Vegetable Soup [Cawl]

Cawl is pretty much the welsh word for soup; but soup with vegetables, and usually either lamb or beef. When I was growing up it was the only way I'd eat vegetables, and in fact became one of my favourite meals. The first time I moved away, it was important that my mum taught my the recipe. At the age of 18, for some reason making vegetable soup was something that needed writing down but now it's like second nature.

The ingredients for my "veggie" soup are;
- some potatoes
- some carrots
- some leek
- some vegetable stock
- salt
- pepper

(I would also most definitely add some suede in there, but this vegetable doesn't seem to exist in Portugal)

I've left out quantities because it really depends how much you want to make. The ratio of carrots to potatoes also depends on your fondness for either.

Useless together, but united they are unstoppable!

Method:

1. Dice up your potatoes.

2. Slice up your carrots.

3. Slice up your leek.

4. Make your vegetable stock (I used a stock cube...easy!)
5. Put all your ingredients in a pan, with plenty of water.

6. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Put on a low boil for around 3-4 hours (I actually left mine for about half the day on a simmer) until the vegetables are nice and soft.

A mélange of healthy colour.

8. Serve with bread.

I used "pao de agua" - nice thick crusty bread is a brilliant friend o' soup! 

TIP: This is the gift that keeps giving. The longer you leave it, the better it is. Heated up the next day, this is a brilliant dish to prepare and serve throughout the week. It's also a great way to go if you're on a budget. 

Mackerel Experiment #1

This is my first "recipe" and my first stab at something new in 2014.

After hearing about my fish challenge, a colleague lent me Gordon Ramsay's "Passion for Seafood" which he had been given as a gift but found unnecessarily complex, and it is! Wanting to try something new this weekend, I delved in to the tome and found a lot of very fancy dishes that were quite frankly a little off-putting. Then I found a simple dish with mackerel and seasoned potato slices. The dish sounds simple enough, and after cross-referencing with a few recipes on the internet that were a little less ambitious than Ramsay's, I set off.

Firstly, the ingredients I used are as follows;
- 3 mackerels (make sure the fishmonger guts the fish, etc.)
- 3 slices of lemon
- 2 or 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
- 300g potatoes (diced)
- 50g butter (cut in cubes)
- thyme (fresh or dried herb)
- paprika
- black pepper
- salt
- olive oil

Method:

Stage 1 - Prepare the Potatoes
I did this first because before putting my potatoes in the oven, I like to pre-boil them, just to make sure they're extra soft.

 1. First, peel the potatoes, and then cut them in to squares.

Choppity, chop those potatoes!

2. Boil them for between 10-20 minutes with some salt. When you can just about to put a fork in to them, they're ready. You want to be careful not to get them too soft.
3. Then, leave them to cool for around 20 minutes.
4. Now, put them in an oven dish and it's time to add the herbs.

Herbalicious!

5. When the potatoes are cool enough, add your paprika, thyme, salt, and pepper, and be liberal with your sprinklings. The more you add, the better your flavour (but don't go too crazy!) Cut your butter up in to cubes, and mix those in to, ensuring they're equally distributed amongst the potatoes.

This was the only dish I had, so it looks like there aren't as many potatoes there.

6. Now your potatoes are ready to go in the oven. There's no need to cover with foil, you want the potatoes to crisp up a little bit. When you're ready, stick the oven on 180 and pop them in. They should take about 30 mins but the longer you leave them, the better. Just make sure they don't burn.

Stage 2 - The Mackerel

This really is the easy part. It takes about 5 minutes to prepare and 10-15 to cook.

1. First, get your mackerels out of the fridge. It's important that the fish have been gutted, and the non-edible scales removed. Just get your local fishmonger to "sort it out." If in Portugal, then apparently you want them to "arranjar" it.

2. Slice your lemon in to three decently sized slices. You want the lemon juice in them to soak in to the meat of the fish.

Happily awaiting their lemony destiny.

3. Insert the lemon slices in to the middle of each mackerel. This should be easy enough to do if your fishmonger has sorted their less desirable insides for you.

4.Next you need to make some incisions in to the side of the flesh. I made two on each side of mine, but depending on the size of your mackerel you can do more, or fewer.

I've made my incisions, next I'll put my herbs inside.

5. Chop up your rosemary and insert it in to the incisions you've made in the flesh. Try and stuff in as much as possible. Mine were overflowing with herbs and the rest were easy enough to spread over the rest of the fish when it came out.

6. You need to time this with your potatoes, but when you think they have about 10 minutes left, your fish can go under the grill.

7. It's very important that you brush your fish with olive oil so that it doesn't stick to the grill - like mine did. I had fish eye all over the place! Not very appealing.

Looking delicious and excited to be grilled!

8. Grill them under a heat of about 190-200 C and make sure you turn them over so each side is equally cooked. They will probably need to be in the grill for around 10-15 minutes.

Stage 3 - Any Extras?

This is where you might want to add a bit of salad, or some more veg. I opted for some steamed carrots.

...and voila!

Absolutely delicious!

This really was easy to make. I spent a lot of time on the potatoes, and they were, quite frankly, awesome. At first, I wondered if the lemon made any difference. The difference is subtle, but it's there. The meat on the underside, closest to the lemon, tasted a great deal nicer than the rest, which was still amazing.

You may need a bowl, or separate plate for your fish bones and fish bits.