As Strong As Soup

Think of this as a tribute to the joyful South African sauce because it's  absolutely not   the authentic recipe. But it's a delicious, lively sauce that's highly adaptable, even if it is a bit eccentric. Easily put together largely from tins and jars that you could well have in the cupboard, it's perfect for grilled, barbequed or simply-roasted meats or vegetables. It can also be used as a marinade, a heated sauce or a cold ketchup style condiment (or a combination of the above). Most recently, I used it as a sauce with chargrilled duck. You could use fresh peaches in this sauce but tinned are available all year and make life really easy. I use a small tin of peach slices in fruit juice and I use the fruit juice from the tin to thin the sauce, if it needs it. If you use fresh peaches, you may need to add a little water and if you use peaches in syrup, then you may want to increase the amount of vinegar in the recipe. But this base recipe is very forgiving and open to a...

There's nothing too surprising or unusual about this chutney, but it's proved to be a huge favourite in my house and is rapidly hoovered up with curries or other spicy dishes. So I thought I'd better write the recipe down in case I forget it and have to leave home under a dark cloud of ignominy.  You can't go far wrong with this chutney, it's very forgiving and open to substitutions and variations depending on what's in season and what's in your cupboard. I used standard, dessert apples this time but sharper, cooking apples will work too, though you may need to increase the amount of sugar a little. I used small plum tomatoes to make this version of the chutney but it's OK to use whatever you have. You could even use any unripe, green tomatoes at the end of the growing season but, once again, you may need to increase the amount of sugar a little. The amount produced by this recipe will obviously depend somewhat on the size of the aubergines and apples us...

If I ever get round to inventing a time machine then I'll probably revisit any year from the 1980s rather than live through 2020 again. So for this Christmas season I'm looking back to the decade "when the frocks went posh" (as the estimable Cleaners from Venus say). I'm offering versions of both a sauce and a side dish from the 80s that would be useful at any time of the year but will be just perfect alongside Christmas leftovers. So make a note of them in your Filofax, blow the dust off the Lloyd Cole album and I'll see you down at the wine bar later. First, the sauce.... Grelette Sauce This cold sauce is very easy to put together. It can be served in generous amounts to complement a main course or in smaller dollops as a condiment in a similar way to tartare sauce. I remember it being served mainly with fish and fish terrines but it also works well with turkey, chicken or vegetable dishes. Grelette sauce was created (I think) by Roger Vergé but there were ...

I'm told that ‘bhuna’ means ‘brown’ and refers to the way that this curry is cooked until the colour darkens. In yet another of my shameful fits of nostalgia I'm attempting to recreate a curry that used to turn up on the menus of some of the nicest South London Indian restaurants back in the 1980s when I just happened to be living there. I've come across many bhunas that look and taste nothing like this in the intervening years. To be honest, this is close to the original but not entirely faithful. I think I've toned down my spice craving a bit since the 1980s and I definitely use less oil these days. I imagine that you can still find something like this dish in restaurants somewhere in the country, but it's probably not fancy enough for many London establishments these days. I've checked Google and the place where I first ate this bhuna is now an estate agents. That sums up the recent history of South London rather well I think.  The number of spices h...

Every now and then I find that I'm tempted to use certain flavours more and more often until they become a bit of an obsession. Fennel has been a bit like that for me in recent times. This ketchup definitely satisfies the fennel craving with a serious hit of flavour. I'm not sure that this is  truly a ketchup and I've probably used it more often as a sauce for chicken, pork or seafood combined with pasta or rice. It's made using the same technique as a ketchup but with less vinegar and sugar than you might expect. As a result, it won't keep as long as a typical ketchup, so store it in the fridge if you're using it in the next few days, or freeze it if you need to keep it longer. This makes around 350 ml of ketchup or 3 to 4 portions if used as a sauce. 1 onion (I like to use red onions in pickles and ketchups but it’s not really critical) 1 bulb of fennel 2 cloves of garlic (3 if they’re small) ¼ - ½ chilli (depending on how hot the chilli t...

This recipe is a handy and tasty variation on tomato soup that uses plums to give a sweet and sour flavour. It’s based on a Michael Smith recipe from the 1980s. I don’t mean Michael Smith the very successful Scottish chef or Michael Smith the well-known Canadian TV chef; I’m talking about Michael Smith the cookery writer, TV chef of his day and great champion of British food, who sadly died back in 1989. This may not be exactly Mr Smith’s original recipe, but the spirit is there. It’s possible to make this with tinned tomatoes if you’re stuck for fresh, but you’re likely to need less passata in that case. It’s crucial to get the balance of sweet and sour right for this soup and you may need to adjust the amount of sugar you add depending on the sweetness of the plums and tomatoes you’re using. This will make 4 or 5 decent-sized portions. 1 onion, chopped 500 g plums (preferably red ones), stoned 325 g tomatoes, deseeded (you don’t have to be fanatical about the deseeding)...

For this month’s Random Recipe Challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to select  a recipe (randomly, of course) from our favourite cookbook. Well, I've got a fair number of favourites, mostly made up of books that remind me of good times. It's difficult to choose just one among those, so instead I've gone for my favourite practical cookbook. This is the one I reach for whenever I need to remind myself how to do something or when I need a reliable recipe in a hurry. That used to be Delia, but recently it's been Darina Allen's ‘Ballymaloe Cookery Course’.  (Not that I've got anything against Delia, I hasten to add. I wouldn't dare.). On opening this weighty tome I was faced with a page of chutney and relish recipes and, since I'm currently blessed with a generous harvest of chillies from the plants on my windowsills, I seized on a Tomato and Chilli Jam recipe. Once I started to make the jam, though, I felt a bit of a fraud since it's very simi...

Toward the end of this long, cold winter I have to admit that I’m getting a bit fed up with the idea of yet more root veg. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them, but carrots seemed so much more interesting at the start of the winter. However, using a good can of Italian tomatoes adds a bit of sunshine and balances the sweetness nicely. This should make 5 or 6 portions 1 onion, finely chopped 500g (prepared weight) carrots, chopped 1 potato, about 150 g – 200 g, peeled and chopped Pinch of dried chilli flakes 1 litre chicken stock 400g tin of chopped tomatoes ½ tsp sugar Sprig of fresh rosemary 2 tsp sherry vinegar A little lemon juice In a large frying pan, soften the onion in a little oil, adding a drop or two of water to prevent it browning or cooking too quickly. Add the carrots, potato, chilli flakes and a grind or two of black pepper then pour over 750 ml of the stock. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan and cook gently for 15 minutes. Add the can of tomatoes, the su...