Beetroot and squash soup with red bean mash

When this blog started, the first couple of posts were of beetroot-based recipes, as Rachel had just gone to the market and brought back a lot of beetroot. This is once again the case, so here's some delicious squash and beetroot soup:

Recipe (serves 2)

• 2 small squashes/pumpkins
• 2 beetroots
• olive oil
• a stock cube
• garlic paste, salt, a bit of cayenne pepper, and lots of cumin

Peel, de-core and cube the squashes and cube the beetroots. Put into pan with a generous amount of olive oil, some garlic paste, and the spices. Gently fry for 5-10 minutes. Then add the stock and enough boiling water to cover the vegetables. Simmer, occasionally stirring, for half an hour. The squashes will have dissolved, the beetroots softened, and the soup become thick, red, and creamy.

To go along with this, Rachel made a bean mash consisting of chopped spring onions, mashed kidney beans, lemon juice, tahini and pepper:

En Guete! Return of the return of the beetroot

Here is another En Guete! post by Dave. He also took the photo, which I think is rather good.

Having made two beetroot-based meals, we found ourselves with yet more beetroot to use up the following day. So we looked into the cupboard and determined that the other thing we had far too much of was risotto rice.

Consulting Google for a recipe yielded this one. We made it vegan by the simple method of leaving out all the cream and cheese and using margarine instead of butter. We also substituted brandy for the vermouth, since we had no vermouth in.

Despite the recipe's dubious origins, the result was delicious, and probably a lot less taxing on the stomach than the cheese-laden original.

En Guete! Return of the beetroot

After the great success of our borscht, Dave and I were a little surprised to see quite how many beetroots we had left. We decided to make purple mashed potatoes with them. This was made easier by the rice cooker/steamer we got for Christmas (expect many of these posts to mention it. It is a marvel). We steamed potatoes, carrots and beetroot together, then I mashed them with some salt, pepper, and margarine. The different types of vegetables hadn't softened to the same degree, which gave a nice mix of creaminess and chunkiness. Dave made onion gravy and we had the mash with Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages.

The next day we had both fresh beetroot and beetroot mash left over and I started to despair a little. Neither of us had actually made bubble and squeak before (although I love my stepdad's version) but we steamed some cabbage and improvised. From subsequent looking at websites, it seems that my choice to make the mash into patties before frying it was quite a fancy one. Despite looking worryingly meatlike in the pan, they were good and had just enough of the crunchy outside.

Dave will be happy, because now I've written about these rather traditional meals he can write about what we did with the last of the beets...

Oh yes, and that white thing the plates are arranged on is our washing machine, which stood around for a while because the kitchen fittings were brand-new and strange. We eventually plumbed it in ourselves, with help from Ask MetaFilter, and felt mighty.

En Guete! Borscht(sch)

As promised, here is episode one of En Guete!, written by Dave.

The day after we moved into our new flat, Rachel went to investigate the market in town and returned with a profusion of vegetables, amongst them a large bundle of beetroots.

"We schould make borscht!", she said. Neither of us had had this infamously red stew before, so we went onto Google and used pretty much the first recipe we came across.

In German, borscht is spelled "Borschtsch" and pronounced a bit like the sound a parent makes when their meal of borscht is interrupted by their beloved daughter's declaration that she is unexpectedly pregnant with the stable-boy's child, causing a near-eruption of stew. This pronunciation made us refer to our dinner in an increasingly elaborate way, ending up at "Would you like some more borschtschtschtschchshchshhhhh, darling?"

Anyway, the recipe we were using included optional pork sausages, which we left out, and cream, for which we substituted vegan cream. We can't know if the result was authentic, but it was certainly delicious.