Celeriac and potato soup for a rainy evening

It was a grey day and eventually started raining tonight, so I needed a comforting bowl of hot soup! In the frige were rooster potatoes and celeriac, let's marry them!
The soup has a gentle and mild taste. Serves 4 hungry individuals.


Celeriac & potato soup

1 onion peeled and rouglhy chopped 
1 fat clove of garlic peeled and roughly chopped
half a tsp of chilli flakes
1 tsp of cumin
500g potatoes peeled and roughly chopped
500g celeriac peeled and roughly chopped 
1 ltr of veggie stock
50-100ml milk
a knob of butter
1tsp oil

Melt the butter with oil in a pan on a low gas add onion with garlic and fry until onion is translucent, add spices (cumin and chilli flakes) and fry for another minute then add potatoes celeriac and the stock. Bring to boil and simmer for up 30 minutes, but make sure that potatoes and celeriac are tender, add milk and blend it in a food processor or with a hand blender until creamy.
Serve with walnut and parsley pesto and sprinkle over with some paprika. 
Walnut and parsley pesto is by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and was published on the guardian's website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/oct/27/recipes.foodanddrink 
It's delicious but there's loads of it, we're going to have it as pasta pesto for lunch tomorrow and still plenty in the fridge awaiting for me to come and use it:)

Quick supper celeriac fritters, mixed berries compote pavlova, and black bean choco cake

Now, that's what I call a productive evening, my husband is asking me for mercy, he's trying to loose weight and records all he eats on myfitnesspal. Poor chap, I cook like there's no tomorrow:) I need to adopt some people to join my family (does it sound like a sect?) so my husband can breath a sigh of relief.  
I made my lovely celeriac fritters from approx. 500g of celeriac which served the two us very generously but it would easily serve 4 as a starter.

My celeriac fritters with herby yogurt

Celeriac - peel and slice thinly, if big cut into halves
Prepare two not too deep bowls - one with egg beaten with fork, add salt and pepper; the second bowl with breadcrumbs either on their own or mixed with spoon of paprika and a generous spoon of ground cumin. Heat some oil in a frying pan, coat each slice of celeriac in egg then in the breadcrumbs/ breadcrumbs mix and fry on a medium gas until golden brown, but pierce with a small nice to make sure that the celeriac is thoroughly cooked.
Herby yogurt
Mix thick natural yogurt (half a 500g pot) with a tbsp of lemon juice and herbs of your choice, I like mixing dill parsley and chives or mint but can be herbs de provence dry mix. Spoon generously over the fritters.

I also baked last night pavlova and assembled this morning in a rush. 

Pavlova with mixed berry compote

For the meringue:
3 eggs
150g of caster sugar
1/2 tsp of white wine vinegar
 Whisk the eggs to soft peaks and then while whisking add 1 tbsp of sugar at the time, wait around 20 seconds before adding the next one, continue until all sugar whisked in, fold in vinegar. Preheat the oven to 160C (fan assisted) and using whatever you have (ideally it should be a palette knife which I couldn't find so I used a big knife) spoon the mixture onto the baking paper. Turn the temperature down to 100C and bake for 1.5 hours. Ideally leave in the oven overnight to cool completely, gently remove the baking paper and put on a plate. On top of the meringue I spooned 250ml of half fat crème fraîche and to finish mixed berry compote.

Mixed berry compote:
I only had around 200g of frozen mixed berry, I heated this in a small pan on a low gas adding some muscovado light brown sugar and a tbsp of limoncello. Cool and spoon on the pavlova to finish.

And finally this is when my husband held his breath I did as well the black bean chocolate cake. I used a recipe from the guardian's Cook section on Saturday. Here is a link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/02/10-best-bean-recipes
but the recipe comes from http://atastylovestory.com/




The only change I made was that I added 25g of dark chocolate and 25g of milk chocolate.

It's still cooling hence the photo in the baking tin. Can't wait to try but given that it's almost 11pm and I don't want to upset my husband any further will wait until the morning:) Goodnight!