Hot, Sweet and Sour Orange, Carrot and Ginger Soup

I've always liked orange carrot soup much more conceptionaly than in practice. I've even had a Covent Garden Soups version with carrot, orange and ginger, which I thought I would love, but didn't. To me, the flavours needs balancing and more punch, and what I love about Chinese food is the concept of balancing all the taste dimensions: sweet, sour, salty and acid.

A cold has been doing the rounds at work and in this little abode, so while I'll write up the 'Feed-a-cold Chicken Fusion Soup for Him' soup that we did on over the weekend later, today will be about my 'feed-a-cold soup for Her', which is the above.

Just a heads up: we'll be roasting the carrots first to get them nice and sweet.

This soup makes just enough for two bowls with leftovers for next day lunch. Double up if you want more.

Ingredients:

• half a red onion
• 2 cloves, ground
• 2 'petals' of star anise, ground
• quarter teaspoon powdered ginger
• half an inch fresh ginger, peeled and chopped fine
• quarter teaspoon nutmeg
• kallo (or other gluten free brand) vegetable stock cube
• 100 ml orange juice
• 3 cloves garlic - chopped. oh yeah, this cold is going down!
• 3 carrots, sliced in half
• 1 potato, diced.
• 1/4 cup of pink lentils, washed and rinsed very well
• sprig rosemary

After soup is made:

• Balsamic vinegar - to taste
• honey- to taste
• Tabasco sauce or scotch bonnet pepper sauce, to taste

Method:
First, toss the sliced carrots in olive oil in a metal tray and place in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees to roast.

When the carrots are ready: fry the onion, garlic and ginger gently in a frying pan in a little olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Into a pot add this and the diced potato, rosemary, and other ingredients except the vinegar, honey and Tabasco sauce. Add a cup of boiled water and cook for 20-30 minutes of medium-low heat.

After the time is up, let the soup cool a little, then use a hand blender to get everything smooth.
Now add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and a little honey to taste, then pepper sauce. The result is a beautifully deep soup that hits your taste bugs in all their erogenous zones!

(I did this in my thermomix for 20 mins at 100C, then blended at speed 7 for about a minute)

Autumn Layered Polenta Bake

Ready-made polenta is one of those great standbys to keep in the fridge.
A low fuss, low effort dinner could be some grilled or stir fried veggies and some fried polenta chips, but since I'm trying to cut the cholesterol, I googled 'baked polenta recipe', hit 'image search' and clicked the images I liked the look of. This recipe is the love child of those recipes.

You can change the ingredients around based on what you have at hand and add more polenta layers if you have more than one pack. In essence, you want to make a sort of chunky stew and then sandwhich it between two layers of polenta which you'll bake in the oven until crisp. The difference in texture between those layers is what makes this meal.

I use nutritional yeast and salt mixed together to give it a crunchy, cheesy topping, but for the dairy or soy-cheese enabled, please feel free to cover the top with the melting stuff.
Ingredients

• Ready-made polenta, sliced
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 1 stick celery, chopped
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 2 carrots, sliced
• half a can of puey lentils (leftovers from another a previous night’s dinner)
• 3 marks and spensor 100% meat sausages (leftover from Mr Umami's lunch), sliced
• 1.5 cups peeled and diced pumpkin (I used a potato peeler) OR sweet potato, diced and peeled.
• Quarter teaspoon dried oregano
• Sprig of fresh rosemary
• Dash of balsamic vinegar
• Sea salt
• 1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• Extra virgin olive oil

For the topping:

• Nutritional yeast flakes
• Salt
• Olive oil

Method
Preheat the oven to 190c. This recipe will use the hob and the oven. On the hob, in a large frying pan, fry chopped onions, garlic and celery on medium heat for 3-4 minutes until the onions soften. Add carrot, pumpkin, herbs and a little salt, and leave on the same medium heat, stirring occasionally to get colour on all sides of the veg until the pumpkin starts to soften, about 10 minutes.

Brush a baking dish with a little olive oil and leave in the oven to heat for ten minutes.

Return to the hob: add the tinned tomatoes, hot water, lentils, sausages and a dash of balsamic vinegar, then tun the heat up and leave on the hob for another 10-15 minutes until the pumpkin is fork tender.

Remove the tray from the oven and arrange polenta slices on the bottom layer, then add the stew on top, then arrange another layer of polenta slices on top. Brush the top polenta slices with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with nutritional yeast flakes and grind some sea salt all over the top (cheese is actually quite salty). Put in centre of oven for 20 minutes.