This time I went for a soup recipe, surely you can’t get a soup recipe wrong!

Ingredients:

50ml extra virgin olive oil

1 red onion, rougly chopped

1 large red capsicum, seeded and membranes removed, roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

1kg ripe tomatoes, peeled and rougly chopped (I cheated here and just used diced tomatoes from a can)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, roasted and ground (again I cheated and got ground cumin)

2 teaspoons caster sugar

2 teaspoons sweet paprika

2 teaspoons sea salt

6 eggs

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook for 5 minutes, or until soft and translucent. Add the capsicum and garlic and reduce the heat to low-medium. Cover and cook, stirring occassionally, for 40 minutes, or until the mixture has a jam-like consistency. (Now at this point I was really confused, if I left just onion, garlic and capsicum in the pan for 40 minutes I would have burnt the house down, so I added about a cup of water so it didn’t burn).

Stir in the tomatoes and 700ml water and simmer for 25 minutes, or until the mixture has a soupy consistency. Add the cumin, sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the paprika and the sea salt and combine well.

Crack the eggs, one at a time, into a cup, then gently slide them into the soup around the edges. Cover and simmer gently for 3 minutes for soft eggs, or 5-6 minutes for well-done eggs.

Gently divide the cooked eggs and soup among warm bowls. Sprinkle with the remaining paprika and serve with toasted bread.

In the end this turned out nicely – the soup was beautiful and rich with a hint of spice. The eggs were interesting – it made the soup quite filling so this can easily be a full meal.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tablespoons butter

1 red onion, diced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

3 tablespoons red lentils

500g carrots, peeled and finely chopped

1.5 litres vegetable stock

ground cumin, extra, or thick double cream, to serve

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, then add the onion and cumin. Cook until the onion is soft and transparent, then add the lentils and carrot. Stir for a minute before pouring in the stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a slow simmer. Continue to cook for 40 minutes, or until the carrot is soft and beginning to fall apart.

Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Transfer the mixture to a blender, a few ladlefuls at a time, and blend to a smooth puree. Return to a clean saucepan and heat over low heat when ready to serve. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve with a sprinkle of ground cumin or a dollop of cream.

I was so impressed by this soup – it was so easy to make and with only a handfull of ingredients, was incredibly flavoursome for such a simple dish. I will definetly add this to my regular repetoire now!

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 leek (white part only) finely chopped

1 carrot, cut into 1cm cubes

1 large potato, peeled, cut into 1cm cubes

2 cups (500ml) good quality chicken or vegetable stock

1 tomato, peeled, seeds removed, cut into 1cm cubes

420g can four-bean mix, drained, rinsed

50g thin French or thin green beans, ends trimmed, cut into 2cm lengths

1 large zucchini, chopped

4 tablespoons good quality basil pesto

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the leek and sweat over a low heat for 1-2 minutes. Add the carrot and potato and cook, stirring, for a further minute. Add the stock and 1 cup water and bring to the boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 5 minutes, then add the tomato, four-bean mix, French or green beans and zucchini. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for a further 2 minutes, stir in half the pesto, then ladle into serving bowls. Add a dollop of the remaining pesto and serve with slices of chargrilled bread.

This soup was a nice twist on the average veggie soup with the leek and the pesto giving it a good kick. I made my own pesto (basil, oil, garlic, pine nuts and parmesan in a blender) so everything tasted really fresh. Easy and quick recipe to make, particularly if you decide to use pre-made pesto, I think I’ll be adding this to my regular repetoire!

I have a beautiful Hungarian cookbook, Culinaria Hungary. My mum bought me this book when it became apparent that I wasn’t very good at learning the traditional Hungarian way of learning recipes: a bit of this, a bit of that, cook until it looks good!

It’s amazing what paprika will do to a dish – this recipe is so so so simple, minimal ingredients, just a dash of paprika totally makes all the flavour come through in the fish.

Ingredients

About 1.5kg fish (eg. carp, catfish, perch – you can use a mixture)

Salt

1 capsicum

1 tomato

2 medium onions

1 tablespoon sweet paprika (not the hot paprika)

1-2 hot peppers (optional)

Chopped parsley (my addition)

I have adapted this recipe a bit – it’s a very traditional recipe that uses all parts of the fish, I took the easy way out and just use fillets so made the recipe a bit easier as a result.

Scale and gut the fish, remove the bones and wash (to avoid this step I just used a boneless fillet of fish!). Cut the fish into bite sized pieces and season with salt. Chop the capsicum and tomato into small pieces, and slice the onion. Place the fish and onions in a pot and add enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, add the paprika and simmer gently for 1 hour. Add the tomato and capsicum  and cook over high heat for 20 minutes.

I added some chopped parsley to give the soup a bit more colour.

Ingredients

In a large stockpot, combine the stock, onion, ginger, lemongrass, cinnamon and peppercorns. I cheated a bit here – at my local Asian grocers I found a pack of spices for beef Pho soup, so used this instead of the lemongrass, cinnamon and peppercorns.

Bring to the boil, reduce heat and cover, simmering for 1 hour. Strain stock and keep hot.

Arrange beansprouts, basil, mint and coriander leaves on a platter with chillies and lime.

Put the noodles into a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Soak noodles for 15 minutes, or until soft. Drain.

Divide noodles among 6 large soup bowls and place raw beef slices on top. Ladle hot stock over noodles and beef and pass the platter of garnishes and sauces.

The soup ended up okaaaay, but not quite as good as I was expecting. The flavours in the spice pack were really strong and quite overwhelming so I probably didn’t need to boil for a whole hour. I’ll probably give it another go with a different recipe, but in the meantime I’ll be heading out to Box Hill or Richmond for my Pho fix!

Ingredients

1 tablespoon mixed seeds (pumpkin, poopy, sunflower)

a small handfull cashew nuts

2 skinless chicken breasts

2 teaspoon 5 spice

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

olive oil

thumb sized piece of fresh ginger

1 fresh red chilli

1 chicken stock cube

100g rice noodles

a handful of snow peas

6 thin asparagus spears

6 baby corn

soy sauce

juice of 1 lime

small handful of spinach leaves

Boil the kettle. Put a medium fry pan or wok on high heat and add the seeds and cashew nuts to it straight away, while it’s heating up. Put a large saucepan on high heat. Fill the saucepan with a litre of boiling water from the kettle and put a lid on it. Toss the seeds and nuts around until heated through nicely – this will take a couple of minutes. While this is happening, slice your chicken breasts lengthways into 3 pieces and put them into a bowl. Sprinkle the chicken with the five spice and a good pinch of salt and pepper and stir. When the seeds and nuts are done, transfer them to a plate. Put the empty pan back on a high heat. Add a little olive oil to your hot pan with your slices of chicken and cook for 5 minutes, until golden, tossing and turning every now and again.

While the chicken’s cooking, peel and finely slice your ginger and slice your chilli. Crumble the stock cube into the pan of boiling water. Add half the chilli, all the ginger, your noodles, snow peas, asparagus and corn, with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Bring to the boil and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring. Halve the lime and squeeze in the juice. By the time the noodles and veg are done, the chicken will be cooked. Take a piece of chicken out and slice it lengthways to check if it’s cooked all the way through – when done, remove all the chicken from the pan and slice each piece in half to expose the juicy chicken inside (don’t be tempted to overcook it). To serve, divide the spinach leaves between your bowls and pour over the broth, noodles and vegetables. Divide the chicken pieces over and scatter with the toasted seeds, cashews and remaining chilli.