Wifey and I have often thought that we do not make enough soup. Soup and bread can be a nutritious and healthy meal. Parsnips are still in season so she has tried a number of different recipes we found on the internet. We have liked most of them but have not been quite satisfied at the combination of a parsnip taste and being spicy. Today I think we have a recipe that meets our taste; your taste may of course be different.

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 parsnips (parsnips vary a lot in size so roughly 170-200 g)
1 smallish onion
1 small potato (about the size of a large egg)
3 garlic cloves
1 heaped tsp garam masala
500 ml chicken stock
1 dsp olive oil
(1 dsp cream)

Method

1. Heat the oil
2. Finely chop the onion and garlic, and fry them gently for 5 minutes
3. Roughly chop the parsnips and potato and add to the pan for 5 minutes
4. Add the chicken stock and garam masala
5. Simmer for about 10 minutes
6. Whizz the soup with a hand blender
7. Serve and optionally add a dash of cream

One dish I have enjoyed at Evangelos' restaurant on the east side of Munich is bifteki with tzatziki. The following is my attempt to reverse engineer it. I try to dry fry the bifteki with a cast iron grill pan.

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

500g pork mince or sausage meat
one medium onion
three medium garlic cloves
salt and pepper
1 dsp olive oil
1 dsp flour
slices of feta cheese (optional)
half a cucumber
300 ml greek yogurt
1 tsp dill

Method

1. Grate the cucumber and leave the grated cucumber in a bowl.
2. Finely chop the onion and garlic
3. Heat up a cast iron grill pan spread with a tiny amount of oil
4. Whizz the meat, onions and 2 cloves of garlic using a food processor
5. Divide the mix into 4 (or 5) portions and roll through the flour as balls then flatten slightly
6. If stuffing the bifteki with feta cheese form the balls of meat around slice of feta cheese
7. Drain the cucumber of any excess water and add a crushed clove of garlic and yogurt and mix thoroughly.
8. Take the bifteki balls and place on the grill pan
9. Turn after about 8 minutes and grill the other side
10. Serve the bifteki with tzatziki. Sprinkle dill over the bifteki.

Tips

a) I have found pork mince is (to my surprise) a bit too lean for this to do well. I usually mix pork mince with sausage meat. The sausage meat is more fatty but the fat should come out in the grill pan thus helping the dry frying.
b) I would normally serve with tomato rice. This weekend for some reason we forgot about the rice and served with pitta bread. Since there was no 'veg' I took a cougette and thinly sliced it and cooked it on a grill pan with two sping onions and the first chopped chives of the year.

With climate change we are already used to mild winters. I suppose we never had much of a winter in central southern England but in my childhood I recall that there was usually about two weeks of the year with snow and frosts from October to March. We now seem to have a dark, wet, windy season with unhealthily mild temperatures. It seems to be around 10 Celsius each midday rather than the average of 2 degrees. Germs seem to be multiplying like crazy.

I wonder if we should rename the fourth season. How about following the trees and going for Spring, Leaf, Fall and Bare?

With the wet weather I have not bothered to look around my garden for a few weeks. Today I got a surprise when I looked at my herb garden.

Yes, the chives are well and truly up. In fact with 10 cm growth they could even be harvested! Normally they are a millimetre above the ground if visible at all in mid January.

What was even more surprising was that the wild garlic was a centimetre above ground. Again this seems weeks too early. Maybe we have lost the fourth season altogether and are slipping slowly from Autumn or Fall to Spring.

Another big suprise was last night when a little ladybird wandered over our dining table. Springwatch look out!

A couple of years ago I tried growing our own garlic. We have grown more than a year's supply each summer - ranging from huge bulbs to tiny ones though all edible. The longer garlic is stored the more pungent it gets. I am now noticing that more and more of the bulbs in the cellar are developing the bitter green shoot inside. The rest of the bulb is OK but the green should be removed. A sign of spring? Or maybe my cellar is too warm to store it.

Well, fresh mild new garlic will be something to look forward to in the early summer.

I have enjoyed Jambalaya when travelling on business in the US. Indeed I have tried the dish in a range of locations from the Jazz Kitchen, in Dubwa's town of Austin, Texas, to the Santa Fe in Helsinki, Finland. The Jazz Kitchen is probably the nearest I have been to Louisiana and I assume the most authentic - though I understand there may be quite a bit of variation.
In the Jazz Kitchen the Jambalaya is basically a starter or light main course served in a soup bowl. It is also quite runny with a strong flavour of beef stock and is eaten with a soup spoon. They use andouille sausage which is slighltly spicy and is a converntional sausage unlike the French andoillette. I have never seen this sort of sausage for sale in the UK.

In Helsinki I assume they find it equally difficult to get Louisiana sausage and Santa Fe's jambalaya is quite different. They have finely chopped chicken, ham and small prawns through the rice and serve it on a hot cast iron plate with a sausage on the top. It is not runny and the rice has tomato purée through it. The sausage was much like a light coloured Bratwurst. I thought this version was more likely to be a success at home.

My version certainly does not try to be authentic - though it has the cajun 'trinity' of onion, celery and peppers. Having tried out a few sausages with it my family are happy with Lidl bratwurst sausages. Although you are supposed to use ham and prawns and chicken I generally use one or the other to avoid having too many partly used packs in my fridge. Since my boys love the sausages that part of the recipe is overweighted. The quantities are rough.

Serves 5-6

Ingredients

500 g sausages
250 g chicken or gammon steak or prawns
300 g onion (one large onion or a few medium ones)
4 celery sticks
one large pepper or two small ones (roughly 250 g)
400 g rice
500 ml passata
3 large garlic cloves
4 tsp cajun spices (I use a mix I bought in the shop, but you can make your own seasoning)

Method

1. Heat a little vegetable oil in a wok
2. If using chicken, dice it and brown it in the wok and set aside
3. Finely shred the onion, celery and garlic and cook with a medium heat in the wok
4. Put on the rice, making sure you do not have too much water in the pan. Err on the side of the rice being on the dry side as more liquid will be absorbed later.
5. Grill the sausages (with bratwurst we grill them then chop them into roughly 1 cm slices and grill the slices again end on)
6. After about 15 minutes frying, shred the pepper, add to the wok and fry for 5 minutes
7. If you are using gammon steak or prawns, they are already cooked, add to the wok and stir. If using chicken add the set aside pieces at this point too.
8. Add 3 tsp cajun spices and mix through the wok, then add the passata and allow to reduce a little
9. When the rice is ready add roughly half and mix through the wok, then add the other half.
10. Mix the bratwurst slices through the jambalaya
11. Add another teaspoonful of spices and mix thoroughly before serving.

The New Year got off to a great start! Instead of entertaining at home we visited a couple (in the Manchester area) who were among my best University friends in Glasgow many moons ago. The main point was to catch up with them after 18 months; in that time between us we have had both parental bereavement and serious parental illness.

My mate is a good cook so I will mention the menu in passing:

Sunday lunch (Old Year's Day/Hogmanay)

Cock a leekie soup with bread and a great cheese platter. The soup was great but I really enjoyed the cheese. There was an unfamiliar Dutch cheese, even unknown to my 'Nederlands' wife, and one I had never previously tried which was smoked Cheshire. I love non-plastic smoked cheese and this tasted really good. Sorry I do not know where you can buy it.

Sunday dinner

Moussaka (apparently a genuine Cypriot family recipe from his former colleague)
Home made raspberry icecream

Monday lunch (New Year's Day)

beef and ale pie with spuds and cabbage (resulted in beery farts down the A34 from one of my sons!). Tasted good (I am not good with pastry and admire those who get their act together).

Tuesday was horrible - back to work again!  Loads of it.

Wednesday was even worse. I have had an intermittent cold/cough for the last month which ebbed and flowed; in more than one sense. It finally degenerated into fever and headaches too. After a day in bed, I am bouncing back. At least this is minor winter stuff and nothing to complain about - wrote too much already!

Now my wifey is in Holland for the weekend and hungry sons are asking for jambalaya and filet steak warm salad for the coming two days. I had better stop sneezing by tomorrow or it will be tinned soup! Or a very hot curry to help my cold.

So much for 2007 week 1.