As Strong As Soup

For this month's Random Recipe challenge Dom of  Belleau Kitchen paired off last month's entrants so that we could pick each other's recipes. I was paired with Lucy of the excellent Vanilla Frost . Sadly for poor Lucy I spend a fair amount of time off line and away from technology but we eventually managed make a suitable selection following some exotic numerology. I got Sonia Allison’s ‘Complete Bread Machine Cookbook’, first published in 2001. More years ago than I care to remember we bought a bread machine. They were very new at the time and, compared to today’s models, pretty basic. We used it off and on but it didn’t produce great bread. Years later I was given Ms Allison’s book and quickly came to the conclusion that the worst thing about our bread machine was the book of recipes that came with it. Thanks to Ms Allison I learnt a new respect for bread machines. OK I know that as a food blogger I should be making my own sourdough loaves in an oven fired by driftwood...

For this month's We Should Cocoa Challenge Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog has issued the challenge of using chilli with chocolate. I have a slightly childish fascination for the way that chocolate can enhance and balance the flavours of savoury dishes and so this seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. I'd like to tell you that this is an authentic Mexican dish but I don't really do authentic. In fact, this started out as a Pat Chapman version of a Mexican recipe some time ago, but it's wandered a fair way from the original now and seems to have picked up some hints of korma on the way. It might seem like a long list of ingredients, but it's actually a pretty simple dish to put together. You can use more chillies if you like, but personally I think this dish should be fragrant rather than seriously hot. The amount given here should serve 2 – 3. 1 onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1 – 2 tbsp fresh chillies, finely chopped 2 tsp sesame seed...

My apologies for the lack of posts and responses to email and comments for the last week or two. I was wandering around Normandy and out of touch with technology. I was very much in touch with apples, cider, pommeau and calvados, of course, and so I think an apple recipe is in order. In fact, this recipe is from the Sarthe region rather than Normandy but let's not worry about geography. Pommé is a kind of apple jam without added sugar – well, actually it's more of a cross between a jam and an intense compote. The only ingredients are dessert apples, cider and a lot of time. The result is an amber-coloured, soft jam with an extraordinary depth of apple flavour. The flavour of  pommé will vary a lot with the type of apple chosen and I think the best option is to use a mix of sharp and sweet apples, if you have them. I used a mix of British dessert apples with Worcester Pearmain the main variety. The recipe doesn’t take a lot of effort once the preparation's done...

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)...

This dessert is not only delicious and seasonal, it's also just that bit out of the ordinary (well, actually, it seems downright odd when you look at the list of ingredients) . The finished torta is thin, very moist, fairly delicate, not too sweet and tastes properly grown up.  There are a number of different variations on this torta but this version is essentially a Sophie Grigson recipe from the late 1980’s. I’m assuming that you know relatively restrained people, in which case this will serve around 8 of them. 2 dessert apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced 175 g pumpkin (weigh chunks of the flesh with no seeds or skin) 80 g caster sugar 2 tbsp milk 60 g plain chocolate, roughly chopped 60 g amaretti biscuits (not the soft ones), crushed into small pieces but not to a powder 60 g semi-dried figs, finely chopped 30 g sultanas ½ tbsp cocoa powder Finely grated zest of 1 lemon ½ tsp vanilla extract or paste 2 tbsp brandy 2 eggs, lightly beaten Grease ...

For this month’s Random Recipe challenge  Dom of Belleau Kitchen has challenged us to pick a recipe at random from among those we've torn out of magazines, newspapers and the like. Fair enough, I thought, and went to my box of disorderly clippings and pulled out a recipe for Navettes cut from a well-known French magazine (I'm naming no names). I was a happy bunny because I've always fancied making these. Navettes are mostly associated with Marseille and are somewhere between a cake and a biscuit. They're supposed to look a little like boats and, according to one story, may date back as far as ancient Egypt where they were made in the likeness of the boat that carried Isis. Not sure I really buy that, but I love a good story and this does seem to be a genuinely very old recipe. So I cheerfully began to make the navettes. But, Dear Reader, let this be a salutary lesson to us all. As I've discovered more than once in the past, the recipes in magazines are sometime...

In my last blog entry I was extolling the virtues of prunes in armagnac and the sheer joy of using them in ice cream. Assuming that you have some armagnac-soaked prunes, then the easiest way to create an ice cream is to stir some chopped prunes with their armagnac juices into softened, shop-bought vanilla ice cream. But, although the following recipe is more complicated, it’s much nicer in my opinion. The taste is truly intense and the combination of the residual alcohol and mascarpone makes for a velvety smooth feel. Definitely a grown-up sort of ice cream and definitely one of my favourites. You don’t have to soak the prunes for 4 weeks to make this ice-cream – overnight will do at a pinch – but if you have got the patience then I promise it’s well worth the wait. 200 g armagnac-soaked prunes, drained 125 ml of the armagnac-laden prune-soaking liquid 125 g caster sugar 125 g fromage frais (preferably not the very low-fat version) 200 g mascarpone 1 egg yolk 5...