Competition: Love The Garden's Seasonal Recipe Competition

As I mentioned just before Christmas, I entered the Love The Garden.co.uk's recipe competition with my delicious Carrot, Maple and Bacon soup. Love the Garden regularly run seasonal recipe competitions for food bloggers, choosing one main focus ingredient, and challenging us to all come up with innovative and delicious recipes using this ingredient. In the past they have chosen ingredients such as cabbage, potatoes, and tomatoes- but this winter it was carrots! I thought my carrot soup had a fair chance- and it turned out it did! Because i won runner up prize, winning a copy of the new cookbook "Comfort and Spice" by Niamh Shields. I love it actually- very pretty photography, and i will defo be trying her "American style pancakes" recipe in the lazy brunch section of the book- sounds lush!

I lost to a recipe for carrot halva, by the guys behind the "Wanton Flavours" foodie blog. The grand prize is always £200 at any restaurant of your choice in the U.K, and each time i become ever more determined to win first prize! I'll get it one of these days, watch this space!!!

Recipe: Carrot, Maple and Bacon Soup

Sounds like a reeeeeeally weird combination I guess, but when you think about it things like honey and maple syrup are used with root vegetables all the time. Honey roasted parsnips or carrots are of course, a very popular dish at Christmas. So I thought I would try and see whether maple syrup and carrots compliment eachother, and it worked out really really well! I then thought, this soup is quite sweet, so it needs something salty to set it off- and then I remembered Americans love putting maple syrup on their bacon and pancakes at breakfast, so I thought that would make a good garnish. In some supermarkets you can actually get "maple cured bacon" as well, which is delicious too. I am entering this recipe into Love The Garden's "Christmas Carrot" recipe competition. It is a recipe competition for bloggers that ends 21st December- all you have to do is post up a carrot recipe onto your blog, mention their site, and you are end up with a chance to win a £200 dinner at any restaurant of your choice! Here is the URL, if any of you fancy going in for it! http://www.lovethegarden.com/blog/christmas-carrot-competition

Carrot, Maple and Bacon Soup (makes 2 large bowls, or serves 4 as a starter)

50g butter
1 red onion, diced
1 white onion, diced
½ tsp mixed herbs
500g carrots, peeled and diced
30ml maple syrup (plus extra for drizzling)
700ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
4 thin rashers smoked bacon (or generally 2 rashers per person)

1. Sautee the onions, mixed herbs and carrots in the butter and maple syrup, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid, and continue to cook for about 10 minutes, or until the vegetables have started to caramelise.
2. Add vegetable stock and cook on a high heat for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to as high as possible, and cook rashers of smoky bacon on s non-stick baking tray until they go nice and crispy (this generally takes 10-15 minutes).
3. Blend the soup, add any extra water/stock if necessary to get to your desired thickness, season to taste and serve hot- garnished with crispy smoked bacon and an extra drizzle of maple syrup!

Fishy business

According to news in today's Sunday Telegraph, the Conservatives have unveiled proposals to bring an end to what they refer to as "scandalous waste" in the fishing sector, hoping to change current EU policy.

To protect fish stocks, the EU Common Fisheries Policy currently enforces a limit on the number of fish that fishermen are allowed to catch and bans crews from landing any fish outside the quotas, forcing fishermen to throw them back into the sea, even if they have died during the fishing process.

The Telegraph reports the shocking statistic revealed by Bill Wiggin, the shadow fisheries minister who is quoted as saying "For every cod we buy in our local fish and chip shop another fish is being chucked back into the sea due to a system that is immoral and environmentally wrong".

Hear-hear!

The Tories are now seeking EU support for a pilot that would enable fishing crews to actually sell "over-quota" fish with the revenue shared between fishermen and the Government, allowing the profits to be reinvested back into the fishing industry. And it looks like the Conservatives are confident that the EU will accept their proposals.

If so, it will add to the sea of change which has already seen a U-turn by the EU allowing knobbly carrots and bendy cucumbers to return to the shops.

Thank goodness. At last is seems that our very bonkers world is getting less bonkers by the day, a slow process but good news all the same.

Who knows, one day even bananas might get a reprieve.
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