Winter warmer....

It must be cold.....I felt compelled to make soup. Well it is cold, -15 C last night.......so I dug out the pumpkin from the freezer my neighbour gave me back in the autumn before south west France became an arctic wasteland.......and made this:

Obviously it wasn't complicated. Chop an onion, fry it in lovely sinful butter for a bit, then add a pint or so of veg or chicken stock (oxo, naturally), a couple of chopped carrots (had to defrost them from the horses' supply in the barn) and some chopped pumpkin. Then leave it to simmer til the veggies are soft, add seasoning of your choice, I used ginger and chilli but nutmeg or cinammon go just as well, bit of salt and pepper and whizz it up til it's smoothish. Naturally I have one of those hand held things you stick straight in the pan to blend it, less washing up afterwards!

Really nice with a bit of fresh baguette.......

Potatocornia.....

Gosh, haven't posted for nearly a year, how remiss of me. Not that I haven't been cooking, of course, just that being lazy I make the same stuff. A lot......

Anyway, this is a bit of an experiment that turned out rather well. Chop an onion and fry it, add some lardons. These are basically bits of bacon that come ready chopped up into small strips here and it makes life very easy.

Another thing that makes life easy are the pre cooked, pre diced potatoes you can get vacuum packed. So open a packet of those and chuck it in the pan. Along with some sweetcorn, tinned or frozen will do nicely. Then all you have to do is stir in some thick cream or crème fraîche and add lots of black pepper, the lardons are usually salty enough so you don't have to add more. And if you're me, you add some dried chilli flakes too.....

Et voilà:

Aliénor came up with the title. It's one of her favourites.......