Sunday, October 13

HEARTY WINTER SOUP AND BROWN BREAD


As the garden offers up her final fruits
The days are that beautiful autumnal crisp and heavy with the scent of damp leaves
Fire is now a ritual every evening as opposed to an occasional occurance
The seasons are vivid in the Irish Countryside
 and so much of the season is about what we eat 

 
and right now hearty soups with warm brown bread feel just about right
The thing about soup is, to me it feels a little contradictorary to offer a recipe 
as really soup, in this house, is usually about what is available or waiting to be used up 
So the following "recipe" is a guide and you should substitute the contents of your own larder

HEARTY WINTER SOUP

2 onions chopped 
A 1" piece of fresh ginger
2 large carrots
2 sticks celery
2 cups red lentils
1 tsp salt
1 stock cube 

METHOD
put onion in pan and sprinkle with salt, sautee until soft, 
add chopped carrots, celery and finely chopped ginger
sautee for 5 mins
add 2 cups of lentils 
add 3 pints of cold water and stock cube
simmer for 45 mins until everything is soft 
Blend until smooth

serve as is or with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkled with chive flowers 

(sweet potato, butternut squash and parsnip would all be welcome additions)

This was one of those occassions where I didn't have everything the recipe called for,
made some substitutes and the results were better than the original

BROWN BREAD

225g coarse wholemeal flour
100g whole spelt flour*
150g plain flour
1 tspn salt
1 tspn bread soda
25g butter
1 tbspn dark brown sugar
300 ml milk
100ml plain yoghurt
1 egg
seeds (optional)

*if you do not have spelt flour simply divide the 100g between the other 2 making it 
275g wholemeal and 200g plain

METHOD
Pre heat oven to 200c
line a loaf pan with a sheet of grease proof paper
Place flours, salt, bread soda into bowl
add cold butter 
rub in 
sprinkle in brown sugar
put the egg, milk and yoghurt in a jug and combine
add the wet to the dry mix and combine 
add a handful of seeds if desired, pumpkin, sunflower, poppy all work well
pour mixture into loaf pan

Bake for 40-45 mins 
allow to cool completely before cutting
 

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