Roast Potato Substitutes

Brace yourselves.

There's a chance I might not be the best cook in the world. Wait, now, and hush the disbelieving gasps that have no doubt escaped you. I'm pretty good, granted, but I have my flaws. I'm impatient and I'm not great at following recipes, which is why my baking repertoire is particularly limited. On the other hand, I like to think I have turned these challenges into positive attributes (I do this a lot, *ahem* potential employers) by being pretty good at improvising.

I am all about taking basic ideas and changing them to suit what you like/what you've got/what's in the discount bin. This involves categorising food, by texture, flavour, type, etc, and making sure your substitutes are appropriate. For example, my mum used to make a lovely little dish made by mixing grated cheddar, chopped onion, and egg, and baking it until it puffed up. We just called it 'cheese and onion', but I can appreciate that the name doesn't give much away, and could potentially be misleading. Maybe 'Cheddar and onion bake'? I don't know. That's for history to decide. Anyway, when I started cooking for myself I figured that the basic cheese + flavour + egg bake formula could be adapted pretty broadly, and I regularly make a feta and thyme for a greek tiropita feel, or ricotta, nutmeg and spinach for a creamier, Italian-ish version.

What I'm saying is, don't feel like you have to be constrained by 'recipes', or 'tradition', or 'common sense', or 'for God's sake Bronwen don't be ridiculous'. Well who's ridiculous now, goddammit, I'll show you all.

This slightly overlong preamble is really just to try and explain why I did something that I wasn't sure was going to work, but it totally did work, and now I'm going to rub it in all your doubting faces.

OK, so the other day I was all set up to make a nice roast chicken for Sunday lunch. I had my chicken, I had my veg for the side, all I needed was some potatoes to roast as I was down to my last one. So out I popped for potatoes. Now you tell me this; if you were a supermarket, what sort of jim-crack, shady operation do you have to be running to be completely out of potatoes during peak shopping hours at the weekend? A question for another time, perhaps, but the upshot is I was in a pickle. Potatoes with a roast is pretty much non-negotiable. I could have gone the relatively short distance up the hill to another shop where I would undoubtedly have found potatoes, but the downsides were twofold. 1) It was up a hill, and 2) I honestly never thought of this option until just now. Instead, I started to do my super-speedy thinking-outside-the-box food-improvisation thing. You know when Sherlock goes into his daft mind-palace whatsit and he's got WordArt popping up in the air all over the place? It's basically exactly like that, except with pictures of starchy alternatives. And you know what is basically potatoes? Gnocchi.

I'll give you a minute here, because presumably I've just blown your mind. Gnocchi is a starchy dough made from mashed potatoes. Makes total sense.

I got a 500g packet of regular, cheap gnocchi, and just poured it in to roast next to the chicken, as well as some onions and carrots.

Call me Wile E. Coyote: Super Genius

It didn't turn out perfectly - some of the gnocchi absorbed too much of the meat juices and disintegrated slightly. But most of the bits around the edges were crispy, chickeny, chewy, and delicious.

While they may not be able to permanently take the place of roast potatoes, I definitely think I'll be using gnocchi whenever I'm cooking for a large number of people, as it saves a massive amount of prep time.

Patent pending, so if you do it you'll have to credit me.  It's only fair.

Spicy Sweet Potato Soup

So what did you get for Christmas? Wait, don't actually tell me. As with so many conversations that begin this way, I don't care. I just want to tell you what I got.

I got this fancy hand blender!

I used to have one of those cheap, plastic stick blenders that was pretty useful as a milk frother, but required serious time and attention if you wanted to actually blend something. It disappeared after one of my many house moves (I think between Coventry and Leamington, so logically it should be in Kenilworth somewhere), and since then I've managed to get by without it by using a potato masher instead. It doesn't exactly make soup smooth, but it's at least a little less lumpy.

But now I have this guy! He is powerful. I don't know exactly how powerful, but I think it should be measured in horses. In his dormant state he is known as Prince Adam (geddit?), and he can blend like billy-o. What an odd phrase.

So that's basically what I've been up to for the last month. Blending. Blending all the things. Also taking popular songs and replacing the word 'pimping' with 'blending'. Blending ain't easy. Etc.

This is a spicy, wintery soup I've made a few times which allows me to blend to my heart's content, but by adding kidney beans post-blending it gives a bit of texture for the lumpy soup lovers out there. They are a powerful faction.

You will need:

2 sweet potatoes
1 large white onion
2 carrots
oil
1 can of kidney beans
1 1/2 - 2 pints beef stock
salt and pepper
a pinch of chilli powder or chilli flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 - 2 tsp worcestershire sauce

Peel and chop the sweet potatoes, carrots and onion, and start cooking in a large saucepan with a little oil. Add the spices and salt and pepper, and stir thoroughly. Add enough stock to cover the veg, but keep a little back in case you want to thin it out later. You can use chicken or veg stock instead (the beef certainly makes the whole thing a little brown), but I prefer beef for this soup.

Bring to a slow simmer, cover, and cook until the veg is soft - maybe 30 minutes. Once the veg is soft, blend the shit out of it. Yeah. Really blend the balls off it. Cool.

Add the worcestershire sauce, more seasoning if you need it, and more stock if the mixture feels a bit thick. Drain, wash and add the kidney beans to the soup, then cover and cook for a further 20 minutes.

Of all the things I have blended recently (there have been a few), this soup is my favourite.

Black Pudding Sauce

I'll admit, black pudding isn't for everyone. Quite apart from the mental pause it'll give most people when they remember they're essentially eating blood paste, the spicing can be a little heavy and the texture is a bit cloying.

A little while ago I had a black pudding bread sauce at a restaurant, and it was lovely. The spice was more mellow and the texture unctuous without being gummy. In retrospect I could have asked what they put in it or how they made it, but where's the fun in that? And when I saw that you could get a four slice pack of black pudding in my local Tesco for the grand price of £1.29, that pretty much clinched it. Here's my attempt at a recreation.
 
You will need:

300g black pudding (1 full four slice pack)
1 medium sized onion
100g breadcrumbs
1 pint beef stock
1/2 pint bitter
salt and pepper
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Chop the onion and black pudding into small pieces, and start frying in a large saucepan until the onion is just about cooked and the black pudding starts to soften. Add the breadcrumbs and stir thoroughly. Add the hot beef stock and beer slowly, stirring as you do so. Keep simmering on a low heat, stirring occasionally until thick and glossy (about 10-15 min).

Once the basic sauce is complete add the salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar to taste. You'll want to be quite generous with the salt and pepper especially.

Sausage, mash and blood. Classic.

This makes about a pint and a bit of sauce, and, full disclosure, it's not the prettiest thing in the world. I believe the colour can be described as 'brunge'. However, it is thick, meaty, and tasty.  I generally use it instead of gravy, especially with mash, but you can also add more hot stock to make a delicious soup. Just remember that it is delicious, and you're not just eating blood soup.