Wednesday 5 December 2012

Northern Anarchist Cookbook VIII:

A Quick Soup for Today -  Aubergine, Tomato, Garlic and Coconut Milk Soup
Lindsey Bareham in her book 'A Celebration of Soup' writes:  'This is an easy and delicious soup of no real origin but with South-east Asian overtones.'   She adds:  'The coconut milk, which is rich mild and nutrious, combined with the quickly cooked vegetables, and fire from the garlic and chilli, provide a good balance of textures and flavours.'

Serves 4-6.
400g/ 14 oz. aubergine.
225g/ 8 oz. tomatoes.
900ml/ 1.5 pints chicken or vegetable stock.
400ml/ 14 fl oz tinned coconut milk.
2 tbsp groundnut oil.
2 small onions, finely chopped.
1 fresh chilli pepper, cored, de-seeded and finely chopped.
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
1 tsp salt.
a big pinch of white pepper.
a pinch of sugar.

Peel and cut aubergine into 1-cm/ 0.5-inch cubes.  Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for 60 seconds, peel and chop into small chunks.
Bring the stock and coconut milk to simmering point in a large pan.  While they are simmering, heat a wok or large frying-pan and add the oil.  When hot, stir-fry the onions, chilli, garlic and aubergine at high heat for 4 minutes until nicely browned.  Drain on absorbent paper, then add to the soup.  Add the seasoning, adjusting to taste.  If necessay add a bit of sugar.

2 comments:

Galloping Gourmet said...

This purely gastronomic blog is the best thing Brian Bamford has written for months. Stick to the recipes & cut out all the other personal vendetta, lunatic fringe, 'anarchists are fascists' batshit idiocy

bammy said...

Are yes, but what tha' didn't seem to notice was that Lindsey Bareham had fail to tell us what to do with the tomatoes after we'd chopped them up. I only noticed well I was doing the soup last night. I suggest we chuck them in after the aubergine is golden brown. What do you think? We can dedicate this dish to Galloping Gourmet!