Update and Cream of Celery Soup

So I got engaged on Valentine's Day! The bf (now he's just f, but I'm not going to call him that)
He bamboozled me, I told him that it was a really cheesy thing to do to propose on V Day and he agreed, and then he did it! I came home and made him his favorite dinner and he gave me a beautiful ring he designed himself.
I'm very very happy, and what better way to bring me back down to earth than to start my wedding day diet again.
I bought this book in a charity shop ages ago because I'm weak! I can't help collecting sets of things, and already had the Winter Puddings Cordon Bleu book, so you know... I've never cooked from it because it's so dated. Dated how, you ask? This celery soup is thickened with roux, cream and egg yolk, to make it luxurious? Cooked celery doesn't have that much flavour, so all you're left with is thick, mild chicken stock that's slightly green.
Look, I put it in my fanciest bowl and it's still very uninspiring.
But I'm engaged! I'm walking around on clouds, from now on I'm only making positive comments. So this soup is perfect to give for dinner to someone who likes their food quite plain. I like spicy food, so sometimes it's hard for me to empathize with people who don't, but now I can at least have them round for a meal. Serve with one plain piece of white bread.

Paella Rice with Red Mullet and Roasted Pumpkin

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been working on a new project. It' early days, so I'll see how it goes over the next couple of months, in the mean time I will do my best to keep this blog - my pet poodle - going. I've honestly missed the stream of consciousness confessional nature of writing here, never again!
Paella, by Alberto Herraiz is one of the books I got for Christmas, I saw a review for it here and put it on my wishlist on a whim, it's that kind of impulsive behavior that makes so charming you see.
My bf (who is also my bff) is half Spanish and I invited his mother over to borrow her paella dish and to get her hyper critical view on the validity of any of the recipes in this book. It's a very interesting selection, there are multiple recipes for stocks and sauces, a section of paellas made on the stove and in the oven, some to be made on a grill outdoors and even some sweet options. Some are very very traditional, some are quite... experimental. I chose red mullet because it's seasonal and there aren't any hard to find ingredients (did you know that Morrisons sells own brand paella rice now? Like ain't nothing but a thing!). You are meant to buy your mullets uncleaned and use the livers as a base for the rice. I got mine from Jonathan Norris's stall which is two minutes walk from my office. The first time I walked past him I thought he looked familiar, and then I realized that he's the guy from season 3 of Come Dine With Me!!!! So amazeballs, is it cool that I'm excited about that? Anyway, he was happy that I didn't want my fish cleaned and I feel like we really bonded.
Buying the fish was the best part of making this recipe, it will kill you. Here are some status pictures my stepmother took.
The result is beautiful and perfectly tasty, but a little too sweet from the pumpkin for me. It was also nothing like any paella Maria Isabel has ever heard of, but that's kind of the point of a paella, its a receptacle for any old junk you have lying around. And actually an insane amount of work. Why would you clean and fillet six red mullets, make a extraordinarily delicious stock, cut up pumpkin into two different sizes of cube, blanch, roast and puree half and assemble your 4 hour paella when you could just go down the road to your favorite Spanish restaurant and get something just as delicious for a lot less money. There are a lot of skills to master, and if that's your bag, this book is perfect.

Anyway, here's another thing I'm doing, it's a charming thing for charming people to do. Pick up the book closest to you, turn to page 45, the first sentence describes your sex life. This is a great game to play with cookbooks. Here's the result from Paella "There are differences of opinion when it comes to black rice", which describes my sex life exactly.

Parmentier

This is the last soup for a while because after this I completely fell off the wagon.
Basically it's one half of some kind of a double ying yang soup from this book,
and it's meant to look like this.
I only made the leek part, so mine was never going to look anything like this. It tastes ok. Really, only ok.
When I went to hear Ms. Marmitelover do a little talk for her book last year, one of the things she said is that she doesn't trust the likes of Nigella for providing recipes because as a columnist and cook book author only she has never had to prove herself by catering on a large scale so the likelihood of her dishes failing is higher. Obviously she was speaking about this in context to her own home restaurant enterprise, but still, I cannot disagree more. Restaurants that produce cookbooks have to adapt the recipes to the home cook to allow for available equipment, ingredients, which alters the result. Which is why restaurant cookbooks are always difficult to cook from. It's a showcase designed to entice you to visit the place, so what do they care if it takes you 2 hours at home to make the soup, you should have booked a table instead! Meh

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Today's recipe is inspired by having to sit next to a junked out homeless girl on the tube today. Most people's experiences of the homeless are very negative, like being stuck in a confined space next to someone who hasn't washed and keeps twitching and threatening to throw up on you. Gross, but there are charities out there to help people like this by raising awareness and providing a safe supporting environment. This book is called More Than A Meal because homeless people need more than a good meal, they need a bath too they also need compassion and understanding. Admittedly the book is a little dated, we have Hockney's 'Fish', Tony Blair, Des Lynam and and Jane Asher staring morosely at you from the cover. Does that make you hungry?
The very first recipe in the book is Jimmy Carter's (yes the president!)Cream of Broccoli soup. How wonderful and random is that? I had to Google him to see if he's still alive, he is, but he's already made his funeral plans!
Anyway, the soup is pretty straighforward and basic, however I still managed to forget to put the potato in. Just before serving you mix in the lemon juice and add in a little creme fraiche.
Choice of bowl here is entirely coincidental! Overall it's really boring, but innoffensive. I may have preferred it without the lemon, but I don't really care that much.

Turkish Lentil Soup

I bought this little spiral bound book in SCP of all places. My old office was on the same street as the Old Street branch and sometimes at lunchtime I would go in there to browse the prices home wares and occasionally make a small purchase, usually gifts for other people (when my goddaugher was born I very briefly flirted with the idea of getting her a 'designer' baby' rattle - no wonder I can only afford to eat soup for dinner now). Anyway, this book was produced by a Primary school in the area, and a few of the shops near by were selling them. I'm not sure exactly what they were raising money for, but they got a lot of support from local restaurants and a couple of celebrities too. The recipe I'm using is by a parent of one of the kids though.
The recipe is painfully scant on the directions, instead of measurements everything is doled out in 'big spoons', and stock is 'meat water'. I'm using some of my precious veal meat water (smuggled from France but I'm sure can find it on the internet). There are no cooking times and no pictures, but what you do is make a roux and fry with onions until everything is a little brown and crispy, mix in the stock and cooked lentils and thicken with milk and egg yolk.
I was really apprehensive about tasting this, hot egg sauces creep me out a little bit and the colour is distinctly 'mental institution beige'. But the taste is amazing. Rich and meaty, sweet from the onions and earthy from the lentils, I would have loved to add a bay leaf though.

Soupe a la Menthe Fraiche

Day 5 of the soup diet.
I'm beginning to feel a lot better about sacrificing my evening meal to mostly vegetarian broths (maybe if that was entirely true I wouldn't refer to it as sacrifice?). When I was younger we used to have soups a lot, we didn't have that much money and my mother certainly struggled to give us anything at all sometimes. When we moved to London and food was everywhere I vowed never to eat soup again, pathetic peasant food that it was, I'd really moved up in the world. Now that I have more perspective I feel extremely guilty for being such a brat, if there is any justice in the world my children will probably do this to me.
I feel like I have to meet the Aline Benayoun more than half way in seriously calling this 'Mint Soup'. It's more of a vegetable stew, with mint. But let me tell you, after a bowl of turnip water this was some kind of a feast. Benayoun could have called this a mint souffle and I would still be happy. This is hearty, and very carb rich, but the lemon and herbs manage to lift any heaviness and make the soup taste fresh and light. The flavours are wonderful; rich, Mediterranean but with a herby African twist.

Cream of Turnip Soup

I'm getting quite a collection of artist inspired cookery books (this is the Holy Grail that I am seriously saving up for), some make the tenuous links between a painting and a dish, some are charity compilations of recipes with the off one by a painter, and a very few are recipes of dishes they actually ate.
Monet's Cookery Notebooks was complied using Monet's own diary notes recipes, somewhat of a contrast to the starving artist cliche. The first half of the book is an account of his life in the French countryside with photos of his house (if you want to see pictures of the kitchen they can be found on Ms Marmitelover's blog), and the second half contains the recipes.
Look at this assembly of ingredients. The most vital component, the water, is not pictured. A more appropriate title for this dish might be Hot Turnip Water, that's how thin the ultimate soup is. I deliberately, somewhat unfairly, took an unflattering photo of my bowl because I was so angry at having only this for dinner.
You boil the turnips in a lot of water with some butter and blend. Add salt and pepper, more butter, or cream which I didn't have, and presumably enjoy. 'Evening meals at Monet's house always started with a soup' the book tells us, and as a first course this would be lovely. Look at this, I'm not even going to pretend with some clever styling trick that this is anything but a bland soup. As it is, there is too much butter in this for me to seriously consider it a diet food, but not enough flavour for it to be in any degree indulgent. Turnips are actually a guilty pleasure of mine, part of the cabbage family they have that nice tangy crispness, but once cooked their muddy flavour comes through which is why it's a risk to put them at the forefront of a dish like this. It's not bad, but I probably wouldn't make it again.