Butternut and Nut Butter Soup

I am a fan of soup ... almost as much as I am a fan of clever puns so this soup is already on to a winner purely by its name. I even make my own soup very occasionally. I have made a butternut squash soup before but it was a garlicy one that was also made with carrots, which was tasty but sweeter than I like. I saw this one on the TV this evening that I absolutely plan to be making soon because I think the addition of peanut butter to anything has got to be an improvement!

Fry off two onions in a knob of butter. Add some grated ginger, crushed garlic and chopped red chilli. Peel you squash, cut in half, scoop out the seeds and chop into cubes. Put in the pan with the onion mix, season and cook for five minutes. Add chicken stock and cook for around 25 minutes until the squash is softened, then transfer to a blender and blitz until smooth. Take a ladle of the soup and mix in a tablespoon  or two of crunchy peanut butter until it has combined, then return the soup/peanut butter mix to the rest of the soup in the pan and stir through. Finish the soup with the juice of half a lime. Sprinkle with chopped coriander and a swirl of natural yoghurt.

From River Cottage Every Day, Channel 4, 28th October 2010. Original recipe can be found here: http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/butternut-nut-butter-soup/

One Pot Sausages and Lentils

Nigella Lawson makes a tasty looking version of this ... but this recipe from BBC Good Food Website is pretty much the same in terms of ingredients however the whole thing is simplified by getting things done in just one pot. Less washing up = happy me :) I cooked this for the first time tonight and the recipe is really simple, and the flavours were fantastic BUT the green lentils i bought took ages to cook and and absorbed about four times the water in the recipe. I've never cooked lentils before so it may have been me. I didn't soak them, but the packet specifically said not too.

Ingredients

Olive Oil
400g Pack of Sausages
1 Onion, Chopped
1 Garlic Clove, Crushed
1 Red Pepper, Sliced
250g Puy/Green Lentils
150ml Veg Stock (I needed MUCH more than this)
125ml Red Wine or extra stock

Fry the sausages for five minutes until brown then put them aside.

In the same pan add onions, peppers and garlic and soften for five minutes adding extra oil if necessary

Return the sausages to the pan with the lentils, wine and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the sausages are cooked and the lentils are soft. (I found i needed to add loads more water/stock and cook it for much longer to get the lentils soft enough ... I suppose it depends on your lentils so use the packet as a guide).

Serve with crusty bread. Serves 4 (apparently ... but many 400g packs of sausage contain 6 sausages which is problematic so really it probably serves 3 at best. If my experience is anything to go by you could half the amount of lentils and triple the amount of water and cooking time you've probably got a great meal for two without any need for bread.)

At the time of writing this recipe can be found on the following link :  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2233/sausage-and-lentil-onepot

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

I have great memories of eating this cake swimming in a bowl full of custard ... I think it may be one of my all time favourites, although I am quite fickle when it comes to cake and my favourite tends to vary depending on what happens to be around at the time. I can't remember the last time I ate it and I have never baked it. However, this weekend that is set to change. Hubby and I have a roast pork dinner planned for Sunday afternoon and this cake is on the menu for sure.

I had to google for the recipe and found this promising looking one on the BBC Good Food website.

INGREDIENTS

• 50g softened butter
• 50g light soft brown sugar
• 7 pineapples rings in syrup, drained and syrup
• glacé cherry

FOR THE CAKE

• 100g softened butter
• 100g golden caster sugar
• 100g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs

METHOD

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. For the topping, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Spread over the base and a quarter of the way up the sides of a 20-21cm round cake tin. Arrange pineapple rings on top, then place cherries in the centres of the rings.
2. Place the cake ingredients in a bowl along with 2 tbsp of the pineapple syrup and, using an electric whisk, beat to a soft consistency. Spoon into the tin on top of the pineapple and smooth it out so it's level. Bake for 35 mins. Leave to stand for 5 mins, then turn out onto a plate. Serve warm with a scoop of ice cream.

The Great British Bake Off

This weekend I had the house all to myself ... Hubby went off to Devon surfing and left me to my own devices. I had a nice relaxing weekend (aside from a bit of essential housework) and cooked nothing.

However, I did watch the entire series of "The Great British Bake Off" which has been airing on BBC2 and the final was on telly last Tuesday evening. If you're quick you might still catch it on the iPlayer.

Aside from being droolsome viewing, it was also a bit educational. I learnt more about baked goods than I ever knew there was to know. For example, everyone knows that the Earl of Sandwich invented the sarnie so that he didn't have to leave the gambling table, but did you know that the pre-packed sandwich started off in covent garden when a struggling baker started making ham sandwiches to sell hungry theatre goers after watching their shows? Did you also know that biscuits were invented during the industrial revolution as a portable snack for travellers on the newly invented steam engine? Well, I didn't but now I do.

One of the finalists has a blog called The Pink Whisk too which I'm going to invesitgate ... and I have a real urge to bake cherry scones.

Nanny G's Victoria Sponge

As I probably already mentioned, Nanny G used to recite the recipe for a basic Victoria Sponge over the Sunday lunch table, much to my dismay at the time. To her credit, I can still remember the ingredients, quantities and process of baking this classic cake by heart. It is only fitting that the first recipe I add to my notebook is this ... not that I'll ever forget it!

Ingredients:

80z Butter
8oz Sugar
8oz Self Raising Flour
4 Eggs

You will also need a bowl, a wooden spoon, two 9" greased and lined cake tins and an oven preheated to 180 (160 for a fan oven).

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale - you can't do this too much!

Add the eggs one at a time and combine thoroughly and vigourously - sometimes it looks like the eggs will never mix in but they will.

Sift the flour into the bowl and and fold it in gently until just combined - if you mix it too much you will knock all the air out of it and stretch the gluten in the flour so it will never rise.

Share the mixture between the two tins and spread it out right to the edges - to get the cakes to rise into a lovely flat cake rather than have a dome in the middle I spread the mixture a little thinner in the middle.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (depending on your oven) until they are just golden on top and a skewer comes out clean.

Leave the cakes to cool in the tin, then turn out on to a board or wire rack ... choose the prettiest one to be the top!

Sandwich together with a filling of your choice. The traditional one would be raspberry jam and whipped cream but I like to add fresh raspberries too, to sneak in one of my five a day and ease some of the cake guilt! I sometimes substitute strawberry jam and fresh strawberries for fussy people who don't like raspberries. Lemon curd is equally lovely ... ditto chocolate spread.

Dust the top of the cake with icing sugar and serve.

Feeds 6 - 8 people quite generously, but if there are only 4 - 5 of you don't expect there to be any left for later!

An Introduction to the Nanny G Notebook

I must have been such a frustration to my Nanny G.

She loved to cook and to eat and to talk about what she had cooked and what she'd been eating. She particularly loved to cook for other people and Sundays were an institution she had built around food. You would always find a legendary traditional roast if you visited at lunchtime, with roasties to die for and two types of stuffing (one would be sage and onion, the other usually some experimental flavour). If you visited at teatime you would be greeted by the kind of spread you only read about in Enid Blyton novels with a table brimming with plates of little sandwiches, cold cuts, butter made into curls, scones toppling from a tiered stand and at least one gigantic spectacle of a cake.

As her only Grand Daughter she tried desperately to pass on everything she knew to me ... and as a cantankerous tomboy of a child I resisted any and all attempts to be domesticated preferring instead to draw with my Grandad. My Brother and Cousin would probably have been a more receptive audience, but they were boys and Nanny G was forever the traditionalist.

Nanny G died from ovarian cancer about twelve years ago. If she was still here I think she would be quietly proud at the progress I have made in the good housewife stakes. I now LOVE to cook and eat, and talk about the things I have cooked and eaten, and cook for other people. I am hoarding foodie magazines in every spare inch of cupboard space and I can happily watch cookery programmes on the tv all day, much to my husbands dismay. I scribble down recipes while Nigel Slater or Nigella Lawson seem to effortlessly create something that looks so delicious it makes me want to lick the television (Nanny G would probably blame watching Pob for that urge!) I even bake a very convincing Victoria Sponge from memory of the recipe she would recite at me over our Sunday feasts.

So, in a bid to free myself from some of the clutter my notebook is moving from the kitchen shelf to this blog. It will never run out of pages, and I can fix my spelling without tippex, and I can save photographic evidence of my successes and failures and if anyone else stumbles across my Nanny G notebook I hope you find something that tickles your fancy here.