Leek and hazelnut pasta

This is a quick and simple recipe, but it’s not particularly filling. I sometimes precede it with bread and dukkah to ensure that there’s a good, filling meal. You could of course simply make more, or more pasta and there’s always the no-fail filler of adding some beans to the meal. I think white beans would go best here.

It is well worth taking the little bit more effort to toast the hazelnuts, it completely transforms them!

I’m very fond of Brussels sprouts and like to make them a feature of my meals, rather than a side dish. If you look through the blog you will see several recipes with sprouts as star of the show. I suggest adding them in my variations at the bottom of this post and would say that they make this recipe even more interesting.

 

Ths recipe can be made gluten free with the appropriate pasta 

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

olive oil

I whole, large leek, thoroughly cleaned

1/2 tsp salt

up to 1/4 tsp chilli flakes

1 large garlic clove, crushed or diced

2 heaped tbsp thick yoghurt

4 handfuls of short pasta such as fusilli

a generous grind of black pepper

a handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped

grated Parmesan*

Method:

• Heat a small frying pan or saucepan and then tip in the hazelnuts. Toast them until the skins darken and begin to shed. Shake the pan or stir the nuts frequently so that they don’t burn. Set aside and chop them when they get cool.
• Pour the olive oil into a larger frying pan, and while it’s heating, slit the leek down the middle and slice it into half moons. Use the dark green leaves as well (you may have to remove one or two and the discoloured parts at the top of the leek). Sprinkle the salt over and add the chilli flakes.
• Cover and cook over a moderate heat until the leek has softened. Check regularly to see that it’s not burning. Add the garlic and stir in the yoghurt. The leek should have produced quite a lot of juice, but if they look dry, add a little water, white wine or stock.
• In the meantime, cook the pasta to your taste.
• When the pasta is cooked, using a slotted spoon, add it to the frying pan and carefully mix everything together. Season generously with black pepper; taste and see if more salt is needed.
• Garnish with the parsley, should you happen to have some.

 Serve on heated plates or bowls, with

Notes:

• *If you prefer vegan food, use 'Parmegan' cheese.
• Substitute vegan yoghurt, if you prefer, or crème frâiche, or a similar product.
• If your leek seems really dirty, cut them about an inch below the first split leaf and take off the outer green leaves, one by one. Often you will only find dirt in the first few of them, which saves the tedious and unnecessary job of washing the whole leek. Unless you are a convinced vegetable washer, of course. I usually only give the a cursory rinse, if that.

Variation

• Add about a dozen Brussels sprouts, quartering the large ones and halving the smaller ones, in the frying pan with the leeks.
• Add 1/2 cup of white beans, soaked and cooked in the usual way, once the leeks have softened.
• If you have no parsley, use half a teaspoon or so of my mixed herb blend.
• Substitute walnuts for the hazelnuts.

 

You will find many more recipeslike this here and here

Leek and potato soup

 

This is a really good, hearty soup and completely different from its cousin Vichyssoise, which is served chilled. See in Variations. I think it needs plenty of potato to give it body. Some people like it puréed to a velouté, some people prefer it hearty and chunky. I prefer it half way between the two, but unless you go for totally puréed, you really to have to be sure that the potatoes are of a floury variety. Chunks of potato really don’t complement the smoothness of the leeks. I don’t peel the potatoes, but again that’s a personal choice. You can add milk of any type. Some people like to swirl in cream, at the end, but I would only want to do tat when having the soup as a starter. Sour cream is better – otherwise the result can be a bit cloying.

Use 1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the salt.

Serves 4 for a starter, 2 for a main course

Ingredients

1 large or 3 small leeks

2 large tbsp butter or olive oil

salt

2 large, floury potatoes

4 cups mushroom stock, or water

1 cup milk

coarsely ground black pepper

Method:

• Trim the discoloured top off the leek(s). If the leeks are very dirty, slit them in half or quarters from the top down towards to root end, and swirl around in plenty of water until clean. Otherwise, you will probably find the dirt is only in the lower part of the green leaves and the upper part of the white, in which case you can just slice that part out and wash it separately.
• If you want to garnish the soup with crispy, fried leek tops (see Variations) cut off about 30 mm/1 inch of the green top, slice very thinly and set aside.
• Now, take your clean leek and chop it.
• Heat the butter/oil in your pressure cooker and add the leek. Sprinkle with about 1/4 tsp salt to help it soften and fry until the pieces are soft and silky in texture. If you wish, you can remove a couple of spoonfuls and set aside, to add at the end for additional texture.
• Cut the potato into cubes, skin and all. Add to the pan and sauté for another couple of minutes, then add the stock or water. Bring up to pressure and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Let the pressure reduce at room temperature.
• Allow to cool slightly and then add the milk.  Mash, or purée to the required consistency. Season to taste: the saltiness will depend on whether you have used seawater and/or stock, and then grind over lots of black pepper and stir in the reserved leeks, if you’re using them.  Reheat until piping hot and serve.
  

For a full meal, serve with fresh bread.

Variations:

• garnish with 4 tbsp sour cream
• garnish with 4 tbsp chopped chives
• garnish with crisp green leek tops, heat a frying pan, with a good glug of oil over a medium-high heat. Drop in a piece of leek, and when it bubbles and floats to the surface, add the rest and fry for a couple of minutes, until they go crisp but still maintain some of their colour. Remove with a slotted spoon
• For Vichyssoise, which really needs to be served chilled, use half the potatoes and equal amounts of milk and water. When the soup is cooked, mash it or blend it smoothly – it’s supposed to be a velvety purée – and then chill it on ice or in a fridge, if you have such a thing. Serve with cream. This looks particularly attractive if it’s swirled on top of the soup.

Italian chickpea Soup

This is a substantial and well-flavoured soup, suitable for winter lunches or a main meal. It would go very well with sun-dried tomato bread. The ingredients are not really voyaging vegetables, but they keep reasonably well and you would still be able to make this soup a week into your passage.

 

Use 1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the salt.

Serves at least 8 as a starter, 2 or 3 for a main course

Ingredients

 

3 large sticks of celery

1 leek

1 cup chickpeas, soaked

5 cups boiling stock or water

2 bay leaves

1½ tsp oregano

3/4 tsp rosemary

1/4 tsp chilli

14 oz/400 g tin of diced tomatoes

 handful of finely chopped fresh basil or parsley, or 1 tsp dried basil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Method:

• Thinly slice the celery.
• Trim the leek, removing the root end and any discoloured outer leaves; trim the top. Slice thinly, washing any slices that have grit or soil lodged in them.
• Drain the chickpeas and put them in your pressure cooker, together with the water/stock, celery, leek, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary and chilli.
• Bring to pressure over a high heat and then cook at high pressure for 20 minutes. Reduce pressure naturally.
• Remove the bay leaves and discard. With a slotted spoon, take out 4 or 5 spoons of chickpeas and put them in a bowl together with half the tomatoes. Mash together to thicken the soup.
• Put the tomato/chickpea mix back in the pressure cooker together with the parsley or basil and the vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.
• Simmer for a further few minutes so that the tomato flavour permeates the whole and serve hot. 

Variations:

• Add (vegan) Parmesan cheese at the table.
• Try using butter beans instead of the chickpeas

Potato soup

 

Potato soup is a favourite of mine. It’s very quick to make, cheap, warming and filling, as well as being excellent cold weather food and delicious with herb bread. Although it’s a simple recipe, it’s full of good things: iron, protein, vitamin B6, potassium, and vitamin C. Potatoes are seriously underrated food. Unfortunately, especially in the tropics, they’re often not the easiest of vegetables to come by, nor the cheapest.   If you want to eat soup in the tropics, however, there are plenty of other recipes about!

Use 1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the salt.

Serves 2 as a main meal, 4 – 6 as a starter

 

Ingredients

1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil OR 2 tbsp butter
4 potatoes, preferably floury ones
3 cups water
1 cup (vegan) milk
Annie's seasoned salt and (cracked black) pepper
freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

• Dice the onion and put it in a pressure cooker, or saucepan, with the olive oil or butter. Cover and cook for 5 minutes until softened.
• Peel the potatoes, if you want to (I don't usually bother, because I like potato skins) – the soup will look more elegant without the skins – and dice them. Add to the pan and stir for a couple of minutes.
• Pour in the water, bring to the boil and pressure cook for 5 minutes OR cook for a further 20 minutes.
• Mash the potatoes thoroughly, to produce a creamy purée. You’ll still have bits of onion (and maybe potato peel) floating around, but that’s the way it goes in low-tech living. If you have a stick blender, you can combine it all a lot more effectively.
• Add the milk and reheat to nearly boiling. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Ideally, potato soup should be a creamy-white purée, but I don’t usually peel my potatoes, so don’t mind the ‛bits’ from the salt and pepper.
• Put into bowls and grate nutmeg over each.

Variations:

• If you have any fresh herbs, add them with the milk.
• Dried thyme and/or rosemary are also nice additions, but will detract from a white soup. 
• Mix in some cream just before serving.

Cream of vegetable soup

I created this soup in Greenland, where I used dried vegetables rather than the fresh shown in the following recipe. It was a lovely soup with dried; it’s wonderful with fresh. Should you be in my predicament, I give the dried vegetable version below. The resulting soup is thick and rich: ideal for a main course in cold weather.

There are more cans included than I would normally use, but the baked beans are an essential ingredient because their tomato sauce gives a flavour that is otherwise hard to obtain, while sweetcorn adds extra flavour and texture. The recipe makes loads – probably enough for four people, but like most soup, it only improves with keeping, and in the conditions in which you’d be eating it, there’d by no problems about its going off.

I've tagged this as gluten free - but some makes of baked beans might have flour in them.  Check the label.

Use 1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the salt.

Ingredients

1 leek

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion

1 potato

1 turnip

3 carrots

1/4 cup gram flour

6 cups water OR stock

1 tsp sage

2 tsp parsley

6 juniper berries, crushed

1/2 tsp cracked black peppercorns

2 tsp seasoned salt

200 ml/7 oz can sweetcorn

400 g/14 oz can baked beans

170 ml/6 oz can cream

Method:

• Wash the leek carefully, slitting down the sides of it to ensure that all the grit and soil are removed.
• Heat the olive oil in a pressure cooker or large saucepan, over a low heat.
• Dice the leek, onion, potato, turnip and carrots and put them into the pan. Fry gently for five minutes until the vegetables are softened and well coated with oil.
• Stir in the gram flour, mixing well to remove most of the lumps.
• Pour in the water, turn up the heat and bring to the boil.
• Add the sage, parsley, juniper berries and cracked pepper and seasoned salt.
• If you’re using the pressure cooker, bring to pressure and cook for 8 minutes. Otherwise, turn the heat right down and simmer as gently as you can for 45 minutes.
• Add the cans of sweetcorn and baked beans and bring back to boiling point. Simmer for a further 5 minutes or so.
• Gently stir in the cream, mixing thoroughly. Heat until almost boiling and then serve with warm bread.

Variations:

• For the Greenland version, use 1/4 cup of dried onions and 1 cup of mixed dried vegetables instead of the fresh vegetables. Pour 1/2 cup boiling water over the onions and leave them to soak for 30 minutes before adding them to the soup. Pour 2 cups of boiling water over the other vegetables and leave them for the same time.
• Extra zing can be added with a tbsp of Worcestershire Sauce, if you use this.
• If you don’t have any cream, mix ½ cup dried milk with ½ cup lukewarm water and add this to the soup.