Food as Medicine ... Pepper, tomato, chilli and garlic goodness in a soup

Since I became an independent adult, and thus not at the mercy of my parents' ideas about food and nutrition, I like to think that I've enjoyed a very healthy diet, and the more so since The Ragazzi became my family. Which has meant home-grown vegetables, as much as my modest little garden plot would produce, and actually, it produced quite a lot, especially French beans and lettuces, and as much organic produce as I could find and afford, all turned into home-cooked, home-baked, home-preserved food.

I'm no paragon, of course, please don't think I am claiming to be, I enjoy chocolate and crisps and other 'non-food' treats, especially in times of stress, which is ironic since that's precisely when a good, healthy diet is important, but there you are. A long time evolving to what we Homo sapiens are now and the too-rapid rate of technological changes that we have created, means that our bodies often mistake emotional/work-related/environmental stresses for real physical threats and so we are prone to piling on the pounds to protect ourselves against future famine, cold seasons, physical injuries etc.    

Where was I?

Oh yes, eating a healthy diet and food as medicine.

I've just returned from Brittany where, in response to my attempt to give a friend in the village a small gift of a few locally-collected walnuts, a coffee and walnut cake and a bottle of  'walnut wine' to express my gratitude for his help with a rampant rambling rose, he responded (when my back was turned) by returning my carrier bag filled with tomatoes. And not just any tomatoes but orange, green, yellow and red varieties of tomatoes. Organically-grown in his own garden.   

So today, having overdone my organic vegetable order, and needing to find room in the fridge for the fresh produce, I thought that a nice pepper, tomato and chilli soup would be just the thing. Easy, tasty and packed-full of goodness.     

Such a simple soup to make, especially if you take shortcuts, as I do.

Three red, orange or yellow peppers 

Six large and ripe tomatoes

Two red chillis sliced in half and seeds removed (maybe use one if you are not a chilli fanatic)

Three garlic cloves

Olive oil 

Cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds. Place them skin side up in a large roasting tin and drizzle with the olive oil. Slice the chillis, remove the seeds and add to the tin with the unpeeled garlic cloves. Roast for 15 - 20 minutes.

Skin the tomatoes by scoring the tops and popping them into boiling water. When the skin peels back easily cut in half and remove as many of the seeds as possible but don't stress if some remain. Pop the tomatoes in the roasting tin with the peppers and return to the oven for another 15 minutes.

Peel the skins from the peppers. You can do this by putting them in a plastic bag and shaking it about a bit or, if you like to get hands-on with your food, do it by manually. If the peppers are well-roasted the skins should just slide off anyway. The cloves of garlic will also pop out of  their skins easily.

Put the peppers, chilli, tomatoes and garlic into a blender and whizz until smooth.

Add a little vegetable stock, sufficient to make the soup the consistency you like. Personally, I prefer mine quite thick. You can season it if you have a taste for salt. I only use salt on chips and in rice but, hey, à chacun son goût.  

And then gently re-heat and sprinkle with croûtons, a little cheese, some seeds, perhaps a swirl of flavored oil, some herbs, whatever you like to fancy up your soup. Today I ate mine without further fuss because I am eager to get back to the novel that I'm reading.

And enjoy.   

Incidentally, orange-coloured fruits and vegetables contain excellent anti-cancer compounds and garlic and chillis are good immune-boosters, so this really is food as medicine.   

  

Vegetarian Chilli

 

There is a lady in the UK, called Jack Monroe, who is cooking up a storm and generating a lot of heat in the kitchen with her blog   on which she posts about feeding herself and her son on the smallest of budgets. Jack's latest project involves recipes for meals, twenty or so portions of which can be served up for the cost of a posh latte, the idea being that we donate that money to a local food bank here in the UK.

Leaving aside the politics of hunger, and the disgraceful fact that food banks are now becoming commonplace as the credit crunch continues, and even working families with professional wage-earners are now struggling to put food on the table, Jack's certainly made me think about how much I spend on food and how I can cut my own costs. 

So, while we're in France here's one meal that I will be cooking. I think that Jack would approve...

Vegetarian chilli
Now, you can be a tad flexible with these ingredients
I. for instance, if you find that your newly-bought Carrefour garlic is, as sometimes happens, a little below-par, add more onion instead.
2. If your chilli plant has enjoyed the summer so much that it's gone over the top in producing plump, shiny chillis, throw in an extra one for good luck
3. Swap the tinned beans for cheaper dried ones (soak for 8 hours first)

But here's the official line:

Ingredients:
1 tbsp oil (I use a healthy mix of organic sunflower, olive, flaxseed etc oils since I'm going for the cancer-buster properties of this dish here)
2 onions chopped
a red pepper and a yellow pepper, chopped (red and yellow veggies are extra-good)
2 cloves of garlic
Large tin tomatoes (excellent for anti-prostate cancer for you chaps)
a teaspoon of red oregano
4 teaspoons of hot chilli powder (hey, be bold!)
A heap of cooked kidney beans (mine are organic and need soaking and boiling, beware the poisons in under-cooked kidney beans)
a tin of chick peas
I large, plump red chilli, de-seeded and chopped (or two if you have a glut)
salt (not really, just being silly, no-one needs salt, unless you are a sea creature in which case feel free to indulge)

and to add to the cooked chilli
grated cheese and sour cream
all served on cooked rice

Method:

Chop onions, garlic and peppers and gently cook in the oil until soft
Add tomatoes and chilli with the spices and herbs and cook for 15 minutes
Add the beans in all their manifestations and cook for another 10 minutes while you also cook the rice

Et voila!

Add grated cheese and sour cream and enjoy

(Jack has a similar recipe that includes dark chocolate. Chilli and chocolate is a combination that never ceases to surprise me so I may add a couple of of squares of that too next time I cook this)  

In the Kitchen - Lettuce eat soup

A short respite from the canicule as we were suddenly treated to a few cold and very torrential downpours accompanied, occasionally, by claps of thunder and sparks of lightning, and now we're promised another scorching hot day today.

I'm attempting to address my currently high stress levels with some kitchen-therapy.

Now that the cherries are over, and I have several preserving jars of them soaking in various alcoholic mixes and various small jars filled withe jams and compotes and relishes, now that the cherry season has passed, it's time to cast my eyes around for something else to play with.

So how about lettuces?
I eat them daily in my tuna salad, but liberally doused in Heinz Salad Cream, having been raised in a decade when mayonnaise was considered to be Fancy French Muck, which means that I rarely taste the lettuce leaves. Which is a shame really. So back to my Breton-Days when, even though I had a surfeit of lettuces growing in my garden, several friends in the village sneakily took to leaving their own unloved lettuces in carrier bags on my gate, and the only option to avoid being over-whelmed by lettuces was to make soup from them. 


Recipe: The Cyber Tour Guide to Lettuce Soup

2 large Breton onions, peeled and diced
4 fat cloves of garlic from your English neighbour's garden
6 dew-fresh common or garden lettuces
handful of gentle herbs (mint works well) from the pots on the window ledge
4 oz organic Brittany butter, the one with flecks of sea salt
2 oz organic plain flour
2 pints of vegetable stock
1/2 pint organic milk

Fry the onions and crushed garlic in butter until they're soft but take care not to brown the mixture. Sprinkle the flour over pan and stir gently for a minute. Slowly add the stock, stirring gently and then pour in the milk, still stirring and petit à petit bring to the boil. Chop the lettuces and add to the pan with the herbs and salt and pepper according to your taste. (If you used salted butter then you won't need any more salt now).

Let it simmer gently. It will fill your kitchen with fresh, green aromas and endow you with a feeling of health and vitality, while you water the plants or wash the dishes. After around 20 minutes remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Blend in a liquidiser until smooth and silky.

Now you can choose to store the soup in the fridge or, if you REALLY are inundated with lettuces and drastic measures are called-for, freeze it in rigid containers.















If, however, you've just just come in from cutting the grass that's as high as an elephant's eye, with a useless little Flymo, and are in desperate need of a healthy and flavoursome snack, then eat it now with a crusty 'zig-zag loaf' from the village boulangerie

(Quantities given are sufficient for everyone in a small French village)

Now for the science...

The Health Benefits of Lettuce:
Low in calories
A good source of dietary fibre and vitamins A, B, C and K
Contains the minerals potassium, magnesium and calcium
Said to contain folic acid
Reputed to help prevent bone degradation in post-menopausal women