Quick Nourishing Green Soup, Using Left-Over Fresh Herbs

A fresh & grassy soup that's quick to make, intensely nourishing and delicious served with a dobble of cream and sequins of olive oil.

Quick Healthy Green Soup, Using Left-Over Fresh Herbs.

My herb-management system is abysmal, I have to admit. Every week I buy many packets of fresh herbs, and pick bunches from my garden as I need them, but about half of this harvest goes to waste because the leaves wilt in the fridge. They're still edible, but not perky enough to use in salads or as garnishes for other dishes. I abhor food wastage, so over the past few weekends I've been making this fresh-herb soup from the leftovers in the fridge.

I have not given you exact quantities of greens in this recipe, because this will depend on how much herbage you have to hand. This is a versatile formula, and it tastes different every time you make it.

A few fronds of fresh dill on top of this soup lift it to a new level of yum.

I do think this soup needs a stock to give it a rich flavour base, but I don't expect you to make a stock from scratch, or it wouldn't be a quick 'n easy recipe, would it?  A carton of good veggie or chicken stock, or a Knorr* jellied stock pot, or a few teaspoons of Nomu fonds will do nicely, but please don't use a cube or your soup will taste like salted hay and not a fresh green field.

---

Quick Nourishing Green Soup, Using Left-Over Fresh Herbs

4 big potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
1.25 litres good vegetable or chicken stock (see my comments above)
an onion, peeled and finely sliced
a few parsley sprigs, if you have them
a stalk of celery, roughly chopped
½ tsp (2.5 ml) salt
a big bunch of left-over 'soft' herbs of your choice: parsley, basil, coriander, mint, chives, spring onions, dill, and so on
¾ cup (180 ml) cream
a pinch of nutmeg
the juice of half a lemon
milled black pepper

To serve:
extra-virgin olive oil
cream or natural yoghurt

Simmering the veggies in stock.

Put the potato cubes, stock, onion, parsley, celery and salt into a large pot and bring up to the boil. Simmer for 25 minutes, or until the potato is soft.

Remove and discard any thick stalks from the bunch of herbs, roughly chop the leaves and add them the pot.

Cover with a lid and simmer for about 5 minutes, or until the herb leaves have wilted.

Immediately blend the mixture to a fairly fine purée, using a stick blender or liquidiser.

If the soup is too thick after you blend it, thin it down with a little water or stock. If it is too thin, add a slurry of cornflour and water, teaspoon by teaspoon, and reheat, stirring, until it's thickened to your liking.

Stir in the cream and nutmeg, then add a spritz of lemon juice - just enough to give the soup a pleasant little zing. Season to taste with salt and milled black pepper.

Add cream, nutmeg, salt and pepper,
then freshen up the soup with a
squirt of lemon juice.

Serve hot, with a swirl of olive oil and a dribble of cream or yoghurt.

Serves 4. 

Cook's Notes: 

1. Instead of using raw potatoes, you can use left-over cold potatoes, skins and all.

2. If you don't fancy cornflour to thicken the soup, use arrowroot instead.  I find that a little cornflour adds a lovely silken texture to soups.

3. Here are my top tin tips for making memorable soup: Top Ten Tips



* I am associated in my capacity as a freelance agent with the Knorr brand. 

Print Friendly

Ricotta and Chive Hotcakes with Smoked Salmon Roses

For the past few weeks I've been standing in for Jenny Morris, the Giggling Gourmet, on Africa Melane's 567 Cape Talk food show. Jenny's away filming in France, and it's been a thrill for me to step into her famous boots. This week I'm going to be talking about brunch recipes, so I thought I'd share a favourite recipe from my book.

Ricotta and Chive Hotcakes with Smoked Salmon Roses.
Photograph by Michael Le Grange, and plate by David Walters
Image © Random House Struik 2012.

A crisp delicate crust and a hot oozy filling make these little hotcakes a real crowd pleaser. They are good warm but best served piping hot, so if you have a portable gas burner, make them at the table and let your guests help themselves to the toppings.

Ricotta and Chive Hotcakes with Smoked Salmon Roses

500 g fresh ricotta cheese
5 Tbsp (75 ml) finely grated Parmesan
2 extra-large eggs, separated
½ cup (125 ml) milk
½ cup (125 ml) cake flour
½ tsp (2.5 ml) baking powder
½ tsp (2.5 ml) salt
4 tsp (20 ml) finely snipped fresh chives
milled black pepper
sunflower oil

To serve:
400 g finely sliced smoked salmon or trout
lemon wedges
milled black pepper
1 x 250 g tub crème fraîche or sour cream
caviar and capers (optional)

First make the salmon roses. Cut the salmon slices into long strips about 2 cm wide. Twirl each slice into a loose spiral, place on a plate, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate. You’ll need about 24.

Put the ricotta, Parmesan, egg yolks and milk into a large bowl and beat energetically with a wire whisk. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and mix to a batter. Stir in the chives and season with pepper. Using a clean whisk and bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff (but not dry), then gently fold them into the mixture, adding more salt if required. Heat 1 Tbsp (15 ml) oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Drop tablespoons of the batter into the pan and cook for 1 minute, or until the bottom edges turn golden brown. Flip over and cook for another minute, or until the hotcakes are puffed and their edges look set. Watch them like a hawk as they burn quickly. Keep warm.

Arrange the hotcakes on a platter and top each one with a salmon rose. Serve immediately with lemon wedges, black pepper and little bowls of crème fraîche, capers and caviar.

Makes about 24; serves 8 as a snack.

Cook’s Notes

Prepare the salmon roses up to 10 hours in advance and keep covered in the fridge. The batter can be made up to 6 hours in advance, but beat and fold in the egg whites just before you fry the hotcakes.


Print Friendly

Low-Carb Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries and Basil

It's food heresy to tinker with the three perfect elements of a Caprese salad, but I felt I had to, because the tomatoes I bought yesterday weren't very alluring. Although they fell short of being mealy on the inside, they were neither sweet nor acidic, but somewhere in between, with a top note of tasteless. So I dollied up the dish with some paper-fine chorizo slices, a handful of caperberries, salt, pepper and basil oil, left it to stand for an hour so the salt could draw out the juices, and then fell on it like starving wolf.

Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries.
Plate by David Walters.

I'm going to make this again because I love the smoky taste of the chorizo with tomatoes, basil and cheese, and because it's so easy to fling together.

Use ordinary capers if you don't have caperberries and, if you can afford it, an authentic milky-soft mozzarella, not the bog standard supermaket variety. If you can't find pre-sliced chorizo leaves like the ones in the pictures, buy a whole sausage and asked the staff at the supermarket deli counter to cut it very thinly on their magic slicing machine.

Leaving the salad to sit for an hour allows the flavours to mingle

I am going to make a vast platter of this as a starter next time I have friends over for a feast. I haven't thrown a long, lazy weekend lunch since... well, I can't remember when last I cooked for a crowd. It's been such a cold and wet winter here in Cape Town, and I haven't felt in the mood. It's not that I mind spending a lot of time in the kitchen preparing a feast - it's the clearing up and the staggering price of food and booze that puts me off.

How often do you have lunch parties? How much do they cost you? Tell me in a comment!

---

Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries

4 large, ripe tomatoes
12 large, thin slices chorizo sausage
12 slices mozzarella
16 caperberries, or 4 Tbps (60 ml) capers
a small bunch of young basil
flaky salt
6 Tbsp (90 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
half a lemon
milled black pepper

Arrange the tomato, chorizo and mozzarella slices on a platter in overlapping circles, and strew the caperberries and half the basil over the top (use the smaller leaves).

Put the remaining basil leaves  into a mortar and add a pinch of flaky sea salt. Pound the leaves to a paste, then stir in 3 Tbsp (45 ml) of the olive oil.

Place little dabs of the basil oil all over the salad.  Sprinkle with the remaining olive oil, and spritz the salad with lemon juice, to taste.  Season with more salt and plenty of black pepper, and set aside, covered, on the counter top for an hour.

Serve with bread.

Serves 4 as a starter; 2 as a salad.



Print Friendly

Simply Amazing Magic Custard Tart

Amazing and magic are two words I don't use lightly when it comes to recipes, but I must make an exception here (and also break my rule of featuring only original recipes on this blog). This trembling, luscious custard tart, with its delicate cakey topping, makes itself in the oven, and it's one of the most interesting recipes I've come across in years.

Simply Amazing Magic Custard Tart, with a soft cake topping, a rich custard base
 and my addition of burned-sugar stripes. You will notice that the custard in the
 slice on the right looks firmer than the custard in the two slices on the left.
The right-hand slice was cut from the very edge of the dish, and the other two from
 its middle. So the next time I made this dish, I placed it in a bain-marie, which helped
 to even out the texture. Plate by David Walters. 

I made this more elegant version of Magic Custard Tart - plated here in a puddle
of Jersey cream -  in a bigger (and circular) flan dish. I think I prefer the squares
 in the picture above, however, as the custard base is thicker and softer.

You can't really see it clearly in this picture,
 but the custard separates into two distinct layers.
 In this version,  I sifted the flour twice, which
created a thicker & lighter cake topping. 

I noticed this recipe appearing in various forms on Pinterest a few weeks ago, but couldn't help feeling doubtful about it. How can an alarmingly thin batter of eggs, flour, melted butter, vanilla and milk transform itself into a creamy custard tart of perfection? What kind of wicked kitchen alchemy is this? Well, I don't know the exact science behind this, although I have tried - in the process of testing and re-testing it - to figure out how it works.

I'm going to give you the recipe right away, but if you're interested in my testing notes, my tweaks, the origins of this recipe, and some important watch points, please scroll down to the bottom of this post to read my Cook's Notes.

I've given these ingredients in both grams and cups/ml, but I suggest that - for perfect results - you weigh the ingredients using a digital scale.


If you don't have a scale, use cups & tablespoons marked in  millilitres, and be sure to measure exactly, levelling off the tops with a knife, and not pressing down on the ingredients.

---

Simply Amazing Magic Custard Tart 

125 g (125 ml) butter

2 cups (500 ml) full-cream milk

4 large, fresh, free-range eggs, at room temperature
150 g (about 155 ml) caster sugar 

115 g (about 225 ml) cake flour, sifted
a drop or two of lemon juice

1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract or essence

the finely grated zest of half a lemon (about 1 tsp/5ml)

To top:

icing sugar, for decorating

fresh strawberries or raspberries

Heat the oven to 160 ºC, fan off.  Grease a deep ceramic or glass baking dish measuring 20 x 20 cm, or coat its inside generously with baking spray.

Cut the butter into cubes, place them in a pot or microwave-safe bowl, and add the milk. Warm the mixture on the stove or in the microwave, until all the cubes of butter have just melted. Stir well, then set to one side.

Separate the eggs into two large bowls. Squeeze two drops of fresh lemon juice into the bowl containing the egg whites. Using a hand-held electric beater (see Cook's Notes, below) whisk the whites until just firm. They should form soft, snowy peaks that hold their shape, but they mustn't be at all stiff or dry.  Set the bowl to one side.

Add the sugar to the egg yolks and, using the same beater (no need to rinse it), whisk at a medium speed for about two minutes, or until the mixture is pale, thick and creamy. Add the sifted flour and the luke-warm butter/milk mixture, bit by bit, and alternately, beating all the time at a medium speed.  Make sure the butter/milk mixture is just warm, or it may curdle the eggs.

When you've added all the flour and butter/milk mixture, beat at a low speed for another 30 seconds, or until slightly foamy. Stir in the vanilla essence and grated lemon zest.

Now comes the only tricky part of the recipe: incorporating the beaten egg white. It's virtually impossible to fold in the egg white, as you would do with a thicker cake mixture, because the batter is so thin.  So here's how to do it: scoop a quarter of your beaten egg white into the mixture and, using a wire whisk, briskly beat it in to lighten the batter. Now tip in the remaining egg white and use your whisk gently - very gently - to incorporate it into the batter, using the tip of the whisk in a light spinning motion.  When the mixture seems reasonably well combined - don't worry about any small egg-white lumps and bumps on the top - pour it into the greased dish.

Use the tip of the whisk to break up any lumps of egg white on top, then place the dish in a deep baking tray. Fill the baking tray with hot water so that it comes to two-thirds of the way the sides of the dish and place in the oven.

Bake the tart at 160 ºC for 45-60 minutes, or until it is a rich brown on top, and still slightly - but not alarmingly - wobbly in the centre. The centre of the mixture should give a reluctant shudder when you jiggle the dish.  Keep a careful eye on it, as the topping turns very brown in an instant.

Immediately remove the dish from the bain marie and allow to cool. You can serve this warm with custard or whipped cream, but it's best chilled overnight in the fridge.

To serve and decorate: generously sift icing sugar all over the top of the cake. Cut into squares, and serve cold, topped with fresh fruit.  For instructions on how to mark the top of the tart with a hot skewer, see below.

Serves 6

A marking of burned sugar adds a satisfying caramel crunch to
the tart. See Point 9, below. 

Cook's Notes 

1. I tested this recipe four times, adjusting the ingredients slightly with every try - less sugar, more flour, and so on. I also tried making it with Stork baking margarine - my late mother-in-law Audrey always insisted that this produces the lightest cakes - but this version wasn't as light and delicious as the buttery ones.
2. In these notes I've included some important tips that will help you to perfect this dish. Having said that, it may - curiously - not be important for you to heed this advice. Every time I made this, the result was slightly different, but not once did the recipe fail. It's pure kitchen magic. See Point 4, below. 
3. The significant changes I made to the recipe were to add lemon zest; to bake it in a bain-marie to prevent the outer edges of the custard browning; to add a few stabilising drops of lemon juice to the whites; and to warm the milk and butter together. (The recipes I used as sources warmed/melted the milk and butter separately, which required an extra bowl. I figured that warming them together would ensure that both ingredients are at exactly the same temperature when they go into the egg yolks.)  I also added a decorative topping of burned-sugar stripes (see Point 9, below), which add a lovely delicate caramel crunch.
4. Because the batter is so thin, it's difficult thoroughly to incorporate the beaten egg whites without losing some volume. A light touch is important here but, even so, the recipe is quite forgiving - if you watch the video mentioned in Point 10, below, you'll notice that the batter is handled quite roughly, with no ill effects. 
5. Carefully measure out all the ingredients (I place them on small squares of baking paper) before you start with the recipe. This will allow you to put the cake together very quickly, so it doesn't lose any volume. Place it straight into the oven once you've added the beaten egg whites.
6. Be sure to double-sift the flour -  I did this in my final test and the cake layer was noticeably thicker and lighter (see the third photograph, above). 
7. You can use a normal wire whisk to make this dish, and plenty of elbow power, but a hand-held electric whisk is best. I tried making this, the first time round, in my Kenwood Chef, but it was too powerful, and the egg whites were too stiff to mix easily into the batter. 
8. There are some interesting chocolate versions of this recipe here, here and here, but I haven't tried them.  
9. To make caramel stripes on the tops of the squares, heat a flattish metal skewer in a high flame.When it is very hot, press it lightly into the icing sugar layer to form caramelised stripes. You'll need to keep re-heating the skewer, as it cools down fairly quickly.  Do this shortly before serving the squares, or the caramel may turn sticky. It's easiest to do this once you've cut up the tart, but quicker to mark the entire slab in one go. I did this by easing the whole tart - which was very cold - from its glass baking dish. First, run a sharp, thin-bladed knife around the edges to loosen them. Then stand the dish up on its side so it's vertical, and wait until the vacuum below the custard layer releases. Let the whole slab of tart fall into your palm, then gently slide it onto a board. 
10. I can't pinpoint the original source of this recipe. Most of the more recent recipes on food blogs and Pinterest give as their source this recipe & video by Spanish food blogger Mabel Mendez. After some digging, I discovered that this dish is of Romanian origin, and that there are dozens of online versions of it written in that language.  It's called 'Prajitura Desteapta' (roughly translated by Google as 'Smart Cake'.)  Here's an example of a recipe written in Romanian, with some useful step-by-step pics.    

Print Friendly