Tag: Soup

London Peculiar

I love food that has an evocative (or just plain weird) name.  So, when I found myself with a large ham hock in my freezer and some green split peas in the pantry, London Peculiar was top of my list of things to make!  Who wouldn’t want to eat London Peculiar rather than plain old pea and ham soup?  

London Peculiar1

London Peculiar, (aka London Particular) takes its name from the thick “pea-soup” fogs that used to cover London.  You would think that these noxious swirling greeny grey fogs were a thing of the long distant past.  Surely they were from the times of   Dickens and Jack the Ripper?  Not so!  There was actually a “fog event” as late as 1952! 

The 1952 Fog

The fog in ’52 was so dense and so intrusive that the opera La Traviata had to be stopped because people at the back could not see the stage!  Even if they could, the actors and other audience members were coughing so much no one could hear anything over the noise.  On the Isle of Dogs, the fog was so thick, people could not see their own feet! 

12, 000  people died from the fog, which was full of toxic chemicals.  

Just like today, (but more eerie because of the fog), the people of London took to wearing masks to protect themselves.  Then, as now, wise advice was to stay home when you can and wear a mask if you couldn’t! 

And of course, when times get tough, there is nothing like a warm bowl of soup to soothe the soul!  There is an old Jewish proverb that says “Worries go down better with soup than without”.  So true! 

Soup is cheap to make, quick to reheat, and usually fairly healthy.  It is great working from home lunch food but also perfect for a cold winter evening.  It is also a great way to hide veggies if we have little people or even big people,  who don’t love their greens!  Watch the salt in this one though, ham hocks can be quite salty so I would not add more salt until you had tasted the soup to check.  London Peculiar2

 
London Peculiar – The Recipe

I found my recipe for London Peculiar in the July 2010 edition of Delicious Magazine.  You can find that same recipe here.

 

London Peculiar3

PS The amazing pictures of London in 1952 and the factoids I used came from here and here.  These are both amazing articles that are worth reading in full too.  

Stay safe and stay peculiar friends!!! 

And enjoy Shirley Bassey singing about history repeating!  

 

 

Tomato and Tarragon Soup with Sun Dried Tomato Bread

Bonjour mes amis, aujourd’hui nous faisons une soupe de tomates inspirée par un jardin d’herbes françaises.

It is actually a tomato and tarragon soup but the French word for tarragon is “estragon” which I kept reading as “oestrogen”.  That’s not generally an ingredient I want in my soup so we’ll keep it English!

It also seems to be a particularly French time of year, Bastille Day just, gone, the World Cup victory and the Tour De France.  And of course, nothing says celebrate like soup right?   Don’t answer that.

Whatever, this soup is super! 😏

Tomato & Tarragon Soup2

Back in the summer,  I grew both tarragon and tomatoes in the backyard.  But it wasn’t until late in the season after the tomatoes had finished that I came across this recipe for tomato and tarragon soup. I had never heard of that combination before – tomatoes and basil?  Definitely.  Chives – most certainly.  Parsley – why not?  But tarragon?  Not so much.

Since then, I have learned that they are both ingredients in a Sauce Choron which is a tomato flavoured Bearnaise sauce.  The only comment I have to make about that is “What took me so long?”  Next summer, Salmon with Sauce Choron will be featuring on the menu but for the meantime as the cold of winter sets in, I will remind myself about the joys of summer produce by remembering how good this soup was!

The tarragon here is homegrown even if the tomatoes are not.

Tomato-Tarragon-Soup2

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh.  It tasted of summer!  The recipe came from a book called Recipes From a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt.

Next month, I am heading to France.  On my travels, I will be visiting the Ville Rose (Toulouse).  And then on to Bordeaux.  Where I definitely will not be sampling any of the local wines!!!!  😉 Given it will be the height of summer when I am there, I wonder if there will be a tomato and tarragon soup on the menu anywhere?

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh.  It tasted of summer! It is so cold and miserable here in Melbourne at the moment but even looking at these photos brought back memories of warmer days and anticipation of the warm weather ahead in Europe!

 

I served the soup with a sun-dried tomato bread which I feel is a very 90’s adaptation of the Spanish Pan con Tomate where bread is rubbed with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes.  In this version, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes, some garlic, added some finely chopped basil and a little bit more tarragon and mixed these through some butter.  I then spread this onto some rustic, toasted bread and popped it under the grill until golden.

Tomato and Tarragon Soup 6

Teamed with the soup it was a double delight of tomato-ishness.  And tarragon-yness

Here is the recipe for the soup:

Tomato & Tarragon Soup recipe2

And the bread:

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Sun Dried Tomato Bread

Delicious herby, garlicy, tomatoy bread, perfect for dunking into soup!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 slices of rustic style bread
  • 1 tsp butter
  • 4 sun dried tomatoes, finely chopped
  • 1/4 clove of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp mixed chopped herbs, (I used basil and tarragon)
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Combine the butter, cheese, tomatoes and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  2. Spread over the bread.
  3. Transfer to a baking tray and place under the grill until golden brown.

Have a great week everyone!

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Margaret Fulton Cookbook 6 – Missing from the Modern

This is worse than the trout of nightmares.

I’m voting that this has to rank pretty high in the list of three words that should never be put together. 

JELLIED. TURTLE. SOUP.

W.T. F. People of 1977?

You had a lovely Olive and Onion Tart and some fabulous canapés to eat.  Why on earth would you choose to eat soup made from turtles? First that’s just gross and second, they don’t even look like they’d taste good. 

Image (22)Don’t even try to make it better by adding some totally delicious avocado. I’m calling shenanigans on you on this one!

 Even worse.  I was alive then.  My mother better never have fed me turtle soup jellied or otherwise. Or we’ll be having words when I get back.

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 Related articles

 

The Margaret Fulton Cookbook 4 – Soups

“What wonderful memories I have of soup and my Scottish mother’s kitchen.  We had soup everyday and each one had it’s own character and charm”

– Margaret Fulton

To me, the character and charm of the soups in the 1977 picture are rather overwhelming.  How much nicer are the modern pictures?  I do however like that there is a nod to the past in the dish for the Soup Chiffonade…

Margaret Fulton Cookbook Soup Collage
Margaret Fulton Cookbook Soup Collage

And I just love the orange pumpkin soup in the blue bowl.

In fact, I have used this particular combination more than once on this blog.  Once in one of my posts on Valli Little’s Slow:

Thai Style Tomato Soup
Thai Style Tomato Soup

And it will shortly feature in my post on Cantina…hmm…maybe it already has?

Pumpkin Soup with Chorizos Migas
Pumpkin Soup with Chorizos Migas

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Drunk Food – The Meat Pie Floater

Meat Pie Floater

I guess each culture has a food they like to eat when drunk.  The Brits for instance love a curry when they are five sheets to the wind.  Closer to home, we in Melbourne like nothing better than a kebab or its Greek cousin, the souvlaki.  Ahhhh….greasy meaty goodness wrapped in pita bread…deeelicious  whatever you call it.  There was also a spate, back in the 1990’s of mobile hot dog vendors but they were a passing fad.  Nothing beats the 3:00am drunken kebab.  Not in this town anyway.

So ubiquitous is the post pub/club kebab run that I assumed it was a national pass-time.  Oh, so wrong.  A few years ago I ventured across the border into South Australian territory for a wedding.  Post-wedding we ventured into the casino and post-casino we ran into one of the weirdest instances of drunk food I have ever seen.  Which of course, in celebration of the month of crazy and Australia Day (January 26th) I am going to replicate here.  We’ll return to that in a moment.

But first, Adelaide. It’s a weird place.  City of Churches and bizarre serial killings.  And before anyone from South Australia gets their knicks in a knot.  It is true. Dexter said so.

And…the very second I typed Adelaide and serial killers, the little app that I have that tells me about related content brought up an article on a body found in a wheelie bin.  You can fool some of the people some of the time South Australia but the internet will not be fooled.  I on the other hand….did I say I lived in Melbourne?  I meant Sydney.  Or Perth.  Yeah, Perth.  It’s even further away and in the opposite direction.  Yep, I definitely live in Perth.  Just in case you are thinking about crossing any boundaries with your serial killer ways, take a leaf from the Village People and Go West.

Meat PieBut I digress, we’re here to talk about food.  Australian food  to boot. The picture above shows one of the classic legendary Australian dishes.  The Meat Pie.  Second possibly only to the Vegemite Sandwich as THE Australian dish.

We love to eat our meat pies with a bit of….and now here’s some Aussie slang for you….a bit of  “dead horse”.  And no, not in that ooky, literal European way.  “Dead horse” is Australian rhyming slang for tomato sauce.  That would be ketchup to my American friends.

And in Melbourne Perth this is how we eat our pies. Just as pies.  With ketchup.  Lovehearts optional.

Meat Pie With Sauce
Meat Pie With Sauce

And, if we have soup…lets just say a rather hearty pea and ham soup.  We have it like this.  Just soup.  Maybe with some crusty bread. Or a crouton.

Pea And Ham Soup
Pea And Chorizo Soup

Let us now return to the street outside the Adelaide casino at 3:00am.

The BF had gone over to the van to get us each a kebab. He came back empty handed and shaking his head.  “It’s not kebabs.  It’s pies and soup.”

“Ewww…who wants soup at this time of night.  But I’ll have a pie. ”

“No, it’s not pies and soup.  It’s pies IN soup”

I honestly did not believe him.  Until I wandered over to take a look.

And sure enough….pies in pea soup…..

This is drunk food in Adelaide.  Seriously.  Loveheart optional.

And if you don’t believe me, here’s some independent confirmation.

Meat Pie Floater
Meat Pie Floater

I told you they were freaky over there.

I would love to tell you that I tried this and despite all my Victorian West Australian prejudices it was awesome.

Meat Pie Floater jpg
Meat Pie Floater jpg

Except it wasn’t.

It wasn’t as repulsive as I thought it would be.  But it was definitely a whole that was a lot less than the sum of its parts. And nowhere near as good as a kebab.

Maybe you need to be drunk to enjoy it.

If you want to try this delight for yourself, you can find a recipe for a Beef and Shiraz Pie here.  I have used this recipe before and it is a beauty, however I just bought the ones I used for this.  I made the soup though and it was really good.  I subbed in chorizo for the more traditional ham and it made the soup super tasty! Recipe below.

I am looking forward to a long weekend celebrating Australia Day. Just not with a meat pie floater….

Have a great week where ever you are!!!  I would also love to know what constitutes drunk food in your neck o’ the woods.  Drop me a comment….

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Pea and Chorizo Soup

A delicious hearty take on a pea and ham soup – a classic winter warmer

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 chorizo sausages, removed from their casing and diced
  • 2 carrots, peeled, diced
  • 2 sticks of celery, peeled, diced
  • 1 onion chopped finely
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
  • 300g green split peas
  • 2litres cold water
  • Salt and Pepper

To Serve

  • Warm bread rolls or a meat pie and sauce

Instructions

  1. Rinse the split peas under cold running water until the water runs clear. Drain.
  2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the chorizo and cook until the meat is browned. Add the carrots, celery, onions and garlic and cook, stirring occaisionally, until the onions are softened.
  3. Add the split peas and water. Bring to the boil over high heat.
  4. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, covered for about an hour or until the split peas are cooked.
  5. Allow to cool slightly then process the mixture to your desired level of “chunkyness” either using a stick blender or by processing small batches of the mix in a blender.
  6. Season with salt & pepper.
  7. Serve with warm bread rolls if you are normal or with a pie and sauce floating in the centre if you are not.

Notes

  • I like my soup fairly chunky so I usually only put about a third of it in the blender.