Cooking for one (Mark Two)

LadyR_in_Canada

Rustic Mushroom Soup

What to do when you have three large white button mushrooms that have been in the fridge for two days? Still firm and white, but these mushrooms don’t have a long shelf life.

I mostly use these, sliced quite thin, once over lightly in a very hot skillet, saut!ed in butter. Most people overcook mushrooms. Even Martha does. I can’t bear to watch her doing mushrooms.

So, like the parsimonious French, never wanting to waste, I decided to make soup. From only three mushrooms? Yes. The soup will keep for a few more days in the fridge. Keep the base in a covered container and you can feed four people, using only three mushrooms.

Start by saving deglaze from a skillet you have used to brown your steak. Add a couple of cups of water to that pan and bring to a roaring boil. Turn down the heat and simmer, scraping the bits stuck to the pan. If you don’t use this right away, store in the fridge for a few days, in a covered container. It comes in handy for many uses. It’s a great way to clean your pan and you can freeze the broth to use on another day.

After you have seared the mushroom slices (no salt) and sprinkled them with a bit of dried thyme (not too much; it’s very powerful and overtakes other flavours easily), add a couple of cups of your beef deglaze stock.

Peel two cloves of garlic. Add them whole. They will dissolve. Add a half peeled medium white onion to the pot. Peel and add a medium large potato cut in quarters.

Now add salt, the same way you would if boiling potatoes. Cover the pot and simmer until the potatoes are just done. Don’t let the liquid disappear. If you reduce it too much, just add a little water and bring it back to a simmer.

You can pop the covered pot, once cooled a little, into the fridge and save it until it’s ready to eat or you can pur!e it in your machine and then store. You have a great cream of mushroom soup base.

You can use the base immediately, but it is even tastier a day later. Store it in a covered fridge container.

To complete your rustic cream of mushroom soup, scald half-and-half cream. About a cup and a half should do. Let it rise and fall three times. The cream will thicken slightly. Then add the base to the hot thickened cream, stirring with a wooden spoon to combine. Do not boil.

It’s difficult to store after adding to the cream, so save that procedure until you know you are ready to serve. If the soup is for a special treat, serve it in a rustic open-face bowl, with a small dollop of sour cream with just the tiniest drizzle of real maple syrup, just when serving. You might like a couple of grinds of fresh black pepper on top.

A nice slice of crusty toasted open-face baguette swiped with a little garlic butter or herbed butter from my butter collection will make this a memorable soup for your guests.

Otherwise, perhaps serve it in an oversized cup. It’s great to keep on hand for sipping by the fire on a cold night.

And for the Portobello Mushroom

Portobello Mushroom - a Meatless meal

(in memory of REM's poster John M, if anyone knows who he was, aka Mr. Hollywood)


IMPORTANT TIP - mis en place: make everything you need ready ahead of starting your meal preparation, in an organized manner, so all you must do is prepare and serve, and ENJOY!

Do not store Portobello mushrooms in plastic bags. They "sweat" and weep. They keep well, just in the fridge, uncovered. Make sure the mushrooms are very fresh, clean, and very firm. If you have never eaten Portobello mushrooms you are in for a wonderful treat!

Prepare grilled mushrooms. Choose a large size Portobello, perhaps three or more inches across. Ideal large might be four inches wide. Larger ones seem to grill better than small ones.

Let the grilled mushroom rest briefly, as you would a steak, before slitting.

Using a sharp serrated knife, make a cut across the centre, top side. Do not cut all the way through. Dividing the top in equal spacing, slice each top side of the centre cut. You will have perhaps five full width slits. Work quickly.

From your pantry jar of poached whole garlic cloves, slice a garlic clove paper thin. Insert a paper thin garlic slice into each slit.

Next, slice a firm, marinated in your Asbach Uralt cognac jar, black mission fig into thin slices. Gently poke a thin fig slice into the Portobello mushroom slits alongside the thin garlic slices.

Drizzle just a tiny bit of cognac jus from your marinating jar over the top of the grilled, slitted, mushroom surface.

Next, pour a generous tablespoon of my warm blue cheese dressing over the mushroom.

Serve on a few overlapped hydroponic live Boston Bibb lettuce leaves (some areas know this as butter lettuce), arranged on an oversize dinner plate. Offer a small gravy boat of my warm blue cheese salad dressing with a ladle or soup spoon on the side. Heat the gravy boat with very hot water before filling with the warm dressing. Grind a few rounds of fresh black peppercorns over the sauce and over the filled Portobello mushroom on each plate.

A side dish of my special caramelized onions offered on grilled crostini made using Italian bread slices cut on an angle, or a French baguette, rubbed with fresh garlic, makes a wonderful combo.

ALTERNATE: using a slotted spoon to relieve some of the liquid, top the crostini with my tomato salad (on the run) to make a mouth-watering tomato bruschetta.

Sprinkle with fresh, grated pecorino Romano cheese mixed with tangy fresh grated parmesan.

This meatless meal will leave you thinking you have enjoyed a fine steak dinner.

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)

moneyistooshorttomention

Farway,

Did you know you can eat nasturtiums? - every part thereof = leaves (which I do sometimes), flowers, the sorta "capers"?

Yep...I think mine are "expanding" now year on year...

PasturesNew

It's dark, it's cold ..... CBA.

It might be a crumpet night

Glad

Beetroot in the Slow Cooker

well it worked :j

clean dirt off beetroot, wrap each one in a large square of foil and put in slow cooker on high for 4 hrs, unwrap keeping on the foil, slide skin off and perfectly cooked beetroot, wrap skin in the foil and throw so no mess

caronc

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Can you gather I'm currently contemplating whether to ask an old male friend (well - ahem...he was rather more than that for some time way back) if he fancies seeing what weekends in Wales have to offer (lots of nice scenery here - if not many facilities) ....and thinking "The advantage to that is that I'm told he eats the same way I do these days.... and he likes cooking....:cool:".

Go for it - life is too short not too!;)

Farway wrote: »

First really hard frost this morning, even the grass. Farewell nasturtiums, you did me, the bumble bees, blackflies & the cabbage white butterflies proud. I look forward to seeing your "children" next Spring

Breakfast was pot of tea, with toast & jam, new jam opened, seedless bramble. Bit too sweet for my taste, but I bet it would be nice plopped in a bowl of rice pud

Nice cold but sunny day, off to Morries, needed milk due to bad planning. Also found doughnuts in my trolley:o

Lunch was yet more of the pork [not yet fed up with it], in a sandwich with some piccalilli. The P I bought from 1celand, £1 a jar, looked same as the dearer branded stuff. Wrong there, same colour is about the only similarity. In future I will but the dear stuff, especially as I only buy it once every 5 years or so

Dinner, the pork casserole thingy idea has gone CBA, I had fancied a baked spud with it, now I find the spud I had earmarked for sacrifice has a slug tunnel in it, thus dinner is reset as Actifry chips and cold pork, with ersatz piccalilli

Doughnuts may feature along the way

Beetroot. I have baked them in tin foil in the oven, were OK but I think I would just boil them if I had to cook them again, spatters & all
Luckily Lild to the rescue, pre-cooked & vac packed beetroot is on offer next Thursday. I have had them previously and find them good. I sort through to find the packs with smaller ones in, sizes vary in every pack, ideal for CFO use

Eeeh, when I were a lad, we used to come home from school and stick our feet in the gas oven to warm our frozen feet up, wellies topped up with snow, as we chewed on a lump of coke [made that last bit up]



Shame about the rice, it was only a couple of weeks back I found the same with brassicas, so no more broccoli / cabbage etc, except small amount from a packet of frozen, now a whole one would never get eaten before it turned to compost

I tend to steam beetroot if I get raw ones, find it reduces the "splatter- factor" (a bit), I can still make a right mess though regardless and don't fare much better with the vac-packed ones.

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Farway,

Did you know you can eat nasturtiums? - every part thereof = leaves (which I do sometimes), flowers, the sorta "capers"?

Yep...I think mine are "expanding" now year on year...

I use some of the seeds every year to make "capers", I love them

Re pomegranate - if I don't want the seeds to add to something I find a bib and a pair of tweezers works well less fiddly than a pin. If I want the seeds I pop half on a board, cover with and old tea towel and whack with another board. The tea towel catches most of the mess but short of buying the wee packs of seeds I don't think there is a way to avoid getting a it sticky:cool:

Despite the lurgy settling to a stuffed head and nose I'm still wanting to eat all the time so I'm currently having a low cal cupasoup in the hope it might fool my tummy for a bit. I know if I make dinner now I'll just want to munch all evening so I'm holding off making it for a bit so I don't:)

caronc

Good morning everyone,
It's still blinking freezing here but the worst of the wind/hail/sleet seems to have calmed down.:)
Usual toast & fruit for breakfast with the last of a tub of cottage cheese. i'm hoping the protein might curb the munchies I've been battling for a couple of days. Lunch will be chicken broth from the freezer with a small piece of chicken LO from last night and tonight it's spag bol made with ragu from the freezer. My aim is to use up as many of my pre-made foods as I can in the next couple of weeks and start afresh in the New Year. That said I'm planning on making goulash soup and dumplings tomorrow which will make more than one portion so some of that may end up in the freezer,:)

PasturesNew

2 crumpets for breakfast.

Top tip: These are thick/fluffy ones, 35p from 4ldi for 6. Must be a new line, or new to my branch ... anyway - they ARE thick/er than usual. So keep an eye out if you've an "A" local and like a crumpet

Probably at least 1½x the height of the regular/old style 35p packs.

[Deleted User]

Getting back to normal again but introducing higher fibre foods slowly. I had this long-gone crisps urge yesterday and ate 4 packs in one day, arghh, so what! I must have needed the fat and salt. Had turkey on white bread sandwich last night with shop bought cba prepared salad at lunchtime. This morning had LO turkey slices on two pieces of white toast, very nice too. One pack of crisps with coffee for break.

I had to go out and called into what is `hopefully` my future local shop. They have cookfood ready meals :j I am so chuffed. Their massive meals for 4 will easily feed 6 so I am sorted if I get any visiting families, cheaper than treating them to lunch out. Expensive yes but when I cba then buying a ready meal of that make will be a real joy. I got one today, lasagne made with beef and pork.Ready prepared and washed broccoli and cauli in the fridge. Thats lunch sorted and one to look forward to because I will not have to cook the main part of it. Plus three strangers stopped to talk to me, what a bonus, no doubts at all about this area now, whatever the property, as long as the plot is right

Last meal will be white rice mixed with berries, stewed apple and yogurt

wort

Have no clue what's for tea today! !
Not been to shops in over a week, and have no fruit , no potatoes, no tomatoes, lettuce, and worst of all no garlic mayo!! I can't believe I've actually run out:eek: this is staple in my house used instead of butter on sarnies and used as a dip on other stuff!
Had toast with cheese spread for breakfast, just had early lunch of cheese and onion toasties, as I have to take the cat to the vets shortly!!!!!

[Deleted User]

the supermarket was already busy and the car park overflowing, I had to go out. I am going to get the last of my solo christmas stuff in next week, several cookfood meals for one will do nicely and a few special chocs. I got the tonics in today, think I have enough gin. Nothing else needed and will be so happy to be avoiding the crowds