New York Soup Co. Fully Loaded Chunky Lentil & Bean Soup

It's only been in this last year or so that I've occasionally bought soups for myself. I'm not a huge fan of soups - be they thick or thin - though I will gladly consume them if they're offered. It's certainly unlikely that this blog will ever feature a home-made soup (that said, knowing me, my very next post will be a recipe for a home-made soup!), but now my local supermarkets are stocking more than their own-brand cartons, there may well be more posts like this...

The main problem with lentil and bean soups, I've found, is that they tend to be very soggy. Lentils have to be soaked thoroughly before they can be used or it's like eating lead shot. Cook them just right, and everything's dandy... cook them wrong, however, and they're just mush. Beans, meanwhile, when fresh, are already soft, yet each kind has its unique texture. When making something like a bean and lentil soup at home, it's all too easy to create mush... and, by and large, most of the ready-made kind I've tried have been at the mush end of the spectrum. Better that than crunchy pellets, I guess, but surely there's a balance to be had?

My local shops seem to carry only two varieties of New York Soup Co. 'Fully Loaded' soups, while they have a range of four, along with two other ranges of three each, and the occasional Limited Edition. Given the choice between Tomato & Meatball and Chunky Lentil & Bean, then, I picked the latter due to my inherent distrust of meaty chunks drowned and disguised in sauce. The packaging claims that their products are "inspired by the fresh delis of New York", but this soup seems to be New York via Texas, labelled with the following: This hotpot is inspired by the cowboys of the Midwest who would stop for a feast of beans during vast cattle drives. This soup is packed full of protein and antioxidants... "ta keep ya full o'life boy!"

Seems to be a confusing case of multiple identities or just one of those situations where a company doesn't let their corporate identity get in the way of a good recipe.

But all this is just the packaging... what about the contents?

First impressions weren't good. Despite the packaging's insistence that "no artificial ingredients are used in our soup", the colour looked that little bit too vibrant... and the moment I dumped it into the saucepan (you didn't think I'd use the microwave for this, did you? I mean, sure, it's an option... but it's always better to heat a soup on the hob), I noticed the kind of oily sheen that I've learned to dread, since that's precisely the kind of thing that sets off my stomach acid.

A mere five to six minutes of warming on the hob later, I decanted the soup into a bowl, grabbed myself a couple of slices of bread, tucked in... And was very surprised.

It's difficult to say which surprised me first or most, but the main surprises were the sheer spiciness of the soup - bearing in mind that spiciness is not mentioned at all on the packaging - and the texture of it. It's called "Fully Loaded" and "Chunky and Hearty" and it really lives up to those epithets. The lentils are just firm enough that you know they're in there, and the skin on the beans is just tough enough that they feel substantial... and the innards are soft without being squishy, moist without being sludge.

The aforementioned oily sheen remains when the soup is heated, but it comes from what the ingredients list calls "Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1.5%)" and, even coupled with the spicy kick, my stomach had no complaints afterwards.

The spiciness isn't overpowering, then, but it adds a welcome kick to the hot soup, and keeps it from being the kind of flat, bland, almost woody soup that puts me off anything involving beans. In some cases, a substantial tomato component in this kind of soup would be enough to prevent it from becoming a flavourless mess, but that's only if you're especially fond of tomato... Since I'm not, the addition of garlic, black pepper and red chilli turns it into exactly the kind of soup I'm likely to pick up again in future.

S&M Rodeo #10: Iceland Chip Shop Style Battered Sausages

It's a well-known fact that, once in a while, I like my food dirty.

No, not unhygienic, just unhealthy. Actually, long-time readers of this blog might get the impression it's not so much 'once in a while' as it is 'more often than not'. Ahem. Time for an anecdote!

Some years ago, I worked in Kensington. The office complex had an on-site bar/restaurant which was OK, but nothing special and, outside the complex, we weren't exactly spoilt for choice in eateries. There was a good Indian buffet in one direction, as well as a decent greasy spoon, a good Chinese and a nice Greek place in another direction. Slightly further afield, there was a decent Thai place, but that sometimes chose not to open. Even further away along that same road was a small fish and chip shop which seemed to do mainly takeaway business, though it had a poky little seating area up some stairs in the back.

Now, being from the suburbs of London, fish and chips is pretty much a staple food for me, so I'm always up for investigating a new chippie... and this one was one of those places that battered more than just fish. In particular, it battered sausages.

What could be more perfect, right?

The used the usual greasy spoon, all-day-breakfast kind of sausage, only slightly larger and glided with a fairly unremarkable batter, but the sum of the parts proved to be remarkably addictive, and I ended up defaulting to that if I couldn't decide on a (new) fish to order.

Now, one of the significant downsides to where I live is that there isn't a local chippie anywhere nearby. Certainly there's at least one within walking distance, but the one I know is takeaway only and, if judging 'walking distance' as 'close enough that the food is still hot/warm by the time I get home', it's actually not within walking distance. Plus, even if it was, since it's connected to a proper fishmonger, it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that they would do battered sausages, so I've been hankering after them for a good two years now.

But, lo, my local Iceland recently (it would seem) added frozen battered sausages to their list of chilled meat products and, suffering from withdrawal as I am, I picked up a bag to give them a try. Naturally, since these are sausages covered in batter, I can't exactly serve them up with mashed potato (well, I could, but it wouldn't be right), so this is only loosely part of the S&M Rodeo series.

The first thing to point out is that these sausages are comparatively small. They're fairly fat, but not very long... maybe a little more than 3/4 the length of the Waitrose gourmet sausages I pick up once in a while. This isn't ideal, obviously, and for £1.50 for a bag of eight, they're not such great value when compared to Iceland's other sausages, which are £1 for ten (pork, pork & beef, etc), or for twenty of their 'Thin Sausages'. Still, if you're after cheap and cheerful, these certainly still fit the bill.

As with any frozen battered food, the obvious drawback is that, since the oil needed to 'fry' them is contained within the frozen, partially-cooked batter, what you end up with is never going to be as crisp as the freshly fried version would be, nor does the batter cook as evenly. Couple this with the fact that there's a fair bit of fat within the sausages and the end result, whether baked or grilled, tends to be soft, bordering on soggy. In fact, when cutting through these sausages, one can pretty much guarantee that the batter will simply fall off.

Nevertheless, the combination of batter and very basic sausage remains pleasant and, while it's some way off the authentic chip shop experience, it has satisfied my cravings for the time being. I can see myself keeping a stock of these for those moments when I need some serious comfort food.

Awwww, yeah... all it needed was a generous dollop of brown sauce, and it was good to go...

Apologies for the silence...

Not quite sure what happened to cause such a big delay in posting. Sure, I've been working solidly since September, but I still have my evenings and weekends... Perhaps after working during the week, I'm more inclined to just veg out over the weekend rather than put any real effort into my efforts in the kitchen.

I have photos of foodstuffs I'd been intending to write about but, as has been the case in the past, I can barely remember how they tasted, so I'm just going to have to try them again sometime and resolve to write them up immediately afterwards. There's no 'grand plan' for posting more frequently in 2013, so expect updates as sporadically as always.

In other news, the name of this blog is now only technically accurate...