Simon: Parsley Soup, P146

I hate it when Hwsgo's right. Well not really - he is rather good at this cooking lark and I do listen to him, I'd just never admit that to anyone. Especially not to whoever's dropping in on my blogs... anyway, frying off some fennel then adding and frying off some chicken is a damned good way to reheat said chicken, and yes, admittedly, much much better than some of the dodgier things involving white sauces that I've done in the past.

And so from horror to disappointment. I've made soup, but it's not one of my best ones. I had almost all the ingredients for Simon's parsley soup, so when I saw bundles of Parsley in the market I leapt on them in anticipation of another special tasting treat. But no: I've made leek and potato soup with some parsley in it. Noticably. I may be being unfair to the recipe - I didn't quite follow it exactly in a not-quite-having-the-right-ingredients sort of way, i.e. I could only find one of the two leeks that I thought I had in the fridge, didn't have the energy to completely separate parsley stalks from leaves etc etc. (and I didn't envisage pulling parsley stalks out of my hand blender when I first started this quest). Simon recipes are usually robust to a little ingredient variation - maybe this one wasn't. It's not a horrible soup, it's just not spectacular.
But it did at least bring back another of those fun moments in cooking: the one where a lumpy bunch of vegetables suddenly turns into a big smooth soup. Maybe it'll be better in the morning.

Simon: Milk Chocolate Malt Ice-Cream (p45)

Hoorah for the credit crunch: rabbit is back in the shops again. Which is good, but we got ours from the game dealer at Bentley (always a bit suspicious seeing fridges stocked with duck a couple of miles from a wildfowl sanctuary, but hey at least it's had some exercise...). Hwsgo cooked the rabbit (whole, unjointed) as a French casserole with lots of tomatoes and veg inside: a good thing to come home to after losing the ability to move my arms much in the gym. Wine: Katnook Estate cabernet; not best matched to the Wabbit, but definitely best matched to our relaxed-out mood for the evening.

Oh, the Simon? Chocolate malt ice-cream. Not difficult really: I dashed home at lunchtime to make it (having collapsed into bed early last night), which mostly consisted of whisking stuff carefully and having patience whilst things melted into each other (and taking an educated guess at what "thickens slightly" means). It's had 7 hours of freezing now, but was at a happy cold-fudge state when we got home two hours ago, so it is possible to both make and eat it on the same day. Which judging by Hwsgo's earlier reaction to tasting it is really quite likely to happen.

The *really* important thing that I forgot to mention earlier was that I didn't use an ice-cream maker. I didn't even need to whisk the ice-cream mixture midway through: there were no ice crystals at all in it, and it just froze directly into the right state. Homemade ice-cream without the faff? Oh yes...