Fridge Soup

Sometimes life doesn't entirely go to plan. Take this weekend, for instance. I should've been in Nice running a marathon. I'm currently at home in a onesie making soup. So you see my point?  I'd like to get upset about this and throw some outrage at the situation. But I'm a firm believer in owning up when you've managed a situation poorly.  

I currently have an injured leg.  My knee is painful, which has been caused by my IT band tightening, which was caused by physio intended to fix my overloaded hamstrings.  My hamstrings are overloaded because my glutes are horrendously lazy and do not fire at all.  They just don't activate.  So here's my confession.  I found out about the issues with my glutes over a year ago when I had a biomechanical assessment as part of my membership induction at Charlotte Ord Academy. And I have done nothing about it.  So I can't get angry about not being able to run this marathon.  I'd love to be able to pass the blame for my poor performance onto someone, something else. But I can't.  It's all my own doing.  I have got better at doing my rehab exercises over these past few weeks, but it was far too late to be any help.

I had secretly held out some hope that I'd get to Nice and feel just fine on the day and glide along 42km of the Riviera coastline like some kind of bad ass, but walking around a golf course for nearly six hours in the pissing rain on Friday put paid to any of those notions.  My legs were fine at the start of the day, but as time went on and I creaked around 18 holes as an auctioned caddy for my friend's memorial golf day, it became clear that my legs would not be up to the task of a marathon.  I headed home afterwards to pack my bags and get an early night before my 06:25 flight to Nice.  

It was as I dithered around the flat in a desultory fashion that I realised that I didn't want to go.  I had been determined to go to Nice anyway, as my flights and hotel were non refundable.  And it's a nice place, Nice. But I didn't want to go there. On my own. In November. To not run a marathon.  So I decided to stay home for the weekend. And immediately felt less anxious.  I felt even more cheerful as I headed to Guildford to collect Murdoch from the Dog House and started to look forward to a weekend spent snuggling with the mutt. Perfection.

Which brings me to this week's exciting batch cook up

Fridge Soup

This is a simple recipe, with no need for a sous chef, which is handy, as mine is nowhere to be seen.

Where's Murdoch?

This soup is basically another really simple way of using up whatever veg you might have lurking in the fridge.  I had plenty, as I have started getting veg boxes from Abel & Cole again.  I am a big fan of the veg box, especially as Abel & Cole have changed things up to give you more control over what you get in each box.  However, with that said, there are times when the amount of veg in the fridge reaches panic levels.  Especially when you've spent all week shoving the veg aside to get to the pizza and eat that instead.  Come on, we've all been there.  

Firstly, I chopped up a couple of leeks, a couple of onions and some garlic.

Vampires can't get within 200 yards of me right now.

Then I warmed up some butter in my most enormous saucepan and chucked them in on a low heat to gently soften.

I've sprung a leek!

While that was going on, I chopped up some more veg: parnsips, carrots (including some lovely purple carrots, so nice to get the different kinds to mix it up a bit) and threw that in the saucepan.

A lovely, colourful mixture of root veg

 I chopped up some cabbage and threw that in too.

Cabbage

Then I threw some potatoes in, what's the point of soup without potatoes? Hell, what's the point if life without potatoes?

If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be the humble potato.

I grabbed a couple of handfuls of lentils to add some bulk, rinsed them thoroughly and put them in the saucepan too.  

Adding a bit of bulk

I seasoned with plenty of sea salt and black pepper, chucked in a couple of vegetable stock cubes and lots of boiling water and left it all to bubble away on a low - medium heat for an hour or so.

Bubbling soup

Because I hate having chunks in my food, I got my hand blender out and blended the soup until smooth.

Smooooooooooooth soup

As I was feeling decadent, I served with a swirl of single cream and a buttered slice of granary bread. 

Hearty

As I write this, the soup is still hotter than the surface of the sun. So I haven't put it into portion containers yet. But I think it'll be around 6 - 8 portions, which will see me through most of the week.

Hearty Mince

I'm not a chef. I'm not even much of a foodie. I could quite happily eat the same five meals between now and when I die and not really feel too worried about the situation. Which means that cooking gigantic vats of food to eat across the week really suits my temperament, as well as my schedule.

And there's something about this time of year, just after the clocks go back, that makes me feel all autumnal and jolly and quite in the mood to batch cook the crap out of something. So tonight I cooked..... well I'm never entirely sure what to call it. Is it a bolognese if you're not serving it on pasta? Is it a chilli if it has no kidney beans? I have no idea. So instead, I'm going to call it 

Hearty Mince

The first thing to note about making hearty mince is the invaluable nature of the sous chef. Mine is quite keen on veg preparation, but soon loses interest thereafter.

Murdoch loves raw carrot

There is no set recipe for this meal, not really. I look at what veg I've got in the fridge, pop to the supermarket to add what else I fancy and chop it up quite finely, as I don't like having big chunks of stuff in my food. This time round I had onion, garlic, leeks, chillis (with seeds left in for a bit of ooomph), carrot, courgette (not chopped in this picture as I ran out of room on the chopping board), fresh peas and edamame.

Chop veg finely. Or don't. It's your dinner, have it how you like.

Once you've got your veg ready to go, heat up a bit of butter (or olive oil) and chuck the veg in a big pan to soften on a low heat. I left the peas and edamame out at this stage, to be added later.

Probably at least fifteen of your "five a day"

Next, turn up the heat a bit and add some mince. I bought two large (750g) packets of extra low fat beef mince from Tesco and forgot to take a picture of it cooking, mostly because my pan isn't really big enough to accommodate that much meat, so there was quite a bit of unseemly swearing at this stage. Please imagine a picture of a metric fucktonne of beef mince browning off with the veg. Thanks. After it was all browned off, I drained it a bit, as there was quite a bit of liquid at this stage.

Starting to look quite tasty

Add some herbs, stock cube, salt and pepper (and if you fancy it, a spoonful of Marmite. But not coffee, as Sainsbury's seem to be suggesting. WTF Sainsbury's?! Give it a rest), some tomato purée and a couple of cartons of chopped tomatoes. Lower the heat again and let it bubble away for a bit.

Add the peas and edamame

Near the end of the cooking, I added the peas and the edamame. They only need a light steam, so best add them towards the end, otherwise you risk ending up with green mush.  I popped the lid on so that all of the steam stayed in and left it alone for about 10 minutes.

Everything tastes better with cheese on it. FACT.

This made eight nice sized dinners, which you could serve with pasta, rice, quinoa, couscous, veg or even eat just by itself. As you can see, I've popped some grated cheese on top to serve.

My final top tip is to decant into individual dinner sized containers, especially if you're a greedy bugger like me.  Then you have ready to go portions, rather than spooning gigantic helpings out of one big tub and wondering why it only lasted a day (come on, we've all been there).

Yum!

Monsieur, wiz zis second post in one day you are really spoiling us!

I just had to share my super delicious dinner with everyone - mostly courtesy of my dad and the excessive crop of runner beans his garden has produced this year. Seriously, he's drowning in them, especially with mum away in Costa Rica and therefore not doing her share of bean eating.  He's had to put about a hundred weight of them into the freezer.  However, I digress.

According to my calorie calculator each serving is about 535kcal, so it doesn't break the bank as evening meals go.

Runner bean & parma ham risotto (courtesy of tastes of summer)

Serves 4

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 20-25 minutes

Ingredients:

250g runner beans, topped and tailed, side strings removed if necessary and sliced thinly on the diagonal 

1 tablespoon olive oil 

25g butter 

1 medium onion, finely chopped 

350g arborio rice (or other risotto rice) 

1 – 1.2 litres hot chicken or vegetable stock 

6 slices Parma ham, cut into ribbons 

75g Parmesan cheese, grated, plus extra to serve 

Small handful of basil leaves, shredded 

Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the prepared runner beans and cook the beans for about 4 minutes, or until just tender. Drain and set aside while you cook the rice.

2. Heat the olive oil and the butter in a large heavy-based saucepan. Add the onion and gently fry for a few minutes until softened but not coloured.

3. Add the rice to the pan and stir for a couple of minutes. Have the hot stock in a separate pan and keep it at a gentle simmer. Add a couple of ladles of the hot stock to the rice and cook over a gentle heat, stirring frequently, until the stock has been absorbed into the rice. Continue to add the stock to the rice, one ladle at a time, stirring after each addition until it has been absorbed. After 18-20 minutes the risotto should be cooked – it should be creamy and the rice grains tender but retaining a little ‘bite’. You may not need to use all the stock.

4. Add the cooked runner beans, Parma ham, Parmesan and basil to the cooked risotto. Add a little more stock, if necessary, and season to taste.

5. Serve the risotto with shavings of Parmesan and black pepper.

6. ENJOY!