Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Another (nearly) local meal - spinach soup

It'd be local if I had managed to get anything resembling an Irish onion at the weekend but there were none to be had. I decided to forgo the New Zealand, Argentinian and Brazilian offerings and settled for shallots from France. The potatoes however, couldn't have been more local - they came out of my compost heap. There's been a very impressive looking plant growing out the sides of the pallet and since I needed potatoes for this recipe (really needed to make something to use up the leftover spinach from last week) I decided to investigate.
Here's the haul of edible ones, there were a few green ones which went back into the compost. I was a bit worried about the little white dots on them. These rubbed off easily enough but I decided to play it safe and peel them anyway. So, into a pot with shallots and some butter, sweated for 15 minutes then stock added and let simmer until they were cooked through with the spinach being added for a couple of minutes at the end and everything being blitzed with a mixer. It was delicious although I think I would try it with less potato next time as I felt it overpowered the spinach a good bit. It's a very green looking dish too!

One final picture to show you - here's my first harvest of tomatoes. Unfortunately this is what fell off the plant when the wind blew everything over - oh well, there are a few more like this still on the various plants, maybe we'll even get some sun in August and they might go red! That would be cool. In the meantime I've bought a big bag of Irish tomatoes and am going to try my hand at making ketchup. If that works out well I'm going to get my hands on some nice meat this weekend, use my new mincer to mince it and make hamburgers for the barbeque (I have a big umbrella so am prepared to barbeque in the rain at this stage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A fine harvest!
Get those fried green tomato recipes at the ready..
Great Big Veg Challenge

Melanie Rimmer said...

This autumn, plant some Japanese overwintering onions. We pulled ours a few weeks ago and they keep well so they'll last us for a while.

Omelay said...

we just made ketchup local ketchup it was very easy to burn the bottom. we finally resorted to using the crock pot. good luck with your ketchup.

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see how your ketchup turns out! I've never made homemade ketchup before although my Mum and I have made chili sauce which was really delicious. (Chili sauce more like Heinz and less like Indian chili sauce).

*melanie from www.meli-mello.com