Seriously though, this isn't a fancy awesome blog, it's just a place for me to ramble on about food.
Photo reblogged from Robot Heart Recipes with 126 notes
Broccoli-Spinach Soup with Avocado Toasts
Serves 4Hot dog, did I love this soup and these delicious little toasts! I whipped up a batch of the soup early in the week and loved it so much that some days I ate it for both lunch and dinner. If you use bagged spinach this meal is also a snap to prepare—big time bonus for weekday fare. For the toasts, I added a bit more zip by rubbing a peeled garlic clove on the toasted bread before layering on the toppings.
INGREDIENTS
Soup
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 leek, white and pale green parts thinly sliced
4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 bunch broccoli, chopped (6 cups)
6 ounces baby spinach (6 cups)
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons tahini
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
Toasts
4 slices rustic bread, toasted
2 avocados, sliced
1/4 cup radish sprouts
1 lemon, cut into wedges
INSTRUCTIONS
Step One: Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add leek and cook until tender, about 4 minutes. Add broth; bring to a boil. Add broccoli and cook, covered, until bright green and tender, about 2 minutes.
Step Two: Remove from heat. Stir in spinach, Parmesan, and tahini. Let cool slightly. Season with salt and pepper.
Step Three: Working in batches, puree soup in a blender until smooth.
Step Four: Top bread with avocado and radish sprouts. Season with salt and pepper, squeeze with lemon, and drizzle with oil.
Source: Whole Living, March 2012. View the recipe on WholeLiving.com.
I made this soup tonight!
Some changes I made:
* I added some lemon juice
* I added a little bit of garlic
* I added some lactose free cream to finish it off - I liked the version I had at a friend’s where she finished it with cream/cottage cheese (can’t remember which type). Buuut I’m lactose intolerant so I try to keep the cheese to a minimum. The cream was a pretty good replacement, although lacked the tang of cheese.
* I added extra tahini
* I used the whole leek - I tasted some of the dark green leaf to find out if it was bitter or something, as I couldn’t see a reason NOT to throw it in. It just tastes very mild, but not bad, so I chopped it up with the rest.
Some things I’ll do next time:
* I’ll add salt and pepper to the soup itself rather than upon serving
* I’m going to add just like, one potato. I think a potato would give it a tiny bit more bulk and creaminess than it has naturally.
* It could definitely use a bit more tang, so I’m going to have to put my thinking hat on to think of a good tang replacement that isn’t cheese :S
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Spaghetti Bolognaise
GUESS WHO FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE AGAIN. THIS GUY.
Well anyway. Sometimes when I have the energy I make big batches of spag bol to freeze so the boy can take it to work for lunch. I’m allergic to tomato so every time I cook it it’s an experiment in seeing what my general knowledge + sense of smell can tell me, since I can’t taste it as I go.
Good old aussie spag bol is great because you can just throw whatever the fuck you want into it.
So mine today had (close estimates in some cases):
1kg beef mince
500g chopped bacon
a baggie of the caramelized onions I made… I’m guessing but I think it was about 1/2 - 2/3 of a cup of them
700g frozen mixed vegetables (peas, corn, and capsicum)
300g frozen chopped spinach
800g canned diced tomato
flavourings it had:
shit tonnes of garlic
140g herb and garlic concentrated tomato paste
couple of shakes of celery salt
couple of shakes of cinnamon
couple of shakes of paprika
lots of shakes of oregano
lots of shakes of basil
a bunch of parsley
shit tonnes of pepper
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup brown onion gravy
couple of shakes of worcestershire sauce
a squeeze of sweet chilli
a squeeze of bbq sauce
yeah, I think that’s everything, might have left something out though. It would have been better with some red wine but we didn’t have any, boo.
fried up the onions, garlic, mince, and bacon, then added everything else. cooked it for idk about an hour? in my BRAND NEW POT aw yeah. it made 7 bear-sized serves :D
boy and serina both tell me that it’s pretty good :D
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Inspired by Erinna, today I caramelized onions in my slow cooker :D
I cut up about 2 1/2 kg of red onions (which took a while and many, many tears) and threw them into the pot, added a little olive oil, and then (with washed hands) DOVE MY HANDS INTO THAT FUCKER AND STARTED RIFLIN’ AROUND. The idea being to get the onions well coated in the oil so that they wouldn’t stick to my pot. Also: it was wicked fun.
Left them in there for 9 hours total - two of those hours at the beginning the cooker was on ‘low’, but I was getting impatient and they weren’t even translucent so I was like “fuck this” and turned that bugger up to ‘high’.
I’m horrible at just letting my slow cooker do things on its own, I’m a compulsive prodder. I like to stir things every couple of hours. From all my slow cooking I’ve done over the past few weeks since we got it, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in quality or time if you want to prod it every now and then.
Towards the end, in the last couple of hours, I used some paper towel to drain some of the fluid in the bottom of the pot. I probably didn’t need to but it was weirding me out.
Another thing I did in the last few hours, which I know you’re not “SUPPOSED” to do but whatever whatever I do what I want thor, was I added a little bit of sugar and stirred it in. I like really sweet onions okay >:|
Anyway they’re all done and I spooned them into some ziplock bags to freeze. I didn’t measure exactly but I reckon there’s probably about 3/4 a cup in each bag? *shrug* I got four bags worth anyway, so that’s pretty good. They’re in the freezer now and shall come out whenever I need them >:D
It’s impossible to make caramelized onions look good in any possible way but I took a picture of them in their little baggies for you anyway.
I saw one person online recommend keeping one lot in the fridge at all times and I think that might be a winner, I’ll have another look at the meal plan for the week and see if I can slip them into food over a few days, because caramelized onions are fucking delicious.
I have a feeling this blog will frequently be updated at stupid o’clock in the morning. It’s when I get my most motherfucking poetical about motherfucking cooking.
