On Sunday evening I decided to make vichyssoise. Vichyssoise is a cold soup made from potatoes, leeks onions and cream. Its very easy to make and its delicious.Here is my recipe:

Vichyssoise

Ingredients (serves 6)

1 Onion (sliced)

6 Potatoes (peeled and chopped into chunks) (you can also use sweet potatoes for something a bit different)

6 Leeks (chopped into chunks)

1/2 teaspoon mild yellow curry powder

1/2 cup chopped parsley

1/2 cup choped chives

500ml chicken stock

100ml single cream

plain yoghurt

cayenne pepper

Instructions

Lightly sauté onion in oil in large saucepan.

Add curry powder and cook until fragrant.

Add the stock potatoes and leeks and boil until soft.

Blend mixture with stick blender till smooth.

Add chives and parsley and stir.

Allow to cool.

Mix in cream and refrigerate untill you are ready to serve.

Serve cold with a dollop of plain yoghurt and some cayenne pepper.

Enjoy :)

Country Sausages with Mashed Potato and Pesto and Sugar-Snap Peas

Sorry for the long absence of posts, but I am flat out broke and in the process of selling my house. I have been eating ALOT of spaghetti and Bangers and Mash, not exactly inspiring.But I felt it was time to give you guys another entry.

First off, I really like both bangers and mash, and spaghetti (in all its forms), but I hate the lack of variety in my diet right now. So I decided to experiment with the classic bangers and mash dish.

Last week I made some pesto and I served it with (you guessed it) spaghetti.

Pesto is really easy to make, delicious and cheap. All you need to do is roughly blend up fresh basil, lemon juice, sugar, olive oil, garlic, and nuts (I used almonds, but any nut will do). DON'T over blend it. It should be rough in texture, a paste not a soup.

Last night I decided to flavour the mash with the pesto.
Wow.
It was fantastic, The flavour really complemented the sausages far better than ordinary mash did. I will definitely be doing this again.

Pastilla

I'm back and ready to start a new year.

Unfortunately Mark has moved to Cape Town for the summer casting season. I really miss my kitchen buddy, but I wish him every success at finally making it to Hollywood.

Happy new year to all my readers, this year is gonna be great. To get it started properly, I cooked a dinner party for my friend Aidan and his girlfriend Kelly.

For starters I served a thin slice of salmon quiche. For mains I made Pastilla (pronounced "bastiyya"; Arabic: بسطي) a sweet and savoury Moroccan curry pie in phyllo pastry. It was made with chicken, dates, eggs, almonds, onion, and more spices than you can throw a stick at.
Many thanks to Kevin Lynch of Closet Cooking for the recipe (http://closetcooking.blogspot.com/2009/12/chicken-and-date-pastilla.html).
Normally you sprinkle cinnamon and icing sugar on the top, but this time I chose not to.





Aidan and Kelly


For desert I served lemon cheese cake, vanilla ice-cream, and chocolate phyllo parcels. A fantastic start to the Boogie calendar!