Live Below The Line Day 3 Dinner: Broccoli stalk and yoghurt soup, 29p
Day three, dinner three, sees me over the middle hump of this year’s Live Below The Line challenge. In previous years, I’ve found myself at the end of the week with the scraps and scrag-ends of my £5-for-5-days food shop, exhausted, cranky, and willing it to be over as I try to be inventive with whatever bits and pieces there are left. I’m trying not to let that happen too much this year; in the same way I gently encourage my 5 year old not to leave the ‘green veg’ on his plate until the end for a dragged-out, miserable dinner experience (if anyone finds the answer as to why small boys are totally happy to eat their own bright green bogies and lick their radioactive-looking snot from their noses but abhor anything green that might be good for them, please, I’m dying to know) – I decided to shoehorn some of the ‘scraps’ into the week, rather than drag my heels and pouty lower lip all the way to Friday. So here we are, Wednesday, and a broccoli stalk soup. Rather this than the mushy peas, anyhow, that are glaring at me passive-aggressively from the worktop and filling me with fear.
I decided to dice and slightly char the broccoli stalk – there’s no real knowledge or science behind this decision, I just figured it needs all the help it can get to take it from ‘thing I would usually feed the guinea pig’ to ‘thing I’m really looking forward to for my dinner’. And as ever, I’m padding it out with a little pearl barley, because a) I seem to be barely making a dent in it despite eating it with almost every meal and b) I need all the energy I can get in order to not just sit in the middle of the living room, get fired from all my jobs, and let the toddlers run riot and draw on the walls.
Served 1 at 29p
1 broccoli stalk, diced (weighed a whopping 150g), 14p
2 spring onions, 8p
1 chicken stock cube dissolved in 300ml boiling water, 2p
30g pearl barley bits, 3p
30ml natural yoghurt, 3p
First dice your broccoli stalk. Grab a non-stick pan, or a griddle if you have that sort of thing lying around the house (personally I have one favourite large shallow non-stick pan I use for everything, it doesn’t get the fancy lines on it that you would get from a cast iron griddle but having spent some of my errant youth flinging skinless-boneless-tasteless-chicken onto a griddle in a local Harvester I don’t have positive associations with identikit charcoal lines on food anyway…). Pop it on the hob and crank the heat up to shit-hot. Fling the diced broccoli in and turn the heat down to medium-low, depending on the size of your burner. Big burner low, little burner medium. You want some heat, but not so much, that pan should be hot hot already. Stir the broccoli to disturb it a bit and stop it sticking, you want a light char rather than something that tastes like you’re chewing an ashtray… Add a tiny bit of oil if your pan needs it. When it’s a bit soft around the edges, remove from the heat and allow to cool a little.
Give it a minute or two, and add your stock (adding water then crumbling the cube in is fine, it will all come together in the end) then the pearl barley. Return to the heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until the pearl barley is soft and swollen.
To serve, add your yoghurt – DO NOT just dollop it into the pan as it will split, which is perfectly edible in a sour kind of way but does look rather off-putting. Put your yoghurt in a separate bowl, add 2 tablespoons of the soup to it, and stir quickly to combine. Repeat this step about 6 times, gradually thinning the yoghurt and warming it without it splitting. When the yoghurt-soup mix is warm to touch, tip it into the remaining soup and stir in. And serve. Voila. Broccoli stalk and barley soup.
I’m taking the Live Below The Line challenge to raise money for Street Child United – you can sponsor me at http://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/agirlcalledjack
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @MsJackMonroe
Jack,
This is coming up with an Oops 404 error.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 8:41 AM, JACK MONROE: COOK, CAMPAIGNER, GUARDIAN COLUMNIST, MOTHER, AUTHOR, ETC. wrote:
> Jack Monroe (MsJackMonroe) posted: “Day three, dinner three, sees me > over the middle hump of this year’s Live Below The Line challenge. In > previous years, I’ve found myself at the end of the week with the scraps > and scrag-ends of my £5-for-5-days food shop, exhausted, cranky, and > willing it”
It fid that for me too, but if you scroll past the oops message to recent posts you can click on the broccoli soup link there.
We love broccoli stalks. The kids always fought over the ‘trunks’ from their trees.
I try not to buy broccoli with hugely thick stems compared to the flower-head but eat it all anyway. I find that finely cubing the stalk and cooking it for a couple of minutes (while I separate the florets) results in it all being cooked at the same time.
Great idea about charring the stalk on the hob. I saw a yummy recipe yesterday (smitten kitchen, I think) for broccoli, oven-charred in oil with lemon, garlic and chilli flakes. One to look forward to trying after these five days’ hard culinary labour are over, probably.
I have been really enjoying reading your experience with this challenge, but I did wonder if you had ever tried the old Slimming World Mushy Pea curry recipe? My husband loathes mushy peas but he likes this so thought you might too although since you make lots of curries you might need to turn up the heat more than we do maybe add some chilli/garlic. You can switch the frylight for oil and it makes a lot it’s a thick sauce similar to a chip shop curry sauce.
* 2 tins of Mushy Peas
* 1 tin of Baked Beans
* 1 tin of tomatoes
* Finely chopped mushrooms and onions
* Curry Powder
* Frylight
Brown off the onions and mushroom in frylight. Add the other ingredients and cook for about 25-30 minutes. Add some water if it seems a little thick. Blend and add to rice or pasta.
This is a definite keeper for me. I always guiltily chuck my broccoli stalk despite being an avid hater of food waste simply because I don’t know what to do with it. After spending a huge amount of time on your blog the past day or so I’ve been inspired to be more creative with scrag ends in the cupboards and may even try the LBTL challenge just, as a fledgeling food blogger myself, to test my supposed cooking creativity to its limits and save some money whilst doing so. You’re an inspiration to so many of us Jack x
My standard way of using up the broccoli stalk (I feel guilty if I don’t use it, sometimes it’s almost big as the head) is to slice it up into rounds and throw it in to a stir fry – has a slight look of water chestnuts.
I do this too!
hi jack just discovered your blog,really enjoying reading through your recipes,will be trying a lot of them out,i always use the stalk as it tastes to me of asparagus!
I didn’t know what to expect going in to this recipe, but it was exactly what my almost bare cupboard could give me (minus the barley bits), so I didn’t think I had anything to lose.
Imagine my surprise on the first sip when I tasted something that evoked the sour deliciousness of my mom’s sinigang! It’s not quite the same thing, but for this homesick person it was heaven after mixing in a tiny bit of cream and a good heaping of rice.