Winter Survival Soup

Since October last year when we set off on our bike trip, it seems like I could never get warm. Until the very end of our trip, we were always running away from cold weather. And then, when confronted with lovely warm weather, we realised: we preferred cycling in cold weather!

Also, it seems I am destined to change home locations in the middle of winter. In 2007, we left balmy Brisbane to land in icy, windy, mid-winter England. This year, we returned to a lovely wintry Brisbane (temperatures usually higher and the weather more predictably pleasant than English summers), swung down to crisp cold Tasmania (where I thought it would be fun to get an almighty cold that laid me up in bed for three days) and finally reached Melbourne, our home for the foreseeable future, in the midst of its usual (so I’m told) drizzly, grey winter.

We ate a lot of soup to keep warm. Here’s my recipe – it’s very flexible. Almost everything can be substituted with something else. The main thing you do need are potatoes (at least 1, even if you substitute other root vegetables because potatoes just make the consistency *right*), onion or garlic (or both), stock (cubes, powder, home-made – although if you make your own stock, you definitely don’t need me telling you how to make soup!) and water.

Ingredients
- onion, 1 diced
- garlic, at least 2 cloves smashed, unless someone is feeling poorly in which case, MORE!
- potatoes, 2 medium-sized, diced
- other root vegetables (carrots, turnips, swede, parsnips etc), roughly same amount as potatoes, diced. I tend to chop my veges different sizes depending on how long they take to cook. You want all the veg cooked nice and soft, so carrot and swede get cut small; parsnip and turnips about twice as large as carrot.
- celery if it’s hanging around, chopped roughly
- stock: I tend to use stock cubes or powder and tend to use half of what is recommended for the quantity of water that I add (about 2 teaspoons, usually, but it depends on the stock powder. I have for a long time been a fan of ‘Vegeta’, in case you’re wondering.)
- ground black pepper
- herbs, a nice handful if fresh; a tablespoon or thereabouts if dried; whatever you have on hand: parsley, oregano and thyme are all great (as is a mix of them, of course)
- water, enough to cover the veg, usually a little bit more than a litre

Equipment
- saucepan
- handheld blender or failing that, a potato masher. I suppose you can use a normal blender, too, but, oh, the clean up involved!

Procedure

1. Saute onion in a teeny amount of oil. Add some garlic, too. Garlic is always good (repeat after me …)
2. If using celery, add shortly after garlic and keep on saute-ing
3. When the onion is translucent or soft-looking, add potato.
4. Add stock cube or powder and stir into potato, onion, garlic mixture.
5. Add other vegetables and stir to coat with stock powder.
6. Add pepper and herbs now. If using fresh herbs, reserve some for adding at the end.
7. Add enough water to cover all the veg, with maybe about an extra centimetre or two. If it’s too thick later, you can always dilute with more water. I like to have a boiled kettle ready.
8. Bring the whole lot to a boil.
9. Cover with a lid, turn the heat down so that the soup bubbles nicely, but is not boiling vigorously. For me, this is about a medium heat.
10. After about 15 minutes or so, all veg should be nice and soft. If not, let it boil on.
11. Turn off the heat and let it sit for about 5 minutes to cool a little.
12. Mush with the handheld blender, adding more water if it’s too thick. You’ve had soup, right? So, you know what consistency to make it. Spoon some up and let it fall. It should slide off, not leap off. If it just coagulates on the spoon, it’s probably too thick. But hey, maybe you like your soup like that.
13. If you don’t have a handheld blender or a counter-top blender, you can mash it with a potato masher. Make sure that you cook the veg even softer – about 25 minutes. You won’t get a nice smooth consistency, but it should be fine. I’ve even made soup and mashed with a fork when I had no equipment. Dearie me.
14. Sprinkle with some fresh herbs (parsley is best here), maybe a swirl of creme fraiche or yoghurt if you’re feeling all la-dee-da about your soup and a turn of the pepper grinder.
15. Enjoy that warm goodness sliding down your throat and warming up your belly.
16. Leftovers freeze brilliantly. I don’t think I need to tell you how to freeze soup. Or do I?

Of course, we in the southern hemisphere won’t need winter warmer soups for much longer … Hurrah! Spring is coming!

Anzac Biccies

Anzac biscuits are wonderfully easy, seemingly healthy biscuits (cookies to you Statesideans).  I never grew up eating them but I learned how to make them during Home Economics in grade 8 (first year of high school), where I impressed the teacher with my naff sewing skills (home sweat shop; I churned out those pillowcases while my classmates struggled to thread the machine) and inability to discern the difference between parsley and coriander (she asked us to bring in parsley and when I asked what it was, she showed me a picture.  I was so happy: we had plenty growing in the backyard.  My shepherd’s pie ended up tasting a bit funny.  First foray into fusion cooking!)  The Home Ec teacher was also flabbergasted that I had no idea what oats were but after the coriander confusion, she said she would bring some in for me.  I’m sure she dreaded it when I stuck my hand up to say, “Miss? What’s thyme?” or “Miss? What’s brown sugar?”

I love these biscuits.  They might keep for a long time (so the story goes – they are so named because women in Australia and New Zealand made them for men (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) fighting on far away shores during The Wars) but they barely lasted a morning when I took them into work recently.  Best compliment on a biscuit?  The girl who never eats anything sweet or remotely bad, eating two and emailing me to ask for the recipe.

WIN!

This pic is really old. January 2009! I made some recently and took some pictures but I prefer this old picture.

You will need:-

• rolled oats (1 cup)
• plain flour (1 cup)
• desiccated coconut (1 cup)
• sugar (1/2 cup)
• butter (125 grams)
• golden syrup (2 tablespoons) *
• boiling water (2 tablespoons)
• bi-carbonate soda (1 teaspoon)

• a big mixing bowl
• a saucepan
• baking trays
• greaseproof paper

How to make them:-

1. At some stage during this procedure, preheat your oven to 160 degrees celsius. My oven is electric and warms up really quickly, so I turn it on when I am rolling the biscuit patties (Step 8).  You’ll also want to line your baking trays with greaseproof paper preferably before you get your hands all dirty rolling the patties, but if you forget, it’s useful to have a Partner on hand whom you can plaintively call for help.
2. Dump all the dry ingredients (oats, sugar, flour, coconut) into the large mixing bowl together.  Leave them alone.
3. Melt butter in a saucepan.
4. Boil some water in a kettle.
5. When the butter (125 grams) is all melted, add golden syrup (2 tablespoons) and freshly boiled water (1 tablespoon).
6. Add bi-carbonate of soda (1 teaspoon).  Supposedly, this will make your melted butter and golden syrup mixture foam up.  I have never had this experience, which is terribly sad for me.  Here’s hoping yours foams up.  I have no idea what purpose this serves but nor I have had the guts (yet) to skip this part.
7. Add the (non) foaming melted butter / golden syrup mixture to the dry ingredients and mix it all up.  Don’t worry about making sure it’s mixed in really well, this will happen at the next step.
8. About here might be where you turn your oven on to pre-heat and certainly where you want to line your baking trays.
9. Form roughly a tablespoon full of dough into little patties, about 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter and 1 cm (1/4 of an inch) in height.
10. Place these on your greaseproof paper lined baking tray, leaving about 5cm between each.
11. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
12. Let cool on the baking tray for a few minutes; this is very important because if you try to move them straight to a cooling rack, they will fall apart and you will not have Anzac biscuits.  Instead, you will have really tasty oaty crumbs.  Not that that has ever happened to me.
13. After about 10 minutes of cooling, you will have yummy soft, chewy Anzac biscuits.  You can also call them cookies if that’s your bent.
14. After a day of cooling, you will have harder, crunchier Anzac biscuits.
15. You can send these far and wide.  Or just eat them before they even cool down.

A word on Golden Syrup:

I hear this is difficult, if nigh impossible, to obtain in the US of A.  I reckon you’ll be fine substituting with honey, possibly even with maple syrup, maybe with molasses (though I’m not sure on the last because I don’t really know what molasses is but where it’s in a recipe, I’ve substituted with golden syrup without disastrous results).  Your biscuits (cookies) won’t taste like mine, but I think they’ll still be pretty damn tasty and reasonably close to the original.  Well, you’ll be in the right ballpark anyway.  And that’s all that counts (per me).

Update on Golden Syrup (Thank you wonderful friends!)

• Treacle is probably a better replacement (thanks, Kirsty!)
• Molasses is probably too dark and too flavoursome to be a substitute.  A blend of plain corn syrup and molasses might be better. (thanks, Nikkipolani and Wandering Chopsticks!)  NB – none of us have tried this.  If you do, I’d be totally chuffed if you report back …

Banh Tet / Banh Chung

This is not a recipe post.  I am such a disappointment to the poor souls who search for recipes of Viet food.  I talk about (and think about) Viet food a lot, but I never really learned to cook it.  I certainly have not learned to cook from my mother, who always starts whatever I want to learn about well before I arrive at her house (and this is now complicated by the fact that I am many, many miles from her).

I am, however,  (if I say so myself) a pretty good cook and good at guessing flavours and ingredients and muddling along.  And I’m reasonably willing to be experimental.  So, I’ve taught myself some recipes merely from eating a lot.  Now that’s a fantastic way to learn.

My go-to for Viet food recipes is teh internets, but especially Wandering Chopsticks.  Often, I read information on her blog that shines a light on things that were part of my history but that I never really thought about or could explain to anyone if they asked.  I rarely knew why.  Tet has just been and gone and I’m catching up around the blogosphere, and in doing so, I re-read Wandering Chopstick’s post, 3 years past, of her family’s banh tet traditions.

Now, I’m quite sure I call these banh chung and that my family’s have always been cylindrical.  But nikkipolani’s post about her own marvellous mother’s marathon cooking session, despite being unwell, made me pause and wonder what I called them.  And I did not know for sure, only that I was quite sure we did not call them banh tet.

I’ve never been privy to my family’s banh tet/banh chung making sessions.  I remember one pre-tet when I was in high school: I came home from school, doing as I always do – slipped off my shoes at the door and let them fall where they will, tossed my school bag in a heavy heap inside my bedroom and call out to my parents – whereever the were in the house or garden – “Um, Ba! I’ve just got home from school!”  The usual reply is, “Child! Is that you?” to which no reply is necessary.  The next phase of my after school ritual was to go into the bathroom and wash my feet, then wander into the kitchen scavenging for pre-dinner snacks.  I exercised a lot during high school and I ate ridiculous amounts of food all the time.  This day, however, when I walked from my bedroom out to the patio area where my parents usually were, I found my grandmother, mother, an aunt and my second-eldest sister perched on little short-legged stools.  My mother was mixing rice in a bowl; my grandmother was cleaning banana leaves, my aunt and sister were assembling little green packages.  Like the well-behaved child that I rarely was, I greeted my grandmother and aunt properly and dodged around everyone to go up the stairs and into the bathroom.  As I ascended the stairs, I saw Ba out in the backyard making up an enormous fire in our rarely used outdoor barbecue.  “Ba!” I called out to him, “What are you doing?” He waved at me but did not answer.  My sister, however, said, “For banh chung, you idiot.”  This, of course, I did not dignify with a response and continued on my merry way to clean feet and satiate tummy.

That is my only memory of when my family made banh tet/chung.  It perplexed me then, and it perplexes me still.  My mind’s eye has a clear picture of my second-eldest sister adeptly assembling banh tet/chung.  I came back after satiating my teenage hunger and sat on the steps watching (and not offering to help).  I later wandered over to my father to see if I was allowed to poke and prod at the fire (answer: no).

Of all my sisters, she was the one least likely to do any chores, whether cooking or cleaning .  Not that she was lazy, just that the chores never fell to her.  The eldest was, with my mother, the family cook.  The third-eldest was the one who did major cleans (and who could also be trusted to burn soup).  My fourth eldest sister was the everyday cleaner (and unlikely to cook) and I was in charge of the random-(and-if-you-can-be-bothered-to-pin-her-down-and-persuade- her-to-do-them)-chores.  But my second-eldest sister was a mystery.  I rarely saw her cook; though she (as did we all) chipped in to clean most of the time.   And yet, she was incredibly skilled at making banh tet/chung and I learned, regularly called upon by my many aunts to help them make theirs.  No wonder I did not see her very often.

Shortly after this tet, my father fell very ill for the first time, so major cooking events rarely happened at our house.  They were always held somewhere else, at an aunt’s or an uncle’s place, and I was only called in if soup (chicken & sweet corn and crab & asparagus being my specialties) or cha gio (spring rolls – I was / maybe still am a very fast spring-roller) were on the menu.

Banh tet/chung was not a favourite food of mine.  I ate them because I was supposed to and because it was obvious someone (lots of someones) in the family had slaved over the making of them.  My mother liked to eat hers sliced and fried, and then dipped in sugar.  I don’t think Ba was a fan.  By the end of tet, I was heartily sick of them.  My family – despite our large numbers – rarely got through more than a couple.  My parents now don’t even get through one cylinder.  And I have never had a cylinder of banh tet/chung to call my own.