Sovay's Profile

From: Northern England,

Joined: October 7th, 2012

About me: I've embarked on a mission to cook something new from every cookery book I own - currently 260 - and am planning to use my account here to keep track (thanks to rfb from Librarything for tipping me off to the existence of this site). I've made a couple of rules for myself: to cook the recipe as given, with no substitution or variation unless suggested by the author; and to try to pick a genuinely new dish from each book - in other words, as I've cooked many Leek and Potato Soups in my time, I don't get to count Leek and Potato Soup as a new dish just because I haven't used this specific recipe before (unless it has really significant differences from the usual versions).

Hodge Podge from Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book

Beef and vegetable soup with beer - turned out disappointingly bland. The recipe had no seasoning other than salt and pepper - having tried it, I added a stock cube and some Worcester sauce, which helped... read more >

recipe reviews (241)
book reviews (5)
useful review votes (43)

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Sovay's Reviews

1 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 1Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

Food In England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are

By Dorothy Hartley
Piatkus - 2009

A classic English recipe, but I have to say that it's quite hard work (as is often the case when making the best of cheaper ingredients). The basic method is straightforward but it does take long, slow cooking, and then getting the meat off the large, oddly-shaped bones in respectable-looking pieces is a bit of a struggle. Also there's a lot of fat on an oxtail so it really is a good idea to do the cooking a day in advance, then chill the sauce and remove the excess fat. On the upside there's a lot of flavour in all the bones and sinews, and more meat to salvage than might appear at first glance.

I used my slow cooker which meant I had to cut the vegetables rather smaller than would be usual in a stew of this kind. They didn't look great on the plate so I removed them before freezing the extra helpings, rubbed them through a sieve and added them to half a cup of soup mix (green and yellow split peas, green and red lentils, pearl and flaked barley) simmered in beef stock until very soft, and made a surprisingly good soup.

useful (1)