FOOD: Soup and pasties - classic pub food - given a home-cooked twist

A JOURNEY BY CARto anywhere up, down or across the country, makes me crave toasted cheese sandwiches and bowls of soup the minute my seat belt clicks into action. Fish or seafood chowder is also right up there on the craving list, but if you're in dodgy pub territory, it's often safer to go with the cream of vegetable soup and toasted ham and cheese special. Ordering chowder in an establishment that only serves packet soup is like playing Russian-roulette with a soup spoon, rather than a shotgun. Gastro-roulette, anyone?

However, years ago, on a mission to buy cheap industrial fridges (that may have fallen off the back of a truck), I was brought by the vendor to a local pub for lunch. The place was heaving and eventually a flustered waitress came over and verbally sprinted through a list of daily specials: “Today’s specials are chicken and chips, cod and chips, curry and chips, sirloin steak and chips, lasagne and chips. The vegetarian dish of the day is vegetarian stir-fry and chips.” With that, she turned on her heel and continued to sort out hungry diners.

On the one hand, I was too terrified to ask if I could have plain old soup and a sambo. On the other, I braced myself for a Jack Nicholson-style scene from Five Easy Pieces. In this infamous scene, Nicholson tries to order some toast in a road-side diner and the uncooperative waitress pretty much refuses to serve that, so he ends up ordering a chicken salad sandwich on whole-wheat toast, telling her to hold the chicken, the mayo, the butter and the lettuce.

I felt I was going to have a similar conversation with this lassie if I was to avoid a monstrous pile of chips being served. I geared up for a bit of a battle, but how wrong I was. When I ordered my ham and cheese sandwich, with a bowl of the soup of the day, I got a big smile and was promptly served one of the tastiest sambos ever. Maybe it was the soda and lime that I drank with it, or the thick slices of home-cooked ham and oozing cheddar that made it all so good. Hands down, it was a divine culinary moment.

Seafood chowders need lots more love than a toasted sarnie. Too creamy, and you end up feeling queasy. Too bland, and it’s one of the dullest soups around. But get the balance right and you’ve got a fabulous dish.

We finally settled on this recipe with curry powder, which isn’t at all traditional, but makes a really good smoked haddock chowder.

The recipe for the pasties was tweaked from two sources: Marcus Wareing's One Perfect Ingredientand Ravinder Bhogal's Cook in Boots. It's an homage to the ham and cheese toastie.

Cheese, ham and chutney pasties

Makes five – perfect for lunch

100g butter, diced

225g plain flour

1 egg

Bit of milk

1 knob butter

2 onions, peeled and chopped

Few sprigs of thyme

100g strong cheddar, grated

150g cooked ham, diced

1 tbsp pickle or chutney

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

Mix the butter, flour and egg in a food processor. Add a splash of milk so that the pastry comes together in a ball. Wrap in cling film and chill. To make the filling, melt the butter and sweat the onion and thyme until soft and slightly caramelised. Season, and leave aside to cool. Divide the pastry into five pieces and roll out into discs. Layer these up between sheets of baking paper and chill until ready to use.

Preheat an oven to 180 degrees/gas four. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper.

Mix the onions with the cheese, ham, pickle and mustard. Taste, and add more mustard or pickle if you like. Spoon equal amounts of the mix on to one half of each disc, leaving a good border. Fold the other side over and press the edges together. Seal up with a little milk dabbed on your fingers, pressing the edges between your finger tips. Place the pasties on the baking tray. Have the seam facing up. Brush with a little milk and bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool before eating.

Smoked haddock chowder

Serves four to six, depending on how much fish you put in

Feel free to add prawns, mussels, salmon or any fish you fancy. If you add less milk at the end, you could just top this with mashed potatoes and make a fish pie. This is the only time I mean it when I say, the garlic is optional. It was a bit overpowering, but I threw it in anyway for medicinal purposes.

400-600g smoked haddock

400ml milk

1 bay leaf

Few sprigs of thyme

Knob of butter

2 leeks, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (optional)

2 carrots, peeled and diced

2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced

Half a head of celery, diced

1 tsp mild curry powder

300ml vegetable stock

50ml cream

chopped parsley, to garnish

Cook the haddock in milk with the bay leaf and thyme in a small saucepan. Gently bring it to the boil and then turn off the heat and leave it alone for 20 minutes while you get the veg prepped.

Heat up a big knob of butter and sweat the leeks and garlic for a few minutes before adding the carrots, potatoes, celery and curry powder. Mix well, and when you can really smell the curry powder, add the stock and slowly bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for 10 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Remove the skin from the haddock and set aside the chunks of fish.

Strain the milk and pour into a jug. Add the cream to the soup and about half of the milk. Add the haddock and cook for five minutes over a gentle heat, then taste. Add more milk and adjust the seasoning, but don’t boil the bejaysus out of this dish or it will look slightly curdled and will toughen up the flavours. This can be cooled, chilled and re-heated the next day, but I think it tastes better if made and served straight away.