Broccoli, Spinach and Stilton Soup

On the 25^th of October this year, the day after my birthday, and Wayne Rooney’s, in an enclave of Leicestershire that would be of no relevance in particular should it not be for its proximity to Britain’s ‘Rural Capital of Food’ Melton Mowbray, a world record breaking lump of Stilton cheese tipped the scales at 140kg.

To make ‘The Beast’ as it has become affectionately known, The ‘Long Clawson Dairy’ used 824 litres of full fat milk, 1.8kg of salt, 190ml of vegetarian rennet (a naturally occurring substance that acts as a coagulant), and 0.0003g of dairy cultures, a form of bacteria. After 12 weeks of maturing it was ready to be sliced open and enjoyed on a massive Carr’s water biscuit.

A few years ago I was on a beach in the north east of Greece about 100km east of Thessaloniki, in a peculiar camp site not entirely unlike a run down Baltic Butlins filled with large Greek families headed by portly patriarchs and matriarchs serving up saganaki. This wasn’t that unusual; the fact that a trance festival was going on around them in the same site however certainly made for some interesting observations and conversations. It was certainly a reality check on a few occasions for wasted revellers, myself included, as we encountered holidaying families and their children playing on a beach in blissful sobriety, seemingly unaware of the goings on around them. There was a point when I got a few strange looks as I marched to the beach and began stuffing rocks into a rucksack to take them back to my campsite, in order to make a border for an elaborate network of pathways that a friend and me had created to pass the time whilst waiting for our friends to arrive from the airport.

Another thing one does at these festivals after constructing the ultimate ergonomic camping area, is experiment with mind altering substances. Never one to shy away from a new experience I recalled an article I’d read detailing the effects of ingesting excessive amounts of blue cheese on the mind, and thought I’d give it a go. 500g of cheese later and I certainly felt very different, delirious in fact, not helped by the forty degree heat, however if you can get past these initial side effects I'm sure it'll make a far nicer tipple than the so called 'Meow Meow' or even those horse tranquilisers some people seem to be snorting. In fact, I may start dealing Stilton. 

The answer then is, like many things in life, moderation. You don’t need 140kg of Long Clawson stilton, 1 will be quite enough for this recipe, and to last you and your water biscuits into the new year.

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

1 large white onion

1 large bag of spinach

1 head of broccoli

1 tablespoon plain flour

Healthy knob of butter

Salt and Pepper

2.5 litres of vegetable stock

150g stilton

Double cream to garnish

Method:

1. In a large saucepan heat the butter and cook the onions until soft but not brown, chuck in the flour and stir through. Add the vegetable stock and broccoli and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and simmer for 6 minutes. Add the spinach and stir in so it wilts, simmer for another few minutes until the broccoli is cooked.

2. Take the saucepan off the heat and blend the contents either in a processor or with a hand held blender, the latter is far easier. Add a slug of double cream and stir it through, crumble up lumps of stilton into the soup and stir so they melt, season, serve.

Grandma Jac's Marrow and Courgette Soup

Grandparents are great, they are like your mum and dad, but where your parents are expected to teach you right and wrong and life’s lessons and how to behave and all that jazz, grandparents are exempt from distributing disciplinary action. So in short, they are like your parents, but more fun.

It doesn’t just apply to playing games either; the confusingly contradictory battle of double standards extends to the kitchen as well. Mum won’t let you eat some things and then force you to eat others (I recall several hours spent locked in the boot of our estate car for refusing point blank to eat my cauliflower, I didn’t even mind the stuff, it was a matter of principal), whereas Granny will feed you and feed you until you burst and let you get down from the table whenever you please.

I am happy to say that things haven’t changed!

I woke up at 9am this morning in West Sussex to the smell of bacon wafting up the stairs, I pretty much fell down them to get to the kitchen, knocking my already oversized head on the doomsday beams on the way down, and found Grandma Jac beastin’ out brekkie over the Aga.

“How many eggs would you like boy”?

“Oh, one’s en-ouef Jacco”!

The joke was lost on her the first time round as her hearing is somewhat lacking, it was, as you can imagine, still very amusing when she finally got close enough to hear me shout it at her. I didn't have the strength to crack another . . .

It conspired that she had good reason for being asleep at 8:30pm the previous evening, the alarm set downstairs, me tucked up in bed, no TV, sin signal. She had to rise at around half past six and begin making a pan of marrow and courgette soup, all home grown of course, that we could have for our lunch. Two meals ready by 9am is good going by anyone’s standards, the fact we were leaving at 11:30 hadn’t fazed her and out came the Tupperware so the soup could make the journey back to Hertfordshire, along with me, my big sister, her cat-mauling-chicken-killing but peculiarly affectionate Jack Russell, and a bag full of swiftly thawing cow thigh bones whose odour was rapidly masking that of the our lunch.

(Foodnote: Speaking of forbidden foods re: the parents, I was never allowed pushpops as a child as they are essentially one big sugary E number. I bought one the other day as I’m now a big boy and can make my own decisions; my finger was too chubby to fit in the hole. Bum out.)

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

450g marrow and courgettes, grated (a few courgette shavings to garnish)

1 pint of chicken stock

½ tspn curry powder

1 pot of Philadelphia (smaller size)

Butter

Double Cream

Salt

Pepper

Method:

1. In a saucepan melt a little butter and cook the marrow and courgettes for 1 minute, add the curry powder, seasoning and stock and simmer until soft. Add the Philadelphia and stir through until smooth, blend and season further to taste.  

2. Serve with some courgette shavings, a drizzle of cream and a couple of turns of pepper.