Nigella

Yummy in my Tummy

6/02/2008 01:08:00 PM

Welcome to Winter, Melbournians! Yesterday was cold and foggy. I was out of the house from 10am, when there was a distinct chill in the air, and when I came home at 6pm, it was already dark and the fog was descending again. Boo. Like the fog, I was coming down with a cold (again!!), and I wanted something very warm and comforting for dinner.


Pumpkin and Sweet Potato soup. (You can just see my parents' char siew / siew yok fan from Pacific House in the background). The soup is a Nigella recipe, from Nigella Express. Her recipe is express because she uses a packet of already-chopped pumpkin and sweet potato. I had to do the chopping myself, which made it less express, but still not that difficult. You just simmer the veggie pieces with some stock and spices for about 20 minutes, then blitz in a blender. Because the vegetables are quite sweet, the soup needs quite a bit of salt. And, unlike the coffee-art style swirl of buttermilk that Nigella suggests as a garnish, I just used a spoonful of yoghurt and a sprinkling of chopped parsley. I had it with country-style crusty white bread. Delicious and comforting.

As a last minute dessert, and because I was so cold and tired, I decided to be sa-aad and make myself an individual cooked dessert. Based on Nigella's crumble-in-a-cup idea from Nigella Express, I made a crumble in a coffee-cup. I already had crumble mixture in the freezer, so it was all quite easy. Too easy, almost. I put frozen raspberries and chopped up apple pieces in the cup, mixed them up with a teaspoon each of flour and vanilla sugar, covered it in frozen crumble mixture, and baked it at 220C for 20 minutes. Once it was cooked, I put a gargantuan amount of vanilla ice-cream on top, and dug straight in. Fabulous. (Be careful not to touch the cup itself! It will be HOT!)


Crumble is one of my favourite desserts to make, which brings me to the Yummy Blog Award. Cindy and Michael from Where's the Beef? awarded me with the Yummy Blog Award. Thank you guys!


The Yummy Blog Award is an award given to blogs with yummy recipes/photos. If you are a recipient of the award, you're supposed to write about a few of your favourite desserts... so here goes!

1. Rhubarb meringue pie - this is one of my favourite all-time dessert to make, and a tie for my favourite recipe from How to Eat. I made it with doubled quantities of meringue for a recent barbecue. YUM!

2. Pig's Bum - my other favourite How to Eat recipe! A steamed sponge pudding with rhubarb inside, served with lashings of hot vanilla custard. Incredible. I pull it out for dinner parties when I can't think of what else to make, and it always goes down a treat.

2. Apple crumble - my mum's favourite. Last year she went through a phase of buying extra granny smiths just so I'd make it more often! As I previously mentioned, I now keep crumble mixture in the freezer for emergencies. I've also discovered my ultimate crumble recipe: rather than cooking wedges of apples in a pan, I now cut them into teensy-weensy pieces and mix them with orange juice and a bit of butter. This makes a super-soft, mushy filling. Fabulous. For the topping, I now use demerara sugar for extra crunch and toss in an extra handful of flaked almonds. And always, vanilla custard or vanilla ice-cream.

I'd like to pass this award along to Kelly-Jane at Cooking the Books. Her alfajores de dulce de leche looked amazing, as did her 10 favourite photos from her blog.

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2 comments

  1. Hope you manage to fight the cold...there's few things worse than being hungry and having a blocked nose. The soup looks delicious :) I made the crumble myself the other day, it's a nice idea making individual ones, but yes, too easy sometimes lol. There's nothing like crumble for winter comfort food. Oh and I agree, KJ's alfajores were gorgeous! :)

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  2. Thank you so much Sarah for your award, I'm honoured!

    I've brought butternut squash and sweet potato about three times now, meaning to make this recipe, but have never quite gotten round to it, it looks great - I must. Just the thing for a chilly day :)

    Thanks again.

    KJxx

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