Bacon, Leek, and Potato Soup

This is not your usual pale, creamy, and smooth leek and potato soup. This is a chunky, flavourful, heartwarming dish with big bits of bacon, diced potatoes, and sweet leeks. It needs about 20 minutes to simmer, which is the perfect amount of time to make some rolls or a salad to go alongside. (Recipe for cloverleaf rolls coming this weekend.)

emergency sausage and beans supper

The stress is mounting at work--the Dreaded Exams are coming. Preparing extra revision materials for borderline students is taking up a lot of my brain power. There just doesn't seem to be much space left in my head for thinking of what to eat for dinner. And sometimes I forget to shop for food, too. It was one of those nights when we both came home tired and stressed. I was in a dyspeptic mood after a bit too much hassle from deadlines and even slack-jawed drooling seemed like an effort.

Marmite and Vegemite

You either love 'em or hate 'em. These sticky, pungent, almost black accompaniments for toast are British and Australian classics.

Marmite and Vegemite (the latter an Australian knock-off of the former) are made from brewer's yeast, salt, and spice extracts. Both contain added vitamins (niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folic acid) and in addition, Marmite contains vitamin B12. They are both completely vegetarian. Lots of Britons grew up eating Marmite as soon as they were weaned, and our Australian flat-mate, Matt, is a Vegemite boy.


I did a taste test to find out once and for all which of these I like to eat. Or, perhaps, which I hate less. The Marmite is darker and viscous, a bit like thick molasses. I had to twirl the knife around to keep from trailing threads of Marmite over the edge of the jar. The Vegemite is more brown than black, more solid than liquid. It spread a bit like thick, brown cream cheese. I covered half of my warm toast with each one.

The Marmite toast tasted mellow and salty. The flavour was deep and dark. The Vegemite side was also salty, but also seemed a bit vinegary. The Vegemite tasted tangy and piercing. Thinking about the differences between them was like considering a young and old advice-giver: Marmite was a calm, authoritative voice, while Vegemite was an insistent, high-pitched talker.

I think Marmite will be my unguent substance of choice from now on. I can even imagine coming to quite like it in time. But I have to say that after the taste test, I spread the other piece of toast with apricot jam, as a palate cleanser. At the moment, sweet tops salty any day for me.

grown-up baked beans

Here's a side dish from The Kitchen Revolution that I made to go with Bacon and Spinach Pancakes. The baked beans were easy--I just let them simmer away while I was preparing the more complicated parts of the meal.

Grown-Up Baked Beans
side dish for four people

3 T olive oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves
pinch of dried herbes de Provence
pinch of paprika
1 c white wine
1.5 x 400 g cans borlotti beans
1 x 400 g chopped tomatoes
1 t light brown sugar

Heat the oil and sweat the onion. Add the garlic, herbes de Provence, and paprika. Cook over a medium high heat for 5 minutes, then turn the heat up and add the wine. Bring to the boil and add the borlotti beans, tomatoes, and sugar.
Allow to boil then reduce the heat and simmer for half an hour or more.

I have been doing quite a few recipes from The Kitchen Revolution, but it is only a library book. So I am trying to keep it clean, especially while cooking spattering things like tomatoey beans.

for freezing: fish with cheesy topping

I am trying a few recipes from the book I borrowed from the library: The Kitchen Revolution. I expect to review this cookbook for you in a while, after I have tried out a few more of the 400+ recipes. The title of the first recipe I tried is Fish Rarebit. It's based on Welsh Rarebit, a fancy cheese-on-toast. Here, the toast is replaced with white fish. The idea of this "Two for One" meal is to make double proportions and then freeze half for a later meal.


Sweated leeks are added to lots of cheddar cheese, breadcrumbs, some ale (or water), mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. Then this is layered on the fish and grilled for a few minutes, then baked to finish. The recipe in the book makes two meals for four people, so I made half this, serving Ant and I one fresh meal and one frozen for a later date when things get hectic and we are both thinking of take-away. The original recipe is below.

Fish Rarebit
two meals for four people


3 leeks, approximately 500 g, finely sliced
2 T butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 T mustard powder
1/2 t ground cayenne pepper
350 g cheddar cheese, grated
2 t Worcestershire sauce
75 ml bitter or ale (or water)
100 g breadcrumbs (made from 4 slices of bread)
8 portion sized white fish pieces (haddock, pollock, cod, or coley, for example)

Melt the butter in a pan and add the leeks. Cover and sweat gently for 5-7 minutes.
In a bowl, combine eggs, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, cheese, Worcestershire sauce, beer or water, and breadcrumbs. Season with salt and pepper.
Remove the lid from the leeks and cook until the liquid evaporates. Season the leeks, remove from heat and allow them to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F and heat the grill to its highest temperature.
Oil an ovenproof dish large enough to hold four fish pieces. Place four fish pieces in the pan and use half the topping to cover the fish. Place under the grill for 3-5 minutes, or until topping is brown and set. Then bake in the oven for a further 7-10 minutes.
Meanwhile, top the remaining four fish pieces with the remaining topping. Place them in a suitable container (plastic, foil, or ovenproof dish). Cover and freeze well.
To cook the frozen meal at a later time, defrost the fish completely. Cook as above.
Serve with new potatoes, watercress salad, or veggies of your choosing.

irish brown soda bread

Today I really had a good day or rest. After church I bought The Observer (the Sunday version of the Guardian). I had planned to do this because of the Observer Food Monthly magazine that I wanted to read. After lunch Ant was trying out his new Wii game and I was curled up on the couch with my many newspaper sections, including the Food Monthly. I think I sat there, reading, for about an hour and a half. It was so nice to relax properly.

Other parts of my nice Sunday included a great church service, veggie laden food, baking a loaf of Irish Brown Soda Bread (below), and doing a little clearing of clutter. How was your Sunday?

food for my British party

I had such a great time last night celebrating my citizenship with some friends who came over. It was really nice to have my friends mix as well--not something that happens very much. I had some colleagues, some church friends, some new friends, and some of Ant's friends there. I wish I had taken more pictures! I guess I was too busy pulling things out of the oven and topping up (or was it emptying?) the Pimm's pitcher.

Dave was pressed into service when he arrived and he constructed this amazing cheese and pineapple hedgehog. Ant told me that this was a food he always ate in Liverpool when he was young, and my British guests confirmed that they remembered it from their childhoods.


Ant made the cucumber sandwiches and they were snapped up. I managed to get a photo just before they were all devoured. Very British with the crusts removed.


I ordered most of the other food from Sainsbury's: toad-in-the-hole, steak and kidney pies, cocktail sausages, onion bhajis, vegetable spring rolls and samosas, quiches. I did make the puddings, though, chocolate trifle and cream scones. I am so pleased with the scones (from my new Bittman cookbook), which we ate with clotted cream and Grammie's strawberry and raspberry jams. Yummm--it was delicious.

for whom are the potatoes named?

Last week we ate some Anya potatoes. They were on sale at Sainsbury's so I thought I would give them a try.


Here is what the package said about how they got their name.


This got me thinking. Usually a new item is named after the discoverer/inventor/researcher. What I want to know is how often is an item named after the discoverer's/inventor's/researcher's spouse? Can you think of any other examples?