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.

Everybody eats when they come to my house

Our previous book reviews have been about exciting, interesting and useful reads on sustainable dietary habits. Unfortunately this one isn't. The Art of Eating In, possibly isn't the worst book I've ever read, but it is certainly in the running.

The book is a collection of anecdotes and stories from Cathy, who -for somewhat inexplicable reasons- has chosen not to eat out in New York. Cathy shares with us her revelations that home-cooking is cheaper, healthier and sometimes tastier than eating out. I fully acknowledge that I entered into the relationship in complete knowledge of Cathy's agenda, however, ever the aficionado of a good foodie book, I was willing to put aside my concern over the underlying premise of Cathy's 'journey'. I shouldn't have. It was dire.

'Well I decided to give home cooking gimmick of my own. To eat for a prolonged period of time without the assistance of restaurants whatsoever. Was that something that a New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American such as myself could achieve?'

It's certainly a question that only a "New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American" would pose. The book's accompanying website suggests we 'join the challenge' and 'eat in for a week'. WTAF

The book offers us insight into Cathy's homecooking: including her first foray into bread making where -despite claiming to be an avid cook- she states " I didn't think I'd ever seen one of these packages of yeast before". Unfortunately I ignored this giant flag to "STOP READING NOW!"

To be fair, Cathy is clearly a keen and competent cook but does she 'homecook' like normal people? Does she hell. Her dinners always appear to take hours of preparation and end up on the table at 11pm at night. Occasionally she tries to excite us by listing those things she just 'threw in a pan': I cannot believe that she doesn't realise this is how most people usually cook/eat.

In the book Cathy marks her visits with freegans; supper clubs and cook-offs in an attempt to widen her culinary horizon. This could have been really interesting, perhaps if she told us some more background or studies or facts about any of these things, then I might have been more interested. As it was we heard Cathy's non-too-deep thoughts on the matters:

"I didn't feel that I was sacrificing my health by having meat only once or twice a week. On the contrary you could argue less meat in our diets keeps humans and the earth healthier".

I'm not sure who the target audience was, but I am sure I wouldn't like to meet them!

The one thing that struck me in the book was when Cathy estimates her grocery bill for a week of 'eating in' to be $25 which is about 160 sek, £15, €19. What?! I knew food prices in America were artificially low, but that is ridiculous: especially when you read about the kind of food Cathy was cooking.

I think this sums up my problem with all these 'extreme diet' books. Some try and make ethical points but many end up as money making gimmicks and fail to address real problems. The market is flooded with these 'food challenge' books and the underlying points about the unsustainability of our food systems seem to become lost in the process. How have we reached a stage in human development where it can be an 'alternative' lifestyle to cook at home?

The Seasonal Beets are trying to encourage people to eat chose seasonal foods and cook sustainably, but have we underestimated the size of the problem? Do we need to actually go back to basics and teach people the benefits of homecooking? I hope not.

To be fair I feel that whilst Cathy might be a bit misguided, she's not malicious in her writing and she is attempting to encourage more sustainable eating. For that reason I suggest you check out her blog and also our next 2 postings which are my attempts at making some of Cathy's recipes a little more time-friendly.

Would I lie to you?

A report in today's Guardian Newspaper suggests that 'localism' can be a misnomer in food labelling. Apparently those naughty supermarkets and food producers label items 'local' as a method of distinguishing the 'type' of produce rather than the origin.

Food labels are getting more and more complicated and, if like me, you don't own an i-phone and cannot download one of the latest apps to help you out, I thought I'd provide this handy guide to making sure you buy seasonally (and locally) as much as possible.

1) Learn the life-cycle of the plant: shoots & stalks, then leaves grow, then come the berries and soft fruit, hard fruit, then roots.

2) Look outside your window, what stage do the plants appear to be at: shoots? leaves? berries?

3) Go to your local vegetable provider pick accordingly (checking the labels just incase so you don't make a Netherland/Sweden faux pas...)

It's not right but its ok...I'm gonna make it anyway!

Earlier this week our lovely friend Anja celebrated her birthday. Anja is part of Lund's Sustainable City Walk a great initiative which provides information on sustainable shopping in Lund. I decided I was going to attempt some seasonal baking for a birthday treat and came across this very tasty looking recipe for pear and ginger muffins.

Then disaster struck (well minor blip anyway) I discovered you cannot get Swedish pears in January. I was quite surprised at this as I always thought of pears as a winter fruit; but no, the pears in this recipe are from The Netherlands :(

That said, it was still rather tasty and I think would work equally well with apples: especially those apples that are a bit grainy and reaching the end of their winter lives.

I changed the recipe slightly (because my sugar coated baked goods have a tendency to burn) but the original can be found here.

Pear and Ginger Muffins

Makes: 18! (although the original recipe said 12, but then it is a Nigella effort and her portions are always a bit suspect).

Ingredients:

2 large pears (1 peeled and finely chopped, the other thinly sliced)

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup of brown sugar

3/4 cup of caster sugar

1 tsp of ginger

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of flavourless oil

2/3 cup of sour cream

1 tblsp of honey

2 eggs

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
• Line muffin tins with paper cases
• Mix the brown and caster sugar with the oil, until light and incorporated.
• Whisk in the eggs, honey and then stir in the sour cream.
• In a separate bowl sieve the flour, baking powder and ginger.
• Fold the 'wet' mix into the dry (careful not to over stir)
• Fold in the chopped pears.
• Fill each muffin case about 2/3 full of muffin mix and top with 3 small slice of pear.
• Bake for 20 minutes
• Cool for 5 minutes in the tin.

Enjoy eating with coffee, friends and only a smidgen of guilt that the pears came from The Netherlands.

Chilli Vanilli

Here at the seasonal beets, we realise that there are some lovely fruit and vegetables that will never be grown locally and thus are never in season.

What to do? For things like leaves, root vegetables and fruits there is almost always a local and seasonal substitution (spinach and leeks for salads, apples instead of bananas, plums for pineapples and so on). Alas, for other ingredients - in the words of Margaret Thatcher - there is simply no alternative.

Enter the Chilli Pepper!

I'm a big advocate of spicy food, especially right now in the cold winter months when we could all do with a little more heat. They are also particularly well suited for sweating out a case of the winter sniffles. A well-placed chilli can spice up all kinds of dishes from curries to seafood to a hearty gulash soup. But shop-bought chillis, alas, do not generally come from anywhere near to Europe. India, China, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Mexico, Vietnam, Peru, Pakistan, Ghana and Bangladesh account for 85% of global chili production.

The absolute best way to lower your chilli-induced footprint while still enjoying plenty of spicy goodness is to grow your own plants. Chillies grow surprisingly well indoors all year round, they're cheap, and you can buy literally hundreds of varieties to experiment with.

A little known fact about chilis is that the heat is not contained within the seeds themselves but rather in a compound called Capsaicin that coats the seeds and the insides of the pepper. Capsaicin is insoluble in water, which means that knocking back a glass of icy-cold water in a 'spicy' moment will do nothing to relieve your burning tongue! Instead, try dairy products like sour cream - an indian 'lassi' for example is a great accompaniment to a hot curry. And failing that, a cold beer usually helps too (even if it's just a placebo!).

One of my favourite recipies is a super-spicy Thai style Green Papaya Salad. In the somewhat-predictable absence of green papayas, you can use cucumber as a substitute. The key to this salad is the balance of the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and chilli - keep mixing up the quantities until you reach the perfect balance of flavours.

Shred the papaya or cucumber (using a grater or potato peeler, your choice). If you're feeling flush you can quarter a couple of tomatoes and add them to the shredded mixture too. Next, take between one to ten small red chillis (depending on your taste buds and your bravery), a couple of cloves of chopped garlic (again, amount depending on your taste buds), and a handful of chopped green beans and grind together in a pestle and mortar until broken up but not paste-like. Add to this a spoonful of sugar (palm sugar is best), the juice of a lime, one tablespoon of fish sauce and a handful of dried shrimp (optional). Give it a good bash again with the pestle and mortar and then mix with the shredded papaya. Top with roasted and coarsely chopped peanuts and enjoy!

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!

Whatta man.

I want to share with you a little bit of the love I feel for Mr Bill Bryson. Admittedly not a conventional hero Bill is, nevertheless, one of my most favourite writers and he never fails to educate, entertain and enlighten me (he certainly makes it on my list of 'people I'd like to have dinner with " which I concede, from those featured on this blog alone, is stretching to a medieval sized banquet affair...)

His latest offering is not a traditional travel book, and yet it is no less educational than his previous works: 'At Home' takes us on a voyage of factual discovery around Bill's... home. We visit the scullery, the hall, the bedroom, the garden, the stairs... in each of which Bill teaches about that which we have become so blase and accustomed.

'How lovely' I hear you say, 'but what the devil does this have to do with seasonal food?' Ok I will admit it. It's got absolutely nothing to do with seasonal food. Seasoned food, however, does play a major part of the dining room chapter. Ever wondered why salt and pepper play such a pivotal role in our culinary lives? If you are anything like me, the answer is probably not. But once raised, I realised it was certainly a question that I wouldn't object to knowing the answer too.

Unfortunately the answer is not that thrilling: our ancestors worked hard to find and source these little tasty devils and consequently we will blooming well honour their efforts by having them grace every table on every restaurant from here til kingdom come. Whilst I admit I was somewhat disappointed by this revelation, Bill soon perked me up by providing a whole host of exciting seasoning facts. The best of which are:

• You only need about 200mg of salt a day: most people eat 60 times that
• The Aztecs used to get their salt by evaporating their urine. Tasty!
• An ounce of cornflakes contained the same amount of salt as an ounce of salted peanuts (just one example of how processed foods contain ridiculous levels of salt. Best shun those ready meals I say and embrace a seasonal carrot instead)
• Peppercorns are the dried fruits of the plant Piper nigrum
• Christopher Columbus was actually a complete plonker and instead of returning to Europe from his infamous voyage with spices and gold, came back with treebark and iron pyrite.

Anyway what's the point of this post? To remind you to season, season, season!!! Processed food often tastes better (at least initially) than homemade stuff because we are reluctant to add seasoning to the dish. Don't worry, the level of salt which is added to homecooking is inevitably much much less than that added to readymeals. Don't scrimp on the seasoning, trust me your taste buds will thank you for it!

I'm stroganoff to live without you...

but thankfully I don't have to.

Seasonal, tasty and with multiple uses, this mushroom and beef stroganoff recipe ticks all the boxes.

The dish originated in Russia and was probably named after a member of the Strogonov family (how do you know when you've made it? well, having a worldwide culinary sensation bear your name is probably a small sign) Much like that other staple, Spaghetti Bolognese, everyone has their own version of Stroganoff: today I learnt that Sweden also has its very own variation: korvstroganoff.

This is my version of the famous dish. Its very quick (30 mins tops) and goes with just about anything you've got in the cupboard.

Mushroom and Beef Stroganoff (serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 onion (sliced)

250 g mushrooms (sliced) (I like using chestnut mushrooms but anything thats out at this time of year is fine)

4 frying steaks (cut into thin strips)

oil

marsala

4 tblps dried porcini mushrooms

250ml warm water

150ml creme fraiche

juice of half a lemon

dried thyme

seasoning

Method:

• Soak the porcini in the water.
• Season the beef within an inch of its life.
• In a large frying pan, briefly brown the steak. It should take no more than 4 minutes. Using a slated spoon remove the steak from the pan (Don't worry if it looks a bit pink in the middle, it's going back in later)
• Add the onions to the pan to cook in the beefy juices. (you might need to add some extra cooking oil at this stage). When the onions are translucent, remove them from the pan (it might sound like you are removing a lot of things from the pan but don't worry too much about the washing up, the beef and onions can be plonked in the same bowl at this stage)
• Add the mushrooms to the pan and fry until soft but retaining bite. You might need to add the mushrooms in batches. (Tip for cooking good mushrooms: 'don't crowd the mushrooms"!)
• Drain the porcini (keeping half the liquid) finely chop and add to the now cooked mushrooms. Add a good glug of marsala (this is optional but the alcohol burns off and makes it taste so much better!) and the mushroomy water.
• Return the beef and onions to the pan.
• Bring to the boil and immediately turn down the heat.
• Reduce the liquid by about half and squeeze in 1/2 the lemon juice. Stir!
• Add the creme fraiche and stir until warmed through.
• Sprinkle with thyme (a good teaspoon ought to do it, but don't let me hold you back) and season the whole dish again and add the remaining lemon juice.
• Serve with thick noodley pasta, white fluffy rice, on top of toasted french bread, in a baked potato: the list of accompaniments is quite possibly endless...