It's never a meal plan? Yes - it is!

There you are, you see .....

We have been planning our meals all through the Christmas and New Year period - it's just that the meal plans have very regularly gone to pot as we've been either too poorly to make the things we've planned for, or just didn't fancy what we'd planned to have.

As a result, I've not been posting up the meal plans as it would be too confusing to try and follow what happened to various dishes that never saw light of day.

I have got to admit, though, that this situation hasn't improved much.  I reckon that for the seven meals that we plan, probably between 4-5 have been made just recently.  Last week was one of the better ones, but even then we've only managed five out of the seven!

... we have been eating - and rather well, too!

We're setting off on this week's meal plan with determination to see it through.  Whether this determination lasts, depends on whether either of us parents go down with the sore throat that is currently keeping son & heir from his studies at school.  We whisked him down to the doctor this morning, just to make sure that it wasn't tonsillitis he'd got - which it wasn't, thank goodness.  He's now all sorted out with antiseptic gargle and penicillin, so fingers crossed it won't last long.

Hence, of necessity, the meals for the beginning of the week are non-confrontational and designed to be easily swallowed.  So what's on the agenda?

Tues : Bacon & leek pasta

Weds : 2 sausage paella

Thurs : Lamb & mozzarella stuffed aubergines with a side salad

Fri : Gammon steak, cheesey champ, courgettes, mushrooms & peas

Sat : Pork, aubergine & porcini ragu with pasta

Sun : Beef & beetroot curry with rice

Mon : Chicken pie and vegetables.

The bacon & leek pasta is there because it is one of son & heir's favourite dinners - and just in case he might need some tempting.  It is very easy to eat and just slips down with the minimum of bother, so shouldn't be too challenging for a boy with a sore throat.  Fingers crossed!  Of course the fact that it is one of our favourite "go to" quick dinners doesn't hurt either.

Wednesday's 2 sausage paella is an idea borne of having the remaining half of a very nice chorizo sitting in the fridge looking for a home.  Hubby is planning on putting it together with some good pork sausages, red pepper, mushrooms etc. into a paella type rice dish.  Sounds like it will be lovely - and again, easy to eat for son & heir.

The Lamb & Mozzarella Stuffed Aubergines is a Peter Gordon recipe from the Good Food channel.  We're going through a bit of an aubergine (hubby's favourite) patch at the moment and as soon as hubby clapped eyes on this recipe, he was as keen as mustard to try it.  It uses Sumac, which is a new spice for us - but we have liked the little we've tried of it so far.  The recipe also makes use of all our favourite spices along with lamb mince (my favourite) and mozzarella cheese (son & heir's favourite), so as you can see, it just had to be done.

Friday's gammon steaks with cheesy champ (mashed potato with spring onion) is entirely down to a certain Mr Rod Tucker of the Good Food Good People Facebook page.  He recently posted a couple of photographs of his gammon steak dinners that made my mouth water so much, I just had to include gammon in this week's list.  We've a few spring onions that needed using up, so mashed potato became Champ, then migrated into Cheesey Champ - the idea of which is making me very hungry.  I'll make my creamy courgette & mushrooms which will provide some lovely moisture to the combination, along with some peas for colour.

Saturday is another of hubby's recipes, where he's planning a rich minced pork ragu using smoky griddled aubergine and soaked porcini mushrooms.  The combinations sound delicious and this should be really good.

Sunday is a curry recipe that I found in the BBC Good Food Magazine.  The sheer idea of marrying up beef with beetroot and curry spices is intriguing me and I can't wait to find out how it will be.  I can imagine it will prove to be sweet, earthy and rather gorgeous.  I may very well do a small vegetable curry to go with it, along with the rice.

Monday's chicken pie and vegetables is a meal that has (so far) been moved along from the Monday spot for three weeks in a row.  You never know, we might even get to eat it this week!

I daren't even make the tiniest suggestion of other makes or bakes - probably best not to tempt fate, don't you think?

 

Pizza Tart - or Chorizo, Mushroom & Mozzarella Tart, if you like!

We were in the mood for some tart, last week.  We hadn't had one for quite a while and, although pastry is on the no-no list for my diet, I hoped that I'd be able to offset it a little bit with the other ingredients.


Being Pizza Tuesday, I was able to craft the tart to please just hubby and I - which obviously meant mushrooms!


Aside from that, however, I had been having difficulty with chorizo just lately.  I am not all that taken with the taste of a lot of smoked paprika, which of course, makes chorizo very difficult.  I like a little smoked paprika in dishes, but find it becomes almost medicinal in quantity - which isn't very nice.  However, our local Asda has begun to stock some cooking Chorizo, as well as the "ready to go" version.  I thought it would be worth giving it a try, so used it in the filling for the tart and was pleasantly surprised.  I certainly would be willing to use it again, so it can't have been all that strong!  Hubby used the last Chorizo sausage in the Chilli Con Carne later in the week, and it was crackingly good in that.


Something else that's worth noting, is that I used the Jus-Rol Low Fat Puff Pastry for the first time.  Now I know that "low fat" and "puff pastry" seem like a contradiction in terms, but it worked perfectly!  You must bear in mind, though, that I wasn't looking for a well risen pastry for this tart, but something that would give a lighter effect than shortcrust - and in that context it worked just fine.  I'll be using it again, as every little ounce of fat that can be gained, is all to the good.


So.  What did I do?  Well, I unrolled the pastry rectangle and placed it on a baking tray, then because it was a bit big (ordinarily I'd run a knife around the outside to create a crust), I rolled up the edges to form the crust of the tart.  After copious amounts of pricking to prevent it from puffing up hugely, I then part baked it for 10 minutes at 200degC.


Next, I took a pizza sauce (yes, shop bought. I was interested in a tart that was easy to prepare!  If you want to make a pizza sauce, then by all means be my guest.  I know they aren't difficult to make, but it was one step further than I wanted to go, that night) and put a coating of that over the pastry.

Next job was to slice the chorizo very thinly and add that to the tart base, followed by the sliced mushrooms (which in the recipe, below, I have sauteed first - it will remove a lot of the water that they carry) and topped off by the slices of mozzarella and a small sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese over the lot.


That done, it went into the oven for 25-35 minutes, or until the mozzarella was melted and browned on top and the filling was obviously heated through.


I served it with the Zesty Beetroot Salad on top of some mixed salad leaves.  Oh, incidentally, I used a pack of beetroot that had been marinated in honey & ginger for this - and it was gorgeous.  That's something else we'll be having again!


The salad was just lovely with the tart and provided that nice freshness to counteract all the rich flavours of the tart.


Totting up the Inflammation Factors, the end result is -356 per serving, so as you can see, I failed miserably where offsetting the pastry is concerned.  *sigh*  I was SO sure that beetroot was anti-inflammatory, but it turns out it's anything but.  Hey ho.  Back to the drawing board!


PIZZA TART  (Serves 2-3)


Ingredients :


350g puff pastry
3-4 tbsp tomato pizza sauce
a tsp of olive oil
3 cooking chorizo (4" links), sliced finely
3-4 mushrooms, sliced finely
2 balls of mozzarella, sliced finely
a small amount of parmesan cheese, grated.


Method :


1.  Pre-heat your oven to 200deg C/350deg F/Gas 4.

2.  Roll out (if home-made) your pastry to form a rectangle which will fit your baking tray, then using the tip of a knife, score approx 1" in from the edge a line around the inside of the pastry, to form the crust.  Alternatively, (if shop bought) simply unroll the pastry onto your baking tray and score - or if slightly larger than your tray, roll up the edges to form the crust.


3.  Using a fork, prick the inside of the pastry all over, then place into the oven for 10 minutes.


4.  While the pastry cools slightly, in a frying pan, add the teaspoonful of olive oil together with the chorizo and cook on a medium heat for 5 minutes or so, until the oil has changed colour.  Add the mushrooms and cook on a fairly high heat until they have given up their water.


5.  Next, coat the inside of the pastry with the pizza sauce, then add the chorizo & mushroom mixture, levelling off as you go.


6.  Lay the slices of mozzarella on top, then sprinkle the parmesan over and place back into the oven for 25-35 minutes or until the mozzarella is browned and bubbling.


7.  Allow 5-10 minutes for the tart to cool once removed from the oven, then serve with a salad.


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Zesty Beetroot Salad : so good!

Now, I should really be posting about the Tenderstem Broccoli & Goat's Cheese tart that I made at the same time as the Zesty Beetroot Salad, but you'll just have to wait for that one until next time!  You see, the Zesty Beetroot Salad was just so good, it has eclipsed the loveliness of the broccoli and goat's cheese - which takes some doing, let me tell you!

Yes, this is the final official instalment from the "So you think you know beetroot" challenge, which has been spectacularly successful from our point of view.  All three of the new uses for Beetroot will be included on our menu list, and in the case of the Beetroot & Chocolate Cake, I doubt I will ever make any other kind of chocolate cake again!  The Sweetfire® Couscous is very definitely going to become a regular on our list of salads.

This beetroot recipe is quite ridiculously simple, but with the accompaniment of some lovely peppery watercress, just wakes up the sweet and earthy flavours of the beetroot, by providing the zest of orange together with the fiery kick of mustard.

As an accompaniment to the Tenderstem broccoli & goat's cheese tart, it was just perfect.


When your tongue had had about enough of the creaminess of the goat's cheese and the fresh flavour of the broccoli, you could turn to the beetroot and have it act like a palate cleanser in that it danced all over your taste buds in its beautiful purple juiciness, waking them up and providing the perfect foil for the flavours of the tart.


I used the Baby Beetroot that had been dipped in vinegar for this recipe, but I'm sure it would be just as good with the naturally cooked beetroot.  The "must have" part, is the orange.  Without that, a very important dimension would be lost.

ZESTY BEETROOT SALAD


Ingredients :


3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
zest of an orange, grated
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
3-4 cooked beetroot, sliced
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper.


Method :


1.  Make the dressing by whisking together all the ingredients but for the beetroot.  Season to taste.


2.  Slice the beetroot and slip the slices into the dressing.  Toss gently to coat and leave to marinate for 10-15 minutes.


3.  Just before serving, give another gentle toss to make sure each slice is coated and glistening.


4.  Serve.


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Chocolate and Beetroot Cake : deep, moist and truly delicious

All this sudden interest in beetroot requires some explanation, I think!

Well I was contacted by the "Love Beetroot" campaign and asked whether I would be interested in working with them to try and find some new delicious recipes for their beetroot.  I was immediately interested, as both hubby and I love beetroot and get through a fair amount of the stuff in salads - but usually just sliced by the side of a green salad.  Hence, I was especially interested in the "thinking outside the box" aspect of trying to include beetroot in unusual or quirky recipes.

I was sent - in the most gorgeous box with a sumptuous purple ribbon - three preparations of beetroot to try, a 250g pack of cooked beetroot in natural juice, a smaller pack of Sweetfire® baby beetroot (which is infused with a chilli, sugar and white wine vinegar marinade) and a pack of baby beetroot that had been dunked in vinegar.

It was an easy decision as to what to make with the natural cooked beetroot, as I'd been hankering after making a Chocolate & Beetroot cake for a while.

The Sweetfire® beetroot took a bit more thinking about.  However, I finally settled on their becoming an integral part of a couscous recipe - which we had for dinner last night.  It was just divine and I'll be blogging it very soon.

The beetroot in vinegar is going to be made into a zesty beetroot salad to accompany a Tenderstem Broccoli & Goat's Cheese tart - and I dare say I'll blog that one (provided it turns out to be as nice as it sounds!).

I will also admit to having bought another pack of natural cooked beetroot, in order that the beetroot fun doesn't need to stop when the supplies run out - so watch this space!

So - back to the cake.  I had been looking for a recipe for a while - since before I was contacted regarding the campaign - and had a Diana Henry recipe tucked up my sleeve.  The majority of the recipes I had seen had involved vegetable oil as the fat in the recipe.  However, I was interested in making a cake that involved butter.  I haven't a clue why, I just wanted butter and beetroot, rather than oil and beetroot.  Diana's recipe was the first one that fitted the bill - and seemed to be the one which matched up best to my mental picture of a chocolate & beetroot cake.

As ever (well, you wouldn't expect anything else, now would you?), I didn't prepare it exactly to the letter of the recipe, in that I wasn't interested in slathering it with a flavoured ganache-style chocolate mixture - I simply melted a pack of milk chocolate together with 10g of butter and smoothed that on top.  I was certainly very happy with the results, as was anyone who accepted a slice.

Most interesting was the reaction of Son & heir.  He'd told me that he wasn't going to touch a cake made with beetroot, as it sounded disgusting.  (Bear in mind, he doesn't like beetroot at the best of times).  He was certainly interested in how it smelled as it was cooking and was intrigued by the look of the thing.  I think the fact that the beetroot had just melted into the whole, helped.  I suspect he was thinking it would be covered in slices of beetroot!  His interest was also encouraged by the sight of a block of milk chocolate being used to ice the cake.

When it came to sampling a slice, he still wouldn't commit himself.  He said he'd have "a mouthful of someone else's slice" and decide after that.  Well, so far, he's eaten probably between a third to a half of the cake, on his own.  I think he likes it.

Just out of the oven!

Hubby was expecting to taste beetroot in the cake itself - I hadn't explained to him that its function was more as regards the texture and moistness of the cake, rather than the flavour.  However, once he got over the fact that he couldn't taste beetroot, he was utterly convinced.  Having had a slice when it was first cut, then another the day after and another the day after that, he reckons (and I agree) that the flavour just keeps getting better.  The cake doesn't dry out, either, as so many chocolate cakes are wont to do.

Look at all that lovely chocolate!

It's my Dad's 80th birthday in December and I'm seriously contemplating making him one of these cakes.  I know it would go down a storm - and it would stay as nice as the day it was made, thus enabling it to be made a wee bit ahead of time.

I can see this one becoming a very definite family favourite.





CHOCOLATE & BEETROOT CAKE  (serves 10-12)

Ingredients :

250g cooked beetroot, coarsely chopped
125g softened butter (I used salted, but use unsalted if you prefer)
75g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
300g soft dark brown sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature
225g self-raising flour, sifted
a quarter of a tsp salt
50g cocoa powder, sifted.


Method :


1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180degC/160degC fan/gas 4.  Line the bottom of a 23cm non-stick springform tin with baking parchment.  Grease the tin if yours isn't a non-stick one.


2.  Chop, or grate, or blitz in a food processor, the beetroot until coarsely chopped.  You are definitely not looking for a puree!  Set aside.


3.  Place a small saucepan on the heat with some water inside and place a bowl on top, so that the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl.  Put the chocolate pieces into the bowl and melt by allowing the water to simmer, which in turn will heat the bowl, causing the chocolate to melt.  Do not stir or otherwise tinker with the chocolate - leave it to melt.


4.  Into a larger bowl, place the butter, sugar and eggs and beat until light and pale.


5.  Mix in the melted chocolate, then fold in the flour, salt and cocoa powder with a large metal spoon.


6.  Finally, stir the beetroot gently into the mix.


7.  Transfer the mixture to the cake tin and make a slight dip in the centre with the back of your spoon.  Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out with just a tiny bit of cake mix still attached.


8.  Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove from the tin and place on a cake rack to cool completely.


9.  When the cake is cool, put the saucepan/water/bowl combination back together again and break a 100g block of milk chocolate into the bowl.  Add 10g of butter and leave to allow them both to melt.


10.  Once melted, mix together with a whisk and pour onto the top of the cake.  Encourage the chocolate out to the sides of the cake, then leave to cool.


Absolutely lovely when served with a dollop of Creme Fraiche d'Isigny.

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Fun Beetroot Fact!

Beta cyanin, the pigment that gives beetroot its colour, is an antioxidant so the humble beetroot could be the key to beating your hangover! Beta cyanin speeds up detoxification in your liver, which enables your body to turn the alcohol into a less harmful substance that can be excreted quicker than normal.  

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A week of firsts - well, almost. Meal plan w/c 20 Sept 11

Firstly though, I just want to tell you about the end of last week.

A couple of weekends ago, you may remember we invested in a mahoosive great lump of roasting bacon.  I did a kind of pot-roast with the slow cooker and half of the piece has been sitting in the freezer awaiting inspiration.

Eventually we gave up on inspiration striking and went for Ham & Cheese Pasta.

This was to be one of hubby’s cooking nights and my goodness but he did it proud!  The ham was soft and sweetly salty, while the cheese sauce on the pasta was all oozy and delicious.  We have found a new cheese (well, to us it is new!) in the supermarket, called Castello® Reserve Herrgård®, which is apparently a matured Swedish hard cheese.  It is a cheese very similar to extremely mature cheddar in its texture, but without any of the salty crystals that you so often find in cheddar.  They reckon it has buttery undertones of caramel and nuts – well I’m not sure about that, as the high flavour tones do tend to monopolise your tongue!

Anyway, I can recommend it in a cheese sauce for pasta.  Working together with a mature cheddar (cheddar in the majority) it completely rounded out the flavour, resulting in a super strong cheesy kick.

Oh and by the way – it’s gorgeous on a cracker with some chutney, too!

So, that brings us on to the new week - and this is how it's looking :

Tues : home-made pizza

Weds : Corn chowder with poppy seed loaf

Thurs : Beef Lasagne with chips for boys and salad for me

Fri : Chicken Traybake with runner beans

Sat : Tarragon chicken, gnocchi and tenderstem broccoli

Sun : Beef Goulash with rice

Mon : Sausage plait with chips and baked beans.

Well, typing that just made me hungry - so I reckon it's looking good.

Looking good!

As is often the way, a few days have gone by in the new week.  So where Monday's pizza day is concerned, because we couldn't think of anything we particularly wanted that wasn't suitable for Son & heir, we all had pizza.  Except, instead of buying frozen pizzas, hubby put his pizza-maker's hat on and made some cracking home made versions.  Son & heir had a ham & pepperoni, whereas hubby and I had everything including the kitchen sink on ours.  That included pepperoni, ham, red pepper, red onion, mushroom and most wonderfully of all - anchovies.  Goodness how I love those little fishies!

The pizzas were so filling that neither hubby nor I managed to finish ours - which provided breakfast for hubby for the following day.

As for Wednesday's Corn Chowder, well, I'd been keeping my eye open for a good hearty recipe for this.  I'd seen a few that seemed particularly lightweight and not really suitable as a main course soup.  Then I clapped eyes on one from www.fresh365online.com.

I made it last night and after a bit of a worry about how the corn was cooking, it turned out fabulously.  I'll blog about it separately, so won't go into detail now.

Tonight's dinner - the Lasagne - is hubby's first ever go at making Lasagne.

We all really like Lasagne and because I've not been well, I've not been making dishes like this that take a while to make.  I just find it impossible to devote the time that's required, what with making the bechamel sauce, then the pasta sauce, then the assembly and creation of a salad to go with it.  Unfortunately, it's just beyond me at the moment.  So, dear hubby has stepped up to the hotplate and had a go.

Having just got back to the computer from devouring a good third of the Lasagne, I can tell you that hubby has got the job!  Again, I'll be blogging about this one - so you'll have to wait until then to hear all about it in detail.

Sneak preview!

Friday is a little bit exciting in a beetroot kind of way.  This is the day that the samples of beetroot arrive for the "So you think you know beetroot" challenge.

I'll be receiving three types of beetroot and, to start us off, several recipes have been suggested.  I thought I'd do one of those recipes - as they are recommended - and just freewheel after that.  So Friday's dinner will be the "One pan roast lunch of chicken, beetroot, potatoes and carrots" from www.lovebeetroot.co.uk site.  I have plans to add this and that to the dish, to make it more an evening dinner rather than a lunch, but again (sorry!) you'll have to wait and see what turns up.

I've got all sorts of fledgling ideas about what to do with the other two types of beetroot, but none of them have turned into formulated plans yet.  I'm waiting to see how much of each type I get, before I decide what to do with it.  After all, it's no good planning on doing something that takes 500g of purpleness, if you are only getting 250g - and you can't get to the shops!

Photo c/o BBC Good Food

Saturday's Tarragon Chicken dish is an adaptation of a recipe that I first saw in Olive Magazine, absolutely ages ago.  I've kept it, thinking "I'll do that one day soon" and some two years later, I've managed to include it!  Because of hubby's potato hatred, instead of the new potatoes (which we'll already have had in the traybake) that are recommended, I thought I'd go for gnocchi.  The sauce for the tarragon chicken should have a good enough consistency for the gnocchi and I think our favourite tenderstem broccoli will be fabulous with it.

Now Sunday's Goulash is all that @sarahcartlidge's fault, because she mentioned it being Goulash weather, which switched on an "oooh, yummy!" response in my brain, which won't be switched off again until I make one.  Fortunately, I haven't put the slow cooker away yet - which may well prove to be a permanent fixture on the worktop, at least until Spring strikes.

What do you reckon to beetroot in vinegar served beside Goulash, a la Margi Clarke's Scouse on MasterChef?  Seems do-able, to me.  More so than the Scouse, because after all, beetroot and goulash do originate from similar places ..

Monday is hubby's day to cook again - and this time he's planning on creating a sausage plait (basically a giant sausage roll, with plaited pastry).  Sounds lovely to me - especially as he's going to be adding some additional flavours to the sausagemeat.  As of yet, I'm not sure what, but all will be revealed!

So there we are.  All except for the home-made pizzas are dishes that are new to us.  Even the Goulash is, as I've never managed to create a "proper" Goulash - and by "proper", I mean one which lives up to the one I've got in my head.  Exciting times in the kitchen, even before the beetroot turned up!

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Borscht! Deep purple goodness.

As many of you know, we had been growing a little collection of beetroots in the garden - just as an experiment and to see how they'd get on.

Well, we harvested them the other day and only one of the ten or so was a particularly good size.  Which was okay, as we hadn't thought any of them would come to anything.  Next year we'll have to plant them a bit further apart, I think.

However, I'd been putting some thought into what I'd do with them if any were any good - and had the thought of Borscht floating around in my back of my head.

Now Borscht is not something I'd ever had (prior to last night, anyway), nor was it anything that had particularly appeared on my radar as being something that I just had to try.  I like beetroot - and a salad just isn't a salad without it - but an entire soup made from beetroot?  That was a bit more of a challenge.

Having spent time thinking about it though, I had (sort of) committed myself to giving it a go.  So, I researched various recipes and put a bunch of fresh beetroot on the shopping list.  I didn't plump for one particular recipe, eventually I took the best bits from three different recipes and made my own - which accorded with the image I had in my mind, of what Borscht looked like and tasted like.  Which was tricky, because as I say, I'd never seen it (other than in photographs), much less tasted it!

Having heard all kinds of horror stories of kitchens being painted purple (one Twitter friend dropped a panful of the stuff), and having watched Nigel Slater turn his hands purple when grating a beetroot, I also put a pair of rubber gloves on the shopping list.

My recipe required a number of the vegetables to be julienned and I didn't much fancy turning the chopping board purple, so I'd been pondering on this conundrum for a while.  Ultimately, I utilised a version of Rachel Allen's method of rolling out pastry - and put a double sheet of cling film onto the worktop, which I then put the mandolin onto and julienned the beetroot onto that.  (What, use a knife?  Not when there's a mandolin around!).  This stroke of inspiration (as well as the rubber gloves), meant that absolutely nothing got dyed purple and the beetroot could be conveyed from whole to julienned, then from worktop to saucepan, without any evidence appearing on the worktop, chopping board, floor or my clothes.  (The latter of which is completely amazing, if you know what a muck magnet I am usually!).

As for the flavour, well, it's not exactly beetroot - but the earthiness is there and not overpoweringly so.  The sweetness of beetroot is there, naturally.  However, it seems as though the combination of flavours does that unusual thing in that they combine, amalgamate and come forth in a collection of flavours that is unlike anything you've ever had before.  Nothing is a huge flavour, nothing outweighs anything else.  Even the cabbage is welcomed with open arms by the remainder of the flavours and just sort of disappears.  I can completely understand the addition of vinegar at the end, as this serves to sharpen up the taste, giving you a complete and rounded flavour as a whole.  Borscht has umami by the bucketload.



The recipe is all about preparation.  If you get the vegetables sliced up and prepared before you start cooking, it's just a simple matter of putting items one after the other into the saucepan until they're cooked.

BORSCHT  (feeds 2)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp butter

4 slices streaky bacon, cut into thin strips

1 medium potato, diced small

1 large carrot, julienned (use the mandolin)

1 stick celery, de-stringed and chopped fine

2 shallots (or 1 onion), chopped

200g raw beetroots, skinned and julienned

100g sweetheart cabbage, sliced finely

600ml beef stock

a tinned plum tomato, chopped finely

the juice from the tomato tin

2 tsp red wine vinegar

salt & pepper

sour cream.

Method :

In a large heavy pan, melt butter and lightly fry the bacon until fat has rendered and is becoming brown.

Then add the shallots and fry until softened.

Add the potatoes, carrots, celery and beetroot and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add beef stock, tomatoes and tomato juice plus some pepper and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.

Add the cabbage and stir to combine.  Bring back to a simmer, cover and cook until potato cubes are done.

Take a potato masher and gently crush the soup, to break up the potato but not mashing the vegetables.  Give a good stir and taste for seasoning.  (Add loads of  black pepper – it can take it).

Add vinegar and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Serve with a swirl of sour cream.

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