Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Green lentil soup with lime This weekend's offering from The Soup Book contained home-made chicken stock, fresh thyme, green lentils, and the grated zest and juice of a lime (I can't claim it was the organic lime required by the recipe). The recipe is from the Pulses and Nuts section of the book. I made it for our lunch today. The slight tang of the lime contrasted with the stock. It was somewhat thicker than I expected - more eating than drinking in it - but very tasty. I wonder should I use more stock or let the lentils cook longer if I make it again. Nettles A friend kindly sent me a booklet from the RTE Guide , entitled The Restaurant Recipe Collection . She had marked Michael Healy Rae's recipe for nettle soup for my attention. The Soup Book also has a recipe using nettles, which are in season from March to October inclusive. The two recipes are quite different. Rae's recipe calls for a wider range of ingredients including butter, onions, leeks, celery, po...

Vanishing of the Bees Vanishing of the Bees is a film made in 2007 about bees and colony collapse disorder. Here are a couple of links: www.vanishingbees.com and www.vanishingbees.co.uk. I've just added my first widget to my blog! It's from the UK website address above. Why Bees? My rather cursory interest in bees dates back to my primary school days. I must have been nine or ten years of age and was supposed to be working on a project of my choice. A deadline was looming and everyone else seemed to be working away on their projects. I couldn't think of anything and had been told off for my previous project work! Exasperated, my teacher told me to do my project on bees. I remember reading just the one book - and probably copying it. In spite of myself, I became interested in what I was reading. I must have run out of time because I remember getting to the section about bees' dances as a means of communication but not including the information in my project. One of the ...

Broccoli Soup I suppose I could try and get away with writing that as this week encompassed the St Patrick's Day celebrations, it was appropriate that I made a green soup. I won't try. I chose broccoli as I had a lot of it in the fridge and decided to use it up. The Soup Book contains two recipes with broccoli: broccoli soup and potato soup with broccoli, shallot and mascarpone. Another reason I chose the former is because it also includes leeks and celery and I had some of those in the fridge too. The other ingredients are lemon juice, butter, flour, cream and chives (garnish). I made the soup this afternoon (Saturday 20th March). I didn't have quite enough homemade chicken stock, so I topped it up with the water in which I cooked the broccoli (Step 1). Good idea - I was very impressed with myself. The recipe involves cooking half of the broccoli and putting it aside for later when it is added to the soup. It's ready now and we'll probably have it for lunch to...

Celery and Celeriac Soup Yesterday (Saturday 13th March) was the day for making soup. I've realised, by the way, that as I tend to prepare this blog over several days, I need to put in dates for the various activities or events I report on. During the week I spotted celeriac in the local green grocer's. As I've never cooked celeriac before I thought it might be a good choice for this weekend's soup. On arriving home I got out The Soup Book and checked the possibilities: Camembert and celeriac, celeriac and hazelnut, the intriguingly titled "soup of the first and last", and celery and celeriac. So, being one for a little alliteration, I chose the last. The ingredients include the eponymous vegetables, potato, and vegetable or chicken stock. The suggested accompaniment is walnut bread. Apparently, celeriac ( Apium graveolens rapaceum ) is also known as 'celery root,' 'turnip-rooted celery' or 'knob celery' (see Wikipedia). An article en...

Garlic broth Today's choice of soup (Sunday 7th) was made on the basis of looking in the fridge to see what I had most of! Well, there's a lot of garlic and not much else. So I looked in The Soup Book to see what was on offer and it seems that garlic broth is the front runner. The spouse made a batch of chicken stock for me yesterday (thanks, D) and I'll have to see if I can get hold of Gruyere cheese for the croutes, but I have sage, bay leaves, thyme, olive oil (bought yesterday at the Food Co-op; see below) and eggs. Update: I couldn't get Gruyere so had to substitute pre-sliced Emmental. We ate the soup for lunch - 75% of the household expressed approval, so it will be made again. The older offspring has gone to play rugby stinking of garlic. He could single-handedly beat a team of vampires from Transylvania today. Someone else's soup I was at the Dublin Food Co-op (www.dublinfood.coop/) in Newmarket, Dublin 8, earlier today (Saturday 6th) and had a bowl of ...