Bacon, Leek and Potato Soup

Apologies dear food-blog followers for my slackness of posting.  It has been an incredibly hard year personally, and I kind of lost my mojo for a while there.  I have been busy with uni and other stressors, but I'm back to experimenting now!  I have another chicken and lentil recipe I'm going to try soon too, so keep an eye out for that!

Anyway, down to business.  We visited my mum's family last week, and my grandfather is a farmer by trade, who now lives in town.  This means he has a prolific vege garden, as he can't quite give up the land work!  He thus gave us a bag of leeks he'd grown, and I needed to do something with them.  

Insert genius idea here for leek and potato soup (which my parents incidentally also ate last night from the restaurant whose catering business I work for...).  I wanted to add in bacon too because we have some in the freezer and I love bacon (who doesn't!)... and here is the recipe!

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp paprika
200g bacon
2 large leeks, white/light green parts, sliced thinly and rinsed
2 cloves garlic
4 cups chicken stock, plus 2 cups water
2 medium potatoes, diced small
pepper and salt
1/2 cup cream
1 & 1/2 cups frozen peas (don't worry about thawing them)
1 tsp onion salt

METHOD

• Cook bacon in a large pan, until beginning to brown, then remove bacon onto a plate lined with a paper towel
•  Add 1 tbsp oil to pan, and toss in leeks and garlic
• Cover and cook until soft (around 5 min)
• Add stock plus water, potatoes, onion salt, salt and pepper to taste
• Cover and bring to a boil over high heat
• Lower heat and simmer until potatoes are cooked, (around 10 min)
• (optional step) Puree half the soup in blender (leave out centre piece to allow steam to escape) then combine back in the pan
• Mash the soup gently (which I did because blending was a pain in the butt)
• Add cream and bring to a simmer
• Add peas and cook through, around 3 min
• Add bacon back in and serve

This was actually so easy to make!  It only took half an hour to cook (not counting prep).  The most time consuming part was cutting up the leek!!  And it turned out super delicious, so I'm really happy with it.  The peas and bacon just made it extra amazing!!!

Of course, you can alter it to make it vegetarian, just use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, and no bacon! :)   

We had it with grainy bread and butter.  A good meal on a cold spring night (YES it's the second day of spring already!  CRAZY!)

Recipe Inspiration: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/potato-leek-soup-with-bacon-recipe/index.html

[Slow Cooker] Chicken Cranberry Casserole

It's Valentines Day, and I had a hot date with the crockpot and comfort food, on the couch watching a TV show about teeny tiny animals - monkeys, piggies, dogs, etc.  

Yes, even a glass of wine was involved - in the cooking!!  (I can't drink with my medication, but that's ok, when it's cooked, the alcohol cooks off, so I still get the flavour!)

Two things that always marry together beautifully - chicken and cranberry.   Seriously.  At school, my favourite thing to buy from the tuck-shop (like a cafeteria, but not) was chicken and cranberry sauce wraps - delicious!  So when I saw this recipe in my mums slow cooker recipe book a couple of years back and asked her to make it, I knew it could only come out well.  And I was right.  :)

Now it was my turn to try to make it, since we had a pack of chicken thighs in the freezer that needed using, and I had bought some dried cranberries specifically to make it.

Serves 4 - 6

INGREDIENTS

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

8 skinned & boned chicken thighs

3 rashers bacon (I used ~200g middle bacon - less fat)

170g packet dried cranberries

1 cup red wine

1 teaspoon chicken stock powder

1 bay leaf

3 tablespoons cornflour

3 tablespoons water

salt

METHOD

• Peel onion and chop
• Crush, peel and chop garlic
• Trim and discard any chicken fat, and cut thighs in half.  I had chicken thigh cutlets to use today, so Mum cut the chicken off the sides and threw the bones in too (we just cooked it longer)
• Derind bacon and chop into pieces
• Place onion, garlic, chicken, bacon, cranberries, wine, stock powder and bay leaf in the slow cooker
• Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours
• Stir halfway through cooking if possible
• Half an hour before end of cooking, mix cornflour and water together, and mix into the chicken mixture
• Cover and cook on HIGH for 30 mins
• Season with salt and serve on rice or potato with vegetables!

 

Tonight we had the casserole with potatoes Mum had grown in her tubs, and steamed veges.  

It was a bit runny even with the cornflour step at the end (which was in the original recipe), so I'm thinking next time maybe only half a cup or 3/4 cup of wine, to see if that helps.  I'll edit this post if it does (or if not).   

Either way, it's delicious.  The saucyness is less of a problem when served on rice, but when it's not, you kinda want it to be a bit thicker.  Good excuse to mop it up with bread though ;)

Cooked Weekend Brunch

Not very often, but from time to time, my family partakes of a traditional cooked breakfast... however, some people kind of go overboard on the greasyness and the piling of the plate very high when they have a cooked breakfast.  We had a lovely little brunch, didn't over stuff ourselves, and were well set up for the day.  I just wanted to share the pictures, because it looked so lovely on the plate :)

Clockwise from top left:

• Scrambled eggs on toast (egg, milk, a dash of onion salt, microwave and whisk - yum!)
• Hash browns (grilled in a George Foreman, to get rid of excess oil = super crunchy!)
• Bacon bits (off cuts from the butcher, so cheap, so tasty, cooked in a frypan with a bit of oil)
• Baked beans on toast (out of a can haha)

So delicious!