a busy domestic blog of knitting, sewing and all kinds of needlecrafts, cooking my garden produce and preserving it
Showing posts with label Nigel Slater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigel Slater. Show all posts

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Recipe testing - Nigel Slater's Tender vol 1 - A rich root and cheese soup for a winter's day

A long rambling title but this is really parsnip soup. I've a mammoth 4-5 inch diameter parsnip to use and happened on this recipe while trying to find my 'normal' one, so thought I'd give it a go.
Soups are always easy to make - in this case basically take two parsnips, onion, garlic, chilli flakes and turmeric, and boil in veg stock. I did encounter a couple of problems with the wording of the recipe though.
As I say, I've an enormous parsnip to use so I'm cutting slices off as I want them - which led to the first problem; the recipe calls for 2 large parsnips. How large is a large parsnip? I'm not a stickler for them, but it's one of those times when weights and measures can be handy.
The second problem - again with the parsnips - was there was no indication of how small to chop them. In fact it seemed to say pop them in the pan whole. Anyway, I chopped them into small dice as quicker to cook, and after that everything went well.
I didn't have single cream, as called for in the recipe, to hand, so stirred in some milk at the end - it was still creamy enough. I also skipped the cubes of cheese Slater suggests adding, so technically mine was just "a rich root soup" but still delicious and different to my normal 'curried parsnip soup'.

Friday, 16 November 2012

Testing - Tender by Nigel Slater #1



          Chickpeas with pumpkin, lemongrass and coriander


Part of the continuing search for interesting new pumpkin recipes.....



I started out knowing I would have to substitute a few things - tinned chickpeas instead of dried, lemon instead of lemon grass and, most interesting as I knew the theory but have never tried it out, d-i-y coconut milk from dessicated cocnut. I then realised I didn't have the stem ginger and forgot to add coriander at the end!

Despite what seems like a catalogue of errors, this worked quite well. It wasn't a complicated recipe but I should have sorted the spices - the recipe calls for ground coriander and turmeric, cardamom pods and a chilli rather than adding a 'curry powder' - before I started cooking instead of hunting round in the cupboard while the pans got hot. It was a little too 'hot' for me but our home-grown chillies are unpredictable in heat - even so, another time I might add less.