You say potato and I say...mmm soup.

In my opinion leek and potato soup is one of the simplest, tastiest seasonal dishes imaginable.

Over the years I've had a good few attempts of following leek and potato recipes: some have worked, some haven't... but usually whenever I throw the potatoes and leeks in a pan of stock and the result is fairly consistent, regardless of the method.

So I was interest to find that Cathy had a recipe for this winter staple which suggested roasting the vegetables first. I was a bit sceptical about the added flavour this extra step in the process would add. In truth, not a lot. It did make the dish slightly 'fuller' than usual and actually it was a pretty quick method of cooking the vegetables. So if you don't mind an extra roasting tin to wash up, it's probably worth the effort.

I should not that Cathy suggests using Kale: I couldn't find any so just used more of the top part of the leek in the dish. This has the same slightly bitter taste of kale anyway. I also roasted the leeks on the grounds that this would add more to the flavour.

Roasted Leek and Potato Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients

1 leek, halved and chopped into smallish chunks

4 potatoes, cut into smallish chunks

1 onion, cut into smallish chunks

150 ml milk

500 ml vegetable stock

Olive Oil

seasoning

Method

• Roast the chopped vegetables in olive oil for about 20 minutes (until soft but not smooshy). Watch the leeks so they don't stick to the bottom of the roasting dish.
• Meanwhile bring your stock to the boil.
• Add the vegetables to the stock and cook for a further 10 minutes.
• Blitz the soup until nice and creamy.
• Season well (lots of pepper is very yummy)
• Add the milk

Serve with 'no knead' bread.

I don't know much butter know I love you

Winter is a difficult time of year to get excited about, not least in the cooking department. After months of cooking root veg, who can blame you if your greatest culinary desire is the quick fix of a salad. Root vegetables (the humble carrot aside) are not really known for their speed of delivery. Its a strange man who enjoys chomping on some raw turnip.

They are also sometimes pretty time consuming to prepare. Whilst The Seasonal Beets thoroughly recommend keeping skins on where possible (for we all know that's where the best nutrition is stored) there are times when that is just not possible. My dog loves turnip skin: I am less enamoured by its woody texture.

On top of that whilst root vegetables are filled with nutrition and can be sweet as sugar, the stereotypical varieties we can easily access do lack a certain variation in flavour (yes bothersome friend turnip I'm referring to you again).

And yet root vegetables are cheap, nutritious and very seasonal so we should definitely be eating them in plentiful supply. How can we fix this tricky conundrum? The answer my friends is butter.

"Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter." Julie Powell, Julie and Julia.

Whilst butter alone is wonderful, its magical taste enhancing capabilities can be heightened by the addition of a few key ingredients. Flavoured butter should be a staple in any tasty kitchen. It can be added to baked potatoes; mashed vegetables, boiled vegetables, oven roasted vegetables, fry your vegetables in it or just spread on a piece of crusty toast. The possibilities are for flavoured butter are endless and its so easy to make.

• Take 1 packet of unsalted butter and leave it out of the fridge to soften.
• Then get out the biceps and your spatula and start beating the butter until it becomes soft and pliable (or use a foodmixer...).
• Add your ingredients and whip into a frenzy until all incorporated.
• Leave to stand for 30 minutes and then place it in the fridge to harden.
• Once hard roll into a sausage shape and wrap in baking parchment (like a christmas cracker)
• This can then be stored in the freezer. Just cut away what you need when you need it.

Recipes for flavoured butter

Roasted Garlic Butter (excellent in mash)

1 packet of butter

1 large head of garlic

1/4 tsp salt

Cut the garlic in half and roast the garlic in the oven until soft. Squidge out the garlic, let it cool and add to your butter.

Herby Butter

(the world is your oyster here, I like rosemary and thyme together but tarragon is also very nice, especially on mushrooms! Check out our recipe booklets for other good herb/veg combos)

1 packet of butter

1 handful of freshly chopped herbs

1/2 tsp salt

Chilli Butter

(melt and use to make Kale Chips!)

1 packet of butter

A zest of half a lemon

1 tbsp of dried chilli flakes

1/4 tsp salt

Loads more recipes can be found on the BBC Good Food website and at The Nibble but look out for more flavoured butters on this blog too!

Tutti Rooti

Winter gets a bad rep for vegetables and unnecessarily so. This is the time when we can indulge in that hidden delight of the plant: the root!
Hearty, healthy and full of flavour this next recipe makes the most of winter's best produce.

(this recipe can be found in its original form on the BBC Good Food Website... but trust me its better this way)

Turnip and Bacon Pie

Ingredients
1 turnip (peeled and chopped into 2 cm cubes)
1 onion (chopped)
1 carrot (sliced)
12 rashers of bacon ( devoid of fat and chopped into slithers)
3 potatoes (peeled and chopped into chunks)
1 parsnip (peeled and chopped into chunks)
300ml chicken stock
lots of parsley (chopped)
1 tbls butter
1 tbls milk
salt and pepper

Method

• Boil your potatoes and parsnip until soft and then mash with the butter and milk.
• Fry the bacon in a little olive oil (or you can use some of the discarded fat)
  
• Remove the bacon from the pan and sauté the onions in the same oil (adding more if necessary) until soft
• Then add the turnip and carrot and cook for 2 minutes.
• Pour in the chicken stock and cook until the vegetables are soft but not smooshy.
• At this point you might want to add a little cornflour (about 2 tsp mixed in 2 tbls of water) to thicken the gravy
• Season the mix and stir in the parsley.
• Transfer the filling into a medium sized pie dish and cover with the mashed potato/parsnip.
  
• Fluff up the potato topping with a fork (this gives nice crusty bits later on)
• Grill the pie until the topping starts to turn crispy and light brown.
• Serve piping hot from the oven for a great winter supper.
  

When the weather outside is frightful... warm up with a hearty tartiflette.

Northern Europe has been hit by one of the worst Decembers in living memory; we are all knee deep in snow, shivering to the bone and even the prospect of a White Christmas isn't enough to compensate for the recent spate wintery weather. However, all is not lost, for with snow and ice comes the excuses to snuggle up warm inside cosy houses and eat some proper hearty food.

Tartiflette is not for the faint-hearted; cream, cheese and potatoes, its a dieter's nightmare. That said it provides lots of calories and comfort against chilly snowy conditions. Presumably this is why it is so popular in its native Savoie region of France where skiers guzzle it up by the bowlfull. Luckily for us its main ingredients are the highly seasonal potatoes and onion and so there really are no valid reasons not to invite over some friends for a cosy night in to share some tartiflette! (This is another recipe out the "epicurean experimenters notebook", I can't really remember where it comes from but it might be the

excellent Tamasin Day Lewis)

Tartiflette

Ingredients:
700g of potatoes (peeled, boiled until "al dente")
150g of pancetta lardons
1 onion (sliced in thin strips)
60g butter
150 ml dry white wine
350g Reblouchon Cheese (this is a strong creamy cheese from Savoie, you can replace it with Port Salut or, at a push, Camembert but it wont be quite as tasty)

• Preheat the oven to 200°C and grease a casserole dish with a little butter
• Boil the potatoes, drain but keep the liquid.
• Blanch the lardons for 1 minute in the boiling liquid
• Cut the potatoes into thin strips (you'll have to wait for them to cool unless you have asbestos hands!)
  
• Melt about 1/2 of the butter in a large frying pan and cook the lardons and onions for about 10 minutes (or until the onions go soft but not mushy).
• Add the potatoes and wine and cook for a further 5 minutes (until the alcohol burns off)
• Place 1/3 of the mixture in the casserole dish, add some salt and pepper and then 1/3 of the cheese (cut into strips, it is impossible to grate). Repeat 3 times ending with a layer of cheese.
• Cook in the oven for 30 minutes.

Best enjoyed with a super crusty loaf, a towering mound of green beans (ideally fairtrade and cooked from frozen; sometimes its hard to be seasonal) surrounded by friends and a ready supply of good wine.

Swedish Mulligatawny

This recipe comes from what, many would claim, is the British food bible; Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. The recipe itself is apparently adapted from Eliza Acton's own Mulligatawny from the 1800s!

Delia's most recent incarnation of the recipe appears to be a wee bit fancier than that contained within my CCC (which was actually my Granny's and was printed in 1982). Nevertheless I thought I'd share the 1982 version with you because I find it very flavoursome. It does call for 700g of courgette or marrow but obviously at this time of year that isn't very seasonal. I've also made it with carrots though so I think any sweeter veg equivelent would do.

Swedish Mulligatawny

(serves 4)

Ingredients:

3 large onions (finely chopped)

100g butter

700g seasonal vegetable (chopped into 2cm cubes)

1 potato (cubed)

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp of Worcester Sauce

1 tsp curry powder

75ml of brown rice

850 ml stock (I like using Marigold Swiss Bouillon Powder but I suppose any veg stock will do)

• Melt the butter in a saucepan and then cook the onions until they turn a nice golden brown colour.
• Add the chopped vegetables and the tomato to the pan. Cook until the veg has gone soft (the time will vary depending on what you use, carrots for example take longer than courgettes!)
• Whilst the vegetables are cooking, prepare the rice by boiling it in 150ml of salted water with a cardomom pod until the liquid is absorbed and the rice tender.
• When the vegetables are cooked, remove from the heat and whizz in a blender until purified.
• Then add the rice, Worcester Sauce and curry powder. Season with salt and pepper.
• Have a little taste and add more curry powder if you think it needs it.
• Reheat for about 5 minutes and serve with super crusty bread or perhaps some poppyseed knäckebröd

Oven baked root vegetables with spice

This is another great and easy recipe from Hanne Holm

INGREDIENTS
3 medium large beetroots (ca 300 g) peeled and cut into small boats
5-6 potatoes (ca 400 g) peeled and cut into small boats
3 carrots (ca 300 g) peeled and cut into sticks
2 parsnips (ca 200 g) peeled and cut into sticks
1 leek in slices
4-5 shallots in boats
4 bay leaves

DRESSING
6 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar)
2 tsp ground cumin
3 tsp dry oregano
3 tsp salt
2 tsp freshly ground pepper

GARNISH
parsley, chopped

COOKING
Prepare all the vegetables and have all ingredients ready.
Mix olive oil with lemon juice, cumin and oregano and add salt to taste. Put a little of the dressing in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Mix the vegetables and the bayleaves onto the dish, pour the rest of the dressing over and turn the veggies carefully so that all are covered in dressing.

Bake in the oven for app. 1 hour on 180°C, or until the vegetables are tender - turn them occationally. Garnish with parsley before serving.

I love to serve a tahini dressing to this as I really think that the rich bitter taste goes well with the sweetness of the baked veggies.
It is also good to sprinkle sesame seeds on the vegetables before putting into the oven.