A Year in my Fenland Kitchen

It's autumn, and so here is another soup recipe! This time for mushroom soup, made with a combination of dried mushrooms, button mushrooms and wild mushrooms. A few years ago we had friends who lived in France (now returned to the UK) who regularly foraged for mushrooms in the countryside around their home. When we visited, it was a favourite activity to do together. Collecting mushrooms has always been a popular pastime in France with know-how passed down the generations and in addition, most local French pharmacies will identify, free of charge, any mushrooms you have picked. Although, foraging is gaining more popularity in this country, there is generally not the same level of expertise regarding mushrooms and being of a nervous disposition, collecting mushrooms for the kitchen is something I prefer to leave to the experts. Consequently, the wild mushrooms in the photo below were bought from Waitrose!   For a number of years when our two daughters lived at home, soup, and in par...

 The history of yoghurt can be traced back thousands of years and probably has its origins in what is now Turkey. Some historians believe it may have been invented by accident, when milk exposed to bacteria in warm temperatures turned sour. However it came about, people soon realised that not only did it taste delicious, but that the fermentation helped to preserve milk, since its natural acidity slowed the growth of harmful bacteria. And nowadays, it is probably our best known fermented food. My first introduction to yoghurt was as a child in the sixties, when little pots of yoghurt under the trade name Ski started to appear in the shops. Their USP was that it contained REAL fruit (a rarity at the time) and despite having a lot of added sugar was marketed with the jingle "Ski, the full of fitness food" Mum, always something of a trailblazer when it came to eating healthily, eschewed Ski and much preferred Longley farm yoghurt which she bought from the health food shop, since...

It's autumn and that means a return to warming and cosy meals .... and in particular, soup. I love soup! Easy to make, endlessly versatile, nourishing and most important of all....delicious. Root vegetables especially seem to lend themselves to being transformed into soup and this recipe uses two, namely, carrots and sweet potato. I have garnished the soup with a few of the fried onion slices from the recipe, and a good sprinkling of zaatar, a Middle Eastern spice mix, readily available from most supermarkets. The addition of a swirl of yoghurt and a good squeeze of lime juice helps to offset the inherent sweetness of the root vegetables.  I hope you will agree that this is a perfect recipe for those darker evenings which are just around the corner. Speak soon. Annie x (N.B. I realised that I had omitted to include the fresh ginger in the method ... oops! It should say 'add the grated ginger along with the garlic')