Borscht

After my recent trip to Russia, I have been craving borscht. I've made it once before a few years ago (and stained practically everything I owned red in the process) but it wasn't as good as the stuff I had in Russia.

After reading multiple recipes, and even tweeting about it, I picked the Valentine Warner recipe from "What to Eat Now". It was in two stages, firstly making a meat broth from vegetables, stewing beef and ham hock, and then adding in roast beetroots, parsnips and apples.

Borscht with Sour Cream

The soup should take about 3 hours to make, as the broth and the roasted beetroots both took 2 hours of slow cooking. However, I ended up taking more like 5 hours, as about 2.5 hours in, there was a power cut. Not only did all the lights in the houses go out, the street lights and traffic lights also went out. It was really strange to look out in to the street and see complete black. A couple of stairwells had emergency lighting, but apart from that the only lights I could see were flickering candles or torches. As both the hob and the oven are electric, I just had to abandon the borscht until the power came back on an hour or so later.

I'm not sure if it was this enforced hiatus or the recipe that meant the soup was a little lacking. The initial stages of frying off onions and garlic with dill smelt fantastic, as did the roasted beetroot and adding the meat. I was less convinced about the apples and parsnip and I would skip this if I was making the soup again. Krysia Boo suggested on Twitter to add the juice from re-hydrating dried mushrooms, which I didn't get the chance to this time but will definitely bear in mind in future. I also think next time I would grate the beetroot instead of cubing it, as I didn't like the thin broth with massive chunks in. I prefer my borscht more texturally homogeneous.

Not Quite Up To Russian Standard

I won't bother posting the recipe, as it needs a lot of work before I'm happy with it. I think next time I'll make the meat stock as a stock rather than a broth, and add the dill and onions later on. However, the soup did tick a lot of boxes, and I enjoyed it for my lunch with a good piece of bread and loads of sour cream. It didn't have an overly earthy flavour, and the sweetness of the beetroot was highlighted. A definite starting point for further adventures in borscht.

Student Dinner: Home Made Baked Beans

Today was meant to be my last day at university. I had my final exam on Tuesday, and I was meant to pick up my dissertation mark today. Typically, the secretary was ill and the office was closed. I still had dinner planned though.

I had been thinking for a while what I should have. I toyed with the idea of recreating the food I ate in first year, when I lived in halls and ate in the canteen.

For starters, there would be vegetable soup. Only the soup has gone, and your bowl has some mushy vegetables in it. Once we got a serving so unsouplike that it could be scraped up in a heap on one side of the bowl.

Next up would be fish and spring vegetables. Excellent. A nice, healthy, tasty bit of fish. Yum. Here, the catch would be that I would give my flatmate the last piece of fish, and I would have a burrito filled with the mushy vegetables from the soup. No matter what time I got in the queue, the last portion of fish would always go to the person two or three places ahead of me in the line. If I was really lucky, I would treat myself with fried chicken. Except the kitchen has run out of breadcrumbs, so they used breakfast cereal. Not cornflakes though. Rice Krispies. Sweet!?

Finally, dessert would involve me considering a pot of fruit salad, but being put off by the excess of melon and not enough grapes. Over to the dessert specials! As there is that box of Rice Krispies that needs using up, why not make orange jelly, and top it with whipped cream and puffed rice? Why not indeed? *

Talking of Why Not? (a rather expensive and cheesy club favoured by public school types) I'd squeeze on to the dining table with one or two friends, while the rest of the seats were taken up by posh kids discussing whether to go to Why Not? or Opal Lounge. Plus Daddy and Pimsy are coming up on Saturday to watch the rugger. Tally Ho!

Instead I went for the student favourite of baked beans on toast.

Classic.

I made the baked beans yesterday as they took 13 hours to make. You had to soak the haricots for 10 hours, boil for an hour, chop and brown onions, garlic and bacon, then simmer the ingredients in chopped tomatoes for an hour and half. I can't find the exact recipe online but there are loads on Google. I might give some of the others a go, as although mine we nice, they lacked a certain je ne s'ais quoi.

For the toast, I bought a sourdough loaf from Peter's Yard. I love the way the crust is really chewy but the inside is soft with a slight tang to it. (I got kicked out of there the other day as I had been in there for 3 hours studying and they wanted to close! I feel a bit embarassed about this but it is also a bit cool that the staff now recognise me as the person who can make coffee and a cake last half a day.)

On its own, I thought it looked a bit ascetic, so I added a side salad and a portabella mushroom stuffed with peppered cheddar and breadcrumbs. It was a pretty tasty dinner and good for my student budget too!

(*All this talk of the halls' canteen makes me want to go back and review it objectively. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all...)

Jerusalem Artichoke and Carrot Soup

I have become slightly addicted to the Oxfam bookshop, and frequently go in to the one by uni to check out the cookery book selection. The one in Morningside has a better selection of fancy books though, I guess because the people of Morningside have a bit more cash to splash and will give away books that are still pretty current and in good condition. The other day I nabbed the Green & Blacks' Chocolate book for £1.50!

About a year ago I got the New Covent Garden Soup book. My dad has it and I had been trying to decide whether to buy it or just steal my dad's copy, but it was in Oxfam for £2 so I went for it. I've been trying to work my way through but I've probably only done about 10% of the book so far.

I got some Jerusalem artichokes at the famers' market on Saturday, and I'd never eaten them before, so I didn't really know what to expect. As I was making the soup, I sneaked a piece out and tried it. It had the texture of a potato, but a nuttier taste. I still have a couple left so I might make them in to a mash or a mixed vegetable gratin.

I have had mixed results with the NCG book, with some being totally delicious (Chicken, lemon and tarragon) and some being quite disappointing (pappa al pomodoro). This one was quite successful, and I liked the flavour of the Jerusalem artichokes sweetened with the carrot. It also uses milk so it wasn't overwhelmingly creamy.

Recipe (adapted from New Covent Garden Soup Co's Book of Soups)

25g unsalted butter
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
400g Jerusalem artichokes, peeled
240g carrots, sliced
50g carrots, finely grated
1l chicken stock
110ml milk
salt and pepper

Saute the onion and garlic in the butter on a low heat for 5 minutes until soft, but do not colour them. Add the chopped artichokes and carrots, and give it all a good stir.

After a couple of minutes, add the stock (I used the chicken stock I'd frozen earlier, I used 600ml stock and 400ml water as the stock was quite strong) and simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend it all up, and then add the milk. Stir in the grated carrot to add to the texture. Season the soup to taste.

Et voila!

I found this made about 5 smallish portions, but mine was quite thick, so you could probably water it down a bit if you prefer a thinner texture or need more portions.

Farmer's Market and Scallops

Bright and early on Saturday morning, E, H (two of my flatmates) and myself ventured to the weekly farmers' market in town. Although it was freezing cold, it was better than last time we went as it wasn't raining. It's very rare that you don't encounter some kind of precipitation in Edinburgh, and it did rain later in the day.

I took this photo while we ate breakfast. We did consider the Stoats Porridge van (I am particularly in love with the cranachan variety, although the cold on Saturday was tempting me toward the whisky and honey flavour), but in the end we went for a roast hog roll, with crackling and apple sauce from the Oink van. I love the way they only have one product (a big pig, complete with head and trotters, that slowly gets eaten at the market goes on) and that your only choices are crackling and sauce. No vegetarian option, no low-carb rolls, just pig. Delicious.

We went round the stalls and picked up quite a few goodies. E got a massive red mullet, weighing in at almost half a kilo. He's planning to stuff it with fennel and roast it whole. H got some lemon curd from the dairy woman, and I bought some butter in preparation for the impending butter tasting session.

I also got some Jerusalem artichokes and carrots. I'm planning to make them into soup. I've never had Jerusalem artichokes before so I wonder how they will taste. All the vegetables were still muddy from the field, so when I got home I gave them all a good scrub. It was very satisfying to scrape off the mud and dirt to reveal bright orange carrots underneath. The Jerusalem artichokes were less handsome to look at but they are getting pureed so it doesn't matter!

Lastly, H and I bought 8 scallops to have for lunch. I love scallops but have always been too scared to cook them myself in case I poison someone or just make them taste horrible. We fried off a little garlic in butter, and then added it to some more butter to make garlic topping. The left over garlicky butter in the pan was used to fry the scallops. I was terrified of overcooking them, but also eager to get them a bit brown and warmed through.

We served them on a little bit of pesto with the garlic butter topping. The pesto went well with the corals, and I had my scallops really garlicky, as I love garlic a little bit too much! It was great to have really fresh seafood, and I was pleased that we managed to sear the scallops without making them all rubbery. I think next time I would get the pan hotter as I felt they were a bit too cooked, but some of them weren't caramelised enough.

There are a couple of really good fishmongers around here, plus the farmers' market has 3 or 4 stalls that sell seafood (some of it still alive), so there is no excuse for not eating more fish. It's a shame Scotland has such a bad reputation for food, a lot of the produce is amazing, especially the seafood and game, but it all seems to get exported in favour of deep fried Mars bars...

Scallops with garlic butter and pesto

Roasted Red Pepper Soup

For New Year's Eve, I made roasted red pepper and tomato soup. I based it on this recipe from BBC Food. As it was by the Diabetic Society I thought it would be a healthy dinner to help us get through that large amounts of alcohol we were planning to consume later that night!


I grilled the peppers until they were blackened, and then put them in a plastic bag to sweat. At first, I found them quite hard to peel, although once I got to the bottom of the bag they were much easier. Next time I think I will get them really black, and then sweat them for quite a while, and they should be really easy to peel. At this stage they were really soft and although the blackened parts had burned through to the flesh, it had only caramelized it instead of burning it. They were so soft I was able to tear them up instead of slicing them.


I then added them all to the pan, with 2 onions and 2 cloves of garlic. Next time I would probably use 4 cloves of garlic as 2 didn't seem to add that much taste. I also substituted the vegetable stock for half chicken stock, and half homemade vegetable stock. I liked that it was thickened by a potato, as I find that soups thickened with flour don't always work very well. I used tinned plum tomatoes, but next time I would go for passata instead. I also let it stew for about 30 mins while I cleaned up the kitchen to try and deepen the flavour before blending. Although the recipe says it serves 6, I got 8 portions out of this (4 are now in the freezer).

I served the finished product with a slice of toasted french bread spread with pesto. The pesto went really well with the red peppers, although the flavour wasn't as deep as I wanted. However it was pretty technically easy to make (although the skinning was time consuming), and looks quite impressive, so a win overall.

Dinner is served