World Food Day – Time To Be Thankful

Three very gracious ladies I am very fond of in the blogging-sphere are hosting a ‘MOST’ important event, World Food Day - Time To be Thankful. Val of More Than Burnt Toast, Ivy of Kopiaste & Giz, of Equal Opportunity Kitchen.

Quote from Ivy; “Val and I have decided that we should continue bringing awareness and we are still working on how we can continue to increase awareness and understanding and take action to do all we can year round to alleviate hunger”.

World Food Day – Time To Be Thankful, is to highlight and bring awareness to the hunger problems that exist around the world! Hunger is not only in the third world, hunger happens in our own streets and not too many miles away from us! November is a month of Thanksgiving in parts of the world and here in the U.K. during October each year, we celebrate Harvest Festival where we are thankful for bountiful crops, displays of food and crops are placed in churches and/or schools and we give praise through prayer and song to celebrate our harvest. The food is then divided into parcels and given to the disadvantaged! I feel very passionate and hold closely this cause of World Food Day to my heart! I have been very fortunate in my life to have ample food and never felt those pangs of hunger that many other unfortunates have to endure around the world!

Please let us here in the blogging-sphere make a difference and place our dishes side by side in the conga line of food to feed the world! To join in this event and for more information click on one of the above links to either Val’s, Ivy’s or Giz’s blogs to participate in such a great cause my ‘dear’ friends.

I am submitting to the world food table a wonderful seasonal Pumpkin Soup and a recipe from Rachel Allen’s NEW book Bake for, Rustic Bacon & Cheddar Bread. My reason for choosing these two items of food are; they don’t cost an excessive amount of money to make; soup and bread and this type of food are given out by volunteers to homeless people living on the streets who struggle for warmth and food in the U.K. with every passing day!

Pumpkin, Sweet Potato & Smoked Chilli Soup

A wonderful seasonal soup with a little kick in flavour from the chilli to warm you up on cold autumn/winter day.

Ingredients
25g (1 oz) butter
1 clove garlic, crushed
225g (8 oz) sweet potato, peeled and flesh diced
1 medium pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and flesh diced
¼ tsp sweet smoked paprika
1/2 red chilli, finely diced
750 ml (26 fl oz) vegetable stock
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp Parmesan cheese, finely grated
125 ml (¼ pint) double cream
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Method

Melt the butter in a large pan; add the garlic, sweet potato and pumpkin, giving a good stir then cover with a lid and cook for 10 minutes. Add the smoked paprika and red chilli, then cook for a minute. Add the vegetable stock and bring to the boil, cover with a lid and simmer for 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Allow to cool a little, then stir in the mustard and Parmesan. Blend in a food processor or with a stick blender until smooth. Return to the pan if using a food processor, add the cream and season to taste. Gently reheat through and serve.

Rustic Bacon & Cheddar Bread

Such a great rustic savoury bread and very easy to make with no proving necessary! It’s loaded with flavour from the cheese and bacon and a slice served with a hot bowl of steaming soup is remarkable. This recipe comes from Rachel Allan’s NEW book Bake, a most wonderful book packed full of wonderful treats for any baker!

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients
320g (11½ oz) plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
100g (3½ oz) Cheddar cheese, grated
100g (3½ oz) bacon lardons, cooked until just crisp in a little sunflower oil and cooled
200ml (7 fl oz) milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp whole grain mustard
60 ml (2 fl oz) olive oil

13 x 23 cm (5 x 9 in) loaf tin

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4. Lightly oil and line the loaf tin with non-stick baking paper. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Add the grated cheese and the cooled bacon lardons and mix well. Pour the milk into a large measuring jug, add the eggs, mustard and olive oil and whisk well to combine. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and slowly pour in the liquid, stirring all the time until it is fully incorporated, to form a fairly liquid dough. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 50 minutes. Remove from the tin and allow to cook for a further 10 minutes on the oven shelf to crisp up the bottom. When cooked, it will sound hollow when tapped on the base. Allow to cool on a wire rack before eating.

My appreciation goes to Val, Ivy & Giz for hosting this World Food Day – Time To Be Thankful – Rosie x

Butternut Squash Soup & Spelt Bread

Squashes and pumpkins are plentiful in food stores being autumn time in England. In my local store, I purchased two large organic squashes with an exact recipe in mind to use them. Last year I made Butternut Squash soup from Mary Berry’s recipe, which is an absolute winner in my household and one that I knew I’d be making again this year! This is a simple soup to make by cutting the squashes in half and drizzling over olive oil, salt and pepper placing them in a roasting tray and topping up with water to roast away in the oven until the flesh is soft and easy to scoop out leaving the skin behind. A few carrots, onion, celery, grated ginger and chopped rosemary, sweated off in butter and a good vegetable stock added. All the ingredients whizzed together to make a smooth silky soup. Pure comfort food in a bowl served with crusty warm homemade bread.

I baked for the first time a Spelt loaf to accompany the soup. WOW, this spelt bread has a wonderful nutty wheat taste with a nice texture. To think I was ‘knocking back’ dough with spelt flour that was a common ingredient of ancient civilisations! Spelt grains I believe have even been found Stone Age excavations! I used Doves Farm Organic spelt flour and a recipe from their web site.

If you’d like the recipes for the soup and/or bread the links are below.

Butternut Squash soup

Spelt Bread

Prawn and Sweetcorn Chowder

This recipe has been passed onto me from my dear friend Maureen. I don’t know how she manages to accumulate the most superb recipes; it must be a good eye and perfect taste buds for what’s required in any form of cooking. I have been very fortunate indeed to be given permission to share with you this most wonderful chowder.

The soup is creamy with the bonus of very finely chopped soft vegetables, juicy prawns, small nuggets of bacon and little jewels of yellow corn. A good chicken stock works wonders towards the flavour and I can tell you this soup ROCKS!!

Once you try this recipe be warned, it will become a staple in your home too like mine I am sure.

Thank you to Maureen for allowing me to post your recipe here.

Prawn and Sweetcorn Chowder

Serves 4 - 6

Ingredients
25g butter
25g flour
6 rashers bacon – chopped
1 onion chopped finely
1 red or green pepper, chopped finely
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
425ml chicken stock
425ml milk
100g frozen sweetcorn – defrosted
250g pack frozen prawns – defrosted
Salt and pepper
50ml finely chopped parsley

Method
Heat butter in a large saucepan, add bacon and cook gently.
Add onion and red or green pepper and potatoes and fry over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Add flour and cook over low heat for 1 minute. Gradually add milk and stock, stirring continuously. Bring to the boil and add sweetcorn, parsley and seasoning.Simmer, covered for 10 minutes. Lastly add prawns and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Note: The only alteration I have made to this recipe which is perfectly optional was to; add 1 carrot very finely peeled and diced, 1 stick of celery removing the stringy bits and finely dicing, adding these with the rest of the vegetables at the same time.