Chickpea, lime and vegetable soup

To save money as well as the sometimes agonising decision of what to have for lunch, I try to make a large pot of soup on weekends to take to work during the week. It’s usually just a bunch of vegetables thrown into some tomato sauce and stock, but this week I decided to put a little more effort into it.

I thought the ground nut (peanut) oil would bring out the nutty flavour of the chickpeas, while the sweet potato would make the broth thick and hearty. The lime juice and cumin give it a little kick, which I usually need around lunchtime to get me through to my afternoon cup of industrial-strength coffee, which gets me through to the train journey home…you know how it is.

Makes about 3-4 generous bowlfuls (can be eeked out a bit more by pouring over a small amount of rice)

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons of ground nut (peanut) oil

2 onions

3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 red pepper

4 small to medium-sized carrots, chopped

1 package of fine green beans (about two large handfuls), chopped

2 lumps of frozen spinach (can add to the soup frozen or defrosted)

1 sweet potato, baked and mashed

2 teaspoons cumin

2 ½ teaspoons oregano

Pepper to taste
1 box/can of crushed tomatoes

1 can of chickpeas

½ litre of vegetable stock (I used a packet of Knorr vegetable stock gel)

5 tablespoons of lime juice

Method:

1. Heat the oil. Fry the onions until brown, then add the garlic. Let fry for 1-2 minutes, then add the red pepper. After a few minutes more, add the crushed tomatoes and vegetable stock. Season with pepper, if desired.

2. While the soup heats back up, chop the carrots and green beans and add in. Stir in the chickpeas and spinach. Cover the pot.

3. Let the soup simmer for 5-10 minutes before adding the sweet potato, cumin and oregano.

4. Let simmer for 10 minutes more, then add the lime juice. Simmer for another 5-10 minutes, or as desired.

Chocolate cheesecake brownies

New year, new brownie!

The amazing brownie proves its worth at every bake sale that’s ever taken place since the dawn of time. Ok, perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but I know at my school’s bake sales there were always at least three kinds of brownies (including blonde) cut in all different sizes and priced at 50 cents. Every now and then, if someone’s mum was very kind, there would be a cream cheese swirl brownie as well. While I’ve never been able to master the art of marbling the brownie and cream cheese batter as you see in the cookbooks, the mix of soft cheesecake and chewey brownie is hard to say no to.

My contribution to Christmas dinner was a chocolate cheesecake with raspberry sauce, which got me thinking about these delightful cream cheese brownies and how they could be even better if the cheesecake part were chocolate too. However, getting it right took a few tries, and even now you can’t really tell that there’s a cheesecake layer in them (being the same colour and all…), but the result is basically a gooey brownie with an extra shot of chocolate. Goes very well with leftover mulled wine…

Incidentally, I bake brownies in the ingenious Edge brownie pan, which actually made this recipe 10 times harder with trying to spread each layer around all the curves and bends. I highly recommend it for anything else, though – it cooks really evenly (which is saying a lot for our temperamental, broken-seal, ‘work-when-I-feel-like-it’ oven) and is very easy to clean.

Oh, and yes, that lovely blue item in the background is my brand new Kitchenaid mixer – a Christmas gift from T that’s earned him these and many more brownies to come.

Ingredients for the brownie batter:

¾ cup (170g) butter

5oz (140g) unsweetened baking chocolate

1⅓ cups (270g) sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1¼ cups (155g) flour

¼ teaspoon salt

Ingredients for the cheesecake batter:

12oz (340g) package of full-fat cream cheese

1 egg

¼ cup (50g) sugar

2oz (55g) unsweetened baking chocolate

½ cup (65g) flour

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Grease bottom and sides of a square baking pan.

2. Make the brownie batter first. Melt the butter and chocolate together over low heat, or in the microwave. Measure the sugar into a bowl and add in the chocolate, then the rest of the ingredients – one at a time – until blended.

3. Using an electric mixer, mix the cream cheese and egg well. With the beaters still running, add the sugar in graudally and leave mixing until well blended. Pour in the chocolate and stir into the mix, then add the flour.

4. In the prepared baking pan, pour about three-quarters of the brownie batter. Drop the cheesecake batter in spoonfuls on top and spread evenly, though not right to the edge of the pan. Pour the rest of the brownie batter on top in zigzags, swirls, etc. – don’t worry if it doesn’t cover all of the cheesecake layer.

5. Cook for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with a few moist crumbs. Leave to cool before cutting

Last-minute Christmas stollen

In the midst of getting stuck into the thousands of gingerbread cookies, glorious chocolate cheesecake and messy but yummy mince pies (thank you free Mary Berry recipe in this week’s Stylist!) that came out of my kitchen over the past few days, I noticed on Christmas Eve that I had a container of candied ginger that as yet did not have a recipe assigned to it. That was soon remedied, and a version of Christmas stollen was born. I cheated and did the dough in my bread machine, making it by far the easiest recipe of the season. Definitely on the baking list for next year.

Ingredients (makes two 10in loaves):

4½ cups (610g) bread flour

¾ cup (175ml) water

½ cup (130g) butter, softened

1 teaspoon almond extract

1½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

½ cup (100g) sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1½ packets of yeast*

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup (about 200g) candied ginger

¾ cup (about 200g) raisins or sultanas

Lemon glaze:

1 cup (130g) powdered (icing) sugar

⅓ teaspoon lemon extract

1-2 tablespoons milk

Method:

1. Mix and knead the dough by hand as you normally would and allow to rise until nearly double, or add the ingredients into a bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer and select the dough setting.

2. Punch down and separate into two sections. Roll out each section into an oval, approximately 8-9in diameter. Fold lengthwise and place onto a greased baking tray. Cover and let rise for about an hour, or until you see that it has risen to about 1.5 times its original size.

3. Bake at 350F (180C) for about 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on a wire rack to cool.

4. Cover with lemon glaze and powdered (icing) sugar. Top with maraschino (glace) cherries and almond flakes if desired.

*Note: whether due to the freezing temperatures outside, the humidity of the kitchen, random stubborness or all three, the dough just didn’t rise very much. I know stollen is meant to be more dense than your average white loaf, but just to be on the safe side, I’ve added a bit more yeast into the recipe below to compensate – I haven’t tested this though.

Gingerbread latte cupcakes

What tastes describe Christmas? Peppermint, orange, spices, candied fruit, almonds…although, I personally believe that anything with ‘Christmas’ in front of the title and with a spring of holly as the decoration can pass as a festive treat. 

It’s always fun finding out peoples’ family traditions when it comes to Christmas breakfast, dinner and dessert – for the former, I’ve heard about waffles and ice cream, apple pancakes, croissants and mince pies (why wait for dessert later when you can have it when you wake up?). None of them are particularly Christmassy (well, except the mince pies), but because they've been given the coveted title of Christmas Breakfast, Rudolph himself might as well be delivering it to their table.

To clarify, these are not on the menu next Sunday morning…

Cupcake ingredients (makes around 24):

½ cup (120ml) vegetable oil

⅓ cup (70g) sugar

1 egg

1 cup (220ml) molasses (dark treacle)

¾ cup (175ml) hot water

2 ¼ cups (290g) flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ginger

1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

Frosting ingredients:

3 cups (380g) powdered (icing) sugar

⅓ cup (75g) butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons milk

2-3 teaspoons instant coffee (depending on how strong you want the coffee flavour to be)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Blend liquid ingredients together, then add the dry ingredients until just mixed.

2. Prepare a muffin tray with cupcake wrappers. Fill each one three-quarters full with the gingerbread batter.

3. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.

4. To make the frosting, cream butter and sugar, then add the rest of the ingredients. Blend thoroughly.

5. Frost each cupcake. Top with chocolate shavings, if desired.

Thanksgiving menu

If ever there were a time for a (an American) baker to shine, it’s during the weeks between the fourth Thursday of November and 25 December. Everyone’s cooking up something, or thinking about it, or frantically searching for ingredients for it, or trying to find someone else to do it all for them.

I love the reason for Thanksgiving, and miss the pleasant hubbub that takes place back home. I explain it to British friends as Christmas without the presents, but with the encouragement to reflect on the past year and be thankful for events big and small that have brought us to where we are today. 

Cooking a big roast dinner is just too much to ask on a non-holiday Thursday night in the UK (though I have taken it as a day off in the past, when heading up a dinner for 12…), so T and I designated the following Saturday as our Thanksgiving day. The feast (and many, many leftovers) included:

- Herb encrusted turkey crown

- Roast potatoes

- Sweet and sour red cabbage with bacon

- Candied sweet potatoes

- Pork and celery stuffing (traditional Grammy recipe)

- Peas (just to have a token green vegetable)

- Gravy

- Pumpkin pie

Apple oatmeal cookies

Oh, how often dishes and desserts come about because ‘it was what I had around at the time’.  These have a similar story – one cooking apple that really should be used, a tiny amount of maple syrup from a large bottle that’s been taking up cupboard space for months (waiting for a pancake breakfast that never seems to happen), and the need* to make something small and sweet to bring to work during the week.

These cookies have been made with whole wheat flour, a bit of butter, reduced sugar (in an effort to balance the maple syrup) but the same amount of flour and oats that you’d normally find in oatmeal cookies. They’re cakey rather than cookie-y, so adding nuts might make them all fall to pieces, but mixing in flaked almonds could work. These also might be good as bars.

*Ok, perhaps not ‘need’, but it’s nice to have a little something with that afternoon cup of tea or coffee, giving you a final jolt of caffeine and sweetness to get through the last hour or two. Who's with me?

Ingredients:

½ cup (115g) butter

½ cup (110g) sugar

1 egg

1 cup (135g) whole wheat flour

1 cup (85g) rolled oats       

1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons maple syrup

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

1 apple, finely chopped

Raisins (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Cream butter and sugar.  Beat in the egg, maple syrup, then add the rest of the dry ingredients one at a time, with the flour and oats last. Stir in the apple and raisins.

2. Drop mixture by tablespoonfuls onto a cookie sheet (very lightly greased, if not using a non-stick cookie sheet).

3. Bake each tray for 10 minutes, or until cookies have started to brown. Cool before removing to a wire rack.

Chinese chicken marinade

Cooking during the week is always a challenge, but one untapped area of shortcut magic that I really want to try to do more of is overnight marinating for stir fries. While yes, it does just push the work of chopping meat (yuk) mixing ingredients and clearing up afterwards from one night to a previous one, there is the reward of then preparing a meal that takes 15-20 minutes to make, with two pots and two plates’ worth of washing to do afterwards. And after a long day working and commuting, anything that can save my precious evening minutes is like being given a plateful of fresh brownies.

Mmm, brownies…maybe that’s what I’ll do with the time I’ve saved…

Ingredients:

¼ cup (60ml) soy sauce

¼ cup (60ml) sake (or dry sherry)

4 tablespoons of chilli oil

2 tablespoons chopped ginger

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

6 green (spring) onions, chopped

Method

Mix all the above ingredients well. Put the chopped chicken into a bowl, pour over the marinade and refrigerate overnight.

When cooking with it the next day, pour the entire contents of the bowl into a hot pan, adding any other vegetables you’d like. Season to taste.