food hits and misses

With winter making an encore performance, a hearty soup seemed like a good idea. Sweet potato and red lentil is a bit of a staple at our place. You can season it as much or as little as you like, and it's always filling. If you don't have any laksa seasoning, substitute with fresh, minced or dried chilli, cayenne pepper or galangal.

Sweet potato and lentil soup

1 tbspn olive oil
1 leek, thinly sliced
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 tspn cumin
1 tspn turmeric
1 tspn cracked black pepper
3 tspn laksa seasoning
1 cup red lentils
1 cup coconut milk
2 tbspn coriander, finely chopped

Method

Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan. Add the leek, and saute until tender. Add the sweet potato and spices. Stir to coat. Add the stock and lentils. Cover and simmer until the sweet potato is soft - around 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Using a stick blender, blend until smooth. Stir through coconut milk. Serve with chopped coriander.

As a household, until stone fruit season arrives, we're not great at eating enough fruit. Unfortunately, I don't have any control over what gets delivered in our weekly seasonal fruit and veg box, so we often end up with a lot of stuff that nobody really wants to eat. Recently, that has meant we've had loads of pears. Since there's only so many times you can eat poached pears in a week, I decided to try adding them to a tea cake.

Pear and cardamon tea cake

3 buerre bosc pears, peeled. cored and diced
1/4 cup white sugar
150g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tspn vanilla
2 cups SR flour
1 1/2 tspn ground cardamon

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C. Place half the pear in the base of a greased ring pan and sprinkle with the white sugar. Cream the butter and caster sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well to combine. Add the vanilla and remaining pear and mix well. Sift the flour and cardamon together. Fold in to the egg mixture, alternating with the milk. Bake for around 55 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

The first time I tried making this, it was nice, but not all that exciting. Mostly it was an experiment in reducing the amount of salmon the breadwinner eats in a single sitting. The second time, I tweaked the recipe quite a bit. We both agreed I got it right.

Salmon risotto

400g fresh salmon

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Place the salmon on aluminium foil. Drizzle with lemon juice and season with black pepper if desired. Wrap tightly in foil and place in the oven for around 10 minutes. Wash the leek thoroughly, then thinly slice the white section. Melt butter and oil together in a heavy based saucepan. Add the leek and saute until tender. Add the rice, and stir until coated. Meanwhile, bring the stock and wine to simmering point. Add around one third of the stock to the rice and stir well until absorbed. Continue adding small amounts of stock to the rice, stirring continuously. Add the dill and capers, stirring well. Zest the lemon, then add zest and juice to the rice. Finally add the remaining stock, stirring until absorbed. Remove from heat. Remove the salmon from the oven. Flake the salmon in to the rice mixture and stir through. The salmon will finish cooking from the heat of the risotto. Season with black pepper and serve.