As Strong As Soup

The turnip has an image problem in this country. Perhaps that's not so surprising. I can remember some pretty terrible meals accompanied by grey and unpleasant turnips in the distant past. Fast forward a few years and I was eating turnips in France and realising that they can be absolutely delicious. I've been growing an old French variety ‘Des Vertus Marteau’ for a couple of years now and the flavour and texture is probably the best I've found. Better still, they’re really easy to grow and quick to crop. So if you have a little spare ground, then I recommend trying some. Unless you live in France, you’re unlikely to find the seeds of this or other similar French varieties at the local garden centre but they are quite widely available from suppliers of heritage seeds. (Assuming that new EU regulations  don't remove this option). Chervil has a bit of an image problem in Britain too. It never seems to be as widely available as other fresh herbs in shops and supermarke...

Some of the recipes on As Strong As Soup can be pretty simple, but I think this is the first with only two ingredients. For this month’s Random Recipe cookbook challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen  asked ‘If you had 10 seconds to grab one book, which one would it be?’ I was pretty certain that I would either grab a comprehensive, general recipe book or one that would give me a nostalgic glow (Floyd on France, perhaps). It didn't work out that way. When I gave myself 10 seconds, I panicked and just grabbed the biggest book available. On my shelves that’s Larousse Gastronomique. Not an obvious choice since it’s not really a recipe book as such. But I randomly opened the book and randomly selected a column and was somewhat disturbed to see that the first recipe was included in the entry for Molecular Gastronomy. Fortunately, though, it turned out to be Hervé This's method for creating Chocolate Chantilly. Essentially this technique allows you to create a chocolate cream or mousse...

If you’re anything like me, then whenever you buy a delicious, ripe melon, you have the problem of leftovers. I wrap the excess melon and stick it in the fridge for the next day.  I then usually forget that it's there and discover sad, dried up melon some days later. So that's why I came up with this solution to the problem of excess melon. Actually, it turns out that this sorbet is so refreshing and so ridiculously simple to put together that I'm quite happy to buy yet more melon just to make it. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me (yet again!), this sorbet is based on a recipe by the great Frédy Girardet . I'm sure that the original would have been more refined and would not have contained Malibu. But Frédy Girardet is a great chef and I'm most definitely not. The sorbet will certainly be smoother if made in an ice-cream machine, but it will still be very pleasing if you simply freeze it in a shallow container and rough it up a bit with a fork once it’s ...