Christmas Dinner Soup! - fantabulous guest post by Jen

I recently saw on my F*(&book feed that my very clever friend Jen had made an amazing invention with her enticing Christmas Dinner Soup to warm up her Northern hemisphere home - As I've been a weensy bit slack on here, I asked her if she would mind doing a guest post on here for all us luckyducks (or is that luckyturkeys?) and she said yes! Here we go.....

Christmas Dinner Soup:
(Serves 4 as a main, probably 6-8 as an entree)

This is a hearty, meaty, wintery soup inspired by all the flavours I love at Christmas. The roast potatoes, the oniony, sagey stuffing and the turkey and ham. It was a complete experiment that totally works.



The fixings:
- 1.5 - 2L vegetable or chicken stock
- turkey breast ( approx 400g), diced
- 1 gammon steak or 4-6 rashers of thick cut bacon, diced
- 1 brown onion, diced
- 1 leek, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2-3 sticks celery, chopped
- 1 small sweet potato or 1/2 a medium sweet potato, chopped
- 1 small potato, chopped
- good handful of fresh sage, roughly chopped
- good handful of parsley, roughly chopped
- quarter of an apple, finely chopped (a dollop of apple sauce will probably work too)
- pepper to taste (salt as well if needed, but I find between the stock and the bacon, it's not needed)
- a good dollop of butter (I used lurpak spreadable, a butter/olive oil combo, around a heaped tablespoon

The makings:
In a large pot over medium heat, fry turkey, bacon and onion until the onions are soft, the bacon.and turkey are sealed and the house smells fantastic.
Add the stock, seasonings and apple and bring to the boil.
Turn heat down to simmer and leave it be until approx 1/2 an hour before you want to eat. Then add the other veggies so they don't go too mushy.
Keep simmering until all the veggies are soft and your mouth is watering a lot.
Take off the heat, put some in a bowl. Nom. Burn mouth. Curse. Wait a little bit, then nom again with gusto.

Thanks gorgeous for being such a great friend even if we are internationally challenged. I really miss our many lovely dinner funs that we have had over the years! Thanks for being a food inspiration for me, and the blogosphere... I'll totally kickstart the bignomslittlenoms posting back to action soon!

Ultimate comfort food - Sweetcorn Soup

A friend of mine was feeling a bit under the weather, and I remembered we had had a conversation about how much she used to love Sweetcorn Soup as a child when she was unwell. Luckily, I also remembered that my Mumsy had recently told me about how ridiculously quick and easy it is to make it. So on my way out to visit my friend, it was onto the parental bat-phone and a quick recap of the recipe. Here's what she told me:


Mumsy's Sweetcorn Soup

Empty one 420g tin/canful of creamed corn into a small saucepan.
Using the conveniently empty tin, add a 1:1 amount of water (ie one tinful).

{Add meat* if required at this stage}

Bring to the boil. {If using meat, wait until meat is cooked/heated through}
Meanwhile beat an egg.
Once saucepan contents are cooked/boiling, turn off heat and immediately vigorously stir in the beaten egg, it should cook and flake up instantaneously.
Add salt and/or pepper to taste.

Serve piping hot to patient on couch, preferably with some rubbish daytime television to watch on the side.



*Meat variations (Mum reckons no more than 10g/a couple of tablespoonsful):

1 - Shred some cooked chicken (eg store-bought BBQ chicken breast or leftover cooked chicken)
2 - Buy a small tin of pre-cooked crab meat
3 - Marinate some pork or beef mince/dice with a splash of soy sauce, a pinch of sugar & powdered garlic (and some dry white or sherry)


[Bonus recipe:


Mumsy's "Diced Pork and Sweetcorn Rice"

Mum also says this recipe can easily be made into a delicious casserole-y type sauce to serve on rice.
Simply omit the water, brown diced or minced marinated pork or beef first in a tiny touch of oil then add the can of creamed corn and finish with egg as above.
The resulting consistency should be "kind of like bolognaise sauce".]

I remember having this a lot as a kid. Who knew two dishes for which I have such fond memories could be so easy to reproduce!?