Butternut, Coconut & Apple Soup
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Butternut Squash, Coconut & Apple Soup Recipe

Recipe taken from Seasonal Soups by Fraser Reid

As the cold weather kicks in here in Scotland, we reflect on one of our very best-selling books Seasonal Soups by the delightful and charismatic Fraser Reid. 

Picture of Fraser with fruit tree

Fraser is very inspiring character who gave up his previous office job to open a fruit and veg store in our hometown of Dundee cunningly named Fraser’s Fruit & Veg.

Shop front Fraser's Fruit & Veg

His book Seasonal Soups was inspired by the popular soup packs he sells in the shop to customers based around the seasonal goods available and as a way of encouraging people to try out different vegetables and experiment with new flavours.

Seasonal Soups 3rd Edition Cover

Over three editions this wee gem of a cookbook has grown into a phenomenon and we are so happy to have been a part of Fraser’s exciting journey.

Now back to the soup. To celebrate this journey and the joy it has brought to so many, we thought we would share one of our favourite winter warmers from his collection that will keep you busy in the kitchen and cosy at home, while tickling those tastebuds – Butternut Squash, Coconut & Apple.

Now over to Fraser and as usual the beauty is in the simplicity of the recipe and a few choice ingredients.

Butternut Squash, Coconut & Apple Soup

The apple in this soup acts as a sweetener and can easily be replaced by using a pear, peach or apricot.

Serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil or butter

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and diced

1 apple, peeled, cored and roughly chopped

2 stock cubes

1.5 tablespoons creamed coconut

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a pot on a medium-low heat and add the oil or butter. Fry the onion, carrot and garam masala for 5–10 minutes.

Add the squash and apple and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

Pour in 1.2 litres of boiling water, and add the stock cubes and the creamed coconut, stirring to make sure it dissolves. 

Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend the soup until completely smooth, and then season to taste.

Thank you Fraser for another very tasty and heartening soup to keep us warm.

You can buy Seasonal Soups direct from us with free postage right here

Potato salad pic
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Spinach, Turmeric and Mint Potato Salad Recipe

Taken from Cafe Cooking by Gillian Veal 

As we shift into autumn, we thought it was a good time to remind you that salads are not just for summer time, and we decided to share this fabulous potato salad recipe from Gillian Veal’s recent publication Cafe Cooking.

Cafe Cooking book cover

So dig up the remaining tatties from your garden patch, or go buy some local ones and get cooking this delicious dish.

Recipe:

The east of Scotland is potato country and we grow loads of them at Cambo so we always have a potato salad on the menu. For salad you want a waxy variety of potato, not the larger floury ones a they won’t hold their shape. This is one of my favourite potato salads. When we have them in the garden, I add a few slices of radish.

Serves 4

500g baby potatoes or any waxy potato

1 tsp turmeric

2 sprigs fresh mint, leaves only, roughly chopped

150g spinach, rocket or mixed leaves, roughly chopped

3 spring onions, sliced lengthways in half, then diagonally into 2cm slices

1 tsp nigella seeds (optional)

3 heaped tbsp pickled red onion

salt and white pepper

for the dressing:

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp runny honey or maple syrup

6 tbsp olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut the potatoes in half and put them in a large pot. Fill the pot three-quarters full with water, plenty of salt and the turmeric, then bring the pot to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are tender. Drain them in a colander and set them aside to cool.

Put the warm potatoes in a large bowl and add the mint leaves and the spinach, rocket or mixed leaves. Add the sliced spring onions, the nigella seeds, if using, and the pickled red onions.

To make the salad dressing, put the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, mustard and honey or maple syrup into a bowl and whisk it together. Taste and add salt and pepper as you think it needs it, then pour in the olive oil and whisk until the dressing emulsifies.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss everything gently but firmly. Season to taste with salt and white pepper.

Voila! Thank you Gillian.

We hope you enjoy trying this delicious recipe out at home and for more why not grab a copy of Cafe Cooking by Gillian direct from us right here.

Pic of Burrata, Romesco, Red Chilli recipe

Burrata, Romesco, Red Chilli Recipe

From Catalogued Ideas And Random Thoughts by Stuart Ralston

Acclaimed chef Stuart Ralston is known as one of the most innovative and creative cooks working in the UK today. Catalogued Ideas and Random Thoughts – A Cookbook traces his evolution as a chef, and brings together the food that inspires him, from the finely crafted dishes that he creates in his restaurants to the food he likes to cook at home. 

We are delighted to share one of his favourite recipes with you- Burrata, Romesco, Red Chilli.

Now over to Stuart!


Burrata, Romesco, Red Chilli

According to Jade Johnston, our Ops Manager and partner in everything we do, burrata is hands down the best cheese in the world. It is super versatile, great for sharing and easy to source. It’s also delicious paired with my ride-or-die sauce, romesco. We use a little gochujang chilli paste to give the romesco a slight change of direction from its native Spanish roots.

Seves 2 with plenty of sauce.

For the romesco:

75g flaked almonds, toasted 

75g whole hazelnuts, toasted 

250g shop-bought roasted peppers, drained and seeds removed 

250g tinned tomatoes, drained overnight 

30–60g gochujang chilli paste, depending on desired spiciness 

45g olive oil 

8 garlic cloves, finely grated 

10g sherry vinegar 

5g smoked paprika 

8g salt 

sugar to taste

To serve:

1 burrata

1 red chilli, sliced

olive oil

sea salt 

black pepper

Method:

For the romesco, pulse the almonds and hazelnuts together in a food processor to form coarse crumbs, then place in a large bowl. 

Blend the roasted peppers and drained tomatoes together in the food processor until incorporated but not smooth. Add to the toasted nuts. 

Blend the gochujang, olive oil, garlic, sherry vinegar, smoked paprika and salt to form a paste. Add this to the nut mixture and season as necessary with more salt, sugar and vinegar.

To serve, place the burrata onto a paper towel to drain any excess liquid. Spoon plenty of romesco onto a plate and put the burrata on top. Add a couple of slices of red chilli, season with a little sea salt and cracked black pepper and then drizzle over the olive oil. 

Serve with toasted focaccia.

So tasty! We hope you enjoy this recipe at home.

You can buy Stuart’s book here and discover many more of his amazing recipes.

Cookbook cover
making pancakes
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Pancakes

pancakes

From The Mountain Cafe Cookbook by Kirsten Gilmour

Serves 4

This recipe for pancakes is a cafe classic and was originally my nana’s pikelet recipe, which I think she adapted from a copy of her mother’s Edmonds Cookery Book. I loved making these with her. She would stand and supervise while I stood on a chair flipping away. My granddad and I would then sit at the kitchen table stuffing in hot pikelets with lashings of whipped cream and raspberry jam. Poor Nana would never sit with us – she was too busy cleaning up my mess! I guess that’s where I get my clean-freakishness from now.

  • 3 large eggs
  • 145g caster sugar
  • 300ml full fat milk
  • 400g plain flour
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 10g salted butter

Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar. Using a whisk, beat the absolute hell out of them (Nana’s words would be, ‘give them billio Kj!’). You want to beat until the mix is pale, light and fluffy – you could use an electric mixer if you have one. Now add the milk, flour and baking powder and whisk vigorously until you have a smooth batter.

Heat a heavy-bottomed non-stick frying pan till hot over a medium heat. Carefully drop half the butter into the pan and rub it around using a little kitchen paper, being careful not to burn yourself. Now the pan is greased and at temperature, drop in a small spoon of batter to make a test pancake. The first pancake is usually not great, but as the pan gets to an even heat they will cook to a lovely golden brown.

If the pan is hot enough, pour large spoonfuls of batter into the pan and cook until the underside is golden and you start to see bubbles forming on the top of the pancake. Then it’s time to flip them and cook for another minute or so on the other side. If the pancakes start to stick, re-grease the pan with the remaining butter using the method above.

Serve hot straight from the pan and maybe give them a try with our cardamom oranges.

book cover

 

 

The Mountain Cafe Cookbook is available here.

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Butternut Chorizo and Sage Soup

butternut chorizo sage soup

From The Mountain Cafe Cookbook by Kirsten Gilmour

Dairy free

Serves 4-6

An autumnal butt-kicking, tummy-warming, filling soup for the colder months. If you want to make this veggie-friendly or don’t want to use chorizo then some chopped red peppers make a good alternative. Chorizo quite often has gluten in it – check the ingredients if you are making this for gluten-free people.

  • 550g butternut squash peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
  • 2 tablespoons runny honey
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
  • 150g chorizo, roughly diced
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 1 small red chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped
  • 12 sage leaves
  • 
1600ml chicken/vegetable stock  (or 3 stock cubes in 1600ml hot water)
  • salt
  • freshly ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 200ºC (180ºC fan).

Put the butternut squash in a roasting tin and drizzle with the runny honey and two tablespoons of the olive oil. Sprinkle with the paprika and some salt and pepper, stir to mix and roast for 20 minutes until the butternut starts to soften. Heat the remaining two tablespoons of oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot, then add the onions, chorizo, garlic, chilli and sage, and sauté until the onions start to soften and the chorizo has released its oil. Add the roasted butternut squash and the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer on a gentle heat till the butternut squash is very soft – about 40 minutes. Blitz the soup, then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper – if it’s too thick for you, add a bit more water. If you have any chorizo left over, cut it into thin slices and crisp them up in a hot pan. Spoon a few slices on top of each serving of soup as a garnish, then I love to drizzle over a little of the hot chorizo oil from the pan for extra flavour.

Mountain Cafe Cookbook Cover

 

 

 

 

 

The Mountain Cafe Cookbook is available to buy here.

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Vietnamese Pancakes

colour bowls small

It being pancake day and all, let us introduce you to the glory that is Vietnamese Pancakes. Tran from the Bánh Mì NêN stall at Greenwich Market gave us this recipe for The Greenwich Market Cookbook, and it is not only absolutely delicious but also happens to be gluten-free.

It is a great starter or light lunch – a thin, crispy coconut pancake stuffed with chicken, prawns and beansprouts and served with fresh coriander, mint and a salty-sour dipping sauce. It’s a very straightforward batter but you really do need a non-stick frying pan to cook it. The key is to let the pan get really hot, then turn the heat down to low when you start frying the pancake.

Ingredients

for the batter:

  • 150g rice flour
  • 270ml coconut milk
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1⁄4 teaspoon salt

for the dipping sauce:

  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • 1–2 chillies, finely chopped

for the stuffing:

  • 100g chicken fillets, thinly sliced
  • 100g raw prawns, shelled
  • 1 small onion, sliced
  • 100g beansprouts
  • 100g mushrooms, sliced
  • bunch of spring onions, chopped
  • 4 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1⁄2 iceberg lettuce, shredded
  • small handful of mint
  • small handful of coriander
  • salt
  • freshly ground black pepper

First make the batter. Mix the rice flour, coconut milk, turmeric and salt together in a big bowl and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. If it looks too thick, add another 30ml coconut milk or water so you have the consistency of double cream.

Make the dipping sauce: add the sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, garlic and chillies to 250ml water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Put the chicken in one bowl and the prawns in another and season both with salt and pepper.

When you’re ready to eat, put a teaspoon of olive oil in small non-stick frying pan on a medium-high heat. Once it’s good and hot, add about a quarter of the onion and fry for a minute. Next, add a quarter of the chicken and prawns and fry briefly until the chicken is pale and the prawns have turned pink. Turn the heat down to low. Ladle over enough batter to thinly cover the base of the pan – tip the pan around so it spreads evenly and is as thin as possible. Scatter a handful each of beansprouts, mushrooms and spring onions over one half of the pancake, then cover and leave to cook for 3 minutes. When the batter is cooked through and crispy on the bottom and edges, fold over the side with no filling on it to form a half moon. Cut into four pieces and serve hot on a bed of iceberg lettuce, coriander and mint with the dipping sauce on the side. Repeat with the remaining ingredients to make three more pancakes. Each diner can then roll up bits of pancake with the cool crisp shreds of lettuce and herbs inside, and dip it into the sauce before eating.

Serves 4

Buy The Greenwich Market Cookbook here.

Bowl illustration by Kath Van Uytrecht

banh mi nen 2

 

Sweet Potato Pie
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Sarah Savoy’s Sweet Potato Pie

Sweet Potato PieA week or so ago, I was reminded about this glorious Sweet Potato Pie recipe when the designer who worked on the Savoy Kitchen book posted some pictures on Facebook of his annual crayfish boil. He finished it off with a perfect looking pie, which made me hungry just looking at it. Sarah describes this as a ‘cool-weather pie’ – which I think pretty much covers December in the UK. This is just the sort of thing you should be eating when the wind is howling outside and the rain is splattering on your kitchen windows – a taste memory of warmer times.

Sweet Potato Pie

I can’t imagine how Mom ever got me to try a pie made from a potato, sweet or not. I probably thought it was pumpkin because I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried this as a kid if I knew what it was. I now prefer it to pumpkin. It’s another one of those cool-weather pies, spicy and creamy and absolutely comforting.

sweet_potato_pie-1

  • 450g (1lb) sweet potatoes
  • 110g (½ cup) butter, softened
  • 225g (1 cup) white sugar
  • 125ml (½ cup) milk
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
  • ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • dash of allspice
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 250g pastry

 

Preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F).

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into chunks, then boil them until tender. Drain, and leave to cool a moment.

In a large bowl, mash the sweet potato with a fork or potato masher. Using a hand mixer, add the butter and process until it’s fully incorporated. Stir in the sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and vanilla extract and mix until you have a smooth batter.

Roll out the pastry and line a 23cm pie dish. Trim and crimp the edges, and make some holes in the base with a fork. Pour in the filling.

Bake the pie for 50–60 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean. The pie will rise as it bakes, but it will settle again as it cools.

Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Serves 8

sweet_potato_pie-6

All photographs © Joby Catto

Buy The Savoy Kitchen – A Family History of Cajun Food here

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Digital Soup

soupPlease excuse the recent radio silence, but we’ve been very busy. Some great new projects are bubbling under, our mailbox is full of recipes from Greenwich Market (in English, Mandarin and Italian), and we’ve been working away on our first eBook – a digital edition of Fraser’s Seasonal Soups.

We’ve grappled with digitising our books before but have always shied away from it for two reasons – firstly, from an old-fashioned love of having print cookbooks to get dirty in the kitchen, and secondly (and more importantly) because of the design limitations of epub formats – especially for hand illustrated projects. We needed to get our heads around it though, and the publication of Fraser’s Seasonal Soups last year was a good opportunity to start thinking how we’d like an eBook to look and feel. Thanks to the talents of Stuart Cockburn at I Love Grids, we now have a version that captures the hand-drawn feel of the print book while having the convenience and functionality of an eBook.

Fraser’s Seasonal Soups by Fraser Reid is available for kindle on Amazon right here, and will be on sale in our own shop and on other platforms very soon. Please do take a look and let us know what you think, and what you prefer to cook from – print or digital? Print cookbooks, more than any other genre of books, have held their own in the digital revolution, but as more and more people use the internet to find things to cook, the notion of using your kindle or iPad or laptop in the kitchen is becoming the norm. And anything that gets people cooking is ok by us.

To whet your appetite and in recognition of the fact that soup is not just for the winter months, here’s a seasonal March recipe for you from the soup genius himself.

Smoky Sweet Potato & Butter Bean

Serves 4

Hands down this is one of my favourite soup recipes and it always goes down well with customers. The creamy butter beans are the perfect balance for the smoky paprika and sweetness of the potatoes.

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
  • 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
  • 1 sweet potato, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 or 2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 x 400g tin butter beans, drained
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 2 stock cubes
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat a pot on a medium heat and add the oil or butter. Fry the onion and garlic for 5–10 minutes until they soften slightly.

Add the sweet potato, carrots, drained butter beans and smoked paprika to the pot, mixing everything together.

Pour in 1.2 litres of boiling water, crumble in the stock cubes, and then bring it all to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend the soup and season to taste.

Buy Fraser’s Seasonal Soups by Fraser Reid print edition here or as a kindle book here.

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Gateau de Sirop for International Restaurant Day

cane syrup - black

It’s International Restaurant Day tomorrow – a great idea from Finland encouraging people to set up restaurants for a day, anywhere, for fun. The idea of the day, according to the website, is “to have fun, share new food experiences and enjoy our common living environments together.” Since it started up in 2011, it’s grown from 45 restaurants in 13 cities in Finland to a whopping 2017 restaurants popping up, just for the day, in 30 countries around the world. Amazing! In a moment of crazed enthusiasm on Tuesday, me and my 9-year-old daughter decided to get involved and serve Gumbo from the communal barbecue in the park in front of our house. I’m now looking out of the window at a full-blown Scottish November storm, wondering when I mistook Dundee for Louisiana…

Despite inclement weather conditions, for 2 hours only, Special O’Cajun (geddit? Puns courtesy of Stanley, age 11 – yeah, don’t blame me ok?) will be serving up Chicken & Sausage Gumbo, Baked Beans and Gateaux de Sirop from the shelter of the Magdalen Green cherry trees. They’re all recipes from Sarah Savoy’s beautiful book, The Savoy Kitchen – A Family History of Cajun Food which we were very proud to publish last year. Of all of them, it’s the Gateaux de Sirop that I love the most: a dark, moist spiced cake that smells to me of childhood and takes me back to the sticky gingerbreads my mum used to bake, and her mum before her.

Where my mum would have used treacle and golden syrup, the ‘sirop’ in this recipe should really be dark cane syrup.  Sarah says: “This is a very old-fashioned recipe that Cajun ladies used to make to bring to their friends when visiting. My dad used to grow sugar cane and cut and peel pieces of the cane for us to chew on as an afternoon snack. When he was younger, one of his favourite treats was getting to sample the ‘cane beer’ made during the process of making the cane syrup. As the cane boiled, the foam and chuff that rose to the top was removed to a pot beside the fire. In the heat the sugar would ferment and that would be used to make the beer. I’m gonna get around to trying that some day.”

Here’s Sarah’s recipe, just in case you can’t swing by our restaurant tomorrow. Happy International Restaurant Day everybody x

Gateau de Sirop

Serves 10

  • 260g (1½ cups) brown sugar
  • 125ml (½ cup) vegetable oil
  • 350g (1 cup) dark cane syrup or black treacle
  • 1 tsp cider vinegar
  • 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 tsp ginger
  • 3 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp lemon zest, grated
  • 2 eggs
  • 375g (2½ cups) plain flour
  • 200g (1 cup) raisins or chopped dried figs
  • 100g (2/3 cup) chopped pecans or walnuts
  • 23 x 33cm cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and flour your cake tin, then line it with greaseproof paper.

Mix the brown sugar, oil, and cane syrup or treacle in a large bowl. Put the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda in a cup with 250ml (1 cup) of very hot, but not boiling, water then pour it into the syrup mixture. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, cocoa powder and lemon zest and stir until combined. Beat in the eggs, one by one, then gradually fold in the flour, then the raisins, and then the nuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake it for about 50–60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Serves 10

N.B. Sometimes, instead of mixing the pecans into the butter, I like to candy them in butter, sugar and cinnamon, then chop them roughly and sprinkle over the baked cake.

Buy The Savoy Kitchen – A Family History of Cajun Food by Sarah Savoy here.

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Rowan and Crab Apple Jelly from Cookie Cooks

cookie_rowan_jellyThe Rowan tree is one of the most beautiful sights of early autumn and its berries make a fabulous jelly that is great with grouse and for adding flavour to gravies and sauces. You should pick the berries when they are a full­-bodied red colour, but before they turn mushy. Rowan berries were used in the middle ages to scare off evil spirits. You will feel like a witch stirring a cauldron of off­-putting ingredients when making this, but it all adds to the mystical ambience. Cook the fruit the night before the jelly is to be made.

Makes about 2 x 500ml jars of rowan & crab apple jelly

  • 1kg rowan berries
  • 1kg crab apples, roughly quartered but cores left in
  • 1.5kg granulated sugar (approximately)
  • a jelly bag or a muslin

Wash the fruit well. Remove all the stalks from the rowan berries and put them in the pan with the quartered crab apples. Pour in enough water to come half way up the fruit, bring it to the boil, and then turn the heat down to a simmer and leave the fruit to cook, stirring from time to time. As it softens, use a large spoon to crush the fruit against the sides of the pan.

When everything is soft and mushy, turn off the heat and tip the lot into your draining material. A jelly bag makes this easy, but what I do is cover the top of a large pan with a muslin, and then tip the mush into it so the pan catches any drips. When all the mush is safely caught, suspend it over the pot and tie it up. We have tried this in many ways: hanging it on the back of a chair or tying it to the knife rack in the kitchen. Basically, you just need to hang it any place where you can leave a large bowl or pot beneath it to catch the juice as it drips through the bag. Leave it overnight.

In the morning, measure the juice in a measuring jug. You can squeeze the bag to get the very last remnants of juice out. This might cause your jelly to be cloudy, but as it’s generally used for cooking that doesn’t really matter. However, if you want your rowan jelly to be completely clear for a gift or just for perfection, don’t touch the bag. Now comes the maths. For every 500ml of juice you need 375g of sugar. When you’ve figured out your quantities, put the juice and sugar in your jam pan, heat it slowly until the sugar dissolves, and then bring it to a low rolling boil for 10 minutes. Test a teaspoonful on a cold saucer: if the surface of the jelly wrinkles when you push your finger on one end, it’s done. If it doesn’t wrinkle, boil it for a further 5 minutes and repeat the test. Leave the jam to cool for a couple of minutes, decant it into sterilised jars, and seal.

Buy Cookie Cooks by Melanie McCallum and Domenico del Priore here.