New Year, New Gadget!

Happy New Year to all…and yes, I’ll make the resolution again to cook and blog more, but don’t hold me to it!

Here’s hoping you all had a happy and healthy festive period and have since de-cluttered, found a fresh spring in our step and are ready to embrace January. If so, I have just the think to start the new year: a hearty but healthy bean and pasta stew / soup. I suppose it’s really a version of Italian bean or Peasant soup, made with whatever you have to hand and served on top of a slice of toasted, slightly stale country style bread. Ok, so it might not sound brilliant, but I promise it delivers on flavour.

Ingredients:

streaky bacon (leave out if you want a vegetarian version)

onion

leeks

carrots

can of chopped tomatoes

can of borlotti beans

500ml chicken or vegetable stock

pasta for soup (little pasta!)

oregano / dried mixed herbs

sweet paprika

slice country style stalish bread

Method:

Chop the ingredients into bite sized chunks

Brown bacon, then fresh veg in a pan

Add tomatoes, stock, herbs, paprika and pasta

Cover and simmer until pasta is cooked

Meanwhile, toast the bread.

Once the soup stew is cooked, season well and pour on top of the bread.

Easy – and perfect to warm you up on those colder days. I even blitzed it for the baby as I used homemade, very low salt stock…and a bit of bacon does no harm every now and then!

And as for the new gadget, it’s a Tefal Cook 4 Me…a sort of new-fangled one pot pressure cooker. I actually browned the ingredients in there, then threw everything else in and cooked for ten minutes. More on this amazing pot in a later post – I keep forgetting to take pictures of what I’ve cooked. Also this week, I’m looking forward to my last discounted Gousto delivery. Definitely getting back into this cooking malarkey!