Vicarage Recipes: Italian Bean Soup

This recipe is the favourite of Surfer, who is Godfather to the Joker. I used to make it when he came to pray with the Vicar back in the relaxed days of theological college. It’s loosely based on minestrone, but without the pasta. Pasta is a pain in soup cos it goes revoltingly soggy if you have leftovers, or want to freeze it. So this has beans instead and is easily made from things I normally have in the fridge and pantry.

Ingredients

• 4 rashers bacon, finely chopped, or small pack lardons
• Medium onion, diced
• 2 sticks celery, diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 1 leek, quartered lengthwise and then finely sliced
• Tin of beans – haricot, borlotti or canellini
• Tin of chopped tomatoes or jar/tetrapak of passata (sieved tomatoes)
• Olive (or other) oil, mixed herbs

Fry your onion in a little olive oil and then add the bacon and cook until the fat begins to crisp. Then add other veggies, fry a little and add tomatoes and tinful of water or more to dilute to a soupy consistency.

Bring it to the boil and simmer for 10-15mins until the vegetables are tender. Rinse the beans and add to the soup, along with a smattering of mixed herbs or just oregano. Heat through and serve with crusty bread. This is good for May lunches, given the temperatures this year!

Read Full Post »

Vicarage Recipes: Melrose Lentil Soup

Things in parish have been a bit crazy since the new school term began and my blogging habit has rather dried up. But today I’ve just about got my act together and thought I’d share a great recipe for autumn – my mother-in-law’s lentil soup. The Vicar comes from a small town in the Scottish borders with views over heather clad hills and a high street of family run shops. This warming soup is very inexpensive and simple to make and feels like a little slice of old fashioned rural life. Lentils are especially great for those on low GI diets and for diabetics as they are low in carbohydrates and release their energy slowly.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 or 2 leeks, sliced
• 2 or 3 carrots, sliced
• Other diced vegetables such as swede, butternut squash or potatoes, even leftover veg from Sunday lunch such as mashed potato or runner beans can also be used
• 1 cup (250ml) orange lentils
• Ham stockcube (or genuine ham stock if you’ve cooked a ham recently, but usually I haven’t, or the ham’s been cooked in coke, which isn’t so great in soup)
• Approx 1.5l boiling water

Gently fry the veg until softened, then add the lentils, stock cube and hot water. Simmer for about 20minutes until veggies and lentils are soft. Then use a stick blender to create a smooth soup. If you don’t have a blender, a potato masher will give you a slightly chunkier soup. The Vicar likes to add a lot of pepper – no need for salt because of the ham stock.

Serve with crusty brown bread if you remember to pick some up. This soup is very filling. I often make a double batch, which fills a casserole dish and keeps us going for Vicarage lunches for most of the week. Lentil soup has the strange property of thickening every time it is cooled, so you may have to add a little water on reheating or after freezing. It freezes brilliantly.

Read Full Post »

Vicar’s wife job description: Part 14: Food and other stuff

It’s been a while since I posted a Vicar’s wife job description and yesterday was particularly manic, so I thought I’d give you yet another glimpse of life in our Vicarage from my perspective.

Yesterday I cooked:

• Meringues (using up leftovers) for Thursday’s coffee morning.
• Bread for lunch for mini mission team (7 adults expected, tho’ only 5 ate in the end).
• Soup for ditto.
• Lasagne for Diamond, a school gate mum friend who’s just moved house, and her family.
• Roast chicken, mashed potatoes & parsnip and steamed cabbage for the family, including Happy.
• Chicken stock from the chicken bones (see above).

Yesterday I hoovered:

• The hall
• The family room. This took longer than you’d think, due to wood burning stove dust getting into every crevice and me not having deep hoovered for er-hum weeks now.

Yesterday I organised:

• Our 5 year college reunion, including individually emailing everyone who’d not yet got back to me.
• My pantry. I would not have chosen to do this, you understand, but a shelf was on the point of collapse, so I had to empty it and the Vicar had to do some manly stuff with a drill. Result: lots of dust followed by safe, clean and reorganised shelf.



• Piano practice by three children.
• Quiz papers to be carried out by three children.
• Myself and two other women to start a new ministry in our church – we’re thinking of calling it ‘The Brunch Bunch’.
• The vast pile of odd socks and pants to prevent morning underwear crises, of which there are far too many in the Vicarage.

Yesterday I did not:

• Hoover the stairs and upper landing. Again.
• Pick up the form from school about applying to be a parent governor.
• Nobble the teacher who’s meant to be organising the volunteers so that I can start making use of my CRB form by going into school to help out.
• Remember to give the reply about the party to the Engineer’s friend’s mother.

Today I am going to:

• Hoover the stairs and landings. I am.
• Attend a prayer meeting.
• Help with preparation of lunch club vegetables and the deep cleaning of the church hall kitchen.
• Get those governor forms and nobble that teacher. And the mother.
• Take the kids to swimming lessons.
• Cook a curry so that everyone can eat – at different times due to the Vicar having Governors and a baptism meeting.
• Make a list of all the work that needs doing to the house – we have our Quinquennial tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Read Full Post »