Food, glorious food

[mrph]

Unsurprisingly, one of the best things about having a proper kitchen is that cooking's much easier and more enjoyable. I'm also wasting less food, as it's much easier to store and sort ingredients (and to quickly do something interesting with leftovers).

Accordingly, there's a small risk that this may turn into a cooking blog for a bit. If it does, Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall should take much of the blame...

So far, though, my favourite recipe this year (from the 'River Cottage Light and Easy' book) has just been a very simple and frugal soup - not as some sort of backlash against Christmas excess (although that's no bad thing), but just because I was cooking for friends with dietary restrictions.

Vegetable stock, Savoy cabbage, carrots, sautéed onions and caraway seed. And that's about it. Seeds and bits of vegetable bobbing about in broth (which picked up a nicely warming sweetness from the caraway). Completely vegan - and no potatoes.

I've been a bit biased against caraway in the past - it's lovely in seed cake, but I'd never taken to using it elsewhere. Probably now time to change my view on that and experiment a bit more, though...

Comments

Seeds

[miss-whiplash.livejournal.com]

I'm finding the same thing with coriander seeds in soup, just heated in a pan a few seconds until fragrant. They really add something too.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not done so much with them - I love coriander as a green herb, but haven't really used the seeds (or roots) enough to judge...

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

They're kind of citrussy. Obviously I use a lot ground up in curries...

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

Just had to put my icon here :)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Yay!

Now that Scandinavia has some of the world's most acclaimed restaurants, I'm waiting for the Swedish Chef to take on New Nordic Cuisine... :-)

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

I like sprinkling a few caraway seeds on cabbage while I'm cooking it (I either pop it in a steamer over the spuds, or in a pan with a tiny bit of water and some butter to steam by itself, so the caraway flavour isn't lost.)

Have you seen my food blog? :-)

[kantti.livejournal.com]

Did you use homemade or shop-bought stock?

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Mostly shop-bought (M&S seem to have some of the best I've tried), largely because I've been quite disorganised at doing my own...