Pumpkin & Leek Soup

Another recipe from the August issue of Recipes+,paraphrased, and slightly adapted to the slow cooker.

Pumpkin & Leek Soup
1.2kg pumpkin, seeds removed, cut into small chunks
4 cloves garlic
cooking spray
20g butter
1 large leek, sliced thinly
1L chicken stock
homemade cheese pullaparts, to serve

Preheat oven to 220°C. Place pumpkin and unpeeled garlic on a large baking tray. Spray lightly with oil spray and bake for 20 minutes until golden and tender. This can be done the day before and kept in the fridge overnight in a covered container.

Melt butter over moderate heat and gently cook leeks until soft. Throw into the slow cooker, along with the stock and pumpkin. Squeeze the garlic out of it's skin and add to the rest of the ingredients. Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours.
Process with a hand held stick mixer until smooth. Serve with home baked bread goods hot from the oven so the butter is all melty.

Groentesoep met balletjes

This is a Dutch soup I remember fondly from when I was growing up. It's a great way to stretch a tiny amount of mince, and get kids to eat their vegies. Master Six had three helpings, and Miss Four and I both had two. Plus, there are three individual serves in freezer bags for my lunches. All with mince that was less than half of what I normally use for one meal.

from The Art of Dutch Cooking - Countess van Limburg Stirum

I used 2 cups mixed frozen vegetables (carrots, corn, peas) along with one diced onion and a diced stick of celery. I also added two handfuls of chopped frozen celery leaves (which I save whenever I buy a bunch).

Vegetable soup boiling

You can see above that I used two packs of two minute noodles, along with the flavour satchels, instead of rice, because DP doesn't eat rice.

Tiny raw meatballs

Almost done

Too easy. Dinner took around half an hour, including meatball rolling time. I started the vegetables boiling, then mixed and rolled the meat, dropping each ball straight into the soup as it was rolled. Master Two had to have his strained, so he could eat the noodles and meat with a fork, and drink the soup from a mug, but he went back for seconds too, so it didn't put him off any!

This was an entry for
The Cookbook Challenge: Week 34 - Soups.

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Soup

Inspired by the slow cooker vegetable soup made at kinder this week, and buoyed by the success of feeding my three little terrors soup in mugs outside on the deck next to our Winter Solstice bonfire, I thought I'd make some pumpkin soup to use up some pumpkin my mother had given me from her garden. She has a tendency to pick them too early, as she doesn't like them growing too big, so a recipe that had other flavours to boost the pumpkin in case that was the case this time was just what I was after.

I based my soup on this recipe at Taste.com.au, with a few tweaks as I went. Firstly, the day before I roasted the pumpkin, in it's skin. This was to add depth of flavour, and also to make it easier to remove the skin.

I also needed 3 cups of stock, because of the size of my cooker, the vegies weren't quite covered with 2 1/2.

The kids didn't like the soup, because it "burned their tongues" - wimps. I only used 1 teaspoon of curry powder, because I knew it would get strengthened by the long cook time, but I should have only used a 1/2. I thought it was nice at least.

Kids Cooking Thursday: Slow Cooker Vegetable Soup

Bit of a special post today, we took KCT on the road. Miss Four's kinder teacher asked me to come in and help the kids make Vegetable Soup. The kinder has these really neat little kid safe knives, that look like little saws, and the children use them to help chop up their fruit every Wednesday. Miss Four was allowed to pick one friend to help her, and then as we went on, we picked up another two little girls to peel and chop, so I ended up with four industrious little busy bees chopping away for me. I mostly only took photos of Miss Four, for privacy reasons, but I couldn't resist a group shot near the end, in which I have smudged and blurred faces. I'd love to get a couple of those knives for cooking at home - it really suprised me how capable Miss Four was with it, and I think she could start helping me cook dinner more often, if I only had a safe knife she could use.

Vegetable Soup
2 sticks celery
2 carrots
2 potatoes
3 small zucchinis
1 sweet potato
1 turnip
1 red capsicum (or any vegetables you like really)

Peel and dice vegetables (or get a bunch of four year olds to do it for you). Place in a slow cooker, and cover with water. Cook for 8 hours on LOW (or overnight - it won't hurt it. We cooked ours for almost 24.) or 4 hours on HIGH.
Use a stick blender to make it smooth like we did, or you can leave it chunky.

Celery requires intense concentration


That turnip was really tough work!


The team hard at work


Two tubs full, ready to cook


Ready for a nice slow overnight cook

If you'd like to join in with Kids Cooking Thursday please leave a permalink to your own Kids Cooking Thursday post, as per the rules.

Crockpot chicken stock

Last night, straight after dinner, I took the carcass from yesterday's roast chicken, and put it back in the slow cooker. I hadn't emptied the chicken juices out yet, and to that I added 6 cups of water. I also threw in a packet of frozen soup vegetables. Don't ask me what was in that, as my mother made them up and put them in my freezer. I saw grated carrot, peas, and some other green stuff. I'm thinking flat leaf parsley maybe? I let the lot simmer on LOW for 13 hours. When it had cooled, I skimmed off the fat, and poured it into freezers bags, measuring out 1 cup at a time. Then I froze them lying flat on a baking tray.

This is 7 cups... I almost got 8.

Now I have 7 cups worth of stock tucked away in my freezer for crockpot meals, risotto, or soups, and I won't have to buy chicken stock for a while at least.

Dutch Pea Soup with Stuffed Crust Rolls.

Soup and Cheesy Rolls

One of the first soup recipes I wanted to try when I started the soups on Fridays for Winter was my mother's pea and ham soup. Not that we referred to the ham, to us it was just 'pea soup' and very tasty. I've gone as far as to put this on my menu plan several times, but for one reason or another, I hadn't gotten around to making it until today. Here is the recipe as my mother emailed it to me.

Dutch Pea Soup
1 Smoked Hock
500g green split peas
2 large leeks or 500g onions = 6 onions
3-4 celery sticks
4 beef cubes
3-4 litres of water
2 potatoes opt.

Place hock in water and bring to the boil and let simmer for about 2 hours or until the meat falls of the bone. (I usually do it in the evening.) When the meat is cooked take it out of the water turn the heat off and place your split peas in the water and leave over night.
The next day bring the peas to the boil and then place all the finely cut vegetables in it with the beef cubes too. Let it simmer for about 1-1 1/2 hours until the vegetables and the peas are well cooked. I personally then bamix it all very fine. Only then do I put the finely cut pieces of meat in it that I cut off the bone etc.

Mum was here today and she looked after the kids while I made this - it was nice to cook for a change without having to answer endless questions about ingredients, methods and the nature of the universe from Master Four.

I'm too cute for soup - can I have dessert now?


Hey, I can be cute too, can I skip as well?

I forgot the beef cubes, but didn't really notice the difference in taste. The potatoes really aren't optional, this soup needs to be thick, like a winter scarf.

Piping hot rolls - if you look closely you can see where the cheese leaked

With the soup, I made the usual bread rolls, but stuffed the inside with some grated cheese just for something different. The kids both ate all of their two rolls each, which was a first, so I guess that's a keeper.

Chocolate Mess and ice cream

I promised you all a special slow cooker dessert tonight, and here it is. I found this in a slow cooker recipe thread on a parenting forum I used to frequent. It sounded so interesting I had to try it.

Chocolate Mess - Posted by Sarah_H
1 pkg chocolate cake mix
1 220g container sour cream
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup cooking oil
4 eggs
1 cup water

Spray crock pot with non-stick cooking spray.
Mix cake mix, sour cream, pudding mix, chocolate chips, oil, eggs and water in bowl by hand. Pour into crock pot.
Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours (or high 3-4 hours).
Serve hot or warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

Freshly cooked mess

Easy Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup

Mmm... soup!

This was incredibly simple to make, but tasted so authentic, even though I skipped out the ginger.
This was a Taste.com.au recipe, and took a total of about ten minutes to cook! There was enough leftover for me to freeze so all of us could have another bowl some other night. I"m leaning towards the 8th, in honour of the games - tacky huh?

Miss Two's appropriately themed bowl

Chunky Potato, Corn & Bacon Soup

Chunky Potato, Corn & Bacon Soup

I didn't change anything from the recipe, except I didn't add the parsley at the end.
DP said he liked it, when questioned, and Miss Two ate most of hers (left quite a few piece of potato in the bowl though). Master Four had to be bribed with a combination of the mention of dessert, and a counting of mouthfuls to earn said dessert to get him to eat his, but it didn't seem like he didn't like it, just that he was feeling stubborn and he knows it pushes my buttons if he doesn't eat any dinner. Mostly I think it was he just wanted to leave the table to go back to the Diego game I rented from the video shop for him (DP's brother just gave us his old PS2). Needless to say, there was no more playing of games after dinner was served, even after he finished his dessert - by then it was past bed time. My oven is evil and wouldn't stay lit, severely lengthening the amount of time it took to cook the rolls.

Eventually they were cooked...

Dessert is coming up in a seperate post, for means of simplicity.

Ham Hock and Lentil Soup (with Homemade rolls, natch)

Time again for another Cooks Club Challenge. This one fit in well with our winter themed Soup Fridays:

Karen's Ham Hock and Lentil Soup
2 tb olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 stalks celery finely chopped
2 Pontiac potatoes cubed
2 carrots cut into small cubes
1 cup brown lentils
1 ham hock
2.5 lt chicken stock or water
1 lge handful of baby spinach
Juice of a lemon
Minted Yoghurt
1 cup greek style yoghurt
½ bunch fresh mint finely chopped
Combine yoghurt and mint and refrigerate.

Heat oil in a large, heavy based pan. Add onion and celery and cook until tender. Add the potatoes, carrot, lentils, ham hock, and stock and bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 - 1½ hrs. Remove pan from the heat and take out the hock. Cool and trim meat from the bone, discarding any skin and fat. Bring soup back to the boil and add meat, spinach and lemon juice. Serve immediately with a dollop of minted yogurt and a wedge of warm herb damper.

I used water, because I had no stock, and I skipped the baby spinach and lemon for the same reason. Also I didn't bother with the yogurt because I wasn't sure the family would like it. Seems like a lot of effort, for something that tasted much the same as my mother's pea and ham soup, which doesn't have as many steps to it, but that could be because of all the things I left out too. At any rate, both kids finished their whole bowlful, even Master Four, who fusses over eating a whole bowl of soup, and DP and the housemate both said it was nice. DP only had one bowl, not two like he has with my cauliflower soup, but he is feeling a little under the weather, so that could be it.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Recipe here

I used a small leek instead of an onion, and a full two litres of stock, and 500ml of water as well. I also think I used about three times as much pasta as requested, but hey, the more noodles the better right? I also didn't have any parsley, and that made a big difference. I've never used this recipe before, but I could tell it would have been better with the parsley.

Personally, I thought it was a bit bland, though that could have been from the changes I made, but Master Four had two bowls full, and said it was as good as the stuff he got in the hospital (which was suprisingly good soup). I forgot to take a photo, but I might get one when our housemate comes home and has dinner, if he has dinner here.

Still looking for more soup recipes and suggestions. Anyone got one they want to share?

Cauliflower soup and homemade rolls

Cauliflower Soup
50g butter
1 onion
pinch of caraway seeds
50g plain flour
3 litres water.
3 beef cubes
1/2 cauliflower
1 potato

Melt butter, fry onion and seeds. Add flour, add water slowly. Crumble in beef cubes. Add vegies and mash all together. Cook until vegies are cooked and soup is thick.

At least, that's how my sister sent it to me in an email years ago. I usually don't try to mash the vegies before cooking them. I just boil the lot till the vegies are mushy, then use a stick blender in the pot (take the pot off the heat source first!), or if I'm feeling pedantic, I'll pour it in a blender. A blender needs to do a few batches, because this makes quite a bit of soup, and you have to be careful with hot liquids and blenders.

And to go with, I made rolls for the second time ever! Last year, for winter solstice, I made bread rolls from scratch, following the recipe on the back of the yeast box. They were so-so... didn't rise quite enough in our cold kitchen in the middle of winter.
Today, I just used my usual bread recipe, but used the dough setting on my bread maker, instead of bread. Since it was so hot, I had no problem getting them to rise. And they came out of the oven right before dinner... mmm, melty butter goodness!