A Nigel Slater Recipe - A Soup of Cauliflower and Cheese

Cauliflower Cheese Soup is a firm favourite, it's filling and comforting, not the best choice for those who may be on a diet, but for the rest of us a luxurious soup.

Grain mustard is stirred through the pureed soup along with a pot of creme fraiche - Nigel likens this soup to Welsh rarebit which I'll go along with....I made some mixed grain bread and served grilled cheese on toast to go alongside.

The recipe can be taken to dinner party level by using Gruyère Cheese. For an everyday soup a mature Cheddar cheese is fine, this was my cheese of choice because I had a slab in the fridge shouting to be used.

Taken from Tender Volume I -  Nigel Slater A cook and his Vegetable Patch - page 189.

I am entering my soup into Dish of the Month challenge hosted by Janice at Farmers Girl Kitchen and Sue at A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate.

For more soup postings:
Celery, Leek & Stilton
Cauliflower Cheese Soup with Parmesan Wafers
Broccoli & Stilton Soup with Stilton Croutons
Spicy Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

Celery, Leek and Stilton Soup: Recipe

Celery, Leek and Stilton Soup

Now I'm an adult I like Stilton Cheese and any leftover pieces I freeze away for a rainy day. Stilton cheese, celery and leeks all get on well together and are amazing in any recipe.

A bowl of warm, comforting soup simply can't be beaten.  It's also the time of year when we are wall to wall with diets and exercise dvds - eat sensibly with good homemade food made from scratch, eat less and don't forget to eat a slice of cake every day, it always works for me.

Only if you must, the Stilton cheese can be left out of the recipe, but either way it will still taste very delicious.

Serves: 4

You will need:

25g butter
7 sticks celery - reserving the leaves.
1 large leek
1 onion
110g peeled potatoes
¼ tsp celery seeds
600ml semi-skimmed milk
250ml chicken stock
50g Stilton Cheese

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan.  Chop the celery, leek and onion, peel and chop the potato. Add to the pan and cook on a medium heat for 15 minutes to soften.
2. Pour the chicken stock and semi-skimmed milk into the pan. Add the celery seeds and season.
3. Cook for 25 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked through.
4. Crumble half the cheese into the pan to melt.
5. Puree the soup with a stick blender until smooth.
6. Pour into bowls, garnish with celery leaves and crumbled Stilton cheese, if you like.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup with Parmesan Wafers

This is the second cauliflower cheese soup recipe on my blog. To be truthful I only made the soup so that I could eat the Parmesan wafers and they are so easy to make, you will never look back. My other recipe was by Jamie Oliver and if you look at my previous posting you will see why his soup is so delicious.

The recipe comes from Woman&Home Dinner Tonight and is a really good quarterly magazine for recipe ideas, unfortunately I haven't seen it on the magazine racks in the shops recently.

The weather seems to be a little crazy, sun, wind, rain and hailstones, so perhaps I can be forgiven for posting yet another cauliflower cheese soup recipe.

Serves: 4

You will need: 25g butter, 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped leek (reserve some of the green part to garnish), 1 chopped cauliflower, 700ml vegetable stock, 600ml milk, 75g grated Cheddar cheese

1. Add the butter to a pan and melt, add the chopped leek and onion. Cover with a lid and cook over a gentle heat for 5 minutes until soft.
2. Add the cauliflower, stock and milk. Bring to the boil and simmer for 35 minutes, covered until the cauliflower is tender. Season.
3. Cool the soup and pour into a food processor or liquidizer and blitz until smooth.
4. Add the Cheddar cheese, reheat, pour into bowls and garnish with chopped green leek.

Parmesan Wafers

Line a baking sheet with parchment. Sprinkle heaped tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan in little piles on top and bake for 5 minutes at 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6 until melted. Lift off the paper and cool.

Leek, Broccoli and Stilton Soup - National Stilton Week 15 - 21 April 2012

Leek, Broccoli and Stilton cheese are a match made in heaven. The recipe is by food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis and is from her book Tamasin's Kitchen Bible.
Whilst I was growing up Stilton cheese always seemed to be in the house. I must admit though it wasn't to my taste, it was a cheese the grownups ate, and mostly with celery, another one for the grownups. I never appreciated this magnificent cheese when I lived in the shires, for me it has been an acquired taste.

Long Clawson Dairy or Tuxford & Tebbutt Stilton cheese were the ones favoured by my family because these were our local cheese makers, but when I eventually discovered Stilton cheese it was Colston Bassett for me, I think this is because it is creamier than some of the others. A digestive biscuit with a slab of Stilton on top is heavenly, my husband says I make him want to weep, and it's a waste of good cheese.

Recipe: Leek, Broccoli and Stilton Soup
Serves: 4

1 small chopped onion, 2 tbsp olive oil, 30g butter, 3 finely chopped leeks, head of broccoli chopped, 1.2 litres chicken stock, 150ml milk or cream, up to 55g Stilton to garnish, black pepper.

1. Add the oil and butter to the pan and cook the onion for a few minutes.
2. Add the leeks and broccoli to the onion, cook for five minutes.
3. Add the hot stock to the pan and bring to a simmer, cook until the broccoli is just tender. When cooked add the cream. Allow the soup to cool.
4. Return the soup to the pan and reheat gently.
5. Pour into dishes and garnish with Stilton cheese and a grinding of black pepper.

A couple more postings on my blog using Stilton Cheese - Long Clawson Dairy, Cooking Creatively with Cheese and Broccoli and Stilton Soup with Stilton Croutons.

Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Cheese Soup

Love cauliflower cheese? Hopefully cauliflower cheese soup which is made with a few extra added veg, a good quality cheddar cheese and a dollop of English mustard will become one of your favourites.

It has been so cold where I live, the snowman the children next door made last Saturday, has only just started to melt. I didn't make a snowman but made this fabulous soup instead in the warmth of my house. The soup is easy to make, extremely tasty and can't be found in a carton in your local supermarket! All you need is some good bread, preferably not the plastic stuff, and you've got yourself a lovely lunch.

I made some crispy bacon to garnish the soup but the majority of it sank to the bottom of the bowl whilst I was trying to set up the camera, it was no bad thing though because the crispy bacon went with the soup beautifully and added some texture.

The recipe comes from Jamie Oliver's Cookery Book Ministry of Food.

2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 2 medium onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 800g cauliflower, olive oil, 200g Cheddar cheese, 2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes, salt and black pepper, 1 teaspoon English mustard.

1. Dice the carrots, celery, onions and garlic. Cut the cauliflower into florets.
2. Into a large pan add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and put over a medium heat, add the diced vegetables. Cook for 10 minutes with a lid partially placed over the pan or until the carrots have softened and the onion is lightly golden.
3. Grate the cheese. Put the stock cubes into a jug and pour in 1.8 litres of boiling water from a kettle. Add to the vegetables in the pan. Stir and bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so until the vegetables are cooked.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and add the cheese and mustard, season with salt and pepper. Use a hand blender and pulse until silky smooth - if using a liquidiser let the soup cool down, never put hot liquid into a liquidiser.
5. Top with more grated cheese and some crispy bacon.

Review: DK The Slow Cook Book

If you have a slow cooker and use it on a regular basis, or your slow cooker is collecting dust at the back of the cupboard, this book will inspire you to cook some tasty meals with a minimum of ingredients and are low fuss too.

Good things about this book:
Timings and instructions are given for using both a conventional oven and the slow cooker.
Clear photographs and step by step instructions.
There is advice on braising, stewing, poaching, steaming and baking.
Recipes for tagines, curries, chilli, risotto and fish.
Classic recipes from bread and butter pudding to creme caramel, beef stew with Stilton dumplings to Boeuf Bourguignon.
A good mix of recipes from rich and decadent chocolate and prune sponge puddings, fruity lamb shanks, Greek Stifado to North African tagines.

Have you ever considered making risotto in the slow cooker? It is just so easy, and the wonderful thing is you don't have to stand over a pan and stir, stir, stir. Try the Asparagus and Taleggio risotto - it only takes just over an hour to cook on low, for a bowl of the creamiest risotto ever.


I made a huge pot of minestrone soup, it was hearty and flavoursome and took about 8 hours to cook on low. This soup can be frozen, but I don't think it will make the freezer because it is so delicious.


Anyone for pudding? A lemon syrup pudding both light and luscious with a citrus kick. Cook on high for 2-3 hours and hey presto a steamed pudding. The wonderful thing about a slow cooker is you can steam in it and you don't have to keep checking the pan to see if it needs topping up with water, because the water doesn't evaporate and boil dry.

Slow cooking is experiencing a remarkable come-back, with John Lewis seeing the sale of slow cookers rising by 64% in the last two years (independent.co.uk).

To look inside the book click on the link below.
The Slow Cook Book, Heather Whinney, £16.99 dk.com

Thank you Sophia and DK.

BROCCOLI AND STILTON SOUP WITH STILTON CROUTONS

A bowl of warm homemade soup, especially on a cold grey day, is a joy.

If you have any left over pieces of Stilton Cheese in the freezer, this recipe is perfect for using them up. The soup doesn't take too long to make, and you are rewarded with a wonderful pan of freshly made soup. I'm not suggesting for one minute you should make the baguette to go with the soup.........

The recipe is by Antony Worrall Thompson from his days as presenter of Saturday Kitchen and can be found on the BBC Food Website.

CURRIED PARSNIP & APPLE SOUP WITH PARSNIP CRISPS ALSO CREAM OF CELERY SOUP

The first soup comes from Delia's Winter Collection and must be one of the best soups I have ever eaten.

The recipe can be found here on Delia's website.

The flavour combinations are truly wonderful, and if you are a curry fan, then this soup must surely go on your 'to do list' of recipes.

Hopefully, you will have spices that haven't been bought ready ground. It really is worthwhile roasting your own spices when you need them. The aroma from the spices when you are crushing them in the pestle and mortar is heaven.

I always try to remember not to liquidize soups too much, because I prefer my soups to have some texture to them.

The parsnip crisps for the garnish are very easy to make, simply slice the parsnips very thinly, fry in hot fat for a few minutes and then, as if by magic, they start to curl and twist into wonderful shapes.


The Cream of Celery soup, comes under the heading of luxury soups in Delia's Frugal Food.

I had some celery and leeks that were starting to look sorry for themselves, suddenly these tired looking vegetables transformed themselves into a delicious soup.

I bought my celery seeds from the health store, unfortunately, these aren't very easy to find. You can buy them from the Seasoned Pioneers website though.

Here is the slightly adapted recipe.

CREAM OF CELERY SOUP

DELIA'S FRUGAL FOOD

ISBN 9780340918562 - Page 23

350g sticks celery trimmed (save the leaves), 25g butter, 110g peeled potatoes cut into chunks, 2 sliced and washed medium leeks (white parts only, but I used all of the leek), 570ml chicken stock, 275ml semi-skimmed milk, ¼ teaspoon celery seeds, 2 tablespoons cream, seasoning.

1. Melt the butter in a large pan over a low heat.
2. Chop the celery and add it to the pan, together with the potatoes and drained leeks. Then stir to coat the vegetables with butter, cover very gently for about 15 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time to prevent the vegetables from sticking.
3. Pour in the stock and milk, sprinkle in the celery seeds and some salt. Bring to simmering point over a very low heat (watching it doesn't boil over), cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the vegetables are absolutely tender.
4. Liquidize the soup until it's your preferred consistency. Return the puree to the pan and add the cream.
5. Bring back to the boil, taste and season.
6. Just before serving, chop up the reserved celery leaves and use these to garnish the soup.

SPICY TOMATO AND RED PEPPER SOUP

I seem to be on a mission at the moment to find soup recipes with both 'bowl and taste appeal'. Lots of recipes disappoint me, and in the past I have had more than my fair share of failures. This winter has been unusually cold, and a bowl of homemade soup with freshly baked bread is the ultimate in mid-day comfort food.

Maybe, if you have thought about making soup, but the thoughts of buying fresh soup from the supermarket holds more attraction - I hope these following two soup recipes will help change your mind.

Lightly seeded bread straight from the bread machine was a perfect accompaniment.

Hot Food is a great cookery book and every recipe is accompanied with a photograph. It's always helpful and much more user friendly to look at a beautifully styled photograph.

There are recipes for most of us in this wonderful book. Chapters on soup, spicy, rice and noodles, hearty and pasta. Recipes such as asparagus soup with Parmesan crisps - lamb kofta curry - tamarind beef, bean and noodle stir-fry - Welsh lamb pie and for rainy day cooking - pasta with lamb shank, rosemary and red wine ragu.

HOT FOOD

ISBN 1740452259 - Page 65

Serves: 4-6 people

This is the slightly adapted recipe:

You will need: 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 finely chopped red onions, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 2 teaspoons paprika, 2 diced red peppers, 90g tomato puree, 250ml dry white wine, 2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes, 500ml chicken or vegetable stock, 3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley, 4 tablespoons chopped coriander.

1. Heat the oils in a large saucepan over a medium heat and cook for 1-2 minutes.
2. Add the red pepper and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and the wine, simmer for a couple of minutes, or until reduced slightly. Add the tomato, stock and 500ml water. Season and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Puree most of the soup along with the herbs. Add the remainder of the soup mix to the puree. Enjoy!


My next success story is Tomato and Basil Soup taken from Olive Magazine, a link to this recipe can be found here on the BBCGoodFood website.

The recipe states that it cooks in 15 minutes, but I found it took a good 30 minutes to cook all of the vegetables. If the soup gets too thick, just thin it down a little.

Another soup to enjoy with some good crusty bread!