As I have spent the day under the impression that my son had chicken pox, I
wanted to make him a hearty soup for lunch to make him feel better.
I baked 5 potatoes and sautéed an onion, 3 leeks and 2 cloves of garlic,
then added the baked potatoes (skinned and sliced) to the leeks with a handful of peas and mixed them
together with a pint of veg stock. I brought the pan to the boil and then
simmered for 20 mins adding pepper and ground cumin for an extra bit of
flavour. To finish it off I whizzed it all up in the blender and added a cup of hot water.
For the soda bread I mixed plain flour, bread flour and self-raising flour
(as I was running low on the other 2 - you shouldn't normally use self raising)
to get 500g of flour, with 2 teaspoons of baking soda and a pinch of salt. Made
a well in the middle and slowly mixed in 400ml of cultured butter milk (you can
use live yogurt).
I then freaked out because Hugh Fernley Big Nostrils told me to get it in
the oven straight away! While the baking soda was still doing its thing! and I had been side tracked by a baby waking up from a
too short nap. So I shoved the mix into the oven without kneading and without
really caring to shape it - hence the weird crusty blob that resulted.
I did dust it with too much self-raising flour before it went in however,
and I then baked it for 45 mins.
Then we sat and had lunch.
... and it turns out he doesn't have the pox, he was just a bit pimply this
morning!
