Chicken Soup II

I left the soup in the fridge so that I could skim off the fat easily. Then I used a colander to drain the soup from the bits of chicken and vegetable (yes, I remembered to use a second saucepan so that I didn’t throw the stock down the drain). The chicken came away from the bones very easily. I whisked all the bits of veggies and chicken together in a blender and added the mixture to the stock. It was really good. Not as salty as I was expecting as I’m used to ready made soup. I have enough for today’s lunch and tomorrow. Rob will be home for lunch then and be able to have some too.

It’s not something that I would make if I had people round to eat, there is a lot of messy fiddling about in the middle stage. It’s a good way of using every tiny scrap of leftover chicken.

Chicken soup

Today I decided to try making chicken soup. It’s supposed to be really good for you. I looked up several recipes online and as there were many differences in the vegetables to include I put what I had. I remembered I had parsley in the garden so I added that too. The smell takes me back to my Granny’s stew. I’ll have to get some pearl barley for next time.

I hope that it’s good  for my soul.

Recipe for disaster

I don’t usually make pudding/desserts. There are normally plenty of pots of yoghurt and the like in the fridge. They really are the best way to control portion size in my book.

When Dom and J-M came to visit at the beginning of April, I thought that I’d give my favourite dessert, Lemon Meringue Pie, a go...

 First off; I was too lazy to look for the Royal Worcester Evesham design flan dish which would have been perfect for the job. I used a non stick cake tin instead. Unfortunately, I had to bake the pastry blind, so a high sided cake tin was not a good idea, the pastry ‘sides’ just slid down to the bottom. Before I put the pastry into the oven I’d placed a piece of greaseproof paper sprinkled with rice (no baking beans) on the base. When I came to take off the paper with the rice on it, some quite a lot of the rice got stuck to the half cooked pastry. I managed to pick most of the rice out and burnt my fingers.

The lemon part was tricky too, my grater for grating the zest from the lemons has seen better days, so there was a lot of hard work for little result. It smelt nice though. Next came the corn flour. I should have sieved it, but I thought the thing about corn flour was that it didn’t go lumpy. I ended up with a mix that looked as if it had polystyrene bits in it. It took ages to strain through a tea strainer.

 The egg whites whipped up beautifully (I know what you were thinking).

Everyone was very brave and ate some: It tasted fine, just looked a bit odd and we had a good laugh about it. For the first time ever there was a left over piece of pie – can’t think why.

Image taken from Wikipedia

More cookery?

Incredibly I dreamt about cooking last night. I was in a long narrow kitchen, there were plenty of cupboards ovens and electric and gas burners but no work surfaces. It made life very difficult – nowhere to put down hot saucepans and dishes, let alone prepare the food. I’ve not long started reading 'Last Night in Twisted River' by John Irving – hence the busy kitchen. I already knew that the loggers ate well, but the descriptions of the huge quantities of food that they eat and the conditions of preparation obviously went to my head. It’s a great read, but not if you’re on a diet.

Moi, giving cookery advice?

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about cooking before*. I came across a very interesting tip the other day which I thought I’d share: When you are cake making, substitute the butter with pureed avocado pear. Yes, you did read it right. Apparently cookies that were made with avocado were less crumbly and it doesn’t change the taste.

 At Christmas I made a mustard cake which was very dry, it sounds like the ideal way to solve the problem. (Mustard cake makes a nice nibble to go with drinks before a meal)

Don’t forget to let me know how you get on.

Check out the comments in my previous post. Keith has left a link which could be useful if you are aspiring to make the perfect omlette.

*I tell a lie, if you click on the cookery label below,  I posted something about 7 years ago.

What to cook tonight?

I quite like cooking, but often find that I’m in the ‘It must be Friday it’s spaghetti’ cycle. My bookmarks are full of recipes that I’ve saved for a rainy day but never bothered to look at again. I’ve just come across a recipe software; BigOven Recipe Software - 160,000 Recipes which could change all this. There are recipes on the site and a ‘Leftover Wizard’ which looks as if it is going to be right up my street. You choose up to three ingredients and let the program find you recipe suggestions. The recipes you like can be dragged and dropped into the organiser. You can post new recipes to share too.