Roast Pork & Pumpkin Soup

Things being what they are out there, you can't go past a good leftovers meal. One of the things I set out to do when I started this blog was focus not only on good tasty food but also economical meals, and making the most of your supplies.

I might have done something like this last winter, but what the hey. Learning by repetition is the best way, right?

Or was it learning by doing?

Anyway, not to worry.

This soup requires that you have the following leftovers:
Roast Pork;
Roast Pumpkin;
Roast Veges;
Chicken stock, made from leftover chicken and vege scraps.

This is good, because it gives you good reason to cook:
A Roast Pork;
Roast Pumpkin;
Roast Veges;
And a Roast Chicken, at some stage (although the stock can be frozen, of course).

Making the soup is dead simple.
Take your roast pumpkin and other veges, and chop them up into chunks.
Drop them into a bowl and add the chicken stock. Blend up to a nice, thick consistency. Try to get it ... soupy. Add water if further thinning down is required.
Add your leftover pork, chopped into nice little bites. Heat thoroughly, without boiling.
Serve with fresh rolls, sour cream, and freshly ground pepper.

Mushroom and Sausage Soup

What do you do when your sister brings you a big bag full of delicious field mushrooms that only you will eat? And much as you would love to just fry them up with bacon and eat them, you're busy cooking sausages for dinner already?
Easy.

You make soup.
Chop up the mushrooms, and take some photos, pondering the odd nature of these particular mushrooms that seem to be slightly out-of-focus in the real world (couldn't possibly be the camera, much less the photographer...).
Since you're already cooking up sausages, simply keep the oily pan, add some butter and the chopped mushrooms, and simmer away while you're eating the afore-mentioned sausages, keeping one aside. There was also a certain amount of fried onion in the sausage pan, which we will just take as a given.
Chop up that lone spare sausage.
Add 2 Cups of light chicken stock to the mushrooms and bring to a rapid simmer, then add a 1/4 cup of cream.
Take a stick blender or pour the soup into a blender. Pulse it a few times so that you're left with some yummy chunky bits. Then mix the sausage through.

Sadly, this is the best "Final Result" photo I have, since I then took both servings to work for lunch, where there is no camera. *sigh*

Pumpkin Soup

I went and took photos for this, only to discover that I've already posted the recipe. There are a few differences from the original post in June, for example I peeled the pumpkin before roasting it. So here's a nice shot of some lovely roasted pumpkin.
And this is what happens to the skin left lying on the bench near the muffin trays, when 2-year-old is "helping" make the soup.

Chicken and Corn Soup

Did I mention that the Slow-Cooker Chicken was just divine? As chef, I had an obligation to ensure the highest possible quality was being served up, and so I was forced to sample the wings as they fell apart all over the chopping board before I could get them under the grill. I could literally suck the meat away from the bone, and they just melted in the mouth. So good.

As usual, I reserved the breasts for later meals, and boiled up a stock with the veges scraps, the bones and the cooking liquid. I had intended to make some lunch servings of soup to freeze, but didn't quite get there. Isaac is so keen to be able to eat more that he's decided to get all his eye teeth at once, so our usually quiet Sunday night was anything but. Accordingly, little more than the dishes got done.

Monday night we were all pretty shattered, so the plan to make soup for lunches became a plan to make soup for dinner, and what a good idea it was! Soup and toast on a cold July night with the fire going; that's the stuff! Isaac liked it so much he even figured out how to eat soup from a spoon without getting most of it everywhere but in his mouth!


Chicken and Corn Soup

In a bowl, chop up about 1 C of roast veges (potato, onion, kumera, pumpkin, all leftover from the previous night's roast). Add about 600ml of Chicken Stock (also a by-product of the roast) to the bowl and blend up with a hand blender. Scrape this all into a pot and heat gently. Add 1 chopped roast chicken breast (yet again leftover from last night).

Open a can of whole kernel corn and drain the liquid into your original blending bowl. Add the corn to the soup, then add the liquid to achieve the desired consistency (I ended up using the whole lot). Serve with hot buttered toast, freshly ground pepper and a dollop of sour cream.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

This meal is all about economy, and rides on the back of the Roast Chicken Amazing Multiple Meal Deal. Since the oven's already going, there's no point wasting all that good energy on just one meal. This recipe tends to make two big lunch servings, which I usually take to work with a bit of toast bread. I also reserve the breasts for a second meal, which makes a chicken go an awfully long way. It also makes an extra half-litre of stock that you can put aside for something else in the future, instead of resorting to powdered ingredients.

Since I stuck with a regular cordon bleu treatment for the chook (salt and pepper on the outside, one skewered lemon and 4 peeled garlic cloves stuffed in the cavity), I could spend some time seasoning the veges nicely. I went with freshly ground salt & pepper, lemon zest, paprika, finely chopped rosemary and grated garlic. This adds something special to both the roast and the soup.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

Chop up and roast a whole pumpkin as part of a roast dinner. I know that I will only need to serve about a quarter of it for dinner, which leaves the rest for soup. Boil up a stock from the chicken back and neck after it has roasted, along with all the scraps from prepping the veges, plus an extra onion and maybe a potato. Generally there's enough in the way of peelings and stuff to make about a litre of stock.

Simmer this away on the back of the stove while watching Sunday night TV, then strain it into a bowl and pop it in the fridge for 1/2 an hour to allow some of the fat to separate off the liquid.

Scrape the pumpkin off its skin and chop up whatever leftover veges you have - usually some potato, kumera, and onion, and place them all in another bowl. Add about 400ml of stock and puree up with a hand blender, until it reaches a thick and smooth consistency with some chunky bits.


Today I was home on "looking-after-the-sick-family-sick-leave", and had some for lunch, with a big dollop of sour cream. Delicious, and just what I felt like on a cold and rainy day.

Tonight I'll be Making the Most of the Roast again, using the breasts from last night's chook to make a coconut and banana curry. I'll let you know how it turns out!

One Double Shot of Roast Lamb, Please.

Monday was Queen's Birthday, and we decided to cook up a Roast of Lamb that we had found at the Supermarket for $12.00. I don't think it was on our menu, but when you spot a bargain like that, you give yourself a little bit of breathing room. After prepping the meat and doing a bunch of stuff around the place, friends called and offered to come help with getting the house ready for a valuation that we're having done shortly, and they brought with them another small Lamb Roast, about half the size but still a little frozen in the middle, which pretty much balanced out the cooking times.

Since I had the first lamb slowly marinating in herbs and garlic, I needed to launch a quick but yummy assault on the second one, which we achieved with a quick run to the lemon tree and the trusty assistance of the Grinders.

If you don't have a mortar and pestle, I reckon its the best $30-40.00 you might ever spend in an Asian Grocery. We've had ours for about 8 years, and it has never had time to gather dust. It doesn't rust, it can't go (any) blunt(er), and it even works in a power failure. Unlike knives and blenders, you can use a mortar and pestle to crush and bruise and smash, and are an effective weapon against such things as coriander seeds, cloves and cardamon. Next to my knives and my cast iron frypan, its the one thing in the kitchen I wouldn't do without.

Garlic Herbed Roast Lamb

Start this first thing in the morning. With the joint defrosted, gather some fresh herbs and a few cloves of garlic. I used mint, oregano and rosemary, because they seem to be weathering the winter cold better than the other herbs. Strip the leaves from the herbs, peel and slice the garlic (just crush the clove with the flat of a big knife and slice off the hard bit at the end), and put it all in the pestle. Crush up to a paste, adding 2T of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a T of balsamic vinegar.
Pierce the lamb every 2-3cm, to about 3/4 deep, on both sides. With a teaspoon and your fingers, force the garlic-herb mixture into the holes, and rub the excess over the entire joint.
Put lamb in the fridge and allow to stand for about 8 hours.

See below for cooking details.

Lemon-Tossed Lamb Roast

This can be prepped pretty much right before the meat needs to go in the oven. Put the lamb in a bowl, add 2T of Olive Oil, grind in some salt and pepper, and grate in the zest of a lemon. Toss the meat vigorously. That's it. Really.

Cooking the Lamb Double Shot

Preheat the oven to 230c, placing one rack low and one higher up. Place both joints of lamb onto a roasting tray, preferably on a raised grill, and put into the oven on the lower rack. Cook at this heat for 25 mins, then turn the heat down to 180c. Turn every 40 mins or so until cooked, probably about 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hrs (this allows for the cooking of the roast veges in the same oven on the lower shelf).
Pull the meat from the oven and allow to stand for 10 mins before carving. In this time, scrape the good stuff from the roasting pan and mix with water and cornflour over a gentle-moderate heat, to make the gravy. Season to taste.

Veges

Scrub or peel a load of veges that will fit nicely in a tray big enough to cover the bottom rack in your oven. Chop up into good roast size pieces and toss in a bowl with salt, pepper and Olive Oil. You can also add garam masala, dried mixed herbs, paprika, ground coriander, chopped fresh herbs, a sprinkle of flour, brown sugar, or whatever takes your fancy. My veges tend to be flavoured based on how much energy I have on the day. This time around I grated the rest of my lemon rind on the pumpkin, and it was good.

Lay the roasting tray with baking paper, and spread the roast veges over it. I tend to keep the pumpkin in a separate dish on the same tray as it can sometimes bleed a lot of moisture onto the other veges. Place the tray of veges in the oven on the lower shelf and tweak the heat up to 190c to compensate for the extra volume. Turn after 40 mins, then every 25-30. When the meat comes out to stand, move the veges up a rack and put the grill on - but don't forget them as you make the gravy!

Pudding

I didn't make the pudding - its not my strong point - but Aunty A's Self-Saucing Butterscotch Pudding deserves a spot too. Warm from the oven and dished up with cookies & cream ice-cream, it was a dessert to make your teeth hurt. It was much enjoyed.

And finally, there has to be soup

As with previous roasts, I boiled up a stock with the two lamb bones, and the vege scraps and peelings, chopped up the leftover veges and made a roast vege soup. I got two servings out of it, one of which I just had for lunch. Nice stuff.

On top of that, those two little roasts (worth $18.00 all up) fed 4 adults for dinner, made 2 lots of vege soup, and tomorrow will have made sandwiches for three days. That's value, I reckon.

It's more than just the smell

After a hard afternoon's yakka in the garden, there's nothing quite like coming inside to the smell of roasting pork. Before you say "yes, but who can afford roast pork?", we paid about $11.00 for a frozen leg roast that served 5 adults to bursting and left enough for me to make 2 lots of soup.

This is really simple, but it takes a bit of planning to get the most out of your meat. Most importantly, first thing in the morning, cover the whole joint in salt. I use a combination of Table Salt and Rock Salt, just to keep things interesting. As you can see, it was still dark when we started on this. I allow about 5 hours for a pork to roast, depending on size. The one we had for Christmas Lunch took about 6 hrs, and went on before we even opened pressies!

Knowing that one of my dinner guests is gluten-intolerant, I had to pull the gluten-free flour out of hiding. For more Gluten-Free Goodness, visit The Gluten Free Girl.

ROAST

Morning: Salt the Pork.
Midday: Preheat the oven to 230c, arranging one shelf quite low and one about halfway up, in anticipation of cooking the veges later.
Cut an onion into eighths and place on the bottom of a roasting dish, preferably with a small cooling rack to allow the fat and juices to drain off the meat. If you don't have one of these, or a large deep saucer, inverted, just chop up another onion into quarters and place these in the centre of the roasting dish.
Drain the juices from the pork into the roasting dish, then give the pork a generous coating of pepper and gluten-free flour on all sides.
Place in the tray on the rack/saucer/onion and put in the oven on the lower shelf. After about 30 mins, move the pork up to the higher shelf and turn the oven down to 190c. For the next 5 hours or so, you will simply have to turn the meat every hour and baste it with the juices from the bottom of the dish.

You can prep the veges anytime prior to the last 1 1/2 hrs of cooking, but they should be ready to go in for the last 90 mins. Do whatever veges you most love to roast. Last night's selection was: Little gourmet Potatoes ($1.40 for a 1kg bag at the market!); Kumera; Pumpkin; Carrot; Onion; a Capsicum; Courgettes; Garlic & Shallots.
All of these were tossed in salt, pepper, olive oil, and gluten-free flour, plus I added a big spoon of Garam Masala to the Pumpkin. Most of the veges then go into the oven at the T-90 mark on the lower shelf, and are turned half hourly. The Capsicum goes in for the last hour with extra salt, and the garlic only goes in for the last half hour. Afternoon: When the 5 hours is up, take the pork from the oven and allow to rest. If all has gone well, the crackling should just pull away from the joint. If you have as little willpower as me, lay this in a separate tray and place in the oven. The pork should have at least 10 minutes out of the oven before it is carved.
In this time, steam up a side of greens and mix up some gravy. For this, scrape all the sticky goodness from the roasting dish and place in a glass mixing jug. Mix up a couple of spoonfuls of gluten-free flour with cold water, then whisk up the pork trailings with the flour mix. Microwave this on high for a minute, stir thoroughly, repeat a couple of times until the gravy thickens. This can prove a little trickier with the gluten-free flour than you might be used to, but it does come together with persistence and practice. Alternatively, heat and thicken this in a small pot on the stovetop.
As you start to dish, switch the oven to a hot grill to absolutely blast the crackling. By the time you've sliced the meat and everyone is ready to eat, the crackling should be all crispy and delicious. Unless you have doctor's orders to the contrary, indulge and enjoy.
Then dig in, and watch it all disappear. We also had a jar of my Nana's stewed apples on hand, which went beautifully with the pork.
SOUP

I've never gone this far recycling a pork roast before, but I figured I might as well give it a go.

Using the pork bone, peelings from the kumera and carrot and the roasted pumpkin skin, boil up a stock. Chop up the leftover veges and any remaining pork. Watch a movie while the stock brews. Blend up the veges, stock, leftover gravy and a couple of spoonfuls of apple, then add the chopped pork. It tastes as good as it sounds, with a little spice from the capsicum and the sweet tang of apple in there with all the meaty goodness of pork and roast pumpkin. Mmmm. It smells great, but its more than just the smell. Its the nom nom nom.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll be reviewing last night's entertainment, and the meal dished up for us by tonight's guest chef, Liz E. Bear, who is presently making Spaghetti Bolognaise. Watch this space...

One Chicken - Three Meals!

There are many reasons why I love to cook, and thats what this blog is all about. Food is our link to the earth. Eating should remind us that there is an alternative to the pleasure of satiation, and that is hunger. Every day I am thankful that we live in a country where we have such an abundance of fantastic food. There are millions of people in the world who do not, and I think that sometimes we take for granted how good we've got it here. It seems a shame that so many people lose sight of this in the rush and pressures of the world, and turn to eating instant this and express that. It's the way of things, but it doesn't always need to be.

In a society that is driven by the desire to save time to be able to do more with our lives, it seems to me that we should spend more of that time appreciating not only our food, but the process of engaging with our food.

Its the meal that matters. More on this philosophy later.

With the economy tightening around us and the price of food rising, it seems important to me that we all learn to make the most of everything we put on our tables. Our grandparents knew how to do this, and I'm ever grateful to those older generations who have shared with me over the years the secrets of making a little go a long way. It not only makes good economic sense, it also impacts on our consumption patterns and our carbon footprint.

Now watch, and believe your eyes, as one size-16 chicken makes 2 dinners for 3 adults and a one-year-old and 2 lunches for one hungry young man.

D

Roast a Chicken. Do a pile of roast veges, more than you need. Watch this space in the future for delectable variations on this theme. Make sure you roast at least one whole bulb of garlic and a couple of onions. you'll figure out the quantities after a couple of goes.

Meal 1: Dish up the legs, wings, and thighs with steamed and roast veges and gravy. Should serve 2 or 3 depending on how hungry you all are.

Meal 2: Reserve the breast meat, allow to cool, covered, and refrigerate. The following day, chop this up and stir through pasta with cheese sauce or something similar with fresh greens and Parmesan. Once again, watch this space for more detailed recipes.

Meal 3: Roast Vege Soup. Collect all the chicken scraps, including all the bones from the legs and wings. Combine with any vegetable water you might have. Boil for about 20 mins then allow to simmer for 1&1/2 to 2 hours. Chop the leftover roast veges up into a bowl. When the stock is ready, pour into the bowl with the veges and grind up with a hand blender. Make it as smooth or chunky as you prefer. Season to taste. Transfer to lunch size containers, to be frozen for later and eaten with toast or bagels.

Mmmm.