HEARTY WINTER SOUP AND BROWN BREAD

As the garden offers up her final fruits

The days are that beautiful autumnal crisp and heavy with the scent of damp leaves

Fire is now a ritual every evening as opposed to an occasional occurance

The seasons are vivid in the Irish Countryside

 and so much of the season is about what we eat 

 

and right now hearty soups with warm brown bread feel just about right

The thing about soup is, to me it feels a little contradictorary to offer a recipe 

as really soup, in this house, is usually about what is available or waiting to be used up 

So the following "recipe" is a guide and you should substitute the contents of your own larder

HEARTY WINTER SOUP

2 onions chopped 

A 1" piece of fresh ginger

2 large carrots

2 sticks celery

2 cups red lentils

1 tsp salt

1 stock cube 

METHOD

put onion in pan and sprinkle with salt, sautee until soft, 

add chopped carrots, celery and finely chopped ginger

sautee for 5 mins

add 2 cups of lentils 

add 3 pints of cold water and stock cube

simmer for 45 mins until everything is soft 

Blend until smooth

serve as is or with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkled with chive flowers 

(sweet potato, butternut squash and parsnip would all be welcome additions)

This was one of those occassions where I didn't have everything the recipe called for,

made some substitutes and the results were better than the original

BROWN BREAD

225g coarse wholemeal flour

100g whole spelt flour*

150g plain flour

1 tspn salt

1 tspn bread soda

25g butter

1 tbspn dark brown sugar

300 ml milk

100ml plain yoghurt

1 egg

seeds (optional)

*if you do not have spelt flour simply divide the 100g between the other 2 making it 

275g wholemeal and 200g plain

METHOD

Pre heat oven to 200c

line a loaf pan with a sheet of grease proof paper

Place flours, salt, bread soda into bowl

add cold butter 

rub in 

sprinkle in brown sugar

put the egg, milk and yoghurt in a jug and combine

add the wet to the dry mix and combine 

add a handful of seeds if desired, pumpkin, sunflower, poppy all work well

pour mixture into loaf pan

Bake for 40-45 mins 

allow to cool completely before cutting