Seasoning Mixes and A Very Easy Grilled Salmon Lunch

I know, I have been remiss at posting in the past few months – life got busy again, and when that happens, blog, sadly, takes second place to immediate priorities.  And then, on top of it all, both T and I got a terrible case of influenza together, and spent the two weeks over the winter holidays in bed with thermometers, cold-and-flu drugs, and endless pots of tea, instead of out in the beautiful snow.  I’ll stop about that here before the blog post degenerates into whining.

As a result of it having been winter holidays and us having been sick, I have decided to post about two things which came as holiday presents, and came to be needed.  The first thing is that my wonderful beloved, among other things, bought me a set of seasoning mixes from Rajah, which is a very nice English brand of seasonings – not for English food.  In the United Kingdom, they are mostly found in ethnic shops and the ethnic food departments of supermarkets.  The other thing – a result of us having been so sick – is that I am cooking a lot of rather simple, everyday food that is easy on the stomach and short on prep and effort. As far as the seasonings are concerned, I am not really worried – I have bought many Rajah brand mixes before (in particular their curry powders), and they have always been of great quality.

The ones I received this Yule – none of which I’d tried before – are Jerk Seasoning (insert immature giggle here), Barbecue Seasoning, Hot and Spicy Seasoning and Lemon and Chili Seasoning.  I also got a pack of good Ras-Al-Hanut mix which isn’t by Rajah and isn’t in the picture, but I’ll write about that separately once I have tried it.

The thing about seasoning mixes bought in bulk like this is that they aren’t at all the same as the single-portion packets of ‘taco seasoning’ and ‘dressing mix’ that are sold in supermarkets.  It so happens that I think those ‘shortcut’ packets – which are mostly not made of spices, but of cheap filler – are vile.  This is not to say that all seasoning blends are bad – quite the opposite.  Good quality spice blends found in the spice department of your supermarket, at your favorite ethnic shop or at the spice traders’ are incredibly good to have around the kitchen for when you just aren’t up for standing and measuring and mixing and grinding and… you get the idea.

So, out of these four packets so far, I’ve only tried the Lemon and Chili and the Jamaican Jerk Seasonings.  The latter was used as it was intended, as a rub for a roast chicken, and the former I have used for simply the easiest lunch of grilled salmon.  Now, as I’ve mentioned before, salmon fillets should be on everyone’s list of things to buy when you can get them for a good price  (with the reasonable exceptions of allergic people or those who hate salmon with a passion).  Why?  Because not only are they healthy and really, really good for you, but they are also one of the easiest things in the world to make into hot, delicious food in under 20 minutes.

How?

It’s really simple.  So simple, in fact, that you don’t need a recipe.  All you do is:  preheat the oven to about 200-220C, and smear a small drop of cooking oil over the bottom of a small baking dish.  Blot your salmon fillets with a paper towel and smear them in … well, any seasoning you like.  I used my new lemon and chili seasoning from Rajah.  It worked great.  However, you can use your favorite mix, or you can simply season the salmon with salt and pepper and rub those into the surface.  Put the seasoned fillets into the oiled baking dish, and place the baking dish into the middle of the oven and grill for 15-18 minutes (depends on how large your fillets are and how done you prefer them).

Salmon is a fatty fish and so while it can handle glazing really well, it doesn’t even need that – the oil in the fish itself will mix with the seasoning as it grills.

See the salmon fat pooling down there in the bottom of the baking dish?  Like so!

Toss some greenery onto the plate, chop a cucumber or ball a melon or something – or both, season that with a drizzle of good olive oil, spatulate the salmon over to the waiting plates and you have a gorgeously elegant, healthy and tastebud-tingling meal in less time than it would take to get takout pizza (even if you live above the pizzeria!).

As to seasoning mixes – I definitely recommend the Rajah Lemon and Chili, and the Jerk one isn’t half bad (it’s meant for chicken, not fish, however), but this post is not a plug for Rajah brand as such.  Most fish-friendly seasonings will work here – it is simply that if you have one on hand premixed – either bought or compounded by your very self, it makes a great meal come together without any effort.  And that is a worthy thing in itself.

Combined with a chunk of baguette, or a couple of boiled baby potatoes with peel on, and a glass of white wine or bubbly, this makes for a great dinner as well.

P.S. In case you are wondering, the salad here is just a handful of greenery topped with cucumber and melon, with some flaked sea salt, chili flakes and dried oregano sprinkled on top, and drizzled with a good olive oil.  Melon and chili work wonderfully well together, and I tend to think that anything more complicated than that would be entirely unnecessary.

Spanish-Inspired Chickpeas and Chorizo with Sherry and Chili

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  Or rather, I am sorry I had not had time to write, but I am not sorry for the reasons – being busy happens to all of us, and I am no exception.  In consolation, I bring you chickpeas with chorizo sausage and chili in sherry sauce – a meal that is not only pretty to look at and easy to make, but is very rich in fiber, and also happens to be one of my most favorite things to eat.  One of my many favorite things to eat, but still!

Warning to the timid – this is not food for the faint of heart, as it packs not only a good amount of heat from the fresh chili, but a flavor punch that will be there whether you are as chili-happy as I am or not.  But if you love Mediterranean food in general, and garlic and chili in particular, then I urge you to make this – you will not have any regrets!

Recently, due to the impending summer and the need to look great in a swimsuit in Barcelona come July, I have been on a lose-weight track.  Which, for me, translates to tossing sugar and avoiding refined carbohydrates – I guess it is a personally-designed permutation of a LCHF eating style.  Chickpeas (along with other legumes), due to their high fiber and protein content, are an ideal solution when you (me in this case) are tired of the green salad and a piece of random protein, or want a bit of comfort food without the sugar high.

I would even go as far as to say that unless you are one of those people who definitely dislike legumes, this is a meal you need to make because it really compromises on nothing – from flavor, to its nutritional content, to the ease of preparation and the beautiful presentation, it wins on all points – at least it does for me.

I won’t lay any claims to the Spanish authenticity of this dish, nor, indeed to its authenticity in any cuisine, except that it is authentically inspired by the flavors of Spanish tapas, and more than one ingredient in it is Spanish, which to me justifies the Spanish-inspired claim.

Another plus of this is that most of the ingredients are storecupboard staples and can be easily kept on hand – chickpeas keep virtually forever if dried (or canned), and for a week or so in the fridge if cooked, and raw chorizo keeps in the cold meat part of the fridge for weeks.  And I am the sort of person who has onions, garlic and chilies on hand more or less at any time – though should you find yourself lacking garlic or chili, a bit of garlic granules or chili flakes won’t ruin this dish.  However, I’d urge against substituting both and/or onions with dried products – the quick preparation and the simple composition of this means that fresh ingredients really do shine – and removing or substituting more than one of them does take its toll.

Anyway – here’s what you need to make your own if when you decide to make it:

Feeds 2 hungry people

• 2 cups of chickpeas, cooked.  You can use canned (drained and rinsed) chickpeas, but I cook my own from dry which in my view results in much better flavor.  However, if you really can’t be bothered, 2 cans of chickpeas will do.
• 1-2 links raw chorizo sausage, cut into small quarter-circles
• 1 red onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large red chili, deseeded and chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped finely
• 1/2 teaspoon of sweet or hot paprika powder (go with sweet if you are worried about too much heat, but I use hot)
• 1 tomato, chopped into small bits
• Extra-virgin olive oil, a generous slug
• 1 sprig of rosemary, leaves torn off and chopped
• 75-100ml sherry – dry or medium.  I use Amontillado, which I keep on hand for cooking in general – it’s amazing in cream sauces, and anything to do with mushrooms, too.
• Sea salt (ground or flaked) to taste

What to do:

• Heat up your generous amount of oil in a saute pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce heat a little (5-6/9 for me).
• Toss in the onions and fry them until they are translucent and just begin to color.  Move to the side and add chorizo sausage.  Fry for a few minutes until the oil colors red from the paprika in the sausage, and sausage looks about 2/3 done.
• Move sausage over to the onions and sprinkle the paprika powder on the sausage area.  Add the chili to the pan and fry until it turns bright orange (a minute or so).
• Add garlic and fry just until it goes bright white and aromatic.  Add chopped tomato and cook a further few minutes until it is softened and heated through, then add chickpeas and mix everything thoroughly.
• Add the sherry, stir and cover, allowing the flavors to mingle for a few minutes, and the sauce to reduce.  Season with salt to taste.
• Serve in bowls, sprinkled with some fresh chopped rosemary or thyme.

In my opinion, this can make a lovely festive dinner if paired with a bit of green salad and a glass of good wine of your liking.  And some crusty bread if you aren’t avoiding it like I am.  Just saying.

Two-Fifths Sourdough Rye, and Some Baking Myths

This week, winter has finally and properly come to Stockholm.

We have -15C in daytime, sparkling white snow everywhere – it only really sparkles when the temperature outside is way below 0C – and the city is bright and beautiful and inviting to wander out and around in, now that there is no more horrible wet and dark November muck that lasted entirely too long this year – about two months too long if you ask me.

This sort of weather calls for comfort food, but not the heavy rainy-day fare, no – this calls for satisfying textures and earthy flavors; and the fact that there is NO way to overheat the apartment (all it takes is opening the kitchen vent and the problem is solved!), it is also a fantastic excuse to indulge in baking.

Rye bread is both, healthful and enormously satisfying to eat, and I happen to adore the flavor of it – nothing, nothing beats real and heavily buttered rye bread for things like pickled herring, Skagen seafood salad, charcuterie or smoked salmon.  Unfortunately, good sourdough rye is not that easy to find in even an average Swedish supermarket (it’s easy to find average quality there, heh!), and I can imagine that in most English-speaking countries it is a specialty item, and many people consider wholemeal rye flour difficult to bake with.

I know, I have been there myself when I tried to make the 100% wholemeal Finnish rye.  It turns out great, but it is a pain in the head dough to work with, really.  Now, that one is a traditional recipe so not up to me to change (I may well come up with a better way to make a high-percentage rye bread later), but this specific recipe I came up with on my own the other day.  And, guess what?  It is easy to make.  Really really easy.

Two things which gave rise to this recipe are my incessant reading on the subject of food, and my recent experiments (the failed and the successful) with no-knead bread.  I wanted rye bread.  I have read that rye flour works far better after a long sourdough fermentation, and I have seen how well and easily gluten develops in long, sourdough no-knead method fermentation.  The difficulties with bread that has a large part of rye are normally:  1. that it does not rise very well because rye gets in the way of gluten development, so you get a brick or a doorstop; and 2. that the dough is awful to work with and even look at – it is unattractively grey, gloopy and it is sticky above and beyond all reason, to the point of resembling actual carpenter glue.  So the problem is that you really don’t want to knead rye bread – and you have to knead to get the gluten to develop… oh wait – the no-knead method… Eureka!  And so this recipe came to be.

As the name suggests, the recipe is two-fifths rye and three-fifths wheat, although that is approximate.  I will test a half-and-half one at some point later and let you know whether that works as well, which I think it will.

The method used for this bread is simple, and is described in detail in the (successful) no-knead post.  I suggest you read that once as then you will not have to ever read it again (it makes sense).  The only things I can add that are specific to the rye bread are that:

• I was really really generous at covering the banetton with wheat bran (fearful of the stickiness).
• The first rise for this much rye is longer than I suggest for wheat – this bread was left for approximately 18 hours (from late afternoon and overnight till next morning).
• The 2nd rise (in banetton after folding) can also take longer than the 1.5 hours for wheat – I left mine for 5 or so hours in a cool kitchen and then baked it.
• The baking time after the 30-minute mark removal of lid or bowl (whatever you are using), is minimum another 20 minutes, but I watched the bread for about 10 minutes after those 20, and simply took it out when it reached the right color for my liking.  Since the ovens and baking dishes vary, so may your mileage.  My advice is that if this is your first rye bread, watch it.  It should get beautifully deep chestnut-golden brown (rye bread color), and if it is too light it is underbaked.

The recipe is even simpler – and here is where I would like to kick a few of the things you commonly read on the internet, and even in reputable baking books about baking bread, where it hurts.  Why?  Because among a lot of good and useful advice, there are also sites and books (no names or links as usual, you will know them when you see them), that tell you that unless you do X in exactly Y way, your bread will not work and it’s your own fault for being a bread sinner not doing it as the holy internet church of bread bakers preaches.

In my opinion, all four myths mentioned below (I think I will probably point things like this out as I go along, but only four of them make an appearance in this recipe) are so much of what comes out the back end of a cow.  If you do one of those and your bread does not work, something else is wrong (weak starter, wrong flour, etc.).  It is not because you have sinned against the holier-than-thou principles which are nothing but so much hot air being blown where the sun don’t shine.

So, recipe!

• 100-150g sourdough starter, (I feed mine with mix of about 2/3 rye and 1/3 wheat flour before baking rye, half-and-half for wheat breads).  100% hydration (1:1 ratio of flours to water).  It should have been taken out of the fridge and fed at some point within the past 48 hours.  Myth: a lot of baking purists say you should feed your starter every 8 or 12 hours or oh god oh god it will die and nothing will work… that’s a load of [unmentionable substance].  If you have a strong and healthy starter (one that wakes up and rises within 12-24 hours of being taken out of the fridge and fed), then it is more than fine to do like I do:  I keep my starter in the fridge, and a day or two before I want to bake, I take some and mix it up and let it rise.  It is then fine to bake with the next day or two.  No, I am not hallucinating all those well-risen breads on this blog.
• 350ml cold tap water.  Myth:  you must gather the first morning dew from the petals of lilies, or get the purest mountain spring water you can find, because the chlorine in tap water kills your yeast!  No, it doesn’t.  Your water does not need to be bottled, brought in a wooden pail from a mountain spring, or filtered unless you live in an area where it is otherwise not safe to drink (like London).  But if you can enjoy drinking your tap water, so can your starter.  People who go on about how you should use bottled water for baking bread are… let’s not go there.
• 500g flour (200g wholemeal finely ground rye and 300g bread-quality high-protein wheat flour).  Myth:  you must always sift your flour.  No you don’t need to sift any of it for bread-baking – weighing it and dumping it into a bowl, adding salt and spices, and swirling around a bit with a dry whisk or a spoon before adding liquids is also just fine.
• 2 teaspoons salt.  Use a measuring spoon.  Myth:  you should use un-iodized salt of one fancy and expensive variety or another or it kills your yeast!  Truth – no; regular iodized table salt is fine.  The trace amount of iodine in it is not enough to kill the microorganisms in the starter.
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds.  If you don’t love caraway as much as I do, use 2 teaspoons.  Or none, if you don’t want any.  (No, I do not feel the need to toast mine before adding it, but you can if you like.)

Method (the post linked above details it better, but here is the summary):

• Mix starter and water.  Mix all the rest in a bigger bowl.  Mix liquid into flour mix.  Cover with clingfilm and let stand for 18-20 hours.  Dump out onto a VERY well floured board.  Fold, rest 15 min, stick into banetton to rise.  I left mine to rise for nearly 5 hours but it may have been ready before I came home from my walk, so when it is puffed up, it is ready.  May be as little as 1.5-3 hours for the rye.  Bake, cool on rack, do not cut until completely cooled (more important for rye than wheat breads for flavor development).

Enjoy.  And don’t take [manure] from those who tell you baking bread must be difficult.  It really, really does not have to be.

Submitted to Yeastspotting.  :)

Egusi Beef Stew, African Fish Sauce, and Reviews

A couple of weeks ago I won a giveaway from the very generous Juls at Pepper&Sherry blog for some gorgeous African sauces: one a condiment sauce and one a sauce for a regional dish called Egusi Stew.

Before I go any further, let me just say that as someone who never wins anything, really, I was very happily surprised, especially as the winner was getting picked by the blog’s author rather than a random number generator, which is very flattering!  But all this aside, I was excited because I have never really encountered African food (other than Moroccan) up close and personal – and here it was, about a week later, delivered to my door in a neat little box.  With a card of pretty English landscapes which now sits on my refrigerator!

So what is the deal with the African sauces you ask?  Well, as the story goes, Juls met the proprietoresses of the rather new business Pepper&Stew at a food show, and heard their story – and the idea that they would make homemade-tasting no-funny-ingredient sauces and try to bring African food to the mainstream more, which she figured was a good enough reason to try and also to promote them, and besides she liked the name.  I would have, too.

Image courtesy Pepper and Stew, http://www.pepperandstew.co.uk/

So, onwards to the sauces! – I have now tried both of the sauces that Juls sent me.  The African Fish sauce has been opened and tried and declared by T and a friend to be “more up my alley than theirs”, which is to say – bloody spicy or gloriously warming, depends on who you ask.  If you ask me, I loved it – and while I am not one of those fire-eaters that love to chomp on scotch bonnets fresh, I do love spicy food and I do love the almost tangy and earthy flavor that the fish and shrimp base gives this hot sauce.  Think harissa but refined into a silkier, more glamorous and sophisticated dish, and you are nearly there.  So yes, I heartily recommend this to anyone who loves their food spicy, and who loves to have something spicy like Sambal Oelek or the Prik Nam Pla on the side with their restaurant offerings.  Their African cousin certainly does not disappoint!  I sincerely hope they ship to Sweden, because when my little jar is out, I am going to want more of this, oh yes!

The Egusi (melon seed) stew sauce got used last night to make (unsurprisingly) Egusi and beef and spinach stew.  That was the suggested use of it, and the traditional dish it was meant for so it seemed only right.  First of all, as Juls mentioned, there are no suspicious ingredients in this sauce – no E numbers, no starch to thicken it, no water, no other signs of industrial shortcuts.  No, it was composed largely of tomatoes and hot peppers and a few other things.

And you know what?  It did taste homemade!  It did not have the telltale whiff of “factory sauce” when you crack the jar seal, and it tasted like something I’d literally make at home in my own blender if I went crazy with chili peppers (which I often do).

What did I do with it?

I fried some onions till golden and a bit crinkly, added them to the pot, tossed in a little chopped garlic and let it turn aromatic, and then browned some good-quality stewing beef in small cubes, and that went in as well.  Then I poured in the sauce, about 1 dl of cold water, stirred and covered it and allowed it to simmer on very low heat (3/9) for about an hour and a half.  Why?  Because I do not like tough beef chunks in my stew – the low, slow simmer is what you need to achieve melting tenderness (it is very much enough time if you do not use huge hunks of meat – mine were about 1.5-2cm on the side max).

Then, as per instructions, I added the ground Egusi (melon seeds) which came in a little packet alongside the sauce, and the frozen spinach – and that I just eyeballed and tossed a few of those chunky pellets from the freezer bag in.  I allowed it all to come back to simmer, stirred till spinach pellets melted, and then allowed it another 5 minutes.  And I steamed some rice on the side at some point in this process.

It was almost entirely effortless (unless you count cutting up an onion, 4 cloves of garlic and a bit of meat effort), and very, very good.  And, as food from a jarred sauce goes, it was utterly amazing – as it neither looked nor tasted like any part of it has ever been through an aseptic bottling!

If you wonder whether you should try these, and love African food (and it is rather hot, be warned!), or just love spicy hot food in general, then yes, by all means, find a stockist or order the sauces online from their very helpful and pretty site, and use it instead of those questionable “curry” sauces you find on supermarket shelves all too often – full of sugar, and starch-thickened, gloopy and weight-gain inducing.  Buy this because it is wholesome, delicious, healthy and really, really wonderful on a cold day when you are too tired to do much more than open a jar of sauce and steam some rice – it is about all you need to do here, especially if you omit the meat, and just simmer the sauce with spinach for the vegetarian version – I think that would take about as long as the rice steaming, really! – and then you get to curl up on sofa with a bowl of spicy hot, warming and comforting stew.

My only comment on this would be that to me, the Egusi stew tasted a tiny bit flat.  Do not be discouraged by this, as I am the person who normally wants the garlic, the chili, the ginger and lemongrass, the cumin, the entire pantry of spices in her bowl, often at the same time – the boyfriend said it was a very nice homemade-tasting stew.  I think it was more that it does not have that much of a distinct seasoning to “place” it within a cuisine for me – and I sort of hope that the site brings back their palm nut sauce, because I would love to try that!  But, this is not a criticism, or not an objective one – so please, take the objective “this is very, very good” to heart more than my “I want 30 more spices in my food” ramblings.  Just saying!

So if you love spicy hot food, you should definitely visit their site and buy the gorgeous amazing wonderful hot fish sauce condiment!  And while you are there, check out the Egusi stew sauce as well!

Gorgeous Roasted Garlic Soup With Black Salsify – Or Without!

It is said that some of the best recipes are created by accident.

Mmmmm... garlic!

And besides, who doesn’t love roasted garlic?!  Ok, those who don’t love garlic, some of them may not love it even roasted – but conversely, even among those who avoid the vegetable in its pungent raw form, some still love it once it has been mellowed out by the heat of the oven.

By the way, the post today was not going to be about roasted garlic, actually.  It was going to be about the elusive and rare black salsify, aka the ‘vegetable oyster’ – considered a delicacy in many nations because of its special, reputedly oyster-like flavor.  But, not all things which are planned, come to pass as they were, and so today’s post is about roasted garlic and roasted garlic soup.  Hope you don’t mind.

A very nice soup, at that!

Black salsify – Scorzonera hispanica, or as it is called in Swedish, svartrot (“black root”) is not difficult to find in Stockholm supermarkets.  It appears to mostly come from Holland and is available organic (ecological as it’s termed in Sweden) more often than not – and it tends to hide on a shelf somewhere in the veg department, in a cellophane bag.  I’ve long wondered about it, and finally, now that it’s come in season (and is thus fresh rather than aged and wrinkled), have decided to try it.

Black salsify aka Scorzonera hispanica aka svartrot

So I bought two 375g packs of it.  The part where I got two is important, but we’ll get to that in a while.  I’ve unpacked one of them for today’s lunch.  The soup I have based my soup on was a recipe from Eat Like A Girl, which I don’t blame for the result in the very least – no blame to be had, as I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and besides, this is a truly excellent soup.  The aforementioned recipe attracted me since it uses red lentils, which are a favorite ingredient of mine.

And here we come to the crux of the matter, and that in all the tasting, and later happy eating of said soup, I couldn’t make out any oystery flavor, or any hint that I’d not, for example, used potatoes instead of the salsify.

So, since this soup doesn’t give any hints as to the oyster-vegetable mystery, the fate of the second pack of salsify thus becomes more important, as I will dig around and try another recipe for it that would perhaps clue me on to what all the oyster-flavor fuss is about.  We can hope!

But, in the meantime, forget the salsify – if you love, or even like garlic, you have got to make this soup!  With potatoes or parsnips, or indeed salsify if you have some on your hands for some reason.  Or else reserve the salsify for something where it’ll shine better, but do, do make this soup!

... and it uses up the leftover apple!

You’ve got to make it because it’s warmly aromatic, and it is mild and not at all sharp or burning the way raw garlic is, and it is really very healty and also really easy to make.  Oh, and it’s inexpensive to make (if you omit the not-so-cheap salsify and go with taters or parsnips instead).  And, also, it’s not even time-consuming, because you roast the garlic while you prep everything else.

What do you need for it: (serves 4, or 2 with leftovers to freeze)

• ~400g black salsify (weight is unpeeled, but you want to peel it and put it in acidified water to prevent browning), or peeled parsnips, or potatoes (scrubbed, I don’t bother peeling)
• 3 small yellow onions, peeled and chopped coarsely
• A leftover apple of any variety.  Mine came from the old fruit tree in the neighborhood (I do so practice what I preach!) – quartered, cored and sliced into 1-cm thick pieces
• 1 very large or 2 small garlic bulbs
• 1-2dl cream
• 1.5dl red lentils
• ~1.5L of boiling water
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• Extra-virgin olive oil (for garlic and to garnish)
• Some tablespoons of refined cooking oil (I use rapeseed aka canola)
• Sea salt to taste
• Chili flakes, chopped parsley, grated hard cheese, olive oil – whatever you like to garnish with.  I am sure some bits of bacon will go just great with this too.

What to do:

(this was hard to get in order.  It’s a sort of make-it-all-at-same-time sort of prep – roast the garlic while boiling the root veg and lentils and caramelizing onions and apple – but as it’s all at the same time, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to do it!)

• Preheat oven to 180°C.
• While oven is heating, cut the top off the garlic bulb as in above photo, place it in a little ovenproof dish and lightly drizzle the top with olive oil.
• Once oven is preheated, stick the garlic dish in it, and leave for 30-40 minutes.  How fast it cooks will depend on the size of bulbs and size of cloves inside them, so check on it after about 20 min have passed.

• Wash and scrub your root veggies.  If you are using salsify, note that it leaks tacky latex-ey juice, and will be sticky upon peeling.  So, after you have peeled it, plunge the roots into some acidified water (I used a spritz of vinegar into a bowl of water), and take them out one by one to cut up.  Then, spend a bit of time getting the sticky juice off your hands.  You may also want to cut the salsify on a piece of baking parchment over your board, to protect it (and you) from a lot of scrubbing later on.  Obviously if using potatoes and/or parsnips, just stick them into a bit of water so they don’t turn dark while you chop.
• Once done chopping, drain the veg and place them in a pot.  Add just enough water to cover them, and about 1 teaspoon of salt, bring to medium boil, and cook the chopped root vegetables until soft.
• Add lentils and another half-litre of water and cook until lentils are done and falling apart visibly.
• Once garlic is ready, remove it from oven and allow it to cool a little before squeezing it into the goblet of a blender.

The cloves, once cooled a little, are really easy to squeeze out of peel

• In the meantime, heat a non-stick frying pan and add 2-3 tbsp of cooking oil (I use refined rapeseed).  Once pan is heated, add the onions and cook on medium heat until soft and beginning to color.
• Move aside and add the apples and cook until apples are heated through and beginning to go soft (a few minutes), then place in the goblet of the blender on top of the garlic (order matters little here, put batches in as they become ready).
• Pour the veg and lentil mix into a bowl, add about 1/3 of it to the garlic, apple, and onion mix, top up with a bit of water, and puree until smooth.  Pour back in the pot, and repeat with the remaining root veg and lentils.
• Place the pot of soup on low heat, and add cream and enough water to achieve the consistency you like – I did not add any at this point as I love my soups pretty thick.
• Season with salt to taste, and mix in the 2 teaspoons of cumin, sprinkling it to avoid clumping in the thick soup.
• Heat through and serve, with any or all of the garnishes suggested.

I went with the cheese and olive oil – and some chili flakes later on as an afterthought.  Black pepper would work equally well in my opinion.

The lentils give this a very good dose of trace minerals and fibre, making this a full-meal soup that packs a lot of satisfaction (you won’t be running for a snack anytime after a bowl of this!), and the roasted garlic smell with the warmth of cumin… yum!

As to the other pack of salsify?  Sooner or later, I’ll figure out what to do with it and whether it really tastes like oysters at all.  Naturally, I’ll keep you posted!