Minnie's Soup Kitchen

German Chicken Broth According to the introductory lines in The Soup Book , this recipe is "based on a Thuringian vegetable soup" and "requires a good-quality, well-flavoured chicken stock, so make your own for best results." The last batch of chicken stock made in this house had pork chop bones added to it, so that's the stock I've used. The other ingredients are green beans, carrots, kohlrabi and mangetout or sugar snap peas: the finished broth is garnished with cream and finely chopped chervil. Kohlrabi is also known as German turnip ( rassica oleracea L. Gongylodes group). Of course, when I'm not looking for them, I see them in the shops but on the day when I want to buy some, I can't find them. So I substituted ordinary (white) turnips. They might even be just what I wanted. I bought them at the green grocer's cum garden centre (tiny) cum bistro (more below). The broth is cooked. The recipe is ver...

Bee Part of It - BBC Campaign The BBC launched this project on Monday 17th May. Here are some links to relevant information: BBC London -  news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8668000/8668141.stm BBC Breathing Places -  www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/beepartofit/ Facebook -  http://www.facebook.com/bbcbeepartofit Flickr -www.flickr.com/groups/bbc_beepartofit/ National Trust -  www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-nature/w-nature-bee-part-of-it.htm Other links of interest: Bumblebee Conservation Trust -  www.bumblebeeconservation.org/ PS (Added Sunday 23rd May) It's another beautiful day and I have a freezer drawer full of home-made chicken stock but I won't be making soup this weekend. Who wants to eat soup on a day like this? I have been planting some new plants in my back garden, including two new lavenders, which should attract bees. While on the subject of bees, I was listening to and wat...

Creamy Smoked Mackerel Soup This soup should have been creamy smoked trout soup, but having decided upon it last Friday evening, the spouse and I were unable to locate any smoked trout in local speciality shops and in town. Eventually I substituted smoked mackerel for the trout.  The other ingredients listed the The Soup Book include fish stock (I used cubes), cream, white wine and Worcestershire sauce, with parsley to garnish.  The editor's note pertaining to trout advises the reader to use whole moist fillets rather than pre-flaked fish as the latter can be dry. The note also refers the reader to the Marine Conservation Society's website (www.mcsuk.org) for guidelines on fish sustainability. Irish readers might be interested in the marine section of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (www.npws.ie). It didn't take long to make the soup - the most labour intensive part was skinning and flaking the fish. I'm never too keen on making a roux (see blog of 8th Ma...

Mixed Fungi Soup Today The Soup Book opened practically unaided at this soup recipe! I had planned to make a soup using the stock the spouse made last month from the left-over crudites from our party. (Parsimony or good house keeping?) The ingredients include onion, garlic, flat-leaf parsley (I used the curly-leafed variety available in my garden. I'm a rebel, me. It's there, it's free and the slugs haven't dragged themselves out of the compost bin to feast on it yet), mixed wild mushrooms and nutmeg. The spouse had expressed an interest in going to the farmers' market up in Marlay Park (www.dublintourist.com/details/marlay_park.shtml) and I reminded him about the Dublin Food Co-op (see my blog of 4th March; www.dublinfood.coop/). So then a discussion ensued about which market to go to. The spouse, the younger offspring and I ended up heading into Newmarket Square, me armed with my copy of The Soup Book in case I couldn't get a mix of mushrooms and needed t...

For anyone on tenterhooks about which soup I have made this weekend, let me end your suspense. I haven't made soup, but this is the May bank holiday and tomorrow is another day off, so there's a still a chance. Three of us headed off to the west of Ireland with no definite plan in mind, just that we would visit the Famine Museum at Strokestown Park, Co Roscommon (www.strokestownpark.ie).We arrived there at 2pm and decided to have lunch. The menu included "home made soup" and I checked verbally that it was home made. The spouse and I both ordered it and had to wait a while for it to be served. On tasting it, it was full of ground pepper and not of the freshly milled type, more the commercially produced variety. I suspect the soup was made up of the leftover vegetables cooked for the lunchtime menu and with the pepper added for flavour! It put me in mind of a scene in Alice in Wonderland (Chapter VI - Pig and Pepper ): "`There's certainly too much pepper ...