Watercress and quails egg soup and Chorizo with roast potatoes and aubergine dip
A friend sent me a text message the other day complaining about the lack of good programs on TV. I sent one back saying no problems in my house as there is almost always an interesting food program. I do watch other programs as well if I am watching TV but I do have my favourite cooking shows. Somewhere between cooking and growing your own is James Wong, who actually is a botanist. I watched an old re run of “Grow your own drugs” where he made a watercress soup. It looked delicious and had watercress and pear, I was intrigued and knew I had to make it! By the time I actually got to the shop to buy watercress I only remembered the watercress and pear, so I made up the rest.
Before I started on the soup I got the oven on 180C and made an aubergine dip, roasted potatoes and chorizo sausages for mains. I love aubergine and especially aubergine dip but I like to add other veg to add texture and flavour.
Aubergine veg dip
- 1 aubergine
- 1 fennel bulb
- 1 tomato
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp tahini
- 2 tbsp naturel yoghurt
- black pepper
Half the aubergine, score and sprinkle with oil, slice the fennel and quarter the tomato. Sprinkle over oil and some salt. Half baby potatoes and add to the oven proof dish and roast with the veg. bake for 40 minutes.
I thought I had pears at home but I had Asian pears so I used them instead and it worked very well.
James Wong inspired Watercress soup, serves 2 as a starter
- 1 bag of watercress
- 1 bunch of parsley
- 2 cm of peeled ginger, finely grated
- 3 dl chicken stock
- 3 spring onions
- 2 Asian pears
- 1 potato
- 4 soft boiled eggs
- nautrel yoghurt
Peel the potato and cube. Slice the spring onions and place with the potato with 3 dl of chicken stock, grated ginger and boil for 10 minutes or until the potato is cooked through. Rinse the watercress and parsley and place them in the blender.
Soft boil the quails egg, peel them and set aside.
Add the stock and veg to the blender and pulse until you have a soup. Add yoghurt and halved quails eggs, do a twist with the pepper mill and it is ready.
When there is 20 minutes left of roasting the veg add the chorizo cooking sausage and everything will be ready at the same time.
Scoop the aubergine flesh out and place in the blender together with crushed garlic, the fennel, the tomato, the tahini and yoghurt and some cracked black pepper. Blitz and it is ready to serve. As one friend pointed out, the colour will always be a little funny but it was delicious. Serve with the roast baby potatoes and the chorizo it made for a great dinner.
The aubergine dip 
Serve with the roast baby potatoes and the chorizo for a veg loaded dinner.
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