Man Flu Medication

Yes we had a spate of man-flu in our household last week. Stokesy had to have to day off from work and so I got to be Florence for the day (woohoo). Florence dispensed some hot and sour soup to blast through those blocked sinuses. It makes a great breakfast. To make Florence's man-flu-fighting soup:


Put 500ml water, 1 chicken stock cube, 1 tsp tom yam paste, 4 slices of ginger into a saucepan and heat for 5 minutes to get the flavours going. Now add 3 tbso coconut milk, shredded cabbage and sweetcorn. Heat for another 3 minutes and taste (sometimes it needs more tom yam paste ot coconut milk or stock). Eat with a wedge of lime for extra vitamin C boost.


On Day 2 of his near-death experience he needed more cheering up.....bring out the smiley faces in porridge!

Special Offer...in a hedgerow near you

Apologies for the lack of blog recently. I was all worn out after the Ashburton blog-a-thon so was giving myself some time to regroup. But do not fear, I was not slacking in the food department.

First up, available free, only effort required is a brisk walk in the countryside.................wiiild garliiic!!! (say that in the style of a game show host, it sounds better)

I am no expert in wild food, foraging etc, but even an idiot like me can identify wild garlic. Growing mostly in shady woodland and on verges. Hmmm a picture would help wouldn't it. I will go and take a pic of some over the weekend and add it in.........oh and it smells like shop garlic so you can't go too far wrong. The hardest thing is working out which patch to pick as, unfortunately it always grows in popular dog walking areas. Yes I'd always advise washing it before use.

You can add it raw to salad, it's good cooked into scrambled egg, but I turned it into wild garlic pesto and put a blob into a plain potato soup cos I'm a big show-off. To make the wild garlic pesto:

Large handful (thoroughly washed) wild garlic

75 ml olive oil - the good stuff

small handful pine nuts

small handful of grated parmesan

salt and sugar (yes sugar, the garlic can be slightly bitter) to taste

Throw the whole lot in a food processor and blitz for a minute. Some people reckon that wild garlic doesn't make your breath smell. They are liars.

Shellfish Bisque with spring rolls

Mmm I love shellfish bisque and I love spring rolls. Luckily for me some genius at Ashburton decided to do a starter combining the two. This makes a lovely light summer lunch (until you eat eight spring rolls....oops)

Vichysoisse

Vichysoisse = Posh leek and potato soup
Here I am making mine look even posher with a lovely cream finish. You make it posh by cutting up your veg lickle-ickle and then blending it so it is super smooth

This was absolutely delicious. Key to getting the flvour in was taking the time to sweat the onion, leek and potato, plus using your homemade top-notch chicken stock (which we did on Day 1). And yes those are my perfectly formed buns lurking in the background ;o)

Late night snacking

You know how it is sometimes, you're lurking around late at night, looking in the fridge for goodies. Stokesy and I are on a late night CSI/TV fest tonight so obviously need somethig nice to sustain us. Stokesy tempted me into the kitchen with a beetroot/carrot/apple/ginger juice and between us we made the mushroom and parsley soup. Usually I'll have bread with soup but this was so filling and delicious on its own.

Here's what you need to make it: sweat 4 shallots in butter until soft, add 25g flour and cook for 1 minute. Add 250g finely chopped mushrooms, 2 tbsp parsley, lots of freshly ground black pepper and a little salt. Heat up 400ml hot chicken stock and add 400ml milk to it. Then pour the whole lot into your mushroom pot. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.