Chorizo and Green Pea Soup

It's starting to cool down now, and I'm going to Scotland where it is bound to be even cooler so I thought a flask of warming yet refreshing soup could work a treat for the long journey.

I really like the contrast of the fresh summery sweet peas with the earthy smoked sweetness of the chorizo. This is a good soup to eat warm, not hot or cold. The fat from the chorizo won't do you any favours if you eat it cold and hot you loose the balance of the flavours.

I used some chicken stock I made from a roast bird off of Peckham Farmer's Market but you can use chicken or vegetable stock cubes or powder, or just use water and cook some diced carrots and celery with the onion and season well.

This is meant to be easy and simple but satisfying, I served it with my Garlic and Sea Salt Focaccia and it worked beautifully. Squirrelface even went back for seconds.

Chorizo and Green Pea Soup

300g peas fresh (podded weight) or frozen

100g cured chorizo, skinned and finely diced

1 onion, diced

500ml stock or water

Salt and black pepper

Fry chorizo on a medium heat, allow it to let the redidsh golden fat come out and when there is enough to coat the pan add the onion and cook for 8 - 10 minutes until soft.

Meanwhile, boil the peas in the stock for 3- 5 minutes and move 150g peas, without stock, into the pan with chorizo and onion, the turn heat down low.

Blend the remaining peas with the stock until somewhere between chunky and smooth.

Add blended peas and stock to the pan and turn the heat up high, bring to a boil and turn off the heat.

Wait 5 minutes and serve in soup bowls with the focaccia as advised or any other delicious bread.

Picnic Time!

I'm not really one for worrying too much or obeying the rules of social etiquette but picnics are a social etiquette minefield. If I sit on the grass with a packaged sandwich and drink with friends is that a picnic? Must I have a hamper, cutlery, crockery and wine cooler for it to be proper? Where is the line? Is this something you’re doing to impress or just a lazy day down the park with a bottle of wine and some antipasto?

To settle any arguments and to salve my own harried brain, if you’re outside and you have a blanket and you’re eating and drinking then you have a picnic, what you eat or drink and where you get it from is down to you.

The current balmy weather has coincided with some old friends coming down from Liverpool, we've arranged to have a picnic on Saturday afternoon once the sun has cooled a touch and we’re able to laze about without the worry of sun burn or stroke. I think the key to picnic food is in having something that stores and travels well, doesn't denature or smell awful in hot temperatures and is easy enough to eat with your hands or, at a push, off of a paper plate with a plastic spoon. These rules all apply to the picnic spread below.

Click these links to the recipes!

Individual Crustless Cheese and Spring Onion Quiches

Barley, Greens and Ham Salad with a Lemon-Garlic Dressing

Balsamic Roasted Beetroot and Lentil Salad with Walnuts and creamy blue cheese

Pan Bagnat

Eton Mess Layer

Barley, Greens and Ham Salad with a Lemon-Garlic Dressing

This is a recipe adapted from Allegra McEvedy’s Economy Gastronomy, a very useful book when it comes to home economics and bursting with easy short-cut recipes. That was not an ad, just a heartfelt assertion. The gammon joint I cooked midweek adds a welcome textural and flavour counterpoint to the wholesome chewy barley, the fresh green veg and the fresh and pungent lemon garlic dressing. Simple to prep and put together, this salad keeps for around 3 days in the fridge and is great for lazy lunches, your packed lunch or a sprawling afternoon on a picnic blanket in your garden, any park or even a field.

As I adapted this from Allegra's recipe, so should you go crazy and do the same. I can see it working very well on a Monday lunchtime with some of Sunday's roast chicken mixed in, with some well drained chick peas and a teaspoon of harissa mixed in or some all-conquering chorizo finely chopped and mixed in. The key is to make sure the barley is cooked as per the instructions and that any green veg is blanched and refreshed - that way the salad will last up to 3 days. That is, if you don't eat it all straight away!

Barley, Greens and Ham Salad with a Lemon-Garlic Dressing

100g pearl barley (or spelt)
500ml stock
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped with salt to make a paste
Salt and pepper
400g green veg cut into small chuncks. Mangetout and sugar snaps can be kept whole
Juice of 1 lemon
50ml extra virgin olive oil
100g home cooked ham, diced

Bring the barley and stock to the boil, then simmer gently for about half an hour until you can see the barley through the liquid. Turn the heat right down and put a lid on until the barley is cooked. If there is still some liquid left, boil it hard until it's all gone. Take care not to let it stick to the bottom.

Once it's cooked, stir in half the garlic, season well and spread out on a plate to cool.

Rinse the pan, fill it with salted water and bring to the boil. Drop all your vegetables into it, stick a lid on and prepare a bowl of iced cold water.

When the veg  come back to the boil (2 to 3 minutes), strain and tip the blanched vegetables into the iced water . Once the veg are cool to the touch, drain.

For the dressing, mix lemon juice, olive oil ans seasoning until emulsified.

In a big bowl, mix together the barley, veg and ham with the dressing. 

Pain Bagnat

Widely lauded as the best kind of picnic sandwich, everyone has a version and a preference. I've seen some spread inside with cream cheese (a little cloying), lined with procuitto (a little chewy) and doused in red wine vinegar (a little sour). The only thing you can't have too much of in a pain bagnat is roasted Mediterranean vegetables. No tomatoes though - they will make this lovely moist and crisp sandwich simply soggy.

It's good to experiment with bread for this recipe, a day old fresh white crusty loaf is standard but feel free to have a go with wholemeal, seeded or even sour dough. As the recipe is French you could use some lovely artisan Franch bread but why waste an expensive loaf by ripping out all the good stuff? Supermarket bread will do. It helps if you have need for breadcrumbs in a recipe in the next few days, just blitz the inside of the loaf in the food processor and then store in an airtight bag in the freezer.

Aubergines, courgettes and peppers are the star of this show but can be nicely complimented by some milky mozerella, a bland cheese will work well here, don't deploy goat's cheese or blue cheese, it will overpower the vegetables. Some chopped olives season cheerfully, as does a handful of fresh basil, originally calling for red wine vinegar, I've used white balsamic for an extra sweetness.

Pain Bagnat

1 courgette

1 aubergine

2 peppers (any colour but green)

Jar of pitted green olives

2 red onions

6 baby portobello mushrooms

150g mozzerella

2 large handfulls of fesh basil

Large french style loaf

Oilive oil

Salt and pepper

Slice all the vegetables other than the mushrooms in to thin strips, season and oil.

Roast or grill individually until just charing, turning half way through.

Meanwhile, cut the loaf horizontally about a third down so that you can scoop the bread out of the middle and the lid. Make sure there is about a half inch of bread left all the way around for soaking up the juices. You can reserve the breadcrumbs and freeze for later.

Mash the olives and drain a few times in a sieve to remove brine, line the bread with the olives

Leave the vegetables to cool and drain of oil on kitchen paper.

Layer the bread, starting with the mozzerella, then the basil, peppers, aubergine, courgette, mushrooms and onions.

Put the lid on, wrap a few times round with cling film and put some tins or a heavy book on top and leave somewhere cool, preferably overnight.

Slice with a bread knife and enjoy while lazing in the sun.

Individual Crustless Cheese and Spring Onion Quiches

Pastry can be messy and breaks very easily in transit, by omitting it and serving these delights and using yogurt instead of cream means you have an easily transportable and relatively virtuous quiche. I've used spring onion as it has a sweetness when uncooked that red or white onions do not, which compliments the savoury umami-ness of the Cheddar and Parmesan cheeses.

This recipe can be easily adapted into an large quiche or for a quiche with a crust - either grease a bigger pan and bake for a little longer or blind bake shortcrust pastry for 10 minutes before egg washing and adding the filling.

Individual Crustless Cheese and Spring Onion Quiches

3 eggs

150ml/g low fat yogurt

50 g Parmesan, grated

50g Cheddar, grated

3 spring onions, snipped up with scissors

Salt and pepper

Set oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6, grease a 4 hole Yorkshire pudding tin or 8 holes of a muffin tin (it depends what you have to hand).

Beat all ingredients together and season.

Divide evenly  between your holes and bake for 10 minutes. 

When done, turn out on to kitchen roll and, when cool, layer with the paper in an air tight container and refridgerate until you embark on your picnic.

Or indeed eat straight away like a greedy guts.

Eton Mess Layer

The beautiful weather outside proposes a problem when it comes to fashioning a dessert, baking is out, ice cream will melt in transit, as will chocolate. Eton Mess initially seemed like a bad idea as the meringue would go soggy but i thought about layering it, so it is admittedly, less of a mess, until it hits the plate anyway.

Devilishly simple, berry fruits on the bottom, whipped double cream and broken up meringue. I made my meringue as I had some left over egg whites that I'd frozen. I made the meringue when a bit drunk before bed after daiquiris and dancing with icing sugar and baked on a very low heat until i got up about 7 hours later. I do like a good multi-tasked time saved picnic plan. Buying meringues is totally fine too, i was just being thrifty.

Eton Mess was never going to be a mess with me involved. Is it possible to be over organised? Or is it just anal and annoying? Either way, I have a picnic to attend.

Eton Mess Layer

200g red berry fruits, hulled if using strawberries.

1l double cream.

2 egg whites

3 tbsps icing sugar

Whisk egg whites to soft peaks and add tablespoon by tablespoon the icing sugar and whisk to stiff peaks. Put the oven on as low as you dare and cook for as long as you dare (if drunk). Otherwise 120C for 2 hours and check.

In a bowl or airtight container, layer the berries, cream and then broken up meringue.

Cover with cling-film/lid in fridge until read y to eat.

Eat.

See, devilishly simple.

Posh Egg and Chips

Summer peas are a treat by themselves...

However, the frozen kind are very nearly as good due to modern freezing methods meaning the sugar doesn't turn to starch, plus there's no time consuming podding to undertake. If you're like me and my mother, you'll enjoy the podding process - it's like picking your own berry fruit - one for the basket, one for your mouth, if you have a busy life or just can't be bothered then buy the frozen kind, pre podded peas, even at this time of year, just won't be as good from the supermarket as the frozen kind will be all year.

You won't have the opportunity to make pea-pod wine but your life may be less hectic and they'll be much tastier, as well as being available all year.

Enough of the pea eulogy. What I've done here is make something simple but feastingly delicious and a touch special. The wine and stock in the peas add a richness along with the pig fat and, depending on how you cook your eggs, the yolk mixing with these flavours being picked up by my flavoursome-but-healthy home-made chips is a real treat for the palate.

Any kind of pig product would work well here, I just happened to have some prosciutto style cured ham in the fridge after a food heavy visit from the Italian in-laws. White wine works well but experiment with red or even some fizz if you're feeling a bit decadent, it is posh after all.

Posh Egg and Chips

2 large or 4 medium potatoes

1/2 litre of half and half white wine and stock

400g peas

1 onion

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tbsp olive oil 

2 eggs

100g pork product (cured is best) shredded or pulled apart

Salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6

Cut the potatoes length-ways and slice into chips, i leave the skin on, if you want to peel, go ahead. Season liberally with the salt and pepper and mix with 1 tbsp olive oil and place in a non-stick baking tray.

Place in the oven and every shake every 10 minutes to get an even browning. Bake to your personally preferred crispiness. 

Meanwhile, in a large heavy based frying pan fry the onion and garlic slowly until sweet and translucent, then add the cured pork and turn the heat down and allow the fat to render but the meat should not crisp.

Add the peas and stir thoroughly, then add the stock and wine mix and boil vigorously for 5 minutes.

Crack the eggs on a turn the heat down, you still want to have some liquid in the pan, but not too much, and cook until done to your satisfaction.

Plate up with one egg each and serve with the chips on the side.