Autumn has arrived in England and soup is back on the menu. My mother wasn’t big on prepared or convenience food when we were young. One thing that slipped through her objections was Campbells Bean & Bacon soup. It was my favourite. Time to re-create Bean & Bacon as part of my project to reclaim convenience foods.

I use dried beans in my cooking, they are easier to store than canned beans and last more or less forever. Covid lockdowns made me a bit of a hoarder and some of my dried beans are from 2020. Still good. The other reason to use dried beans is that you can use the ‘hot soak’ method to soften them. Hot soak method reduces the amount of gas that bean dishes produce in humans. Nothing eliminates the consequences of bean consumption but hot soak, in my experience, reduces it significantly.

The recipe below includes instructions for using dried beans and canned beans. The only difference is cooking time. A mini-chopper is very useful for the vegetables and a stick blender great to puree some soup to thicken.

Let’s cook.

Recipe

Ingredients

380 grams (2 cups by volume) dried white beans (navy beans) OR 2 x 425 gram (15 ounce) cans of beans

8 strips of smoked streaky bacon, cut into small pieces

Lard or butter to sauté bacon and vegetables

1 medium onion, finely diced

3 medium carrots, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

110 grams (4 tablespoons) tomato paste

500 mls (2 cups) of pork or ham stock

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of brandy or cognac

Method

1. If using dried beans, follow instructions here for soaking methods. Otherwise, open your tins of beans.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
3. Sautè the bacon until crisp in the lard or butter in a large deep oven proof casserole (Dutch oven) or a skillet. Your le Creuset or similar is perfect. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to drain on kitchen towel.
4. Add the onions to the pan and cook over medium high heat until transparent. Pour the brandy over the onions and turn up to high to cook off the alcohol.
5. Return heat to medium, add the carrots and the celery and cook until they start to soften – 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the spices and the tomato paste, stir to coat the vegetables well. Add the stock and the beans and bring to a simmer. Stir in the bacon.
7. Put the cover on the pot and transfer to the oven. Check once an hour or so, stir and add more water if necessary. Canned beans – may be ready in 90 minutes, if you started with dried beans the soup may take 2 1/2 or 3 hours for the beans to reach the desired softness.
8. Remove from the oven; transfer one or two ladles of beans to your blender or liquidiser. Blend and return to the soup to thicken it.
9. Garnish with additional crispy bacon or slices of sausage if desired, serve warm with crusty bread.
   

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We have a weekly delivery of box of organic vegetables. It’s a self imposed challenge to use up whatever they send. I’ve got 3 choices for ‘do not send’ – these are currently occupied by beetroot (beets you Americans), Brussell sprouts and avocado. It’s not just organic – they work hard on reducing the travel miles on the vegetables. Hence, the humble swede appears frequently in the box.

Why is it called rutabaga in America? And what is a turnip if its not a baby swede? Who knows, the weird and wonderful names of vegetables are beyond my expertise.

When a boring root vegetable appears – soup is the answer. Oven roasting does wonders for root vegetables going into soup, really adds a layer of taste. It’s worth the extra prep time and clean up. I like to really scorch the swede just to the edge of burnt. I did it by accident – oh the dangers of multi tasking a well known recipe – and now it’s required by the Davinator.

Handy tools for this recipe: parchment paper for roasting, a mandolin for slicing in the vegetables, a stick blender to puree the soup at the end. Or a good sized blender. Can also be done in a food processor but both of those alternatives add messy clean up steps.

I add croutons and sautéed chorizo to make the soup a meal. If you’re feeling a need for more vegetables, a green salad on the side would be lovely.

Make this recipe vegan by omitting the butter and avoiding cream or chorizo.

Let’s get cooking.

Ingredients

The recipe proportions are for 450 grams of swede. Adjust if your swede is larger or smaller. Usually larger, in my experience.

• 1 swede, peeled and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 onion (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 tablespoons of brandy (trust me)
• 2 medium carrots (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 stalks of celery (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1.25 litres vegetable stock
• Optional garnish: cream, croutons, fried chorizo
• Plain bread croutons – 6 to 8 generous sized croutons per bowl of soup
• 50 grams of chorizo per bowl of soup

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C(fan)200C(nonfan)/400F
2. Peel the swede and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
3. Put some olive, salt and pepper in a bowl, add the cubes of swede and toss
4. Line baking trays with parchment paper and put the well coated swede in a single layer on the baking trays. Don’t crowd the cubes together because then it steams more than roasts.
5. Roast for 20 mins, remove, turn thoroughly with a spatula, return to the oven for another 20 minutes. Keep an eye on the swede, you want to caramelise not burn but the more brown the better.
6. Meanwhile, heat another tablespoon of olive oil and a similar amount of butter in a large deep saucepan. Add the onions – either pre-chopped or mandolin. Cook over medium heat until well translucent. Pour the brandy or cognac over the onions and turn up the heat to burn off the alcohol. (Sniff the vapours, you’ll know when the alcohol is gone).
7. Return pan heat to medium, add the carrots, celery and thyme. Cook for another five minutes, add the stock and the roasted swede.
8. Bring to a gentle boil, cover and cook for 25-30 minutes. Turn the heat down once you’ve covered the mixture so it’s just ticking over.
9. Purée the soup by your chosen method – if you tneed the exercise, you can put the soup through a ricer or a potato press as an alternative. Return the soup to the pan and cover while you prepare the garnish.
10. If you’re adding chorizo, slice into diagonal rounds and add to a warm skillet, sauté to release the oil and throw the croutons in. The chorizo will shrink and look a bit dry but it makes the flavour more concentrated and the fried croutons are little flavour bombs.
11. Serve in pre-warmed bowls, with a swirl of cream if you want and your choice of garnish.

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Five ingredient omelette.

I have a friend who loves food and hates to cook. By special request, I’m going to establish a special category of recipes on the website – known as the Love Food Hate Cooking recipes. Scrambled eggs on toast was the traditional default dinner of a busy single woman. My omelette recipe takes only a bit more time and effort but is extremely versatile.

The trick to the easy perfect omelette is to start it on the stove top, finish it under the grill and never ever flip it. All you need is butter, eggs, filling(s) and an oven proof skillet. The omelette above is made using crab, parmesan cheese and chives. It is infinitely flexible on ingredients and combination – any kind of cheese, protein that’s precooked (ham, smoked, salmon, thinly sliced sausage, cooked chicken, etc), vegetables that have been properly prepared. Both the recipe and method are straightforward.

I use a le Creuset skillet – they are expensive but stand the test of time. My youngest son is 25 years old and I have le Creuset cookware that predates him. There are other brands of enamelled cast iron cookware that will work well – the heavy bottom pan makes a difference.

Let’s get cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients – two servings

Butter, plenty of it

4 eggs

Tablespoon of dairy – milk, yogurt, cream – any unsweetened dairy (optional)

150 grams of crab meat

40 grams of finely grated parmesan cheese

Handful of chives

Method

1. Beat the eggs with the spoonful of dairy. Including dairy makes the omelette a bit fluffy, it’s optional though.
2. Melt butter in the oven proof skillet – plenty of butter to coat the bottom and sides of the skillet. Don’t let the butter brown.
3. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the eggs to the skillet. Cooking the omelette a bit more slowly at a lower heat keeps the eggs from turning tough or rubbery.
4. Preheat your grill at this point.
5. Cook until the edges and bottom of the egg mixture are starting to firm up. You should be able to run a rubber spatula around the edge. Carefully add the crab meat, then the cheese and herbs.
6. Place under the grill and cook until lightly browned and fluffy. Depending on the heat of your grill – this is likely to be 5 to 10 minutes.

The omelette just before it goes under the grill.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. Let me know how it goes and send requests.

I was nervous about jam and jelly until a friend said these immortal words ‘if it doesn’t set, pour it back in the pot and boil it some more’. That and a new sugar thermometer and I was off. We’ve had a great strawberry season in the UK – at one point strawberries were £2 per kilo ($1.15 per pound weight for los Americanos). I found sugar at a good price and I have made a lot of jam.

Don’t worry the Davinator will not be at risk from strawberry jam poisoning. The same friend doesn’t make strawberry jam or jelly so we have an exchange programme – I’ll trade strawberry jam and crab apple jelly for whisky marmalade and damson jam. Plus I take away her crab apples and make jelly with those. Crab apple jelly (recipe here) is the best combo with peanut butter.

Strawberry jam is traditionally ‘macerated’ overnight. Maceration means you cut up the strawberries, combine them with sugar and pectin and leave them to do their thing. Next morning they are floating in strawberry juice and ready to cook and jar up.

If you’re new to preserving, do your homework first. Youtube is full of ‘jam for beginners’ videos and there is a legion of blogs. My recommendation is to identify your ‘method’ and stick to it. I was making jam, jelly and preserves from a young age – my sisters and I were mom’s kitchen slaves. So I come to this with a fair amount of experience. Your first jam experience may well leave your kitchen looking like a bomb went off but every time after that it improves.

Gadgets do help with jam. Below left is my 2 bowl scale for weighing sugar and pectin separately and below right is a gadget that takes the stem and slightly fibrous centre out of the strawberries in one smooth movement. See the short video I made here.

The other gadget I highly recommend is a proper sugar thermometer – old school analogue that clips to the side of the pan. This is my new KitchenCraft. (other brands are available). It’s predecessor was so old that the numbers were unreadable. Why analogue? You will stand there waiting for your jam to hit 105C and you don’t want to be dipping your high tech digital gadget every 10 seconds. And there’s no annoying tiny battery that is always dead just because it is and it’s not a size you have. Trust me on this one.

Let’s get on to the recipe. My instructions assume some experience but not a jam maestro level.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 kilo of strawberries

750 grams sugar

Pectin

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Jars and lids for approximately 1,000 mls of jam.

Instructions

1. 12 hours before (at least – I leave mine for 36 hours) hull your strawberries and cut large ones in half. If you’ve got giant ones, maybe 4 pieces. But the lovely thing about this jam is the chunks of strawberries so don’t go too small.
2. Get your sugar and pectin ready. I use plain sugar and add powdered pectin. Pectin is necessary for this jam. You can also use liquid pectin or jam sugar which has pectin included. My preferred pectin has me adding 8 grams per kilo combined fruit and sugar so 12 -15 grams for this recipe.
3. Stir the sugar and pectin into the fruit to coat well – avoid the temptation to eat the sugared strawberries. I use a ceramic bowl, I’m always nervous about letting fruit juice sit in a metal bowl. Cover loosely with a shower cap or plastic wrap.
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4. Find your jars, lids, jam funnel, tongs, ladle, wax circles, gloves for handling hot jars.
5. Sterilise your jars – I run mine through the dishwasher and then put them in the oven at about 130C in a baking pan. I take the pan out and leave the jars in it as I fill them – it contains any mess. I put the lids in boiling water with the jam funnel then lift them out with tongs as I go.
6. Tip the strawberry sugar mixture into a heavy pan – I use one of my le Creuset pots. Add the lemon juice and set over a low heat. Dissolve all of the sugar before you turn the heat up or you may have sugar lumps in your jam.
7. Sugar all dissolved, it’s time for the scary part – boiling the jam mixture until it reaches 105C (220F) on your thermometer. There are other methods for checking the set – here’s one from BBC Goodfood. Personally I prefer the thermometer. n
8. As the jam is boiling you can skim any scum that has risen to the top. Use a metal spoon, only do this once near the end – it reduces wastage.
9. Your jam is ready to put in the jars – I have a pair of oven mittens that I use for this step (see photo below – gift from one of my sisters in Michigan) because they are flexible enough to allow me to use the ladle and tongs and insulated enough to protect my hands and wrists. Fill your jars, top with wax circles or liquid paraffin. Put the lids on and tighten as soon as you can handle the jars.
10. Label your jars and remember to put the date on them. Your jam should last a year stored in a cool dark place. Refrigerate after opening is recommended. Jam doesn’t last long enough in this house to need that, though.

Don’t be tempted to double batch the recipe. It will be difficult to reach the correct temperature without scorching the jam. I tend to have two batches ‘working’ at the same time. One coming up to the boil and the other on a gentle simmer to dissolve the sugar.

Thank you for reading the blog – sorry its been so intermittent, it’s been a busy social and sporting summer here in England. Let me know if you try the recipes and have any feedback – I did leave out a crucial step in herby courgette bread until someone pointed out that at no point did it tell you to add the grated courgettes 😳.

This recipe makes beautiful slow cooked stew to serve over noodles or potatoes or even better filling for beef pies. I’ve taken my classic slow cooked beef stew recipe and added a Julia Child twist to it. One thing that makes Julia’s recipes taste fantastic is the separate cooking of key elements that are then combined at the end for maximum flavour. The recipe has 3 key processes: cook the beef, cook the onions and cook the mushrooms. These 3 elements are combined to make either fab stew or even better pie filling. I used my slow cooker for the beef but you could easily put it in the oven on a low heat. I do it in this in order: beef, onions, mushrooms.

Let’s get straight to the cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients – Main recipe

• 1.25-1.5 kilos of stewing beef
• flour for dusting, ground black pepper to taste
• olive oil
• 125 grams of lardons or chopped bacon
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced
• 3 tablespoons (45 ml) of brandy or cognac (I do use VSOP)
• 2 bay leaves
• a dozen whole black peppercorns
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary or 1 tsp of dried rosemary
• 250 mls concentrated beef stock
• 750 mls good red wine

Instructions – main recipe

1. Put slow cooker on high.
2. Dust the beef with flour and black pepper (use a ziplock bag or a shallow plate) and place in the slow cooker.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large flat bottomed skillet over medium to high heat. Add the lardons and brown slightly.
4. Halve the onion and mandolin into thin slices directly into the skillet. Soften until translucent.
5. Pour in the brandy, turn the heat to high and cook off the alcohol. When you can’t smell the alcohol, add the red wine and the beef stock. Again burn off the alcohol.
6. Prepare a bouquet garni with the bay leaves, peppercorns and rosemary. Add to the sauce.
7. Pour the sauce over the beef in the slow cooker. Cook on low/medium for 6 hours.
8. The sauce should be quite thick by the end of the cooking time. If not, drain off the sauce and thicken on the stove top with a beurre manie (you know that thing that shouldn’t work but does).
9. Combine the sauce, beef, onions and mushrooms (including cooking juices from both). Serve up over mashed potatoes or noodles. Or top with puff pastry and cook as pie.

Brown braised onions

Brown braised miniature onions

18-24 miniature onions

30 – 50 grams of butter, a shot of olive oil

125 mls of beef stock and red wine

A bouquet garni

1. Peel the onions.  This is annoying so use this blog, it works great. https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/how-to-peel-pearl-onions
2. Bring the butter and oil up to temperate in a skillet, add the onions and brown. 
3. You will need to roll them around in the butter and keep them moving.  They won’t be perfectly even in colour.
4. Add the liquid, salt and pepper to taste and the bouquet garni.  Simmer for 40/50 minutes.
5. Put to one side with their cooking liquid ready to combine in your beef stew.

Sauteed mushrooms

250 grams of quality small mushrooms (double this recipe if you have mushrooms lovers in your house)

30-40 grams of butter

Splash of olive oil

2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots (optional)

1. Prep the mushrooms to a nice eating size, if small just remove stems, otherwise half or quarter.
2. Heat the butter and oil.
3. Add the mushrooms and shallots if using,
4. Sauté for 2-3 minutes until browned but don’t overcook. 
5. Put to one side ready to include in your beef stew.

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