Potato Tourné Soup

I recently learnt to shape potatoes into tourné cuts from a renowned Chef, details coming soon ;-).

Ideally it should have seven uniform sides but I’m still a budding Chef aren’t I? :-)….l’ll perfect the cut soon, then I’ll do a video and teach us :-D. I opted to use it for this very simple soup for two reasons, 1. l’m really excited I learnt it 2. They are pretty and elegant aren’t they?

Recently, healthy eating has become a priority for most people. Living in a high stress state such as Lagos gives one little time for exercising leaving healthy eating as the only option. While I’m not on any form of diet, I also believe in variety and balance. Anything in excess is harmful even to the slimmest of frames. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, Ice-cream today, stir fry vegetables tomorrow won’t hurt.

So, let’s learn this very easy soup or porridge as we Naijas like to call it.

Ingredients: Serves 2

15 small sized Irish potatoes (l bought small sizes in order to reduce the waste from the tourne cuts)

12 pieces of cubed soft goat meat (avoid buying female goats if possible)

1 small green pepper

1/4 small cabbage

1 cup crayfish

2 fresh Cameroon pepper (yellow scotch bonnet)

1 fresh atarodo (red scotch bonnet)

1 tablespoon corn flour

1/4 teaspoon ground Cameroon pepper

Pinch thyme

Pinch rosemary

1/4 teaspoon ground Coriander

1 Maggi crayfish cube

1 Maggi cube

Salt to taste

Parsley  *optional

Method:

Wash the goat meat thoroughly, season with 1 Maggi cube, ground Cameroon pepper, salt and pinch rosemary. Boil without adding water but as soon as the meats natural water dries out, add 1/2 cup of water. Monitor the water content of the meat, add a little at a time. Not too much so the meat doesn’t loose taste and not too little so there’s stock left for the soup.

Cook meat for 15-20 minutes.

While the meat is cooking, peel potato and cut into any shape you prefer, not too big though so they cook on time.

Wash and cut cabbage into small squares, set aside.

Roughly blend crayfish, yellow Scotch bonnets and atarodo with 1/2 cup of water, set aside.

Wash, seed and cut the green pepper into 1/2 inch squares.

Once the meat is done, remove it from its stock and place in a bowl. Use meat stock as base for the soup. Add the potatoes and crayfish blend to the pot. Season with ground coriander, 1 Maggi crayfish cube, thyme and enough water to cover the potatoes, cover and allow to boil for 20 minutes or fill the potatoes are soft.

Mix corn flour with 4 tablespoons of cold water and add into the soup. Let it boil and thicken for at least 5 minutes.

Check for salt and adjust taste as you like.

Add the meat back into the soup.

Add cabbage to the pot, let it boil for 5 minutes then add the green pepper.

Allow all the ingredients stew together for 4 minutes .

Laddle into bowls.

Serve hot!

Garnish with fresh parsley if you have. l keep dry ones handy, the fear of PHCN is wisdom!

Enjoy!

Have a blessed weekend, till next week.

Azu :-).