Wordless Wednesday: This is What August Looks Like
Wednesday, August 15th, 2012
Posts Tagged ‘onions’
Soup Swap Recipe: Poppy’s Curried Carrot & Apple Soup
Thursday, January 27th, 2011
So many good soups! I am actually eating this one as I type this great veggie soup recipe out for you.
Rebecca too, but her’s has some brown rice baby cereal mixed into it to make it easier to eat.
Poppy’s Curried Carrot & Apple Soup
2 tsp sunflower oil
1tbsp curry powder
11/4lb (500g) chopped carrots
1 large chopped onion
1 large chopped apple
4 cups (1L) vegetable stock
salt & pepper
chopped parsley
Heat oil in a large, heavy pan and gently fry curry powder for 2-3 minutes.
Add chopped carrots, onion, and apple. Stir until well coated with the curry powder, then cover the pan.
Cook over low heat for 15-20 minutes, until softened.
Spoon the vegetables into food processor or blender. Add half the stock and blend until smooth.
Return to pan and pour in remaining stock. Bring soup to a boil and adjust seasoning to taste. Garnish with parsley.
So Delicious!
Wordless Wednesday: To make up for the onions
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010This picture makes me feel better about the onions. Clovey Pickled Beets and Really Dill Pickles.
I’m ready for Christmas.
Canning Disaster! Not a botulism disaster, but a disaster none-the-less.
Monday, November 8th, 2010The post formerly known as: Pickled Pearl Onions
My grandmother used to make the most delicious pickled pearl onions. I’ve never had anything else like them. I have what I thought was the recipe but after speaking to my aunts and my father I wasn’t sure. One Aunt has a recipe that involves soaking the onions in a Crock for six (SIX!) whole days. She remembers the crock breaking though and not being replaced and we ate these for years.
After finding the perfect onions at an Italian grocer on the Danforth, I decided to try it. I thought long and hard on how to approach making these. The pressure was high. My dad mentioned the disappointment of biting into bitter commercially prepared pickles while my aunt talked of other people’s versions being sickly sweet. My mother is sure that the 24 hour soak can’t be right as my grandmother was way too modern for such an old fashioned method.
So, I went out on a limb and guessed that she kept the flavouring of the original recipe but moved on to the more modern method, which only involves a 24 hour soak. I split the difference and did a fridge soak for 48 hours.
After finalizing my approach and making all the necessary conversions, I made the brine, peeled a gazillion tiny onions, carefully cut off their ends with scissors, soaked them, pickled them up, and processed them in a hot water bath for 30 (THIRTY!) minutes, photo documenting every step.
Today was the day, I opened a jar, only to find the bitter taste of absolute failure.
This is how bad they are. They are simply the worst things I’ve ever tasted. And certainly not my grandmother’s famous onions that went so well with roast beef.
So please, if you have a recipe for pickled onions, please share. You can post it in the comments or link to your own blog. If I try your recipe, I’ll even send you a jar.
In the meantime, enjoy this photo essay on how to make really labour intensive and expensive compost. Let me note, that in the case of improperly canned preserves, never compost the evidence, throw it right into the trash. These particular jars were canned perfectly, they’re safe to eat, but you really couldn’t pay me to.
Oh, and Jen and Andy, you’ll want to throw that jar out. Shana, you too.
Recipe: Autumn Soup
Friday, October 1st, 2010
This is a staple at our house once the weather starts to get colder and the vegetables from the garden start to take over the house. Currently we are overrun with carrots and squash so it must be time for soup.
First things first we need to make the stock. I like to have some made ahead but lately I’m just not that organized. We avoid store bought stock for a few reasons; BPA in cans, high levels of sodium especially for the baby, and all vegetable stock seems to have soy, which we just can’t have. Stock is so easy to make that there’s really no need for the prepared stuff anyway.
Soup stock:
Fill a big pot ¾ full of cold tap water
Add 1 carrot cut lengthwise
4 stocks of celery, the more leaves the better*
2 peeled onions
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of peppercorns
2 bay leaves
Let the water reach a boil then turn down to a simmer for about an hour. Once everything is soft and the stock has a nice colour, strain out veggies.
*We like to use organic celery. It tastes better and it’s the number one food on the dirty dozen; the EWG’s list of foods with the highest levels of pesticides and therefore the most important foods to buy organic.
If I haven’t prepared the stock ahead of time I start roasting the veggies as the stock simmers. They will be finished at about the same time.
Roast your veggies on the barbeque:
Roast together with a pinch of salt and a liberal amount of olive oil:
A handful of orange carrots
A handful of yellow carrots
2 red onions
A handful of tomatoes
1 zucchini
Squash.
Normally I would use one squash, but this time I used 3; 2 Waltham Butternut and 1 Royal Acorn. We officially have too many squash. I normally would never use this much, but we need to use them up and we have a lot of people to feed this weekend.
Sprinkle each half with brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.
Put 1 clove of garlic in each cavity.
Drizzle with olive oil.
Grill veggies at 400° for 45 minutes and squash for 1 hour.
Make the soup:
Scoop out the squash into your pot of stock. Add your veggies. Add a chopped up potato for each person. Bring back to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
Blend the soup:
An immersion blender would work best, but since I don’t have one I whizz it up in the food processor in a few batches. Generally we continue to cook it for at least 20 minutes, or until its time to eat, once the soup has been blended.
Eat!
Garnish with a nasturtium or some chives and serve with a nice piece of bread (like Ace Bakery’s Rosemary Focaccia) with too much butter.
