Green Pea Soup - Cooking with Evie

Recently my miss Evie won Charlie's Cookies competition on facebook for her delicious shoe shaped cookies she made for her birthday.

Part of her magnificent prize was this recipe book Roald Dahl's Completely Revolting Recipes, along with a gorgeous apron, cooking utensils and oh, not to mention a years supply of cookies!!!!

This recipe for Green Pea Soup was her first choice to cook.

Firstly she chopped up the spring onion.

Then the garlic.

She peeled the potatoes, and chopped them up.

And I am pleased to announce all fingers were still perfectly intact.

After sweating the onion, garlic and potato with some butter the peas and chicken stock are added, simmering slowly for fifteen minutes.

The bacon was chopped and cooked until nice and crispy.

And what better to serve with then some home baked sourdough.

The bread is coated with some seasoned oil.

Then cooked in the griddle pan, yum.

Meanwhile the soup is pureed.

Topped with bacon and devoured.

It was actually fantastic, such a simple recipe that results in great flavour and very satisfying.

Thank you Charlie's Cookies :)

Chicken Wonton Noodle Soup

For those of you who watched Masterchef Australia you would know Dani, one of the top eight contestants. 

She posted this recipe for Chicken Wonton Noodle Soup on her blog and so I thought I would try it out.

Whilst watching the show I often questioned her cooking abilities compared to some of the other contestants, but I now need to eat my words - because this was an amazing meal.

The soup stock is prepared quite simply simmering softened onion, garlic, and ginger with star anise, cinnamon, sugar, fish sauce and chicken in water for an hour and a half. I actually used some of my homemade chicken stock as well as water.

The wonton filling is prepared with chicken mince, sesame oil, sugar, fish sauce, spring onion, soy sauce, coriander roots, lime juice and white pepper. It is marinated for an hour before making your wontons.

The soup is then served over fresh egg noodles and the cooked wontons. 

Top with mint, coriander and chilli.

We loved this meal and I will be cooking it again. 

My daughter asked shortly after we started eating "can we have this for my birthday mum?"

That, by the way, is the reason for my absence, we had my daughters 4th birthday on the weekend. I will have to post some of the photos, including the castle cake!

Simple Chorizo and Seafood Soup

Again I am sharing a recipe that I have cooked from a book I received for my birthday.

 One of my gorgeous friends gave me Marion Graspy's cook book the day before my birthday when she accompanied me to The Heart of Food Photography Course at Mumu Grill. And now she has started her own food blog Berry Butter where she shares some of her sweet treats. Please go and check it out. 

We had an excellent day at the course trying to figure out our cameras and being inspired to take attempt to take beautiful food photos.

Marion's style in this the book is so creative and interesting. I really love it.

Firstly she gets you to make your own prawn stock by peeling raw prawns and simmering the heads and shells in water for 15 minutes being sure to skim off the top. So simple yet the results were excellent (and that was still the case when we very stupidly strained some of the stock down the sink! and had to add more water and start again).

The recipe really is simple, start by cooking chorizo with onion, garlic and ground fennel. 

Stir in tomato paste allowing to cook for about a minute then let it all bubble up with some white wine. Add the prawn stock, tinned tomatoes and a little sugar. 

Let this simmer for about 20 minutes before adding a chopped up snapper fillet for about 2 minutes and finally squid rings and the prawns for another 3 minutes. Garnish with fresh parsley and your done.

We were so impressed by the flavours of this dish. It was amazing for such little effort, I will definitely be picking this book up again very soon to cook another recipe.

Roast Chicken and Parsnip Soup

Another fantastic gift I received for my birthday was a subscription to the magazine SBS Feast. There are certainly some recipes that are a feast for the eyes.

This is the first recipe I have made, a roast chicken and parsnip soup, by Matthew Evans, the gourmet farmer. 

This is definitely not a weeknight meal although you could always reheat some for a quick dinner.

The chicken and parsnips are firstly roasted. The meat is then taken off the chicken and the bones put in a big pot with leek trimmings, celery, parsley stalks, herbs and pepper. This is covered with water and simmered for a couple of hours.

The soup is then prepared by softening leeks before adding the chopped parsnips and stock. Once this has simmered away for about half an hour add the chicken and some parsley. 

It needed plenty of salt to bring out the flavours but otherwise was really quite tasty. Yes I am slowly being converted to a soup fan.

The recipe suggested you serve the soup with turkish bread so I made my own wholemeal version. It wasn't quite like the shops but it was still yummy.

I bought this butter at the farmers markets on the weekend.

I had to include a photo of the Chocolate Cinnamon Popcorn I made, it was so delicious - an adult popcorn (although my daughter loved it). You can find the recipe at Gourmand Recipes.