Bacon and Tomato Soup

Olive oil
2 small or one large onion, coarsely chopped
3-4 rashers of bacon, chopped
1 carrot, grated
2 tins of whole tomatoes
1-2 cups vegetable stock
2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

Sauté onion and bacon in olive oil for 10 mins over medium heat until onion is translucent and bacon fat is mostly rendered.
Add grated carrot and cook briefly
Cut stalks out of tomatoes and add to saucepan
Add vegetable stock and paprika.
Cook on low heat for 20 minutes.
Blitz with a a stick blender.
Reheat a bit and serve with excellent bread.

Bolognese Sauce

I was virtuous on Sunday afternoon and cooked a Bolognese sauce for freezing and future consumption. I now have 12 little packages of sauce solidifying in the freezer and a satisfying feeling.

Ingredients:

• 2 large or 3 medium onions
• 2 - 3 cloves garlic
• 2 zucchini
• 2 carrots
• 300g mushrooms (any type)
• 3 - 4 anchovies in oil
• 500g beef mince
• 500g pork mince
• 750ml passata
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
• 2 tsp vegetable stock, vegetable stock powder or cube
• olive oil

Preparation:

• Chop onions roughly
• Squish garlic in garlic squisher
• Grate zucchini, carrot and mushrooms (a food processor is helpful here)
• Heat oil in a large frying pan or stovetop-safe casserole dish
• Brown meat in batches, remove to a separate plate or bowl
• Add a little more oil to pan and lower heat
• Cook onion over medium heat until translucent
• Add garlic and cook approx 1 minute
• Add spices and cook for 10 - 20 seconds
• Add anchovies and cook for approx 1 minute, breaking down with your spoon / spatula thingy
• Deglaze pan with a bit of passata if necessary
• Add grated vegetables to pan and cook down for a couple of minutes
• Add browned meat to pan and mix in
• Add vegetable stock gloop, powder or crumbled cube (do not dilute in water, this adds too much liquid)
• Add passata to pan and stir in, bring to boil
• Add pepper as required
• Cook, uncovered, for 1 - 2 hours over slow heat, just bubbling
• Makes approx 2.4 kg, approx 12 servings

Notes:

• This always tastes better the next day.
• The anchovies and the vegetable stock help add the middle notes to this sauce, which I found so hard to do when I first started cooking it. Red wine can also help with this, should you have any around, but it does add a lot of liquid. I like a dryish sauce, particularly for freezing as it tends to weep and separate when you defrost it, otherwise.
• Grating the vegetables not only deepens the flavour, it hides them from those children (and grown-ups) who have an aversion to visible vegetable matter, and improves the texture after defrosting.

This weekend's version had *lots* of swiss brown mushrooms, because I happened to have a lot around. It's resulted in a lovely dark colour and deep flavour.

Vegetable Stock Concentrate

Since becoming intolerant to wheat, corn and soy, I've had increasing difficulty finding a stock concentrate which doesn't contain any of these. While I understand the move to replace chemical thickeners with cornflour, it leaves me with a problem.

While I could make a traditional vegetable or meat stock and freeze it, I have limited space in my freezer and rely heavily on stock concentrates for soups and flavor in other recipes. Thankfully, I was able to use the power of the interwebs to find out that you can make vegetable stock concentrate at home.

I was originally looking for a recipe which would give me a powder, but after some reading I realized that a gloop would be easier to obtain and no more trouble to keep. Many of the recipes assume you have a thermomix, and it would doubtless be easier if I did. However, it is still perfectly possible to make stock concentrate with the aid of a food processor and a saucepan.

The theory behind this is that more surface area gives you more flavour. The finer you chop your vegetables, the more surface area you are exposing to the cooking process. This also works well for putting vegetables in spag bol, for instance: next time grate your carrot, zucchini and mushroom before you add them to the frying pan. It also helps you disguise them from children who have an aversion to vegetable matter :-)

This is loosely based on this recipe.
Ingredients:

Approx 1.25kg of vegetables which could be something like:

• 1 brown onion
• 1 bunch parsley, stalks and all
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 turnip
• 200g mushrooms
• 170g celery stalk

Plus

• 1 glug olive oil
• 125g salt

Preparation:

1. Chop onion roughly.
2. Squish garlic in a garlic squisher or chop roughly
3. Peel and de-seed tomatoes.
4. Put prepared onion, garlic and tomatoes with parsley in food processor with a blade and chop.
5. Peel carrots and turnip if they look dirty enough. Cut to a size that will fit through the feed tube of your food processor.
6. Clean mushrooms if they are especially dirty.
7. Destring celery
8. Put carrots, turnip, mushrooms and celery through a course grating attachment. Yes, bits will get stuck. This is fine. If you don't have a grating attachment on you food processor, you can do this all just by chopping with the blade although it does make the most unholy racket.

Cooking:

1. Heat oil in a saucepan, hot but not smoking.
2. Add everything to the saucepan (it doesn't seem to matter if you add salt now or later).
3. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 mins or so, until everything looks cooked. Nothing should be in the least bit crunchy.
4. Take off heat and cool a little.
5. Put through the food processor with the blade until you get a browny-green gloop. Gloop colour will vary with ingredients.
6. Store in a glass or plastic container in your fridge, avoid metal containers due to the salt content.

Use approx 1 heaped tsp per 500ml water, remembering that it is about 10% salt.