Stone Soup

A cold miserable day today so what better than a nice bowl of piping hot soup for lunch, and what better than my favourite, “Stone Soup”. This is made using the traditional family soup stone, part of my inheritance from Granny. Granny was a master cook who had served, in her youth, in  the kitchen of “His Lordship” in County Derry, Ireland, (the old country) back in the olden days. The stone has been in the family for generations and I believe may have been a leftover from when Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway. I can't show you a photo of the rock (family secret don't you know) but here's a pic of the box we keep it in.

Rock on.

Usually it's just rock in the pot, a bit of salt and pepper, simmer till done. But sometimes a bit of variation is nice and since I had a bit of stock made from the carcasses of a couple of chickens I boned out yesterday, I started with that (the meat as well, don't want to waste anything). Now as this rock has done a fair bit of service a bit of thickening doesn't go astray, so I fired in a carrot, spud, apple and a bit of onion that I had laying around in the fridge. Rice, rice is good too so a handful of that as well, and, since I don't mind a bit of fire, a teaspoon full of curry powder just to sup it up a bit. Piping hot with some toasted home-made Chimichurri Bread you can't beat it, just the thing on a cold miserable day.

Stone soup is seriously good tucker, so good in fact I thought I should share  the recipe. Of course if you don't have a family soup stone all you will end up with is plain old Mulligatawny soup.

Ingredients
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 medium potato peeled and diced
1 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1Litre (4 cups) chicken stock
1/2 apple - peeled, cored and chopped
3 tablespoons basmati rice
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast fillet - diced
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch dried thyme
125ml (1/2 cup) very thick (45%) cream

Preparation method
Fry onions, ginger and carrot in butter in a large soup pot. Add flour and curry powder and cook 5 more minutes.
Add chicken stock and potato, mix well and bring to the boil. Simmer about 1/2 hour.
Add apple, rice, chicken, salt, pepper and thyme. Simmer 15 to 20 minutes, or until rice is done.
Stir in cream and serve.

Don't forget to put the rock back in it's box for the next batch, a good soup stone will last forever properly looked after.

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Little Spinach pies

I like Silver beet, so I grow quite a bit of it. It's a good value plant to have in the garden and it's tough, (you can't kill it with a baseball bat) out here we can grow it year round. As I'm not to worried about crop rotation I grow it wherever I have a hole. Because the roots store plenty of the carbohydrates necessary for additional leaf growth it can be quite denuded of leaves without a problem. Since we usually have way more than we can use fresh, I make it into little spinach pies and freeze them for a snack or quick meal. Just pull two or three out of the bag and into a hot oven for 10 minutes or if it's to hot for the oven, nuke them.

It's just a Spinach and feta fatayer recipe I have fiddled with a little. Fatayer are usually three cornered pies but since there is a bit of waste with cutting circles in the pastry I simply quarter the sheets and use a bit more filling.

Ingredients

500g fresh spinach or silver beet,

250g Persian feta

1 onion, finely chopped

2 big mushrooms

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

Good pinch Cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon lime juice or fresh lemon juice

Frozen puff pastry sheets

Preparation

Blanch the spinach (no salt) then make sure that all the excess water is squeezed out, and roughly chop.

In a fry pan heat some olive oil; fry the onions and finely chopped mushrooms. Add the spinach, spice and lime juice and season with a little salt and pepper. Then add the broken up feta. Make sure all ingredients are mixed well then let the mixture cool.

Cut the puff pastry sheets into quarters and put about a heaped tablespoon of mix in the middle and fold in the corners.

Place the pies on a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven (200°C) for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

The heat has let up a bit over the last week so the garden has picked up a little. The tomato plants that where not looking to good have had a bit of pruning and are showing signs of life, we may get a few off them yet. I have some seedlings that are ready to go and if it stays cool for another week they will be planted out. The second lot of corn is holding up OK and it looks like we will get something there and, since the silver beet is doing fine I'm still getting my greens.

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Great breakfast bread

Being a connoisseur of the ham sandwich I do like good bread. And since we don't have a small, independent artisan baker close at hand we are stuck with the soggy, flavourless, junk from the supermarket. Not my cup of tea I'm afraid so I make my own. I’ve been making bread for a few years now and enjoy the work of kneading and the smell of the hot bread fresh from the oven. I love making the stuff from scratch and bake a couple of standard loaves about twice a week. But every once in a while I get a taste for pizza and since I have two mixing bowls and only need one for the pizza dough, I like to try out a bread that's a little different. Today's bread is my version of Argentine chimichurri bread, a great breakfast bread, toasted under a poached egg.

The Recipe.
2-1/2 cups plain flour & 1 cup whole grain flour

1-1/4 cups warm water

2 tsp dried fresh yeast

1 tbsp honey

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp white wine vinegar

Good pinch cayenne pepper

3/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1 clove garlic, crushed

3 tablespoons chopped red onion

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method

Combine the fresh yeast with the water and honey in a bowl.

Leave the mixture to rest in a warm place for 10-15 minutes until frothy on the surface.

With the flour in a large bowl mix in salt, onion, garlic, parsley and cayenne.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast liquid, mix a little then stir in the olive oil and vineager.

Using either floured hands or a wooden spoon, mix together to form dough.

Turn out on to a floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Return to bowl and cover with glad wrap and tea towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.

Turn out on to work surface and 'knock back' by punching the dough. This releases any air bubbles which would make the dough uneven.

Return to bowl and let rise again, turn out and knock back then form the loaf, let it rise further before placing into a hot oven, about 200C for about 25 min.

The oven is a gas fired pizza oven and is the bees knees for bread baking. I brought this little beauty because cooking inside in the summer is impossible, it's just too hot.

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