Carrot soup

At school, Éowyn often eats carrot soup. Apparently it's her favourite. She keeps on at me to make her some like she's mistaken me for some kind of domestic goddess or something....

Anyway, today, as she's at home due to the teachers being on strike (again) and as she actually helped me with the poo picking (!) I told her we could have carrot soup for lunch. Turns out it's pretty easy really.

Chop an onion or two, fry for 5 mins in oil, peel a decent sized spud (or even better, get a small child to do it for you), chop and add to pan, stick in a spoonful of ground coriander and stir a bit. Then add 5 or 6 peeled (preferably by said small child) and sliced carrots, bit of salt and pepper and a litre or so of chicken or veg stock.

Then leave it to cook til the veg is soft, chuck in a handful of fresh coriander and whizz it all up (small child enjoys this bit but tends to make a mess)

Easy. And very tasty, especially with a few chili flakes added ;-)

Hammy Eggy Peas......

A friend of mine recently put this recipe on Pinterest. Think it came from The Guardian. Obviously it had a slightly better title but it was in Spanish so I have translated freely.......anyway, decided to try it out tonight as it claimed to be quick and easy, and it was, pretty much.

You chop up a couple of shallots and some garlic (you all know I didn't use real garlic as it's far too much faff, the nice ready minced garlic they sell in Eurasie is so much easier) and fry them for a bit in some olive oil. Then you add a cup of chicken stock, (recipe said homemade, I said pass the Oxo) and a load of peas and leave it to simmer for a while til the stock has reduced.

Then in goes a bit of salt and pepper and some shredded Serrano ham (I used Jambon de Bayonne as someone gave us an entire leg of the stuff a while back and it's been a bit of a challenge to come up with ways to use it all up, frankly. There's a helluva lot of ham on a pig's leg). The best bit is you crack an egg or two on the top then just cover the pan until the eggs are cooked.

Easy and yummy, just eat with some nice crusty bread or something.  Reckon it'd be good with chorizo instead of ham too.

Macaroni Merguez

Just made this up, had some leftover Merguez sausages in the fridge, fried up an onion, chopped the sausages up and chucked them in the pan, added some smoked lardons (that's little bits of chopped up bacon to the non French speakers), fried it for a while, then added a tin of chick peas, a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Served with macaroni as that's what we had in the cupboard, the kids (and the big kid I married) gave it the thumbs up.

Obviously I sprinkled some crushed chillies on my portion :-)

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.......

Thai inspired stir fry

Just got back from a fabulous holiday in Thailand. The food was incredible, cheap and everywhere, day and night.....

....the ultimate destination for the lazy cook!!
But sadly, I live in France, where they don't really do takeaway except for Macdo....so I have to try and make it myself. Have a fabulous book full of Thai recipes, trouble is they're very faffy so not suitable for inclusion here.

But here's something Thai-ish that I made up for my dinner earlier:

Chop some shallots and lemongrass, fry. Add some chopped chicken. Then add chillies (of course!), fish sauce, ginger, lime juice, bit of sugar, chopped mushrooms. Stir fry til cooked, serve with rice or noodles, add coriander to taste.

I didn't go mad with the chillies and even the kids ate some!

Duck au curry......

Just invented a delicious curry, using what I had in the cupboard, namely a tin of duck confit. We may not be able to get decent supplies of chilies and coriander out here, but there's more tinned duck products than you know what to do with in south west France.

So I put my tinned duck legs in the pan and fried them for a bit. They are really fatty, so I drained the fat off a few times as they fried, never throw this stuff away, keep it in the fridge and use it to roast spuds in, it's delicious!

In a seperate pan I fried up sliced onions and peppers in a bit of oil so you get that nice charred flavour, the duck is too fatty to fry all the stuff together really (I know, TWO pans, extra washing up, sorry!!)

Then I removed the bones and skin from the confit which had kind of dismantled itself anyway during cooking so not as faffy as it sounds. Drained off the fat yet again and added a large dollop of my trusty favourite curry paste, I used the hot stuff but I'm sure it'll be just as good for those of you who are chilli wusses and have to use mild curry paste ;-)

Then in go the onions and peppers and a tin of chopped tomatoes, and voila, curried confit. Leave it to simmer for ages, stir occasionally, add water if necessary,