Curried Lentil Soup from Oh-Grow-A-Pear

Today was dark and rainy – a perfect day to stay inside, read a book, have a big mug of tea, and make some soup!

The idea for this soup comes from the Souper Saturday category of Oh-Grow-a-Pear, a lovely new food blog I started reading recently. I make lentil soup pretty often but I had fun playing around with the spices and toppings for this one. I love how a simple pot of lentils can become so flavourful, especially without the addition of pre-made stock cubes – just spices and a little salt! I love the chickpeas & apricots in the topping, though next time I may just add them all to the pot near the end so they soften a bit more. All in all, this soup was very warm and comforting – just what I wanted today.

Now, I think I’ll go back to that book and tea I mentioned. Happy MoFoing!

Chocolate raspberry tartlets and market produce

When I came home from the market with two boxes of raspberries that needed to be used quickly (more on that below), I immediately thought of this amazing-looking white chocolate raspberry tart I’d seen on Celine’s blog. Unfortunately I didn’t have the white chocolate or silken tofu required for the filling, so I went with a slightly different idea and made mini dark chocolate tarts instead. I halved Celine’s crust recipe, replaced the whole wheat flour with plain flour as that was all I had left, added a little cocoa powder for extra chocolate flavour, and baked it in a muffin tin (about 8 minutes for 6 mini crusts). The filling is a recipe from Vegan Pie in the Sky (Lagusta’s Chocolate Raspberry Pie) and even though I think I let the chocolate melt too quickly which prevented the ganache from firming up properly, I’m really happy with the way they turned out. I like that they’re not too sweet, so the flavour of the raspberries really shines. I’d love to try the white chocolate pie as well!

Lately I’ve been buying most of my vegetables (especially the ones that tend to be overpriced at supermarkets) at a local market. After shopping there a few times at different times of day, I now try to go in the morning when it’s not too busy and there’s still a good variety of produce to choose from. I usually bring a limited amount of cash (say, €10) and stick to that as my budget. I often spend less than that and just bring as much as I can carry, which will last us for 1-2 weeks. And I’ve found some pretty good deals! Here’s what I brought home today:

- eight (striped) aubergines for €1
- a bag of tomatoes (also striped! couldn’t resist the gorgeous patterns) for €1
- five courgettes for €1
- three ears of corn for €1
- one watermelon for €1
- two artichokes for €2,60
- two boxes of raspberries for €1,50

I did my best to protect the raspberries while carrying them home, but some of them still got crushed in my bag. Oh well, all the more reason to eat them straight away! The mushier berries were perfect in the tart filling and most of the whole ones found their way into our mouths by the end of the day as well. I don’t buy fresh raspberries very often so they’re a wonderful treat.

The artichokes were a little more expensive than I’d hoped, but I decided to splurge on them anyway because I love artichokes and my boyfriend has never tried them! I’ve never cooked them myself so I’ll have to look through my cookbooks for tips first. I’m hoping to counter my boyfriend’s reluctance to try new vegetables by appealing to his love for foods that come with dipping sauces, so I need to make a good vinaigrette or mayonnaise (or both)! Any ideas? :)

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading my posts and/or leaving comments! <3 Hope you have a lovely day.

Sourdough waffles from BitterSweet

Waffles are a pretty wonderful breakfast food. They’re versatile so they can be made as healthy or as decadent as you like, they freeze well, they even make great portable snacks. For some reason, though, my waffle iron had been sitting in a box unused for a while now. I really want to start using it more often, so when I was looking for new ways to use my sourdough starter and came across this this waffle recipe by Hannah Kaminsky, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Like most sourdough recipes, these waffles require a little planning as you need to make part of the batter ahead of time, but this only means there will be less work to do in the morning so you’ll be tucking into a stack of waffles in no time. I used my grandmother’s waffle iron and got eight big crispy waffles out of the batter, which was plenty for the two of us. These would have been amazing with maple syrup and fresh berries, but we had neither, so we spread them with strawberry rhubarb jam – perfect!