Ultimate Potato Soup

Recently I touched on a topic I am sure we have all experienced at some stage in life before-food ruts. You buy the same ingredients repeatedly and use the same recipes. You cycle through and through until you no longer enjoy eating and cooking what you're serving. Or worse still, you have no idea what you're having for dinner, and end up spending a fortune on take away or some last minute ingredients that are quick and easy solutions. So how do you get out of food ruts? Here are a few ideas on how to move away from living the same food day in day out. Any step is a step forward!

1. Buy something you've never tried-a vegetable you've never tasted, that quinoa that everyone has been raving about, or that weird gooey stuff you have been curious about in the foreign food isle at your supermarket. Ensure it gets used within your grocery period. It might just become a new favourite.

2. Menu plan, making sure that you schedule to try one new recipe. Menu planning not only ensures you're only buying what you need for the week/fortnight, but you have everything ready to go without any last minute grocery store dashes (and lets face it, you always end up buying more than you intended!) Menu planning has been the best way in cutting down costs for me personally. Our shopping bills have been heavily reduced. There is great peace of mind in knowing what you're cooking at the beginning of the day.

3. Use pinterest for inspiration-sometimes all it takes is a little tweaking of the same ingredients to make it a whole new meal. Do you always buy chicken breast? There are a million and one ideas on how to change up chicken breast on that damned addictive site.

4. Challenge yourself to use what is in the pantry before stepping out to grocery shop. Had a can of  cream of chicken soup in the pantry for a few months? Got chicken and pasta and broccoli? Type these ingredients into a recipe finder such as Recipe Matcher to generate dozens of new recipes using those ingredients.

5. Buy a food magazine every so often. Woolworths and Coles often has publications they give out for free. Have them in a central area like the coffee table and you will probably have other family members looking at them and making requests. These mags are also great reminders that you are in a food rut and should or can do something about it.

Good luck getting out of the rut and finding new favourites to cycle through! Here's one to kick start you off. It's the best potato soup I have ever tasted. It's the ultimate comfort meal- hot and hearty, thick, cheesey, bacony, potatoey goodness just packed with flavour. You will have people groaning with delight as they spoon this down-it's a real keeper! I have served this at the end of a party once, serving it in mugs as everyone huddled around the fire outside. My guests just couldn't get enough! I have also served it as a dip in a cob loaf, which worked well, as it gets quite thick as it cools. It's one of my most requested recipes. I know you will cherish it too.
Got any other tips? I'd love to hear them! 

THE ULTIMATE POTATO SOUP

500g diced bacon
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cups potato, peeled and diced
1 carrot, finely grated
2 cups chicken stock
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 tbsp plain flour
3 cups milk
1 cup grated cheese
1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped (optional)

Fry the diced bacon until golden and crispy. Drain any bacon at that may be in the saucepan. Add the onion, potato and carrot, along with the stock, parsley, salt and pepper. Place a lid on the saucepan and simmer for 20-30 minutes, or until the potato is quite tender (this time will depend on the size of your potato chunks.) Meanwhile, place the flour in a bowl, and adding a little of the milk at a time, whisk until a smooth paste forms. Add the remainder of the milk, and mix until well incorporated. Add this milk mixture to the pot of stock and potato. Let it reach the boil, then stir continuously for a further two minutes, until it thickens. Add the cheese and stir through. Serve sprinkled with chopped green onion if desired.

Serves 6-8

Roasted Sweet Potato with Honey and Cinnamon Glaze

How does one get out of a dinner rut? You know, how you end up always cycling through the same meals and the same sort of ingredients, and it just gets a little monotonous?
Sometimes you just have to mix it up a little at the dinner table. I always think it's a good idea to buy one new thing a fortnight and force yourself to cook with it. It's a good way to spice up meals a bit and adds to your cooking repertoire, making it more diverse and less boring.
It's a little challenging with small kids, because often you have go-to meals because you know meal time will be easier to bear. Yep, that's right! My kids would rather eat dry cat food than some of the things I serve. It's humbling. I try to reassure myself that their taste-buds haven't sufficiently developed yet, while I force feed them.
I was reading an article written by a dietician the other day about the "shared responsibility eating" theory. Basically you place the dinner on the table buffet style, and your children get to serve themselves, deciding what they want to eat and how much they will eat. There is no obligation to finish or taste anything. Well I think that's crazy. My kids would starve themselves. Or eat crackers for the rest of their childhoods. (trust me, I have been there in my own childhood, resulting in one never-hungry and malnourished girl. That's right-I never felt hungry enough to eat.)
My kids get served a portion of what we are eating and have to finish it. They at least have to have a taste of the things they're not used to, for example, if I add a new veggie or make something they've never tried before, they will have to at least experience it once.
We usually have our sweet potato boiled and mashed, but for Christmas lunch I decided to roast the sweet potato in wedges, drizzled in a honey cinnamon glaze. This was served alongside Gordon Ramsey's Beef Wellington (Oh my. This is a must-make!) The roasted glazed sweet potato  was so divine that I could probably have eaten the lot of it in one sitting. I have since brought it to the dinner table as a side, and it's always been a much-savored hit.

ROASTED SWEET POTATO WITH HONEY & CINNAMON GLAZE (Adapted from Food Network)

4 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into thick fingers
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven at 190C.
Lay all the sweet potato fingers flat on a lined baking tray.
Combine the oil, honey and cinnamon in a small bowl until well incorporated. Drizzle this mixture over the top of the sweet potato. Roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until tender. If you prefer some more colour, you can finish off the roasting with a few minutes under the grill on a high setting.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper if desired before serving.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Pull Apart Bread

I'd like to think I'm a risk taker. But in reality, I'm probably not at all. I think using pumpkin puree in a sweet bread sounds risky, almost too risky for me. Here in Australia, pumpkin isn't used as a sweet--but I know that Americans are quite used to the idea of serving pumpkin pie as a dessert.
Pumpkin certainly does have that sweet element, but to me it's still a veggie and it would never cross my mind to use it in anything but a savory dish.
So I stepped right out of my comfort zone with this month's Secret Recipe Club reveal and made Cinnamon Pumpkin pull-apart bread with a delicious caramely glaze. It was amazing and I was ever so pleasantly surprised by how beautifully all the flavours came together and the lovely soft texture of the bread itself. It consists of soft folds of sweet bread paired together with cinnamon sugar, sweetened by the deliciously sticky glaze. (I think I made my glaze a little thick, and would probably thin it next time. I also mucked up the cutting and stacking of the dough process so mine doesn't look quite as pretty as it might have if I had paid more attention to the recipe. Still tasted great though...sometimes looks aren't everything he he--says the woman blogging in her pj's with hair all amess.)
The recipe was discovered on Mommy's Menu, and this wonderful blogger is a stay at home mummy of seven little people. Amid all the business every day life presents for us stay at home mums, she still manages to cook up and blog some pretty amazing affairs! Bravo! Lets hope I'm still blogging and cooking up amazing things when I have seven!

CINNAMON PUMPKIN PULL APART BREAD (Adapted from Mommy's Menu)

Bread:

2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk
2 1/4 tsp dry yeast
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup sugar
pinch salt
2 1/2 cups plain flour
Extra flour for kneading and flouring surface

Filling:

1 cup brown sugar
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
pinch ground ginger
pinch ground cloves
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tbsp butter, melted

Glaze:

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 1/2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup icing sugar


To make the bread, in a large bowl, combine the butter and the milk. Microwave until the butter has melted, then set aside to cool until just warm. Add the yeast and set aside for 10-15 minutes to proof. The mixture will begin to foam when ready.
Add the puree, sugar and salt and stir to combine. Gradually add the flour 1/2 a cup at a time, mixing until well incorporated. Knead the dough with your hands for 6 minutes, adding 1 tbsp of extra flour at a time if too sticky. The dough should end up just slightly tacky by the end of the kneading, and be smooth and elastic.
Lift the dough from the bowl and spray with a thin layer of cooking oil. Replace the dough and cover. Set aside in a warm place to rise for 60-90 minutes, or until doubled in size.
Meanwhile, to make the filling, place the brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg together in a bowl. Mix until well combined.
When the dough has risen to twice its original size, turn it out onto a floured surface and punch it down with your fist. Knead for 2 minutes, then roll out into a 20x12 inch rectangle. Brush the surface with the melted butter, then evenly sprinkle on the prepared sugar and spice filling.
Using a pizza cutter or smooth bladed knife, cut the dough into 36 squares (6 rows horizontally by 6 rows vertically)  Stack the squares of dough three high, so you end up with 12 stacks of 3. Stack the piles of dough vertically in a 9x 15 loaf tin. Cover the tin with a clean tea towel and set aside to rise for 30-40 minutes.
Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180C.
Once the dough has risen, bake for 30-40 minutes until a deep golden brown. Remove and cool for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to finish cooling.
To make the glaze, place the butter, brown sugar and milk in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, then remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla and the icing sugar to form a paste, then pour over the cooled bread. Serve.

The first stages of the bread making: melted butter and warm milk with the yeast form a foamy substance when left to sit for a while. Addition of puree and flour make a soft dough.

More flour is added little by little to make the dough less sticky, and it forms a smooth ball. It is left to rise and then is turned out onto a floured surface, punched down and lightly kneaded before rolling out.

A slathering of butter then covers the dough and a mixture of sugar and spices is evenly spread on the surface. The dough is then cut into rectangles, stacked in the tin and left to rise. Then it is cooked, and drizzled with a glaze when cooled.