There were a couple of leeks hanging around in the fridge, so I made up some simple leek and potato soup for lunch. I gently sweated the chopped leeks in butter with a couple of whole cloves of garlic, then added a finely diced potato and some chicken stock and let it simmer for about 15 mins. I whizzed up about half the soup, returned it to the pan, added a splodge of cream and seasoned with salt and nutmeg. I served it with a bit of crispy streaky bacon and chives on top and some lovely toast rubbed with garlic and a drizzle of olive oil. The soup was good and the garlicky toast even better!
With a fancy for something warming, I made some goulash for dinner. I used a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe from
the Guardian, adding a bit of parsnip as well as the potato, which worked really well, absorbing all those lovely flavours. I was a bit late putting it on and rather skimped on the timing, so the meat wasn't quite as tender as it could have been, still really tasty though with a dollop of soured cream on the top mingling with the sauce to make it rich and creamy.
As we'd only had a smallish dish of goulash without lots of carbs, there was room for some rhubarb crumble with fresh vanilla custard - an excuse to use some more of the vanilla we brought back from Madagascar. As is often the case, a quickly knocked up crumble turned out to be spot-on and the pale creamy custard was so much better than shop-bought stuff.
I'd had a real fancy for some pudding. I'd hoped to get some rhubarb, but there was none to be found, so it was apple crumble instead, with custard, of course!
