Cream of asparagus soup

This luxurious soup can be made from whole asparagus. However, the following recipe allows you to have your asparagus and eat it, so to speak, because it’s made from the trimmings.

The best way to trim asparagus is to bend each stalk as close to its base as you can. It will snap off just above the tough section.

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

Serves 4 as a first course

Ingredients

 

The trimmings from a bundle of asparagus

2 cups water

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1/4 cup tbsp butter/olive oil

1 tbsp flour*

salt and pepper

1 tbsp lemon juice

 fresh parsley, if available

6 tbsp thick (vegan) cream

Method:

• Cook the trimmed asparagus: put it on a raised trivet in your pressure cooker, so that it isn’t immersed, and pour in 2 cups water. (You could stand it on end to do this, but might need to cut it to size.) Bring to pressure and cook for 1 minute. Reduce pressure rapidly if you like crisp asparagus, naturally if you like it soft. Put the asparagus to one side for another dish. Pour the water into a jug or bowl and set aside.
• Cut the trimmings into 2 cm/1 in lengths.
• Finely dice the onion and garlic. Melt the butter/oil in the pressure cooker, add the onion and garlic and stir it until it’s all covered in melted butter. Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook gently for about 5 minutes until the vegetables are softened.
• Stir in the flour and mix.
• Add the reserved water that you used to cook the asparagus, together with the trimmings. Bring to pressure and cook for 10 minutes.
• Reduce pressure naturally and then mash with a potato masher. Then pass the resulting purée through a sieve to remove any stringy bits. Alternatively blend with a stick blender or food processor
• Return to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Taste and add the lemon juice and more water if you think it can take it.
• Add the parsley and bring back to the boil.
• Remove from the heat and stir in the cream.

Serve with croutons

 

Note:

*Use 1 tbsp gram flour for gluten free.

 

Variations:

• If you like to have bits of asparagus floating around in your soup, trim pieces from the ends of the cooked stalks and add these with the lemon juice.
• For a really thick and luxurious version, use all the asparagus.
  
• This soup can also be made successfully with canned asparagus. Purée the bottom ends of the stalks and keep the tips to chop up and add to the soup with the lemon juice.
  

Croutons

Home-made croutons are about as different from the packaged version sold to decorate your Cæsar Salad, as home-made bread is from white sliced. They only take a few minutes to make and their crunchy texture ideally complements creamy soups. If you are having soup for lunch or as a substantial starter, they add bulk without being overly filling and make a pleasant change from bread and crackers. They're also an excellent way to use up stale bread.

Serves 2 for a meal, 4 for a starter

Ingredients

 

2 slices bread, about 1 cm (1/2 in) thick

2 tbsp olive oil OR 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp butter

Method:

• Cut the bread into cubes.
• Heat some oil in a frying pan over a high heat. Test by dropping in one of the croutons: it should sizzle straight away. Don’t be impatient. If the oil is too cool, you will end up with oily, soggy bread cubes. Put the bread cubes into the pan and spread them out in an even layer. Cook them in batches, if needs be – they want to be one layer thick to make it easy to move them around.
• Turn them regularly until they are golden on at least two sides: lower the heat if they are threatening to burn.
• Remove with a perforated spoon – they cook far too quickly to fool around with tongs – and place in a bowl, lined with a kitchen towel, if you wish.

Notes:

• Croutons are best cooked when the soup is ready to serve, so that they retain their crispness.
• If you are happy doing so, you can deep fry them.

Variations:

• Add 1 tsp curry paste or powder to the cooking oil.
• Fry a diced garlic clove with the bread.

Melba Toast

Wafer thin slices of toast go well with many dips and pâtés.  In fact, this recipe isn’t pukka Melba toast, but works well.

 

Serves 4

 

 10 very thin slices of bread

 

Method:

• Put the toaster over a medium flame and cook individual pieces of bread until they are crisp. You will almost certainly need to use tongs for this, because they get very hot.

or

• Preheat the oven to Moderate.  Spread as much bread as you can fit, onto a lightly greased baking sheet. 
• Put this in the oven and after 2 or 3 minutes, turn the bread over. Watch it carefully during the next few minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn and take it out as soon as it’s crisp. It may tend to curl up, but this doesn’t really matter.

Variation:

• After greasing the sheet, rub a cut garlic clove over it. Repeat between batches, if needs be.

Aubergine and sesame pâté (Baba ganoush)

This is a delicious Middle-eastern creation, which I love. The aubergine and sesame seeds seem to be made for each other. Interestingly, both these foods are among the first crops ever to have been cultivated.

 

Occasionally, you can find jars of aubergine in brine and if you drain it well, it can be used for this pâté if fresh ones are unobtainable.

 

Serves 4 for a starter

 

1 medium aubergine

2 tbsp tahini

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp dried, minced garlic

 salt and pepper

 olive oil

 sesame seeds

 

Method:

• Chop off the stalk and cook the aubergine. The quickest way to cook it is on your toaster, but if you have an oven, you can put it in that for 20 minutes or so. If you have neither oven nor toaster, put it in a dry frying pan over a low heat turning it occasionally. 
• When it’s completely cooked, you should easily be able to stick a toothpick into it. Don’t be impatient – the recipe won’t work if the aubergine is underdone and it doesn't matter if the skin chars a little – just scrape that bit off: it adds a delicious, smoky flavour.
• Let the aubergine cool and then dice it very finely, using a large knife. Scrape it into a mixing bowl.
• Add the tahini, lemon juice and garlic. Blend all the ingredients together with a broad-bladed knife or a fork. Season with salt and pepper.
• Transfer the pâté to a suitably-sized serving dish and smooth it down. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Leave it for a few hours before eating, so that all the flavours can combine. 

 Variations:

•  Add 1/2 tsp gound cumin.
• Add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne. 

Avocado and cheese pâté

I invented this on the spur of the moment one evening in Trinidad. We had invited some friends round for drinks and I wanted fairly substantial nibbles, so that no-one would need to cook more than a light meal after they left. I had a ripe avocado on board, but none of the other ingredients for Guacamole, which would have been my normal choice. However, this recipe worked so well that I reckoned it was worth adding to the repertoire!

Serves 4 for a starter

 

1 large, ripe avocado pear

at least 1/2 cup finely grated cheese

 1/4 tsp of hot sauce 

1 tbsp lime juice 

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Cut the avocado pear in two, remove the stone and scoop out the flesh into a bowl.
• Add the grated cheese. A 1/2 cup is sufficient if the cheese is full-flavoured; add more if it’s very mild.
• Blend the avocado and cheese together with a broad-bladed knife, and add the hot sauce – use less if you don’t like your food too spicy.
• Blend in the lime juice and season the mixture. The result should be a soft pâté, almost like a dip.

Variation:

• Use lemon juice, if no lime is available.

Cheese pâté

This is another recipe capable of many variations. If you make it a little thinner, it becomes a lovely dip, excellent with raw vegetables. It can be made with any cheese that has a full flavour, but would be very bland made with something like mozzarella. You do need a fine grater for the cheese to blend properly.

 

Serves 4 as a starter 

 

1 cup finely grated cheese

2 tbsp yoghurt

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Grate the cheese into a bowl. Mix in the yoghurt and season with black pepper.
• Taste the pâté and add salt if you think it needs it.

Variations:

• Use soft butter or mayonnaise instead of the yoghurt.
• Add 2 tbsp Dijon mustard to the pâté.
• Add 1/4 cup wine to make a dip; reduce the amount of yoghurt if you want it to stay as a pâté.
• Add hot sauce.
• Mix in half a red pepper, diced.
• Add some of Annie's Mixed Herbs to the mixture. 

Mushroom and sunflower seed pâté

 

 

This is truly delicious and certainly good enough for a special occasion.  It's also inexpensive, keeps several days in a covered bowl, without refrigeration and leftovers go well in a sandwich. They can also be thinned with a little water, milk or wine to make a great pasta sauce.

Serves 4

 

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 onion, diced

3-6 cloves garlic (depending on size), minced

2 cups (200 g) mushrooms, chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried rosemary

1 1/2 tsp dried sage

1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

2 tbsp soy sauce

salt to taste

water as needed for blending

Method:

• Toast the sunflower seeds in a frying pan, over a medium high heat until they are golden brown. Stir frequently. Set aside.
  
• In the same pan, heat the olive oil and then add the onion and fry for a couple of minutes until it's starting to turn translucent.
• Add the garlic, mushrooms, pepper and herbs.
• Continue to fry until the mushrooms have shrunk down and their liquid has evaporated. If the mushrooms are a bit dry, add a splash of water (or wine) to start them off
• Remove from the heat, and stir in the soy sauce.   
• When the seeds and mushroom mixture have cooled down enough, combine them in a blender. Blend whilst gradually adding a splash of water until you have a spreadable uniform texture. Scrape down the sides as needed The amount of water you need will vary, so start off slowly. If you have a high speed blender, you may not need to add any.
• Add salt to taste and blend once again before serving.

Variations:

• Add extra coarsely-cracked pepper 
• Add Dijon mustard 
• As with traditional liver pâté, this is quite strongly seasoned with thyme.  If you're not fond of that herb, you might want to add the herbs at the end and taste as you go.  
• Add sherry or brandy to deglaze the pan 
• Use deodorised coconut oil instead of olive oil for a richer texture. 
• Make ‛butter’ to pour over the top with deodorised coconut oil, a touch of turmeric and a pinch of salt. 
• Use toasted walnuts instead of sunflower seeds.
• Try the pâté with different types of mushrooms.

  
  

Vegan garlic and herb soft "cheese"

While this tastes nothing at all like cheese, it is a very pleasant spread, with a similar consistency to soft cheese.  The lemon juice gives a hint of sourness, which might possibly remind the more  imaginative of goats' cheese.  If you can make it well in advance, so much the better: it will let the flavours combine all the more.  As you are unlikely to have fresh herbs, don't be mean with the flavourings .

Makes about 1/2 cup

1/2 cup sunflower seeds or blanched peanuts

1 1/2 tsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tbsp lemon juice

1 clove garlic peeled and crushed

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp Annie's Mixed Herbs

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp chives or other fresh herbs, finely chopped

1/2 tbsp reserved soaking water

Method:

• Soak sunflower seeds/peanuts in water overnight or simmer them for 10 minutes. Then drain and reserve the water. 
• Put about half the chives aside, and then put the seeds, yeast, lemon juice, garlic, garlic powder, Annie's Mixed Herbs and salt in a blender. Blend until the cheese comes together, achieving uniform consistency. 
• If all the ingredients get stuck to the side of the blender, which they probably will, scrape down the sides as often as necessary, adding a little more water, if required.
  
• Taste critically and adjust the seasoning. You may want to add more garlic, herbs or lemon juice. 
• Shape the cheese on a plate by hand, or simply serve in a bowl or on a plate, topped with the extra fresh chives.

The flavours of this vegan cheese develop and combine together, so it’s worth not eating it all up at once! It seems to keep quite well for several days, loosely covered.

 

Variations:

• Substitute, or add onion powder for the garlic powder.
• Use different nuts or seeds.
• Add smoked paprika. 
• Add chilli flakes
• Add some chopped peppadew peppers after blending.
  
• Add chopped capers after blending.
  
• Mix in some pesto once the mixture is blended.
• Form the cheese into a log and roll in either Annie's Mixed Herbs or cracked black pepper.

 

 

Stuffed eggs

These make a delicious lunch, with some bread and a salad.  However, when arranged attractively on a plate, they also make an excellent snack with drinks, or a starter.

Serves 2

2 hard-boiled eggs

1 tsp curry paste

1 tsp mayonnaise

Method:

• When the eggs are cold, peel them and slice them in half, lengthwise.
• Using a teaspoon, carefully remove the yolk and put it into a bowl.
• Add the curry paste and mayonnaise to the yolks and combine them to make the stuffing.
• Pile the stuffing back into the egg whites.

Variations:

• Use yoghurt instead of mayonnaise.
• Leave out the curry paste and use tomato purée instead. Season with salt and pepper.
• Leave out the curry paste and chop fresh herbs and mix these in with the mayonnaise, egg yolks and salt and pepper.
• Instead of curry paste, use hot sauce and a little extra mayonnaise or yoghurt.

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.

Stuffed tomatoes

If you can get the really big tomatoes sometimes (incomprehensibly) known as ‘beef’ tomatoes’, they make a gorgeous starter when stuffed with a savoury filling. There are, of course, countless ways of making these, but I will give one example and a couple of variations. Experiment as you wish.

I use bulgur wheat rather than breadcrumbs, for making the stuffing, but either gives excellent results.

Serves 2

 

2 tbsp bulgur wheat

1/4 cup boiling water

2 large tomatoes

1 small onion

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp basil

1/4 tsp thyme

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Put the bulgur wheat into a small bowl and pour the boiling water over it.
• Cut a thin slice off the top of each tomato and put to one side.
• Scoop out the insides with a teaspoon. You won’t need these for this recipe, but will undoubtedly find a use for them. (If you’re worried about it going mouldy, heat to boiling with a little hot water and put in a vacuum flask until you can use it the following day.)
• Put a little salt on the insides of the tomatoes to draw out excess juice. Turn them upside down to drain.
• Dice the onion and garlic and fry them in the oil until golden.
• When the bulgur wheat is softened, add the onion/garlic and the basil and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Be generous with the pepper.
• Place the tomatoes in the pressure cooker’s vegetable separator and put half the stuffing in each. Cover each tomato with its top.
• Put the trivet in the pressure cooker together with 1/2 cup water. Put the stuffed tomatoes on top. Bring up to pressure. Cook for 1 minute and allow the pressure to reduce naturally.
• Carefully lift out the tomatoes and serve hot.

Variations:

• Add 2 tbsp pine nuts to the filling, to make them even more special.
• Serve with rice (and wild rice) for a main course.
• Leave out the onion and the herbs and mix in 1/2 cup grated cheese with the bulgur wheat.
• Use 1/4 tsp dried, minced garlic with the bulgur rather than frying the garlic.

Hollandaise Sauce

Perhaps this isn’t exactly a basic recipe, but it’s a lovely one to have in your repertoire. Typically, it’s served with fresh fish such as salmon, but it also goes superbly with fresh asparagus, which is anyway such a luxury, that it deserves the best of treatment. It’s also very popular poured over poached eggs on toast.

If you’re unacquainted with this sauce, the best way to describe it’s like hot mayonnaise, but somehow, even richer. I haven’t tried making a vegan version of this.

 

Serves 2

 

1½ tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp water

1 egg

50 g (2 oz)/4 tbsp butter

 

Method:

• Boil water in a small saucepan and then take it off the stove.
• Find a bowl that will sit comfortably over the pan, but not so deeply as to displace the hot water.
• Put the lemon juice, water, salt and pepper in the bowl.
• Beat in the egg, with a wire whisk and then add a quarter of the butter. Continue whisking until the butter has melted. By now the sauce should be starting to thicken.
• Add the rest of the butter a quarter at a time, whisking all the time.
• Taste. Add a little more lemon juice if you like.
• The sauce should be served immediately, but it will keep warm if you leave the bowl over the hot water.

If you find that the water has cooled down too quickly, you can put it back over a very low flame on a flame tamer. The water must not boil because it will then effectively scramble the egg, which will ruin the sauce.