Recipe: Carrot and butterbean soup: Thermomix: frugal

Made with what I had available . . . the usual method is below.

 Ingredients:
1 medium onion, peeled and chunked
six or seven carrots, peeled if necessary and chunked
Three 'rounds' of celery (I don't separate the celery ribs, I just cut across  the top - using the leaves is fine) - check for grit
about 40g butter
a good half tsp ground coriander
1 good tsp cumin
1 large can butterbeans, drained
water
2.5 tbsp marigold low sodium vegetable bouillon powder
ground pepper

Method

Place the onion, carrot, celery, butter, coriander and cumin in the bowl and chop at speed 5-6 for a short time.
Cook at 90, 10 mins, speed 2

Add the remaining ingredients with water to reach to about 1.75 litres with the other ingredients
Cook at Varoma heat, speed 2/3 for about 16 minutes.

Allow to cool
Puree at speed 8/9 for a good time - over two minutes - until the soup is velvety smooth.  Taste and adjust seasonings (I didn't need to, nor did I add any salt)

When I reheat it tomorrow for Sunday lunch, I will add a dash of cream.

Ordinary method.
In a large saucepan:
Chop all the veg into dice
Saute in the butter until soft
Add the spices and saute again for a short time.
Add the remaining ingredients (I guess it would be about 1-ish litres of water)
Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 mins until everything is cooked and soft.
Puree using a stick blender or a processor.
Taste and adjust seasonings, if necessary

What will I have with it?  Why, these, of course.  Five strand plaited loaves.  I'm getting the hang of plaiting now!   These loaves are made with 150g oats (finely ground) and 350g strong white.

Recipe: Spicy carrot and lentil soup: Thermomix and frugal

Another soup.  You see, I have friends over for a lunch tomorrow and I also want all my lunches this week to be made and ready.  It's going to be a very busy week!

For such simple ingredients, this turned out very flavoursome, smooth and warming.  Definitely frugal. at between 25p and 30p per serving (a bit vague because I used cupboard ingredients mostly)  With a good chunk of bread (home made!), that's a filling lunch for under 50p.

Ingredients
an onion, peeled and cut into chunks
some celery, not too much, cut into chunks
about 600g carrot, topped, tailed, washed and chunked
a good half tsp or so of cumin
butter
about 100-ish g red lentils
2 tbsp marigold low sodium vegetable bouillon
a squeeze of garlic puree
boiling water

Method
Put the onion, celery and carrot into the Thermomix bowl and chop for about 10 second on speed 6
Add a lump of butter and the cumin and briefly zizz again to distribute it

Cook on 90, speed 2 for about 7 minutes

Add the lentils, the bouillon powder, the garlic puree and enough boiling water to just below the full mark

Cook on Varoma, speed 2/3, about 16 mins.  You can always give it a little longer if necessary.

Allow to cool for a while, then zizz at speed 8 for 2 mins.  If it is a little too thick, add more water or some milk.

Reheat to piping hot and serve with whatever you fancy really.

It makes about seven good servings (assuming two ladels-full per serving)  It doesn;t have salt or pepper except what is in the bouillon, but it can be added at the end, if needed.

The usual method:
Chop the vegetables finely
Saute them in a large pan in the butter with the cumin.
Add the lentils, bouillon, garlic puree and about 1 litre of boiling water, maybe more.
Simmer until cooked and zizz until smooth.  Check seasonings and adjust, if necessary

Recipe: Vegetable and lentil soup: a thermomix recipe: frugal

Ingredients:
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
2 carrots, peeled or scraped and cut into chunks
1 medium leek, root and top cut off, cur into chunks.
Celery - I use one celery, cut off the very top and discarded, then cut across the top three times, to use the green celery and leaves
some butter (I supposed I used about 40g)
2 medium-small potatoes, peeled and cut into dice
2 or 3 handfuls of lentils
two heaped tbsp Marigold stock (I use the low sodium kind)
A squeeze of garlic puree and a squeeze of chilli puree
Some dried mixed herbs
A good grinding of pepper
boiling water

Method:
Into the Thermomix bowl put the carrots, onion, celery and leek and chop on 4 for about 10 seconds.  Add the butter and chop again to distribute the butter.

Add the potatoes
Cook at 90, speed 2 for about 5 minutes.

Add the lentils, marigold, garlic and chilli purees, herbs and pepper.  Fill up to the maximum mark with boiling water.
Cook on Varoma, speed 2/3 for around 20 mins.

It's nice just like this with the bits but if you prefer a smooth soup (I do), allow the mixture to cool a little and then zizz on 8 for 2 minutes.

Serve piping hot with swirls of cream on top.  To eat later, cool, cover and refrigerate or freeze.

I added no more salt, it wasn't necessary, even with low sodium stock.  I will serve it with bread or croutons and with some grated cheese.   Scrummy!

Variation:  make with a good chicken stock and add shreds of cooked chicken to the soup as you are heating it up.  Obviously, it won't be vegetarian friendly then.

To make it the normal way, melt the butter in a large pan, add the vegetables (which need to be more finely chopped, and saute them gently for a while.  Add the remaining ingredients and water to make for a total volume of around 2 litres.  Cover and simmer until everything is soft, then blend to make a smooth soup.

I haven't costed it out but it can't be very expensive, it has be be fairly frugal and it's good for using up vegetables that are a bit tired.  The only thing that is not so good is the colour!

Melba toast

Not exactly a recipe really, frugal in one sense and decidedly unfrugal in another sense!!

I had quite a lot of bread left over this week.  I had intended to freeze some but didn't get round to it and I don't need breadcrumbs.

I very thinly sliced the bread (it was plaited loaves and firm enough to slice really very thinly indeed) and laid each slice on a baking sheet lined with one of my faithful teflon sheets.  i then popped it into the non-fan part of my oven set on the very lowest heat I possibly could.  The intention was to take itn out before I went to bed but - ooops - I was so sleepy I forgot!  However, being the lowest possible heat, no harm was done except to the electricity bill and I have no idea whatsoever how much electricity my oven uses at its very lowest setting, not a clue!
However, when I woke this morning and was lying in bed reading, it suddenly came back to me and for a moment I panicked before realising that it had to be OK or there would be, at the very least, a bad burning pong over the house!

You know what - they're absolutely delicious!  Light and crunchy all the way through and just very lightly coloured to a sort of beige.  However, I do need to try and work out how much the electricity was - any ideas how I can?

This and that

Yesterday I made butter from last week's left-over cream as described here.  I also made wholemeal oat bread as described here except that I used wholemeal, not white, flour and I made a plaited loaf rather than rolls.
This morning I am having wholemeal bread and butter with cheese and chutney for breakfast.  An odd breakfast, sure, but everything but the cheese is home made.  The chutney is quite old so very, very flavoursome and goes perfectly with the nuttiness of the bread and the creamy (over-salted) butter.

The chutney is a Delia recipe.  it is called Christmas Chutney and you can find it here.  It's one of those chutneys that just gets better and better and better over time and it is now absolutely wonderful.  I first made it as gifts for family many years ago and it was such a hit I have made it several times since.  I shudder to think how old the batch I am eating right now is, but it doesn't matter with chutney!

Today Beth is coming over with red cabbages from her allotment and we are having a mega 'Delia's braised red cabbage with apple' making session.  It's a wonderful recipe, spicy and fruity and full of flavour and we always have it as part of our Christmas dinner main course.   I think she expects us to make loads as she wants quite a lot to go in her freezer as well as for Christmas dinner for eight.
Here is the recipe - do take a look:  it's well worth a try.

Recipe: vegetarian sausage rolls

This is an old recipe, a Delia recipe.  It's a family favourite that Mum has made for years and years now.  They are so popular that they all get eaten while the normal sausage rolls (also delicious and also home made) don't really get a look in.

It's not particularly frugal, as such, but it's certainly not expensive, especially if you use value strong cheese' herbs from the garden and have your own breadcrumbs in the freezer by zizzing up bread that is a bit past it!

Here's a link to the original recipe.  I hasten to add that I did NOT make the pastry, I bought a block of puff pastry from Morrisons which I rolled out really very thin indeed - you know what puff pastry is like!!  I also used Thermione for the 'grating'/zizzing but any processor would make light work of it all.

Photo taken from Delia's site - please do go over there are take a look - it's brilliant with so much information and advice.  My sausage rolls were filled more than these and were very rounded.

Delia’s vegetarian sausage rolls

Ingredients to make about 36
A block of puff pastry - or you could be a glutton for punishment and make your own as Delia's original recipe does, I suppose.  Not for me though!
 
For the filling:
10 oz (275 g) fresh breadcrumbs - dried breadcrumbs just don't wing it but they can be fresh and then frozen
8 oz (225 g) mature Cheddar cheese, grated
1 large onion, grated
3 tbsp thick double cream - I used creme fraiche because that's what I had in the fridge
1 level tbsp fresh chopped herbs (chives, parsley, thyme, etc) - I used parsley, chives, sage and rosemary because that's what I have in the garden right now - or you could use dried mixed herbs.
1.5 level tsp mustard powder
good pinch cayenne pepper
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 7, 425°F (220°C) or 200°C fan

For the filling, simply place all the filling ingredients in a mixing bowl, season well and mix very thoroughly. Then roll out the pastry on a floured surface to form an oblong (as thin as you can). Cut this oblong into three strips and divide the filling also into three, making three long rolls the same length as the strips of pastry (if it's sticky, sprinkle on some flour).

Place one roll of filling on to one strip of pastry. Brush the beaten egg along one edge, then fold the pastry over and seal it as carefully as possible. Lift the whole thing up and turn it so the sealed edge is underneath. Press lightly and cut the rolls obliquely, so that they form little diamond shapes. Snip each one on the top in two or three places with the end of some scissors or a sharp knife, then brush with beaten egg. Repeat all this with the other portions of filling and pastry.  

Bake, on greased baking sheets, on the top shelf of the oven for 20-25 mins and eat while fresh or freeze separately before bagging and bake from frozen – they just take a few minutes longer.

Making butter

I had a go at this lest week because there was some cream left over from the party and I have to say it was easy, quick and made great butter.
I used Thermione but you don't have to, you could use any food mixer, including a hand held electric whisk.  You could use a balloon whisk but I think that would take an awfully long time.

I just tipped the rest of the cream into Thermione and beat it at around speed 6 to 8 until I could hear a slooshing sound that meant that the fat had separated from the buttermilk.
I then used a sieve to separate the liquid from the solid but next time I will use a muslin as shown by Mary Barry in Bake Off Master Class this week.
I was very, very careful to get every bit of buttermilk out of the butter.  I had it in my head that there would be loads of liquid and was surprised how little there was.
The buttermilk went into a little pot and I used it in my bread making yesterday.
Then I washed the butter, just in water and, again squeezed all the water out.  I did this about three times - I think perhaps it wasn't necessary to wash it so many times.
I then salted the butter (it didn't need much) by puitting the butter in a bowl, sprinkling over a little salt and mixing it in well, tasting to check it was OK before making a cylinder of it and wrapping it in greaseproof paper, twisting the ends to seal it.

I think this might be something I will do on a regular basis and if double cream is reduced in price, I could make more and freeze some.  Ditto with the buttermilk that comes out.  When I made some wholemeal and oat rolls yesterday I added the butterlink in lieu of some of the water and I've never had a wholemeal dough rise so well or so quickly and the results are delicious.

Here's the video clip showing Mary making butter, in case you didn't see it.  On my screen it is on the top line, second one from the left.  I've taken you to this page because there might be some other clips that interest you too.  :-)