kitchen surprise: cinnamon pine nut cookies

[marinarusalka]

I didn't have enough all-purpose flour to get the right dough consistency, so I filled it out with cake flour. I think it actually gave the cookies a nicer texture, but I'd have to make another batch with only all-purpose to say for sure.

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour
some pine nuts (I didn't measure)

In a mixer, cream butter with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt. Add the egg and mix until well-blended. Scrape the sides of the bowl. Add flours and mix until the dough comes together. Shape the dough into a log, wrap in plastic film, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a cookie sheet with was paper. Slice the dough log into 1/4" slices and place on cookie sheet. Press a few pine nuts into the top of each cookie. Bake for 10 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

Kitchen Surprise: Winter Vegetable/Bottom of the Fridge Soup

[glinda]

This is a regular soup for me, I make it in various iterations depending on what veg is in season, or lurking unloved in the bottom of the fridge. Something of a Sunday night special, when I want to be kind to future me - few things better at this time of year than opening the fridge after a long shift to see a jug of nice thick soup waiting for you.

Today's version was:

1 leek (alternately a large onion or a couple of smaller ones - or for that matter half a bunch of spring onions)
2 sweet potatoes (or equivalent other potatoes)
half a marrow
a couple of sad carrots
3oz of lentils (in this case mung daal but red lentils, split peas or whatever daal you have in the cupboard)
half a bag of kale (or whatever dark green veg is lurking unloved in your fridge)
a litre of veg stock

Thinly slice your leek, dump into a large pot with a knob of butter/margerine or a tbsp of olive oil, soften slowly on a low heat, stiring regularly. Peel and roughly chop your potatoes, carrots and marrow (or parsnips, squash, lump of turnip etc), once your leek is soft, dump chopped potatoes and lentils into the pan, stir around for a minute of two until potatoes are well-coated in leek and lentils.

Pour hot stock over them, stir and leave for a minute. Add other chopped veg and season. (I usually use a stock cube so I don't bother with salt, so I just add pepper, along with some thyme and a bay leaf because I have a small herb garden with both those things to hand.) Simmer for 20 minutes or so. Give it a stir every five minutes or so to make sure it doesn't stick.

Prep your green veg - when using kale I usually just remove the woodier stocks, when using broccoli I just cut the very end of the stock off, ditch any leaves, and roughly chop it. After 20 minutes, add the green veg and simmer for another 10-15 minutes.

Take pot off the heat and leave to cool for 20 minutes/half an hour - often I make this in the morning before I do a backshift, and I find the time it takes to have a shower, get dressed and blow-dry my hair is also a good interval for this - pour into a jug blender and blitz.

Normally I would put some cheese in this. (Sometimes the time the soup gets left to cool is the time it takes me to walk to the shops, grab some cheese for it and walk back.) Often I will pick up a lump of blue cheese from the supermarket on the way home from work so that I can call it Kale/broccoli and blue cheese soup. However I'm equally likely to make it with whatever soft strong cheese I spotted on the reduced chiller shelf, or at Xmas with leftover cheeseboard cheese. I've never tried it myself, but I imagine that if you have leftover cream cheese needing used up, then that would work too. However, the only cheese in my fridge right now is hard cheese, so by the terms of this challenge, no cheese in the soup.