Been up the country

We are back from a week in the country where it was a big ol’ mess of lovely family chaos. We met our new little nephew James (Jimmy, Jim, Jimbo) who is a sweet little thing. Amelia seemed very taken with him, and even more taken with my brother and sister-in-law’s dog Ellie. We walked, ate chocolate, drank coffee and even got the occasional good sleep. Now it’s back home and time to find a new house. My bones ache at the whole idea. Amelia and I are off to see a place at 4.30 that looks from it’s exterior shot on realestate.com.au like it might have mouldy carpet, a leaky roof and a small “old style” kitchen which they try to pass of as “full of character” and “quaint” but really it’s smelly, damp and crusty. We shall see.

South of the Border Soup

Last night Big-P and I made some delicious, mexican inspired, tortilla-accompanied soup. I hesitate to call it tortilla soup as we left out a few key ingredients that seem to be ubiquitous when making tortilla soup (green chillies for example). After reading all about tortilla soup in the comments on my last entry and over at all recipes I decided to just absorb the ideas and then go free-style in the kitchen with whatever I had in the pantry. The result was extremely pleasing, especially on a cold and rainy old Autumn night. I’ve called it South of the Border Soup… because that’s where we live unless you happen to live in Tasmania, then you should rename it North of the Border Soup. As it’s all made up feel free to replace any of the ingredients with anything else, and also feel free to use some of that weird hominy stuff if you are so inclined.

Ingredients
blob of butter or olive oil for frying
1 onion chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1 stalk of celery chopped
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 can of 3 bean mix
1 can of chicken consommé (broth)
1 small can of creamed corn
pinch of cayenne pepper (more if you like it hot)
pinch of cumin
pinch of dried oregano
pinch of dried basil
slices of avocado, grated cheese, sour cream, squeeze of lemon and tortilla chips (about one cut up per person) fried in olive oil for garnish

Method
Fry the onion, garlic, celery and spices gently in the oil or butter until onion is soft. Add the tin of tomatoes and cook until bubbling. Add the can of beans and the can of creamed corn. Cook until nice and bubbly and then blend with a hand blender. Add chicken consommé and let it heat through. While this is warming up fry up your tortilla bits in olive oil until they are brown and puffy. Serve in big bowls with slices of avocado, cheese, cream and tortilla chips floating on top. We added a squeeze of lemon juice at the end, but lime would have been better.

In more prepared circumstances I might have added some bite sized bits of chicken. I am sure a vegetarian style soup would be just as good if you replaced the chicken stock with vegetable stock. Make plenty of the tortilla chips as they are really good to munch on.

Tortilla Soup

I started the morning by whacking my hand down several times on Amelia’s plastic squeaking turtle (“Georgina”) thinking in my confused sleep state that it was the turtle who was beeping at us to wake up and not my alarm clock sitting right beside it. That made me laugh until I remembered that it’s only yucky old TUESDAY. Luckily Friday is a public holiday and then so is next Monday so Tuesday this week isn’t so bad.

On Saturday night Big-P and I watched a movie called Tortilla Soup. We have pretty much exhausted the dvds in the video library so we are now down to those few remaining movies that nobody’s ever heard of. Tortilla Soup had an original screen play written by Ang Lee and for that reason some of the story wasn’t too bad. I like stories about old crusty chefs who have a grumpy manner but love their three beautiful daughters very much, and they all live at home despite being well and truly grown up, and he cooks them amazing meals and gets extra prickly when they bring boyfriends to the table. It’s a great genre (not that I can really think of any other movies that fit into this rather specific genre). I am now thinking that tortilla soup might be something that I will have to try cooking. In the movie it looked like thick Campbell’s tomato soup which I have always had a soft spot for. This recipe over at all recipes sounds pretty good and relatively easy so when I work out what hominy is I will give it a go.

It’s raining here in Melbourne which is so incredibly good. I am about to take Amelia to the baby chiropractor and I am going to wear my scarf!