Pumpkin perfection

Pumpkin perfection

Transcendent  
Creamy - but without the cream - butternut pumpkin soup is a winner

So we're back into my favourite time of year - autumn and winter - and with it, comes my favourite type of food - comfort food. Perfect pastas, brilliant braises, steaming soups.

Soups are one of my most favourite things to cook and eat. They're so easy to make, yet can be as simple or as decadent as you like. They can be clean, nourishing and light - like chicken noodle soup - or they can be dense and knock your socks off, fending off any would-be cold - like my spicy barley and lentil soup.

I've written before that there's a few things you can't get in Switzerland. But I was pleasantly surprised when the shops started stocking butternut pumpkin a few weeks ago. (Which, I must add, I was shocked to discover that butternut pumpkin - as it's called in Australia - is not actually a pumpkin at all, but rather a squash.) Picking one up, I suddenly had a craving for butternut pumpkin soup.

Perfect pumpkin creaminess

I had plenty of recipes amongst my recipe books and volumes, but none really suited what I wanted; a rich, smooth soup, easy to make, creamy - but without the cream. I've never been a big fan of cream in anything, but especially in soups. However I found the perfect recipe - pumpkin and chive soup. This recipe uses potatoes - the starch of which provides the smooth creaminess - a tiny bit of sour cream - for depth of flavour - and a sprinkling of chives - for a hint of crunch.

After sautéing onion and garlic, and then simmering peeled and cut potatoes and pumpkin in chicken stock (add veg stock to make this vegetarian-friendly), it's time to break out the equipment and whiz it all up in a food processor, in batches, to a super smooth, creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper, add sour cream and finely chopped chives - and voila - pumpkin soup perfection. 

Peel, chop, simmer, whiz, stir - very easy to make. Sweet pumpkin taste, balanced by starchy potatoes and dense sour cream - very tasty. On a cold, wintry night, what else could you ask for?

Great cakes!

Triumph/Transcendent
Can't quite decide whether these were a triumph or transcendent - on the border, so will give both ratings!

Great cakes!

So I have been cooking this year, just not posting. With autumn and winter approaching - my favourite seasons for food - I'll try and post more. 

But I can post on a couple of recent triumphs, both cakes. Baking cakes is something I've always found cathartic, and given a rather frustrating week at work, I felt the need to bake two. 

I decided to make one for a friend's birthday party I was invited to, and then another when I realised a colleague who complains he doesn't get cake in his office would be in town just before his birthday. 

Then the hard question of what to make. I have so many cook books and recipe scrapbook volumes, that I haven't looked into even half the recipes. Then I found two I had never made before that were easy, simple to make, and - more importantly - sounded delicious. 

For my colleague-who-never-gets-cake, I settled on melt-and-mix white chocolate cake with a dark chocolate glaze from Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2. Ms Hay is the queen of quick, simple cakes that taste delicious and this one was no exception. 

Melt-and-mix white chocolate cake

The sweet white chocolate and vanilla cake perfectly contrasted the slightly bitter dark chocolate glaze. The cake itself was not too dry, but did take a little longer than expected to bake. 

It was definitely a hit with all of my colleagues though, with some going back for seconds afterwards and there being none left at all by lunch the following day. 

The other cake I chose for the birthday party was a lemon and raspberry loaf cake. This came out of one of my recipe volumes, and I think it's from the cooking section of an edition of Perth's Sunday Times newspaper.

Although the recipe called for frozen raspberries, fresh ones are currently in season here in Switzerland, so decided to use those instead. It was a good choice, as I think the juice from the fresh berries made it delightfully moist. 

Lemon and raspberry loaf en fete

The flavour of tart lemon and raspberry complemented each other well, with the lemon coming through in the icing on top. Interestingly, several friends had a hard guess trying to pick the fruit that was in it (I hadn't told them), which I was a little surprised by; looked fairly obvious to me! At any rate, comments of 'great cake!' were backed up by the cake having been polished off with nothing left at the end. 

I think of the two, I preferred the taste of the white chocolate cake, but found the lemon and raspberry one easier to make (all done in Betty, my Kitchenaid) and it also turned out more moist, which is something I like in a cake. Thumbs up for both, and they'll definitely go into my list of tried, tested and trusted cake recipes.

Just four hours until Italian stew heaven

Transcendent  

Melt-in-your-mouth tender beef, with rich flavours and perhaps the easiest recipe I’ve ever made, makes this a must-do during winter

Just four hours until Italian stew heaven

I’ve found, since moving from Australia at the beginning of the year, that’s there’s very little I’ve missed. I miss the usual things of course – family, friends, familiarity – but there’s something to be said for unfamiliar thrills. However, it’s food that I’ve found my biggest challenge in adjusting to life in Switzerland, strange as that may seem. I’ve complained about platinum-plated meat prices and the utter lack of some ingredients that I consider staples – liquid stock the foremost one – but otherwise I make do and carry on. But I’m glad of the small chances I get to experience food familiarity every now and again – like the May issue of delicious.

Peposo, mash and rocket

I’ve been buying delicious on and off for a couple of years, but the annual Italian issue in May is a must-buy. So, with the approach of May this year, I asked my mum to buy and send over the May issue. Once it arrived, I had a quick flick through and pretty much left it forgotten on my coffee table for the next six months. With the approach of winter, I recently started to look for wintery, comfort-food ideas.

Picking up May’s delicious, I came across contributor Jill Dupleix’s peposo, or Tuscan beef stew. It looked ridiculously simple and hearty, so one cool, cloudy Saturday I decided to give it a go, impulsively inviting some friends over to share. First, the ingredients; they’re pretty simple. It’s just stewing beef, red wine, tomato paste, rosemary, garlic and anchovies for seasoning. That’s it. As Jill mentioned in her introduction to this recipe in the magazine (I’ve only included the link to the delicious web page here), anything more would ruin it.

While the price of the beef for it made my eyes water (paying CHF45 – A$48 – for 1.8kg of the cheapest cut of beef I could find), it was so worth it. It’s perhaps one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever made; just a matter of placing all the ingredients into a casserole dish (my beloved blue Le Creuset I had brought over recently) and placing into a moderately slow oven for four hours. Simplest dinner party recipe I’ve done.

Rich flavours and melt-in-the-mouth tenderness

While Jill suggests serving this with some polenta, I decided make some mashed potato instead, as I’m still warming to the taste of polenta. But it didn’t matter – the hero of the night was the peposo. What an amazing dish. After four hours of quietly cooking away, I lifted the lid of the dish and the aroma of red wine, garlic and rosemary immediately assaulted us. It tasted as good as it smelt. The rich flavours of the wine and garlic perfectly complemented the rosemary and beef, which was so tender it easily pulled apart with just a fork and melted in the mouth.

It’s a shame that, being here, I’m now six months out with the recipes in delicious. They’re now publishing summer ones. But, there’s always next year’s May issue, and its Italian winter delights, to look forward to within its pages.

Cold comforts

Triumph 

Home-made stock and two simple, yet tasty soups that will comfort the coldest of nights

Cold comforts

So I haven’t cooked anything worth posting lately, mostly because I don’t really get into summer food. With the cooler weather and autumn definitely here, it’s time to start cooking my favourite foods – winter comfort food.

The ultimate comfort food: chicken noodle soup

With liquid stock non-existent in Switzerland, I used last Sunday’s cold weather as a good excuse to stay indoors and make some, plus that quintessential winter comfort food, chicken noodle soup. I’ve used this Donna Hay recipe a few times and I love it; it’s so easy to make by just throwing in a whole uncooked chicken, carrots, celery, garlic, onion, bay leaves, peppercorns and water. You end up with clean, home-made chicken stock, poached chicken for sandwiches, and chicken noodle soup.

The chicken soup is simple, delicious, wholesome and, of course, comforting. I use my favourite soup pasta, ditali (which I’ve discovered, with delight, that I can buy at my local supermarket), and simply add some of the poached chicken, stock, carrots, celery and season with salt and pepper. It tastes even better once it’s been frozen and reheated for lunch at work or a quick dinner at home.

Spicy barley and lentil soup will clear out
the stuffiest of noses

With Emperor D battling the flu during the week, I decided he needed something that is comforting but has a bit of a kick to clear out his stuffy head and nasal passages. One of his favourites is spicy barley and lentil soup, which I found in an issue of Men's Health magazine, but actually comes from The Low GI Handbook. Finely diced onion gently fried with spices, including some chilli, then adding water, a couple of cups of chicken or vegetable stock, some tinned tomatoes, pearl barley and red lentils and voila – a tasty, hearty soup with a decent enough kick  to knock out the worst colds and flus.

The great thing is I now have a freezer full of soup and stock for lunch and dinner for the next two weeks – until it’s time to make some more!

Guilty pleasures

Sinful - vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche

I've discovered some guilty pleasures while being here in Geneva. One is pictured right; vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche. You might remember I had a hard time finding dulce de leche last time I cooked with it, to the point I ended up making it myself. I'm happy to say that dulce de leche is quite easy to find in Geneva, though I should add that the jar below was bought at a fantastic food market in London (more on that in a later post).

The other pleasure I've discovered here is the joy of fresh bread. Nobody does bread like the French - or French-speaking Swiss. I go shopping Saturday mornings and pick up bread from my local supermarket; it's often still warm from having just come out of the oven.

I find there is sometimes no greater joy than slicing a still warm loaf of bread - crusty on the outside, soft on the inside - and spreading a generous amount of butter on.

I should add that, remarkably, I have actually managed to lose weight since arriving in Switzerland. Who would have thought?!

When lamb is expensive, go legumes

Triumph

Spicy tasty chickpea curry is enough to convince one to go vegetarian

When lamb is expensive, go legumes

Since moving to Switzerland, I’ve had to learn to adjust to some things; different brands, different ingredients, even no ingredients (seriously, no white vinegar?! It’s a crime not to have white vinegar on fish and chips!). It’s meant that some of the recipes that had become midweek staples back home in Australia – harissa chicken for one – I haven’t made since being here because I haven’t found harissa (though to be fair, I haven’t really looked).

Swiss cows have expensive taste -
CHF70/kilo for a steak!

One thing that I wasn’t prepared for – and which I still don’t understand – is the cost of meat. It’s ludicrously expensive – CHF27 a kilo (roughly AU$30/kilo or US$16/lb) for top quality beef mince; CHF70 a kilo for good beef fillet steak. That cow must have had expensive taste in its previous life. I don't understand it; Switzerland is admittedly not a big country, but if you saw the number of cows I do when you go past just on a train, you'd wonder why beef is so expensive too. Ironically though, I've found Switzerland - or at least my part of Switzerland - to be cheaper for seafood; seafood is getting quite costly in Australia. 

The cost of meat, especially beef, has meant that we’ve had to have more chicken or vegetarian dishes. One of my favourite vegetarian dishes uses chickpeas, which I just love. Chickpea curry from – I think – Family Circle’s Classic Essential Curries is a recipe I’ve had for years. It’s from one of my mum’s cookbooks and was one of the first recipes I put into the first volume of my recipe volumes. I love it and it’s so easy to make.

Chickpea curry in all its glory

I have no idea how authentic it is – especially since this time around I couldn’t add garam masala because I forgot that I didn’t bring any from home – but it tastes delicious. The chickpeas are really soft and tender, especially if you use canned ones, along with the sweet acidity of the tomatoes and the spicy aroma and flavour of the spices. If vegetarian dishes taste like this, I’ll have to find some more and blog on them!

Cooking for one is harder than it looks

Triumph

Asparagus risotto, classic tomato spaghetti and aglio, olio e peperoncino all simple recipes that are really quick and tasty – whether for one or six.

Cooking for one is harder than it looks

I picked up Emperor D a couple of days ago after his flight landed back in Switzerland from spending several weeks back in Australia. I myself was abroad for work for three of the seven weeks he was away, but the remaining four weeks left me plenty of time to observe that cooking for one person is not as easy as I thought it would be.

That last statement might sound a little strange, so let me explain. I moved out of home at 20 with Emperor D and we’ve lived together ever since. I’ve never lived on my own or even in a share house, so I’ve never had to cook for just myself. So after Emperor D left, I had to work out what on earth I would cook just for me. It wasn’t that simple; for a start, I don’t have a microwave here, so I couldn’t really cook in bulk to freeze and reheat later.

I’m ashamed to admit that the nights when I just couldn’t be bothered I would resort to sticking fish fingers and chips in the oven. Yes, truly shameful from the Empress. Other nights I would grill some chicken or a shishkebab to have with salad. But more often than not I’d resort to pasta or risotto.

Leek and asparagus risotto - this time minus the leek

Not long before I left Australia, you might remember I made a fantastic porcini mushroom risotto, which I wrote about. I hadn’t made risotto since then, so I decided to try an asparagus risotto, using some fantastic fresh asparagus. The recipe I used was a leek and asparagus risotto that I’d made many times back home, but this time I forgot the leeks, so just used onions instead.

I’ve discovered a couple of culinary challenges in Switzerland, mostly with finding ingredients either at all or of equal quality to what I’m used to back home. A good example of this is liquid stock. Good quality, ready-to-use liquid stock – like the Campbells Real stock in a tetra pack I get back home – just doesn’t seem to exist in Switzerland; or if it does, I’m yet to find it. Here it’s all cubes – which I hate using – or the closest thing I’ve seen to liquid, a congealed gel-like stock that still needs dissolving in water. Usually in winter I make my own stock for all the soups I make, but it’s summer here and I otherwise won’t get the use out of it.

But no matter – this risotto was just for me, and while not the standout of my last attempt at risotto, was perfectly fine. The rice was nice and al dente, the asparagus crisp without being undercooked. The good thing about risotto – and pasta – is that you can control how much of it you make.

Which is why I made a lot of spaghetti while Emperor D was away. When I was having a lazy night but couldn’t bear the thought of fish fingers again, I would put some spaghetti on the boil and simply stir through some good quality pesto from a jar. Or I’d make some simple sauces, like aglio, olio e peperoncino (that’s garlic, olive oil and chilli), or Jamie Oliver’s classic tomato spaghetti.

Aglio, olio e peperoncino is an Italian classic which, when done well, is spectacular. It’s so simple, but it’s the simplicity of the ingredients that make it great. Hot pasta, mixed through with gently fried garlic and chilli in oil, sprinkled with fresh parsley is a delight to eat. Plus it's so easy to make with ingredients most people already have in their pantries.

Jamie Oliver's classic tomato spaghetti

Jamie Oliver’s classic tomato spaghetti is another recipe that can be made using just the ingredients from the pantry. In the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta, it’s quick and easy to fry garlic and chilli, and throw in some tinned diced tomatoes and fresh basil, gently simmer for a few minutes and toss with al dente spaghetti for something so tasty. And don’t forget the cheese on top either – for me, it has to be pecorino.

So while I adapted these recipes to cook just for me, they’re easy enough to cook for as many or as little people as you need. In the meantime, I’m glad that Emperor D is back so I can cook for two again.