Category: Dinner

This is an ultra-cheap, easy, yet surprisingly tasty recipe. We seem to have this at least once each week.

Ingredients

For four people you’ll need:

• Penne pasta (one very large handful per person -try pouring the pasta into your hand until it overflows … oh go on, add one more handful just for luck)
• 2-3 leeks, chopped into about 1cm thick slices.
• 200g salmon, thinly sliced tiny pieces (this can be ultra cheap, e.g. salmon trimmings
• half-fat creme fraiche/sour cream
• Lemon juice
• Pepper

Method

1. Boil your pasta. About 3-4 minutes before it is completed, drop your leeks into the pot as well. Everything should be ready at the same time if you get this right.
2. Drain your pasta/leek mix.
3. Drop your salmon and creme fraiche into the pasta pot.
4. Add plenty of lemon juice and pepper. Mix it all up.

Total time from start to finish: about 2 minutes more than the time it takes to cook the pasta as you can do most of the preparation while the pasta is cooking.

We found a great recipe for crispy duck at Video Jug – qutie a good site for all sorts of “how-to” type stuff. For the proper how-to video see this link.

But the ingredients are shown below:

• 1 whole duck , roughly 2kg in weight
• 60 ml sake or rice wine
• 4 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 tbsp miso
• salt and pepper

This is an absolutely fantastic pumpkin soup found at Waitrose

Serves 4 genously

Ingredients

• 1kg pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into 1cm cubes
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2.5cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 4 tsp Bart Red Thai Curry Paste
• 450ml vegetable stock
• 400ml can Bart Spices Coconut Milk
• 142ml pot single cream
• 20g pack fresh basil, chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C
2. Place the pumpkin or butternut squash on a non-stick baking tray and season. Roast for 30 minutes, or until tender.
3. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium pan and add the onion and ginger.
4. Cover and saute; for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Stir in the curry paste and cook for 1-2 minutes, then add the pumpkin, stock and coconut milk.
6. Cover and bring to the boil, then allow to simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
7. Puree the soup in a food processor or blender in 2 batches, until smooth. Return to the pan, season to taste and reheat gently, adding a little more stock or boiling water for a thinner consistency if required.

Serving

Place the cream and chopped basil in a small pan and heat gently. Serve the soup in bowls with the basil cream swirled over the top and sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper, and with crusty granary bread on the side.