Frugal Potato Soup

This is one of my most viewed photos on Flickr – I assume people are searching for it for a simple, cheap, potato recipe. Well, it’s certainly that!

It’s a tasty potato soup that in its most basic form only requires five ingredients – potatoes, garlic, onions, vegetable oil and water. You don’t even need to add stock, but seasonings might be needed, depending on your taste. I also added milk and some bacon strips to the top of mine. This soup is also better eaten the next day, and will serve around six.

Ingredients
2 white onions
3 cloves garlic
5 small potatoes
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 pint milk (optional)
Fried back bacon strip (optional)

Method:
Finely chop garlic and onions together in a processor, then heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan with a lid, and add the onions. Sweat with the pan covered for ten minutes, then add the potatoes and a cup of water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to simmer. Cover again and leave for 20 mins, checking the water is covering the potatoes. If it’s not, add a bit more. Continue to cook until the potatoes are tender.
Add around a pint of water (around half a litre) and bring to the boil. (Note: if adding milk, reduce the amount of water used and add the milk at this point.)
At this point, you can whizz the soup down to a fine puree or mash it to leave it slightly lumpy. Taste for seasoning. The soup is now done!
Garnish with snipped bacon, as in the pic, or maybe with some chives. Or leave plain!
if you eat the soup the following day (recommended, as all soups gain more flavour the day after) then add some more water or milk as the potato tends to make the soup more solid the longer it sits.

52 Weeks, 52 Chickens: Week Five – Leftovers, bang bang chicken

One recipe I turn to quite often for leftover chicken or turkey is Nigella Lawson’s recipe for bang bang turkey salad. You can find it online here.

It’s delicious and spicy, and refreshing thanks to the spring onions and cucumber. You mix a sauce together by heating 2 tbsp groundnut oil, then cooling slightly and adding 2 tsp sesame oil, 3 tbsp smooth peanut butter, 2 tbsp chilli bean sauce, 1 tbsp caster sugar, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 1/2 tbsp black Chinese vinegar and 2 tbsp water.

Then, you mix the sauce with the shredded chicken meat and lay it over a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce, and 20g each of chopped coriander and mint. Sprinkle cucumber and spring onions on the top.

Somehow, this time, the sauce came out a bit redder than usual… but it still tasted good, so who cares? Yum!