As previously mentioned I occasionally have the bright idea to involve my darling children, A-Bomb and the Terminator, in cooking a meal. So this week I thought I’d try courgette and goat cheese soup. This recipe is from a cookbook The River Cottage Year by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It’s a really nice cookbook, Although there are only a few I use from it. The recipes are themed on an annual cycle split by month, this recipe is from August.
Rash Decisions
So although my children are only 5 and 6 years of age I decided it was appropriate to give them some responsibility using a knife rather than just pouring prepared ingredients into a pan. Particulalry for a recipe like this where the cooking is rather simple and a large proportion of the task is preparation. So I finely chopped a few cloves of garlic, and added it to a large frying pan at a low heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. One child was set to moving this round the pan with a wooden spoon whilst I supervised the other in chopping some courgettes.
Wildly Risky
Now I have watched my children with their enthusiastic but still unskilled use of knives and forks. So I knew some hands on supervision would be needed for chopping courgettes. I started by taking the Terminator in hand. I put a wooden chopping board in front of her and a dinner knife with a small fine serration on the leading edge. We had a little safety talk about poking out eyes and chopping off fingers and set about the task. I got her to hold the courgette in one hand the knife in the other then covered her holding hand with my own and wrapped my right hand around her knife hand.
Chopping proceeded but whilst the knife would cut the courgettes being relatively blunt it required proportionally a lot of force for my daughter to do so. Any chef will tell you a blunt knife can be dangerous than a sharp one given it’s propensity to suddenly jerk into movement. So at this point we moved to Plan B a much sharper short paring knife. This was much easier but a repeat of the safety talk and a lot of vigilance were needed. I let both children have a go, stopping the task well before they got near their fingers. I see these tasks as a gentle introduction to kitchen skills that I hope will build to give them confidence.
Cooking the Courgettes
Once the children had got bored I finished cooking the 1 kg of courgettes in batches. They need to be cooked quite slowly with the aim to get a light browning and the removal of most of the water. Once all the courgettes are cooked I placed them in saucepan and used a stick blender to puree about half the courgettes and used a wooden spoon to bash the rest to bits.
Finishing Off
Then I stirred in 300g of a soft goats cheese, I used a soft fresh cheese of very mild taste. Previously I’ve used a firmer fresh goats cheese with a stronger flavour and in retrospect this is better as the flavour comes through more clearly. Then I heated 750ml of semi skimmed milk and stirred this into the courgette cheese mix. At this stage if you want you can loosen the soup with the stick blender again but I quite like it coarse.
To Serve Heat the soup to piping hot but avoid boiling. It is best served with a drizzle of olive and a few ripped basil leaves. The smell of these on the hot soup is amazing and really lifts the dish. I eat mine with well buttered crusty bread. A hearty meal in itself but also a good starter for a meal if you’re not aiming for anything too refined.
I guess my final comment would be I should have taken a photo of it served in a nice bowl but I’m still learning on the blogging front so my apologies.
Other cooking exploits can be found here.