once this has been fried, I pop in some onions saute for awhile and then add sliced mushrooms with a little salt and pepper and fresh or dried herbs depending on my mood at the moment. This provides the veggies and fibre for the meal. Once I've plated this, I fry an egg or 2 in the pan. The egg absorbs the flavours of the onion, mushrooms and cooks in the meat fat. The eggs go into a different plate. I then warm up some bread in the pan since I prefer lightly warmed bread to toast.

I occasionally spoon a teaspoon or 2 of baked beans onto the plate, but mostly I just use tomato sauce. I love tomato ketchup with omlettes and scrambled eggs.

Recipe: Bacon, Onion and Cheddar Biscuits

I've been following the Brown Eyed Baker (Michelle) since quite awhile. But with the moving and the power outages, I haven't baked for quite awhile. (I bake in my microwave)
Today being a Sunday, the chance of a power outage was much lower and I thought it would be great to make these Bacon, Onion and Cheddar Biscuits as a snack/ light dinner, for the husband who was watching the cricket 20-20 finals. Michelle's Bacon, Onion and Cheddar Biscuits are adapted from the Pioneer Woman's Bacon, Onion and Cheddar Biscuits. But I followed Michelle's Recipe

It was pretty quick to assemble (Didn't need to bring out the mixer) and the smell of baking cheese has left the house smelling heavenly. The cat was wandering around head tilted upwards, sniffing all over the place.

For my first lot, I just loosely placed the dough in the muffin pan.

For the second lot, I shaped the biscuits into smoother shapes and these looked much better as a finished product.

While I did use my hands to mix the first few ingredients, I think its essential to use a plastic/rubber/silicone spatula once you add the cheese. Otherwise the heat of your hands could melt the cheese into indistinguishability.

Although the Brown Eyed Baker recommends 20-22 minutes at 375F (190C), I found that I needed to bake my biscuits for 35 minutes at 200C. The good thing with baking in a micro is that you can see the colours of the baked goodies, without opening the oven and letting cold air in.

What would I change?
I diced the onion quite fine this time, but I would chop it a little larger next time. The sweet onion was a nice contrast to the salty bacon and salty cheese and I would have liked to taste more of it.
I'd like to experiment with different herbs in the mix. Some thyme or oregano might go well.
Freshly cracked pepper  might be awesome.
I think this recipe would also taste good with flavoured cheeses. I have some Moroccan spicy cheese in the fridge, I might try that next.

The husband found them a little dry after the 2nd one and wanted ketchup on the side. Any ideas on how to decrease the dry feeling in the throat (compounded by the saltiness of the cheese and bacon)?

Any ideas on what to serve this with?

I was thinking olive oil and balsamic vinegar dip.
Something light, without strong flavours, just to add a bit of moistness while eating.

Equipment needed: