Our recipes from the Tesco's Ladies charity evening
Butternut squash soup
Serves 4
Splash of oil
3 – 4 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed/chopped
1 carrot peeled and roughly chopped
½ stick celery chopped (this is not essential, but trust us, it makes a better end product and if you’re not keen on celery, you don’t taste it when the soup is done)
1 large onion peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium butternut squash about 750g. Hard skin carefully peeled off (it’s easiest to cut the squash in half at the middle where the tapered end meets the bulbous end. Then peel each half). Seeds scooped out with a spoon. Then cut into rough chunks 3 vegetable stock cubes
2 -2.5 pints of water boiled from the kettle
Salt and pepper
Put the oil in a saucepan big enough to fit all the ingredients and bring up to a medium heat on the stove.
Add the onion and garlic and sweat for a few minutes. By sweating, we mean to lightly fry giving little or no colour to the vegetables, so you want to keep it reasonably gentle. Don’t be too afraid here though, you want enough heat to start to cook and if you get a touch of colour it won’t spoil the dish…..but don’t burn! Give a stir now and then.
Add the carrot, celery and butternut squash. Continue to sweat until the vegetables are becoming soft and the onion looks translucent.
Add the water and throw in the stock cubes. You don’t need to dissolve them before hand.
Simmer for fifteen minutes or so. Test the vegetables by tasting some to check they are cooked through.
Whizz up with your preferred tool of blender. The longer you blend, the more velvet it will become. Taste the soup and add pepper if you wish. Stock cubes have salt added already so you may think the salt level is fine or you might like to add a touch more.
Salmon with lemon and rosemary and roasted new potatoes
Serves 2
2 portions salmon
2 lemons
1 bunch rosemary
4 slices pancetta
½ pack new potatoes, sliced in half and par boiled
½ pack cherry tomatoes on the vine
1 pack washed baby spinach
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Remove the rind from and segment one of the lemons. Lay a few of the lemon segments on each of the salmon fillets. Top with a sprig of rosemary. Season the salmon fillets with pepper. Wrap them each in two slices of pancetta and place on a baking tray. Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees.Place the new potatoes on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with a little chopped rosemary.
Roast in the oven for 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and add the cherry tomatoes to the tray and a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice from the remaining lemon (you could also add a little lemon zest if you wish).
Return to the oven and roast for a further 5-10 minutes.At the same time place the salmon in the oven and roast for ten to fifteen minutes.Remove the potatoes from the oven and stir the spinach into the roasting tray. The heat of the potatoes should cause the spinach to wilt down quickly. You may want to return the oven to the tray if you find a little of the heat has been lost.Serve the salmon with the potatoes, tomatoes and wilted spinach.
Sticky Toffee Pudding with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream
Serves 6
175g Self raising flour
175g chopped dates
175g dark brown sugar
50g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
In a bowl, cream the sugar and butter then add the vanilla essence.Heat 300ml of water, the dates and bicarbonate of soda together in a saucepan until frothy. Be careful not to allow it to boil over. Then add everything, even the water, to the butter and sugar mix.Sieve the flour into the mixture and fold in. Break the eggs into the bowl and stir thoroughly. The mixture will look really wet, but don’t worry, this is perfectly normal.
Pour the mixture into a baking tray lined with non stick greaseproof paper.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes at 190oC
Sticky toffee sauce
100g Butter
100g Dark brown soft sugar
Teaspoon vanilla essence
¼ pint whipping or double cream
Melt the butter, vanilla essence and sugar together in a pan, then simmer for a few minutes until it make a caramelised sauce.
Add the cream, occasionally it will spit as the cold cream touches the molten sugar so be careful. Simmer until it amalgamates and stir now and again for a further two minutes.Cut the pudding into squares and drizzle over the sauce, top with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.
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