Salsa Brava, cheat

[The Dong]

Paul Maddox wrote:
> Ok, my turn to send a reciepe.

Here's two soups I made recently, I'm too much of a culinary ninja to 
pass silver over the palms of Delia ;)

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Lettuce, Celery, Puy and Pulse broth.

Tablespoon of butter (for initial frying)
1 head iceberg lettuce (or your favourite lettuce)
Iceberg lettuce and celery are good if you are on a diet, but cut back 
on milk/cream if so. I find you can get away with half a cup or less 
milk. Don't use cream if you are watching calories ;)
1 head celery
3-4 potatoes chopped (I used fresh new ones from my sisters plot that 
day. Only needed a scrub, left skins on)
half a cup Puy lentils (soaked over night)
Half cup Pearl barley, or broth mix (soaked over night)
1 Onion, chopped
Quarter cup Adzuki beans soaked over night (optional)
about 2 pints your choice vegetable stock or more as required
(I usually use only two vegetable stocks cubes and top up the soup with 
water)
Cracked black pepper
Salt (I use my home made celery salt generally in soups, which is just 
salt and celery seeds crushed together in equal proportions and stored)
Fresh herbs: I used Rocket and Parsley.

options: Cup of Milk or cream for cream of. I prefer this.
Fry up lots of sliced tasty mushrooms and add them just at the end for 
the most beautiful mushroom soup in the universe :)
Crisped chopped smoked Bacon or similar as croutons on top, for the 
strictly anti-vegetarian...

Cook it mutha'f..
Fry onion with butter to sweat off, do not colour.
Add chopped celery, potatoes and lettuce and cook for about five 
minutes, stirring almost constantly on a high heat. Do NOT colour or 
burn, heh.
At this stage I add about a level tablespoon of milled black pepper and 
the celery salt.
Now add the stock and lentils, bring to boiling point and skim off any 
scum if there is. Cook about 25 minutes, or until all vegetables are 
soft and lentils cooked. Now either mash or use a liquidiser (I prefer 
mashing with potato masher as it leaves puy lentils intact in the main) 
and cook for about 5 minutes more.
Add chopped herbs and cream or milk and stir through.
Serve with optional extras and toasted bread or favourite sandwiches for 
dipping.

Great stuff.

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Courgette, Mushroom and Camembert soup.
A simpler soup, but just as good.

Tablespoon butter
Camembert 250 gram round
1 onion
3 large courgettes, cleaned, top/tailed and roughly sliced
About 10 chestnut mushrooms sliced (or your favourite)
Enough vegetable stock to cover it all.
Half Cup cream or milk.
Rocket, parsley or other fresh herbs.
Black pepper and salt or celery salt
Breads of choice to serve.

About the Camembert. I got a quite strong round, which tends to smell 
pretty bad (but tastes nice), like it is not good. But once this is in 
the soup, there is no bad scent. It stinks up the fridge like a mouse 
died in it ;) So if you don't like these pungent cheeses, a good 
substitute is a mild Brie.

Cook da poop:

As above, sweat off onion then add all the courgettes.
Stir about 5 minutes then add pepper/celery salt and top up with the 
stock. Cook for about 15 minutes, until courgettes can be mashed. Mash 
them. At this point, there may be lots of courgette seeds visible in the 
soup. Don't worry. Cook for a further 5 minutes and they start to disappear.
Stir in chopped Camembert (whole round) If you want, you can remove the 
outer shell of the cheese, or scrape it. It will melt into the soup very 
quickly making it look like a cream of soup too. Add enough milk or 
cream as desired for colour and texture. Add herbs.
Leave soup on lowest heat...
Fry mushrooms in butter until soft. If you like, you can brown them by 
using high heat, which works nice.
Dump the mushies along with any liquid in the soup and stir.

I made toast to go with this and served with a little black pepper on 
top of soup. In fact, this was yesterdays soup and I'm away to have some 
now :)


Both world class tasting soups, I guarantee it ;)