james test

May 8, 2017 This soup recipe has waited more than eight years to have its moment in our home. I bookmarked it in 2008 soon after it was posted by Jac on Tinned Tomatoes , and this month it was the perfect thing for bringing together the onion, potatoes, spinach and pear that arrived in our vege box. With garlic already in the cupboard and some home-made stock in the freezer, all we had to buy was the blue cheese. It's a simple formula that I made my tweaks to. I took my time cooking the onions down to soft caramelisation, Michael left the skin on the potatoes when he chopped them, and I retained the spinach stems too. It would all fall prey to the stick blender, after all! When that time came, my soup wasn't as gloriously green as Jac's, and I needed an extra cup of water to smooth its way. In our khaki soup, I was surprised how easily I could pick out the pear's sweetness from the pungency of the blue cheese, and the thick carbohydrate comfort of the potatoes. It was a...

June 24, 2016 Cindy bought me a copy of the Cinnamon Snail cookbook for my birthday (and whipped up an amazing meal from it while we were in Stockholm), and I wanted to take it for a test drive before she jetted off to the US. Melbourne was turning on typically soup-friendly weather, and this broccoli/beer soup seemed like something I could tackle on a Friday night.  It came together really easily - you can cook the soup while the 'chorizo' is cooking. The sunflower seed chorizo is worth the effort too, smoky and spicy with a little bit of crunch. This recipe made way more than we needed, but I enjoyed the soup so much that I made a second batch straight afterwards to use it up. The soup itself come out nice and thick thanks to all of the blended up potatoes - it's part soup/part mashed potato, with the nooch adding some cheesiness. Ours didn't come out the kind of vibrant green that was pictured in the book - the broccoli colour was swamped by the beer and tamari, so ...

May 16, 2015 We had a spare Saturday afternoon and thus decided we finally had the time to commit to one of the overly complicated recipes that Serious Eats put up during their recent vegan month . I'm pretty keen to have a crack at the mapo tofu or the creamy ramen , but they both required fancier ingredients than we could lay our hands on at short notice. Instead, we went for this wintery roasted potato and cauliflower soup, with the added bonus of some mushroom bacon. This is still a time-consuming and complicated recipe - I'd guess that we spent more than two hours putting everything together and we dramatically simplified the original (no stove-top smoking, lots of stick-blending and no soup straining). The mushroom bacon could be made well ahead of time, although you've got a good hour to do the laborious mushroom slicing while the veggies are roasting, and the oven's already on so you can pop them straight in.  I'd say the pay-off was just about worth it - ...

We'd loaded up on goodies at the Queen Vic Market on Saturday and had decided that we should buy some dried black beans and then get ourselves organised enough to actually use them. Thus, by the time Monday rolled around we'd had a couple of cups of beans soaking for a good 30 hours and were ready to turn them into dinner. My first port of call for Mexican-y recipes is Ken Charney's Bold Vegetarian Chef , possibly my favourite in our cookbook collection. He didn't disappoint, providing us with a recipe for 'Beautiful black bean and avocado soup'. It all took a bit longer than I imagined it would - despite our preparedness, I didn't realise how long the pre-cooking of the beans would take. I had them simmering for about an hour, but they still ended up a little bit firmer than I'd have liked. Still, that was the only minor complaint about this meal (well, that and its lack of visual appeal). The soup had a spicy zing, complemented by the citrus tang of th...

Cindy and I had cooked up some vague dinner plan, but when I caught the scent of the potato and leek soup in Radio (which, by the way, has added more options to its lunch menu and is now the clear lunch winner on my end of Gertrude), I cancelled whatever other notions we had and decided that it was time for another soup. After a bit of poking around the internet, we came up with this recipe , from Reynard's Feast, which Danika sadly appears to have stopped updating. We weren't organised enough to have faux-milk in the house, so our version ended up being non-vegan. Similarly, we were forced to resort to dried sage through general lack of planning. Regardless, this worked out excellently - the mashing of the spuds (rather than blending) makes for a more interesting consistency. So much so that I decided just to mash the cooked leek as well, which meant it retained a slight chunkiness. The mustard gave the milder flavours a bit of an edge, and Cindy topped it all off with s...

Cindy had warned me by email that she was suffering some sort of cheese-overdose in Chattanooga , so I planned to provide her with something healthy to try to redress the balance. She also had to adjust to the weather - I'd come back to a burst of unseasonable warmth, but Cindy got off the plane into a more typical winter day: wet, windy and cold. Luckily, The Age had caught my eye with this recipe (I won't reproduce it here - I followed their directions to the letter). It looked warming, healthy and hearty - the perfect welcome home meal. Especially with a delicious Indian bread to accompany it. With all the spices included in the ingredients, I expected something with a rich and complex flavour - it didn't quite measure up to what I'd imagined, but it was still a pretty satisfying dinner. I'd up the chilli to a few pinches, and probably amp up the ginger as well. For some reason it performed much better as a reheated lunch later in the week - maybe the spices ...

Many months ago one of Cindy's friends had passed on this recipe for broccoli and blue cheese soup - with winter properly upon us (it was 3 degrees when I was riding to work this week! 3!), Cindy dug it out of her email and set me to work on it. It's remarkably simple - a bit of chopping, some simmering and a run through the food processor - and pretty tasty, with the blue cheese flavour really shining through (in contrast to this effort , where the cheese flavour was a bit too subtle). The downside of the cheesy flavour was the removal of any pretence that this is a particularly healthy soup, in fact it sat a little heavily in my stomach by the end of the meal, and might work better in smaller bowls to start a multi-course meal off. Broccoli and Blue Vein Soup Oil 1 Onion 2 large potatoes, chopped 1.1 litres vegetable stock 350g broccoli, chopped roughly 80g blue cheese, crumbled 150mL milk Salt, pepper and juice of half a lemon (opt.) 90mL (6 tablespoons) cream, to serve 1...

I'm really pushing the soup agenda lately - I guess I've missed it during the warmer months. This lentil chowder was a rich and filling mush, with really strong flavours - a little spiciness, some tangy vinegar and the earthy lentils. I loved it on the night we made it, but by the time we'd gotten through the leftovers the vinegary-lemon flavours had become a bit tiresome. I'm sure the whole package would have been improved if we'd used a delicious homemade stock as the recipe recommended, instead of store-bought salty stock. In future it might be best to make it in smaller batches (or for larger crowds). Creamy red lentil chowder 1 tblsp olive oil 1 small onion, finely chopped 1 carrot, finely chopped 1 celery rib, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 bay leaf 2 tsp dried oregano 2 tsp dried basil 1 cinnamon stalk 1 large tomato, diced 1.5 cups red lentils 5 cups of vegetable stock 1 cup dry white wine 170g silken tofu 1 tblsp miso 2 tblsp lemon juice 1 tblsp...

With Melbourne turning wintry, I was nagging Cindy to dig me up some soup recipes. She pointed me in the direction of her del.icio.us bookmarks and told me to find my own. Luckily, I was sold by the very first item on her list: spicy cauliflower soup and braised lobster mushrooms , provided by the Amateur Gourmet . Our dinner wasn't quite as thrown together as Adam's - we shopped around for lobster mushrooms, but ended up settling for Swiss browns, which aren't even vaguely similar. Ah well, they're still mushroomy and delicious. We also didn't have a big pot of chicken stock on hand, instead making do with our relatively impressive Massel 'chicken' stock for the bulk of the soupy liquidness. Still, these were minor changes. The soup was spicy from the chilli and just a little smoky from the paprika. We threw in a decent sized chunk of blue cheese, but it didn't really shine through - adding maybe a little creaminess, but not a lot of extra flavou...

This month's recipe from our World in Your Kitchen calendar comes from exotic Morocco and also entails some distant deja vu. Back in October 2006 , we sampled harira for the first time and fell for its complex flavours and nourishing beans. We've not been particularly inspired to create new and nutritious dinners for a few weeks, so our bodies needed this as much as our taste buds did. The calendar's recipe is quite similar to our previous rendition, but I'll include it anyway. If you've an appetite for more spicy soups, take a look at the most recent round-up of the No Croutons Required blog event , where every entry is a bowl full of punchy vegetarian goodness. Harira (bean soup) 400g can chickpeas, drained 400g can haricot or other beans, drained 800g can crushed tomatoes 1 onion, chopped a pinch of saffron threads soaked in a little warm water 1/2 teaspoon turmeric 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground coriander 2 tablespoons fresh coriander, chopped 2 tab...

So I was after a light weeknight dinner, with greens and grapes in the fridge leftover from eating this salad on the previous night. Enter a white gazpacho recipe from Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once . But its name and temperature were going to be a hard sell with Michael. I innocently suggested we try a "garlicky bread soup", he agreed, and we split the shopping. He wasn't thrilled when he discovered we'd be eating a cold soup that didn't contain any veges. But what did he think when he tasted it? The white gazpacho was weird. But good. But weird. But GOOD. I could really see the attraction of serving it small in shot glasses as Haalo did - the fresh garlic is really punchy, too punchy to eat by the bowlful for me. (However Michael will eat garlic in almost any dosage...) I'd love some toned-down roasted garlic for the big-bowl version. The fresh greens and grapes were a great side, and they started me thinking about how this recip...

Jackson, Emma and I spent our Tuesday wandering around the Queen Vic Markets and the Pixar exhibition at ACMI (I enjoyed it almost as much the second time as the first). In between, we grabbed lunch at The Quarter on Degraves Street in the city. It's hard going finding a spare lunch table at 1p.m. on a working day, and we ended up just choosing The Quarter because we could see some free seats. The menu's pretty standard Italian - some lunch foccacias, a bunch of pastas and a few meaty mains. Emma and I both opted for the soup of the day: A spicy Middle-Eastern vegie soup, with spinach leaves and a dollop of yoghurt and mint floating on top. The spiciness of the soup came almost entirely from pepper, but it was a hell of a lot of pepper. Emma gave up halfway through, but I struggled through it, using the yoghurty sauce and about six glasses of water to dampen the flames. I think somebody's hand slipped during the seasoning process. Ah well, it was a nice idea and qui...

Rather than force our vegetarian lifestyle on Jack and Em for the whole weekend, we researched a few places in the general vicinity of Yanakie that would provide a tasty dinner. Unfortunately the Waratah Park Country House was closed, but luckily Orange Roughy were doing Sunday dinners even in the off-season. Although, if we hadn't called them to book, I'm not sure that they would have bothered opening - we were the only people in the place all night. Lesson: September Sunday nights in the Prom area are quiet. Very quiet. Even so, the lady running the show for the evening didn't seem too bothered. She cheerfully welcomed us, ran through the specials and chatted happily to us while we settled in. The special deal for the evening was a starter and main combo for $19.50. There were a couple of vegetarian mains and a range of meat and fish options for our non-veg companions. Entree-wise there was soup, garlic bread, bruschetta and some non-veg spring rolls. I opted fo...

With Cindy's ongoing tooth problems , we needed at least one more delicious soup to get us through the week. Cindy spent the morning poking around the Internet and came up with this winner from Pinch My Salt . I won't reproduce the recipe in full as I basically followed Nicole's recipe to the letter, with the laziness-inspired exception of canned artichoke hearts taking the place of the real thing. The process of roasting the cauliflower was pretty time-consuming, especially as the house filled with delicious roasting smells, increasing our impatience for the meal. Luckily, it was worth the wait - the mix of roast cauliflower, lemon zest and artichokes created a rich and tasty treat. It was quite similar to our previous cauliflower soup , but a little lighter and healthier. I think roasting the cauliflower first was a nice touch as well. Cindy tasted a hint of cheese, which was a little odd given the lack of any cheese in the mix, while I was more enamoured of the lit...

With my jaw and gums still recovering from a wisdom tooth removal, meals in the where's the beef? household have been less diverse than usual. Michael has been doing a stellar job at catering to my whims and fancies where possible. Here's what I've been enjoying, as best my mouth allows me.... HIT: Michael's pumpkin and shallot soup . Nourishing and slightly sweet. MISS: Michael's pumpkin and shallot soup, unstrained. HIT: King Island yoghurt . I requested any lump/seed-free yoghurt and Michael pampered me with the best. The cinnamon and honey one is particularly soothing. MISS: Attempting to eat rice pudding on day two. It fared better at breakfast on day four. HIT: Chocolate ice-cream. It's years since I've shopped for ice-cream at a supermarket and it proved difficult to find one without nuts, cookie chunks or other hazards in it. Sara Lee's Ultimate Chocolate has a strange grey-brown colour but is otherwise just what the oral surgeon ord...

The extraction of Cindy's wisdom teeth has meant that we've been on a liquid-food diet for the weekend. To make sure that she had food available on Friday evening, we spent Thursday night in the kitchen: she whipping up her Indian mango pudding , and me having a crack at a pumpkin soup recipe from Ken Charney's The Bold Vegetarian Chef . The recipe had a few quirks compared to regular pumpkin soup - not least the incorporation of a roasted pear. I was uncertain whether the pear was going to have any impact on the overall flavour (it was 1 smallish pear in amongst a kilo of pumpkin after all) and speculated that it may have just been a gimmick to make Ken's recipe sound exotic. It turns out I was wrong, the pear (along with a decent splash of lemon juice) added a level of unexpected sweetness to the pumpkin and shallots, to the point that this savoury option turned out to be a little on the sweet side given Cindy's limited food choices. The recipe also suggested ...

First, something new: Machine Laundry . As the name indicates, this is a laundromat. But it's also a brightly decorated, retro-fitted cafe where hipsters with angular haircuts serve breakfast and lunch. There are the usual breakfast suspects, but also a substantial number of off-beat vege-friendly dishes: savoury muffins and pancakes, fruits poached in vanilla, and below the DIY eggs and toast list, this message: "Don't want eggs? You can order any combo of sides". Could anything make me feel more at home here? (Answer: perhaps my own new angular and slightly pretentious haircut.) I was determined to eat lightly and a little more healthily, choosing the "machine-made granola" ($9, rolled grains toasted with slivered almonds & honey, topped with banana and yoghurt). Unfortunately it let me down, more chewy than crunchy, with too much honey and not enough fruit for my taste. Michael fared much better with the impressive "machine-packed roti bread...

We needed a better excuse for our trip to Preston Markets than just the nearby bakery, so before we set off we dug up this fennel leek soup recipe from our Moosewood cookbook for Sunday night's dinner. It was loaded up heavily with vegetables and seemed like it would be a decent winter's dinner. The recipe took a bit longer than I anticipated - you basically end up making your own stock for the base of the soup - and the final product was a little short on flavour (at least partly due to my forgetting to put pepper in), but still heavy, warming and satisfying. The thin-sliced radishes were a fine accompaniment, as were the croutons that Cindy made up from the fresh bread we'd picked up at the markets, but the whole package was just slightly short of flavour. It's something to work on - maybe up the leek content for next time. Fennel leek soup (courtesy Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics) 1 fennel bulb, trimmed 3 leeks 2 carrots, peeled and chopped 4 large potat...

My usual Monday night netball is on mid-year hiatus, meaning my usual approach of just letting Cindy look after me is no long tenable. Still, she dug up this recipe and we had most of the ingredients on hand, so all I had to do was throw it all together. I've never eaten as much soup as I have since winter arrived in Melbourne - I'm buying it for lunch whenever we're short of leftovers and we're making it about once a week. It truly is ideal food for a drizzly Melbourne July. And, as a bonus, it tends to be pretty straightforward. This was no exception: once the cauliflower and onion are chopped it's as easy as pie. Soup pie. The end result is rich and creamy - thanks in no small part to the cup of cheese that's stirred through. The cauliflower provides most of the flavour, but the mustard seeds were a nice touch - making up for the pepper that I forgot to sprinkle through. It's probably not the healthiest soup going around, but on a cold rainy nigh...

With winter in full swing, I've become a firm advocate of soup for dinner. Particularly warm, spicy soup like this: creamy roasted chipotle soup , courtesy of Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit . Since first discovering chipotles and adobo sauce some time ago, I've been tempted by its smoky heat, but cautious of its feisty spice power. With a generous slopping of sour cream included to keep things from overheating, I was pretty confident that this recipe was going to be a winner. And so it turned out: thick with beans and corn and rich with the spice that the adobo sauce and chipotle provided, it also doubled as a tasty taco sauce (soon to be featured in one of Cindy's leftover makeovers). I altered the recipe a little from the Lindyloo's, so I'll reproduce it here. Creamy Roasted Chipotle Soup 1 tbsp olive oil 1 onion (chopped finely) 4 cloves garlic (minced) 1 large can crushed tomatoes 2 tomatoes (chopped) 2 cobs of corn, stripped from the cob and blackened un...