Cock-a-leekie and finding out about bee keeping

Today I made my first soup of 2010, cock-a-leekie, a traditional Scottish soup. The ingredients are listed in The Soup Book as chicken pieces, bay leaves (which I gathered from my little bay tree), chicken stock, rice, leeks, carrots and ground cloves. I had to use commercial stock cubes, which I thought would spoil the natural flavour but the taste wasn't overpowering. I compared The Soup Book recipe to that in another recipe book which was first published in 1980! The older recipe calls for a whole chicken, trussed, and giblets included, but who has time to truss a chicken? I substituted chicken fillets for the chicken breasts and legs, so there were no bones. Prunes also feature as essentials in the older recipe, whereas they were an optional extra in The Soup Book version.
We ate the finished soup about half an hour ago, two members of the family having commented on how good it smelled. It's a thin soup, but the addition of rice gives it substance. It's been snowing here for over a week and cock-a-leekie is a real winter warmer.

On a different topic, I have had a glance at bee keeping in Ireland, following on from my look at www.soilassociation.org. www.irishbeekeeping.ie and www.dublinbees.org are the respective websites of the Federation of Irish Bee-keepers' Associations and the County Dublin Bee-keepers' Assocation. The latter will be starting its annual course next month. I have seen this advertised in recent years and have thought about going along. Maybe not this year.

Comments

Tuscan Bean Soup

Tuscan Bean Soup This recipe calls for canned beans (borlotti, flageolet or cannellini) and as I have been tidying and cleaning out our cupboards I've used cannellini beans. I have to mention that the younger offspring has done an impressive job on the cupboards. That's enough about him. Back to me and my soup! Other ingredients include onion, carrots, leek, garlic, tomatoes, tomato puree (I substituted sun-dried tomato paste as there was an open jar of it in the fridge), chicken stock (I had to use a cube as my home-made reserves have been used up) and spinach.When ready it's served with ciabatta bread, grated Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. So it's quite a rich soup. We've just had the Tuscan bean soup for lunch. All enjoyed it. The adult males were particularly forthcoming in their praise. The spouse liked the "tomato-ey sharpness" and mused that ham stock should be considered as an alternative to chicken stock. Bees' Cheese and other recipes H

Lovage Soup

Lovage Soup Today I made lovage soup, the second recipe by Sophie Grigson in The Soup Book that I have used in the last four days. She introduces the recipe with these remarks: "If you don't grow this old-fashioned herb yourself, ask around among your gardening friends or head down to the nearest garden centre to see if they sell it. " As I mentioned in my last blog entry (18th May), lovage now features among the herbs in my front garden. As the spouse left the camera at home, I took some photographs. Parsley, sorrel and lovage in Minnie's garden. Rosemary, parsley and lovage in Minnie's garden. I had hoped to add chervil to my collection of herbs - there's a recipe for vegetable and chervil soup in The Soup Book - but "Young Stephen" wasn't able to source any for me. At least he tried. Just while I'm mentioning Stephen, I have to reveal that the spouse and the older offspring claim that he has been mention

Mulligatawny Manoeuvres

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave

Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Search This Blog