Butternut squash and ginger soup

Beans are not the only musical fruit
Man Ray will be turning in her grave at this, but at least in this entry I'm not comparing it to a butt plug
Original squash image adapted from http://runitlikeamom.com/2015/10/30/squash-city/

Soup is fucking great. Take any old crap you've got left over in the fridge or larder, chuck it in a pan with some water, blend it up, and there's lunch for the best part of the working week. This wasn't always the case in my life. When I grew up, making soup meant opening a tin. Not that there's anything wrong with tinned soup, generations have been raised on it. It's weening food that graduates to essentially baby food for adults. One day you're suckling at your Mum's breast, the next it's Baxter's Scotch broth complete with lumps of vegetables and no nipple (though it has lamb in it, so I suppose it may have teat, which is almost the same).

Soup is the ultimate in comfort food, so much so that Heinz use this idea to promote their tinned product when the clocks go back every autumn and even Cup-A-Soup promoted themselves as "a hug in a mug" (no it's not a hug in a cup, you marketing twat, it's a sachet of dried of fucking soup). Then there is the legendary recuperative powers of chicken soup. You have the Jewish idea of Mama's chicken soup as a cure all or even bah kut teh, a pork soup from Singapore laced with pick-me-up herbs from traditional Chinese medicine. Now, I know I've nailed my particular colours to that particular mast with a rant on TCM in this blog entry, but if it makes you feel better, especially as a hangover cure, it's not a bad thing. After all, we're not talking about claiming it can cure cancer.

Anyway, as good as tinned soup is, homemade soup is in a different league. You know what's in it, you can put as much or as little salt in it as you like and tweak the flavour any way you want. Best of all it just tastes so much more fucking fresh.

Butternut squash, as I've waxed lyrically about previously, lends itself to lots of dishes, working especially well with the spices of curry. Pairing it with ginger seemed an ideal combination and, as I found out, it was spot on.

INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp olive oil
½ red onion, chopped
½ bulb of garlic, cloves peeled and crushed
A large chunk ginger (about the size of 1-2 thumbs), finely chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
2 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and diced
Half a butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2 cm cubes
2 chillies, finely chopped
½ tin tomatoes
½ bunch spring onions, chopped
1 litre water
1 vegetable stock cube, crumbled
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp light soy sauce
Juice of half a lemon
Freshly ground black pepper

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a big, heavy pan and gently fry the red onion, garlic, ginger and celery for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes and carry on sauteing for another 5 minutes.

Add the squash, chillies, and spring onions for a couple of minutes.

Pour in the water, tomato puree, soy and lemon juice.

Season well with black pepper and bring to the boil.

Cover well and gently simmer for 1-2 hours

Blend the soup until it's smooth

Serve with bread

NOTES
What I said about blending the soup in my recipe for broccoli and Stilton soup still stands. If you aren't careful you could end up spraying the kitchen and your face with napalm-hot liquid.

I prefer this blended until it's pretty smooth, though if you want lumps in it, be less vigorous with the blender,

You could leave the chillies out if you want. The combined flavour of the butternut squash and ginger is the highlight of the dish but, if you have been a sweary follower, you will know that I think if it don't have chilli, it don't taste of shit. Well, none of the recipes should actually taste of shit. No, they taste nice. That's just me talking street for my younger readers. While this might seem a pitiable thing for a middle-aged man to do, it's still better than most of the shite that Torode and Wallace come out with on Masterchef.

Stuffat Tal-Fenek, Maltese rabbit stew

See, only a very vague resemblance

First of all, I've decided that all this cooking malarkey is a difficult job to do on my own so I could do with a hand. Please allow me to introduce  my new assistant, Potato Gregg. He's a potato who happens to bear a fleeting resemblance to Cockney reformed football hooligan-cum-modern day greengrocer Gregg Wallace. Potato Gregg will be assisting in my preparation and chipping in to this blog with snippets of wisdom and culinary tips.

"Mr Potato Head doesn't get tougher than this! Cor blimey! Apples 'n' fackin' pears!"

Indeed he doesn't, Potato Gregg. Let's get on with the recipe, shall we?

Despite them being a widespread pest because they breed, well, like rabbits, we don't do much with rabbit in this country. No, because we're a nation of "animal lovers" and the little bunnies are just so cute. I mean, so are lambs, calves and piglets but they don't usually live in your garden (well, unless you're a farmer or small-holder) or indeed your living room (well, unless you get off on that sort of thing) before you eat them. And let's not forget the place of the rabbit in our culture: Peter Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Brer Rabbit, Watership Down. Then again there's also Frank from Donnie Darko.

"Rabbits don't come any scarier than that Frank. I had nightmares about him. Myxomatosis is too good for that bastard"

Actually, Potato Gregg, I beg to differ. You forget the Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (see clip below) which was far scarier. That rabbit actually brutally murdered people while Frank was merely ominous and looked a bit iffy. Besides, he was clearly a man in a rabbit suit, looking more like Harvey after he left his head too close to the radiator overnight.

Sharp pointy teeth...

All this preamble aside, the point is that rabbit is a fantastic meat: lean, tasty and cheap. It takes a bit of cooking to ensure it's not to tough. It tastes a lot like chicken although this is the description that applies to pretty much any meat when trying to tell other people what it's like. You do wonder what the first person to eat chicken said it tasted like when telling other people how great this new bird that they'd just barbecued was.

TIMING

Preparation: 30 minutes plus marination (overnight if possible)

Cooking: 3-plus hours on the hob (you could put it in the oven for the same time at 160°C or even do this in a slow cooker)

INGREDIENTS

1 gutted rabbit, cut into 6 or 8 portions

400 ml red wine

4 or 5 bay leaves

1/2 tsp black pepper

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 carrot, sliced

1 large onion, chopped

1 stick of celery, finely chopped

1 tin of tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato puree

3-400g potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks

RECIPE

Mix the wine, garlic, bay leaves and black pepper in a dish. Mix well and add the rabbit. Cover, stick it in the fridge and marinate for a good few hours, ideally overnight or as long as possible otherwise.

Marinating

Heat the oil in a heavy pan and brown the rabbit pieces on all sides, reserving the marinade.

Remove the rabbit with a slotted spoon and put on a plate

Throw the onion and celery into the pan and saute until the onion is cooked. Add the carrot, tomatoes, tomato puree and the reserved marinade.

Heat to a simmer for about10 minutes or so to break down the tomatoes a little

Put in the potatoes and mix well then return the rabbit pieces to the pot

Cover and turn down the heat to a gentle simmer for 3 hours or more.

Ready to serve

Serve with bread to mop up the rich sauce. The meat should be falling off the bone

NOTES

This recipe is the national dish of Malta. I've never been to this archipelago in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea (not yet, anyway, but it's on my list). I find it surprising that the national dish isn't some sort of seafood, given that it's a collection of small islands where you are never more than a few miles from the sea. Mind you, as a former British colony, maybe, along with the red post boxes, there's an element of British influence in the non-use of easily-obtained fish, as is the case with Brits (and as mentioned, nay ranted on, in a previous blog entry)

I'd expect the rabbit would be prepared by your butcher, but in principle you could make this with something you caught yourself or even roadkill if you're that way inclined. The rabbit I used was cleaned and portioned, but did have its various other organs like liver, kidneys, etc which I kept to enrich the sauce. It was bloody cheap as well at £4 to make a meal sufficient for 4 or more people. Parochial reference again, but I bought it at my favourite butcher, Allums of Wakefield.

If you are bothered about eating something so cute there are two things to think about making them less cute. 1: they are coprophagic and 2: they are, for all intents and purposes, just long-eared, grass-fed rats. Actually, these points may not make actually rabbits more appetising to eat, but at least you can look at them as less cuddly

This dish is called stuffat tal fenek and I've not made one double entendre out of that first word. I'm clearly losing my touch.

Like most stews, the recipe needs to cook long and slow, or else the rabbit would be stringy and chewy.

"Meat don't get any tougher than that!"

Oh, do give it a fucking rest with the catchphrase, Potato Gregg, you tuber-faced twat.

Shepherd's Pie with garlic and rosemary mash topping

To paraphrase erstwhile football hooligan and current market gardener-cum-podgy, cheekie-chappy-apples-and-fackin'-pears Masterchef judge, Greg Wallace, "food don't come any more rustic than this!". I mean, how could it? It's named after someone who raises sheep for a living; who smells of lanolin and moss on a daily basis and for whom ticks are sexually transmitted.

Of course, the dish is also a British classic and piece of piss to make, as well as being cheap. That's probably why it's popular in pubs because they're often too tight to invest in the pricier ingredients needed to make better quality food and or invest in culinary training of their staff. Of course, in most good old British pubs, it's often a second rate version of the dish, as cooked on an industrial scale by some big catering multinational. The meat will be mechanically recovered; comprised mainly of lips and assholes; and probably not entirely ovine in origin, such that it could legitimately be called "jockey's pie". Saying that, industrially-produced shepherd's pie is an ideal accompaniment for that great British beer, Carlsberg, as brewed under licence in the UK in some massive industrial scale plant in the middle of fucking Wales. Food don't come any less rustic than that.

This version is easy and so much better than some crap from the freezer or chiller counter at your local supermarket.
Serve with vegetables and you can feed four adults

500g minced lamb
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1stick of celery, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
250g mushrooms, chopped
half a tin of tomatoes
200ml water
1 beef stock cube
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 bay leaf
sprig of fresh thyme
1tsp mint sauce
black pepper
1 tbsp Worcester sauce

500g potatoes. peeled and cut into chunks
Leaves of a sprig of fresh rosemary,finely chopped (around 1-2 tsp)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
Splash of milk
ground paprika

Fry the mince in a pan, pour it into a sieve and drain off the fat. Lamb really is fatty so there will be shitloads of grease in the sink. Add oil to the pan and add onion and garlic. After a couple of minutes, when the onion starts to go translucent, add the celery and carrot. Sweat for 10 minutes then add the mushrooms. Continue to fry (or sauté if you prefer foodie wanker terminology).

for another couple of minutes then add the tomatoes and water. Crumble in the stock cube and add the tomato puree. Add the thyme (strip the leaves into the pot), bay leaf, pepper, mint sauce and Worcester sauce. Stir well and leave the lot to stew for an hour.

Meanwhile boil the potatoes for 20 minutes or so. While these are boiling, fry up the garlic and rosemary in a couple of teaspoons of the olive oil. Drain the spuds and put them back in the pan. Start mashing them. Add milk and olive oil, salt, pepper and the rosemary and garlic and continue to mash. If you're feeling energetic, use a whisk as the texture gets smoother to get rid of lumps.

Add the mince mixture to a casserole dish and spoon on the mash so you cover the top of the meat. A this stage some of the TV chefs would probably tell you to pipe the mash onto the meat because it looks nice. Personally I'd say fuck that for a game of soldiers as it all goes down the same way. Just smooth it so it makes a single layer without any gaps. If you want to be vaguely poncey you can do that fork thing to make little peaks and sprinkle on a bit paprika to make it look poncier still. Bake in the oven at 160 for 45 minutes so you get a nice crispy skin on the mash.

Pie ready to go in the oven.

Calpol is optional

NOTES
As I mentioned for other recipes, replacing the water with red wine makes the meal tastier. This is all well and good, but if I open a bottle of wine I want to drink it and not put it in my dinner.

Like most good cookery pundits, no recipe would be complete without some advice on what to ask from your butcher. Ask you butcher to ask the abattoir worker to give the sheep that is to become your mince a damn good shagging because it really makes the meat tender. Actually, that's not strictly true, since mince doesn't need tenderising, but it's nice to try to brighten the day of someone who kills animals for a living.