Bean & Vegetable Soup with Chorizo

A hearty, delicious soup that's perfect with some crusty bread and a glass of cheery red on a cold night in.

3 carrots, diced into small pieces
4 celery sticks, diced into small pieces
1 chorizo sausage, diced into small pieces
1 onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
10 small mushrooms, sliced
6 potatoes, 3 of them chopped into medium pieces, the other halved.
2 cans of beans - we used a combo of butter beans, borlotti beans and cannellini beans
500ml stock - chicken or beef is fine but get the liquid packs instead of stock powder.
1 bay leaf
cream to taste.

Boil the 3 halved potatoes in a pot and get on with the rest of the recipe (when they're cooked you want to mash them and set aside).
Now fry the onions, garlic and chorizo over a medium heat in your largest pot until the onion is softened. Then add the carrots, celery and potato and fry for 10mins, stirring now and then with the lid off. After the 10mins is up, pour in the stock and add the mushrooms and bay leaf and bring to the boil the lower and simmer with the lid on until the vegies are done, about 25mins.
After this stir in the mashed potatoes until well combined into the liquid (this will make a creamy thick soup) and stir in the drained beans. Lastly turn off the heat and stir in a few tablespoons of cream to taste and seasoning too.

Lasagna with Bechamel Sauce

This lasagna is rich and flavoursome, and makes great leftovers too.
If you use pork mince instead of beef mince, the other flavours in the sauce are a lot more apparent and you avoid an almost overwhelming flavour of beef, so we do that all the time with our spaghetti bolognaise recipe. It's really up to you what you prefer, but we used a 50/50 mix of pork and beef mince for this recipe, which kept the beef taste rich enough without it dominating everything else.

Meat Sauce:
800g mince (50% pork 50% beef)
1 cup red wine
2 celery sticks, chopped into small pieces
1 large carrot, chopped into small pieces
1 onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 rashers bacon, chopped into small pieces
10 mushrooms, sliced
2 large jars pasta sauce (plain tomato, and I think they're 700ml or something)
1 tblsp dried oregano
1 dried bay leaf

Bechamel Sauce:
100g butter
1/2 cup plain flour
3 cups milk
100g grated parmesan

Lasagna pasta sheets (we ended up using 2x250g packs but most likely you'll just need 1)

1) Make the meat sauce first. Over medium in a large pan/wok heat fry onions, carrots and celery till softened. Then add bacon, mushrooms and garlic and fry till the mushroom is softened - couple of minutes. Transfer to a large pot. Now fry the mince in the pan until cooked through, taking care to break it up into small pieces throughout the frying process (the finer the mince the better). Drain off the mince liquid if there's a lot of it. Add the mince to the large pot, add the wine, pasta sauce, oregano and bayleaf and bring to a boil then simmer on medium heat stirring every 5 mins or so (make sure bottom doesn't burn) till it reduces down abit. This will take about 35-45mins.

2) With about 10mins to go on the meat sauce, preheat your oven to 200C. Now we make the bechamel sauce. Over a smaller saucepan melt the butter down over low heat, careful not to let the butter burn and brown. Then gradually add in the flour, stirring into the butter until it's all mixed through. Keep stirring this doughy mixture for 2mins. Now pour in the milk, a little at a time and keep stirring. This will make it easy to keep the mix smooth and lump free. At the end you'll have a very liquidy sauce, and keep stirring on med heat now and it will thicken. When it's thick enough (consistency like pouring custard) remove from heat and add in the grated parmesan and stir through.

3) It's time to layer the lasagna. Start with a layer of pasta sheets then a 1/3 of the meat sauce followed by a layer of pasta sheets. Then 1/3 of the meat sauce, followed by 1/2 of the bechamel sauce and then a layer of pasta sheets. Then the last 1/3 of meat sauce, the last layer of pasta sheets, the last 1/2 of bechamel sauce and sprinkle a nice layer of mozzarella cheese over the top of all this. Bake in the oven for 50mins with aluminium foil covered over it. For the last 10mins take off the foil so the cheese can brown.

Tropical Burger

The burger consists of:

• beef pattie
• cheddar cheese (placed on the pattie when the pattie is being cooked)
• fried egg
• crispy bacon
• pineapple
• mustard
• multigrain bun

My patties are made by getting 500-600g of premium beef mince. Finely chop up an onion, add one egg and place the mince in a bowl. Add seasoning salt, pepper and cumin and mix thoroughly. Shape 5-6 meat balls from the mixture. Place some flour on a plate. For each ball, roll it in the flour and flatten, making sure that the pattie is covered evenly with flour. And then cook in a fry pan with some liberal dose of canola/olive oil.

I must say, I love a good beef burger with pineapple.

(and beetroot!)