Corn Chowder

This recipe is a vegetarian replacement for fish chowder and I think that it is equally good: it’s rich and filling – definitely a main-course soup when served with hunks of bread. For all that, it would make a good starter, if you followed it with a light main course.

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

 

Serves 4 to 6 as a starter, 2 for a main course

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove
4 mushrooms, sliced
1 green pepper, chopped
2 potatoes, diced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp gram flour
2½ cups water OR vegetable stock
1 cup (vegan) milk
400 g (14 oz) can sweetcorn
1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
salt
1 cup (vegan) single cream

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and add the onion, garlic, mushrooms and green pepper. Don’t let them brown – the soup is meant to be very pale. If you prefer, you can ‛sauté’ them in a little water until they are softened, and then add the olive oil.
• While this is happening, peel and chop the potatoes. (If you prefer not to peel them that’s fine, but the bits of peel do rather spoil the appearance of the soup.) Add to the pan, stir and fry for a few minutes. Lower the heat, cover and cook for about 5 minutes.
• Put 1/2 cup of the water in a mixing cup, add the gram flour and whisk to a smooth paste.
• Add this to the pan, together with the rest of the water. Stir gently until the soup is about to boil, so that the gram flour is properly incorporated.
• Lower the heat and cook until the potatoes are tender – about 10 minutes.
• Add the sweetcorn and the milk; reheat until boiling. 
• Stir in the cream and reheat just before serving.

Variation:

• 1/2 tsp paprika or chilli adds variety
• If you can get hold of any, a handful of chopped, fresh parsley added with the cream is delicious.
• Use dried mushrooms, soaked in a little hot water for half an hour, to turn this into a voyaging soup.
  

Note: 

• Although the potatoes serve to thicken the chowder, they should not disintegrate and disappear. If you can only get very floury potatoes, this is unavoidable, but they won't spoil the flavour of your creation.

Sweet potato/kumara soup

This is a pretty soup, with a West Indian feel to it.  I prefer to make it with orange or yellow sweet potato or kumara.

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

 

Serves 2 for a main course, 4 for a starter 

 

Ingredients 

 

2 large or 1 very large sweet potato/kumara

1 onion

2 tbsp olive oil

2 red peppers

1 litre water

2 tbsp cream of coconut

salt and pepper

lime or lemon juice

Method:

• Peel and dice the sweet potatoes, dice the onion.
• Heat the oil in a pressure cooker and cook the kumara and onion over a medium heat, for about 10 minutes.
• Heat the peppers over a flame until the skins bubble and then peel them. Chop them and add the to the other vegetables and mix well.
• Add the water, bring to the boil and pressure cook for 10 minutes. When the pressure has reduced, mash with a potato masher or stick blender, until the vegetables are reduced to a purée.
• Return to the heat and stir in the cream of coconut. Season with salt and pepper. Taste and add lime or lemon juice.

 Variation:

• Add some chilli if you want a spicier soup.

Fried peppers

In much of southern Spain, you can buy long, thin peppers, which look like an overgrown chilli. In fact they are ‘sweet’ and the locals tend to cook them on a plancha, which is essentially a sheet of well-seasoned steel, that's placed at one end of the barbecue. Hot coals are swept under it and the metal gets extremely hot. When the peppers are cooked like this, the skins char and the core and seeds cook to a delectable softness and do in fact, taste positively sweet. They’re unbelievably good with lots of coarse salt ground over them. Occasionally, one of the peppers is spicy hot, which causes much amusement, when the greedy diner has bitten a huge chunk off the end. Lacking a large barbecue and plancha, I suggest cooking them in a more mundane frying pan.  They are sublime as a starter, because you just have the peppers alone and can really appreicate the flavours.  The long, thing ones (sometimes sold as Romano) are full of scalding hot juice - be careful! - which is totally delicious and can be mopped up with bread.

Although they’re common in both Spain and South America, these slender peppers are not easy to find elsewhere. However, ordinary peppers make a good second best, although the seeds don’t cook the same way and aren't usually worth eating. You can also find miniature peppers which taste equally appetising when cooked this way - seeds and all.

Roast peppers have become very popular recently, and many people cook them over the barbecue. Nothing, however, quite matches the searing heat of a hot plancha or frying pan. 

Serves 4 as a starter 

 

12 Spanish peppers or 4 peppers

olive oil

coarse sea salt

 

Method:

• Wipe the peppers.  If using ordinary perppers, quarter them and remove the seeds.
• Heat the oil to smoking hot in a heavy frying pan. Put in the (pieces of) pepper(s) and toss them in the oil. If you think you're going to overload the pan, cook them in batches.
• Using tongs, keep them moving so that most of the skin gets burnt and almost blackened. The inside should soften at the same time.
• Remove the cooked peppers and keep hot. Add more to the pan (with extra oil, if necessary) and repeat the process until such time as all the peppers are cooked.
• If you’ve nowhere to keep them hot, chuck them all back into the pan, after the last ones are cooked, so that they’re reheated.
• Serve with plenty of salt and some fresh bread to mop up the oil and juices.