Egg and Lemon Soup - Just Google It!
Another instalment from Lagom chefs this is not a cookbook.
Google it! That phrase keeps popping up. And I get it it’s quick, easy, efficient. Exactly what our culture seems to love.
But I’ve been choosing cookbooks over Google lately, and this “just Google it” moment gave me a chance to think about why.
When you skip straight to the answer, you miss the discovery. And that’s the part I love the messy, curious bit. It’s how recipes evolve, how people tweak things to fit their lives, and how we all pass along tips, stories, and experiences that make food more than just instructions.
For me, learning happens in the doing. Trying stuff. Messing it up. Sharing it anyway. That’s what happened this week when I posted my first go at an egg and lemon soup. I’ll be honest I saw it and thought, yuck. But I gave it a go, followed the recipe to the T but turns out that I did it totally wrong… and then you all showed up.
And wow, did I learn a lot.
Here’s what the amazing community on my socials taught me:
That soup I made is a Greek Avgolemono.
It’s even better with chicken or white fish.
You can make it silkier by separating the eggs and adding everything slowly.
And it’s a go-to comfort food when you’re feeling under the weather.
That’s the beauty of food and community. I learned more from your comments than from the recipe itself. And now I feel connected to the dish, its origins, the technique, the people who love it. That’s something no search engine can give you.
And speaking of messing things up…
My sticky ginger & date cake this week? Total chaos.
Mistakes were made. 100%.
which brings me on nicely to the cook books!
1000 Recipe Cookbook
Egg and lemon soup or Avgolemono.
We might as well kick things off with the Egg and Lemon soup a quick glance of the ingreidnets and it’s very minimal - rice, stock, egg, lemon and salt.
Now as I said I followed the recipe from the book with no prior knowledge of the dish. I want to cook these recipes from the books without letting my chef intuition take over as that can often lead you down the same well troden path, it’s always good to learn something new.
Things I learnt: The stock is key - this was a home made stock, that i made and knew it was tasty so we were all good there. A lot of the comments pointed to making a stock like i had but using the chicken stripped from the bones to add to the soup. Traditional yes in my book NO!
The one thing I really felt my version missed was any kind of base building flavours, yes you had the chicken stock but I would have thought to have had some kind of onion, carrot or celery to give the soup a bit more of a base and texture. The only thing I had to nibble on was rice that was cooked in the stock.
Plenty of comments came through saying you need to add aroamtics to the broth like herbs and bay leafs to give it some extra oompf it was defo needed.
I have never made a soup like this where you temper the eggs into the broth. Tempering is where you add a little of the hot liquid to the cold ingredient to slowly bring it up to temperature rather than adding a whole load of hot and shocking the ingreidnet into spliting or in this case tunring into scrmabled eggs.
This part I achieved nicely, tempering the eggs and adding the lemon juice gave the whole dish a really nice creamy consistency. I am a big fan of citrus and acidity so the lemon is always a wonderful addition to a chicken broth.
Here is what I would have done if I revisit it:
Holding onto a bit of tradition and going slightly off piste.
If I had a plain chicken stock I would start by making this have a bit more body, so I would reduce the stock down so it felt like it had a bit more flavour to it, mine was pretty light.
While reducing the stock which will intensify the flavours i would infuse some herbs that really compliment chicken and plays in the greek food. So i would infuse a couple of sprigs thyme in the stock and that would be that.
Chicken!!! It needed something to actually eat, I don’t think you can beat shredded roasted chicken, so i would 100% cook a whole chicken and pull off the delightful leg meat which is way tastier than the breast in my humble opinion.
To give it that extra flavour i would start classic with diced onion and garlic and sweat this down before adding in the stock and cooking the rice in the stock as the recipe stated.
I would 100% utilise the Rangiri (random cut in Japanese) cut of the carrot. So lay the carrot across the chopping board, cut at 45 degrees then, roll so the cut side is facing down and cut, keep doing this along the whole carrot to make these wonderful random shapes.
By cutting the carrot like this they taste better and they retain their bite even when cooked for longer periods.
To keep the soup feeling clean I would separately blanch the carrots in salted boiling water then add that to the soup. I like a carrot when it tastes like carrot, when added to a stock it will absorb a lot of the liquid and end up tasting a little cloudy!
I would stick with cooking the rice in the stock like the original recipe and still finish it with the egg and lemon mixture.
It does feel like every nation has some kind of chicken broth as it is super resourceful and doesn’t waste anything when using a whole chicken.
I have nothing else to report here…
Onwards and upwards..
1000 Recipe Cookbook
Sticky date gingerbread
Oh boy the classic saying “you can make a chef out of a baker but not a baker out of a chef”
Pair the above phrase with someone who has recently been fully diagnosed with ADHD we are what we call in the trade FUCKED when trying ot follow a baking recipe!
As I said earlier my chefy instinct was telling me to do something different, i didn’t follow that instinct then realised that the chef instinct I had was me having actually read the recipe and the information I was meant to be using was real life information. So yeah..
Basically this recipe is a sticky toffee pudding recipe but with loads of ginger and nutmeg put through it! I have been known in the land to make one of the best sticky toffee puddings but I clearly am a bit rusty!
The way you get a good “sticky” in sticky toffee pudding is by boiling the dates with bicarbonate of soda and some form of liquid. In this case it was milk.. I bloody didnt follow made the cake mix and got to the bit where I was meant to add the dates and realised I had already mixed the bicarb and milk in the mix! TWAT!
The final result of the “sticky ginger pudding” was pretty dry! I was scratching my brain as to why then soon realised what I had done after doing my breakdown video! I suppose this is the theme of the newsletter, don’t worry about your mistakes, learn from them and still enjoy the process!
After sampling the soft crumbly sponge it just made me want to poach a pear! Ginger and pear is such a classic combination and i think the cake with a poached pear would have been sublime! Serve all of that with some delicious ice cream i think we would have been onto a winner!
The moral of the story here is always read the recipe a few times and make sure you really know what you are doing! I really struggle with following recipes as I love to cook in the moment.. turns out it’s a big ADHD trait 1, 2 miss a few DONE!
Completely un food related but a classic test my old maths teach Mr Chadwick used to do before we sat exams was to give us a test of about 20 questions. Questions 1-12 were normal questions then questions 13 read..
“stand up and bring the test to the front there is no need to do the test”
It was such a great lesson in reading the paper/questions all the way through before starting! And i suppose this is where baking is not for me as it’s always quite tricky to correct a mistake once you have made it!
Anyway.. love you all
M
What Have I Been Up To This Week!
Camping. In 32-degree heat. Yep, we questioned ourselves when we rocked up to the campsite, but honestly we were in that "better to be too hot in nature than stuck in London" mindset.
We took the van and booked an electric pitch (genius move) so we could bring a fan - lifesaver.
I’ve been slowly building out our camp setup and learning what I can’t go without. And one non-negotiables is good coffee.
Now don’t get me wrong if it’s instant or nothing, I’ll survive. But if the van’s coming, the full setup’s coming too.
So here’s what I take with me:
Coffee machine is Moccamaster - link here
I do prefer an espresso so I can make a flat white, but looks I was getting whipping this thing out imagine the outcry when I am churning out coffee shop quality drinks!
Grinder is Fellow Ode Brew - link here
Now this grinder looks the nuts, weighs the nuts and grinds the nuts! But I tell ya what she is one messy grinder! I bought this grinder for home use for my espresso machine as my grinder broke but turns out the grinder doesn’t go fine enough for espresso! So now i have a very expensive grinder for camping - ultimate twat flex!
Beans were Monkey Board - link here
I love coffee and float around a couple of different beans depending on how I am feeling but the last couple of months I was smashing through this. Fruity and creamy finish.
Cooking set up
When your outdoors the odd bug and bit of grass in your food is all part of the experience. It was a bit of a last minute trip so I opted for loads of pre marinaded stuff, pre cooked bits and of course pizza!
I have recently been playing around with the Gozney Tread and it is absolutely epic! It comes with this robust lightweight tripod so you don’t have to worry about taking up counter space with their other option the Roccbox!
I would bloody love to know how the hell you are meant to get your timings right with proving your dough in a YETI in 32c heat! There must be a way!
Anyway it came out round, pizza looking and edible! Even with the odd bug!
—
For the BBQ I used a Morrisons £25 special that we bought a while back, it’s perfect for the three of us! The main thing with a BBQ is to use good charcoal and create 2 cooking zones!
Charcoal was Love Logs a great sustainable British charcoal which smokes very little and gets ripping hot and stays hot! Link here
Then onto the cooking zones..
Get the BBQ ripping hot, then before you start cooking spend a bit of time shuffling the charcoal up to one end, leaving a few bits down the other end. This will give you a HARD FAST cooking zone then a slightly cooler zone to escape to if things get too hot!
I think cooking on a BBQ is one the most stripped back forms of cooking, it gives you a wonderful unique flavour and makes you feel like a right hard nut!
Other bits
The only other things we have loads of is YETI - I have 3 load out boxes that fit perfectly down the middle of the seats and one big YETI coolbox.
The beauty of hooking up to the mains electric is we can run the induction hob if we want to cook any pasta or corn for a meal.
The Pans are Made In and they are the nuts!
Stuffed
In this week’s pod I show all the ways you can cook with COURGETTES! George also reveals the secret, delicious steak cut that nobody's telling you about, and we chat about our favourite food scenes in movies!
In other news….
Sheer Lux asked me to share my go to recipe for the summer! Mine is a banging cauliflower flatbread its been my go to for years! Go and check it out along with a fair few other banging suggestions from across the food and chef scene all the inspo you need!
Click the pic below to go to the article!
Until next week.
Martyn x