Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Cream of Vegetable Soup The recipe for this soup is by Roopa Gulati and features in the winter vegetable section of The Soup Book . So far I have made only seven of the forty-five soups in this section and thought I'd better get a move on. The older offspring, with his predilection for meaty soups, will survive. Still in thrift mode, I used the older vegetables from the fridge to make vegetable stock based on the book's recipe. This stock recipe is a good way to use up leeks, carrots, celery, onions, button mushrooms, potatoes and tomatoes; the herbs of choice are parsley, bay leaves and thyme. I used this stock in today's soup, the other ingredients of which are carrots, leek, parsnips, onion, turnip, celery, potato, thyme, bay, nutmeg, cream and milk. Parsnips are not among my favourite vegetables, but the dominant taste of the finished product was swede turnip (in Ireland turnips are swedes - UK publishers, take note!). The four of us liked it and there is plenty lef...

Beef Chilli Soup "Tonight we're having Chief Billy soup," I told the older offspring before recognising my Spoonerism. I meant to say "chilli beef", of course. This is another recipe in The Soup Book by Carolyn Humphries. The ingredients include lean minced beef, crushed dried chillies, fresh red chillies, ground cumin, dried oregano, passata, beef stock, red kidney beans and tomato puree. Humphries suggests serving the soup with tortillas and guacamole. It's a cold day today here in Dublin, so this soup was intended as a warming hearty meal with the added summery twist of guacamole. The four of us sat down to our dinner to the accompaniment of Ennio Morricone's most popular pieces of music. The soup was delicious - spicy and rich. The two older males wanted seconds but there was none left. The younger offspring wrapped as much of his soup as possible into a tortilla, added grated Cheddar cheese, guacamole and chopped coriander, and managed to eat it...

Camembert and Potato Soup   Yes, I know it's only Tuesday and only two days after my last soup-making foray, but I haven't gone back to work yet. I have time on my hands and food in the fridge to be put to good use. I'm having a thrift extravaganza: today I made turkey stock with the bone of the turkey leg the spouse bought the other day and any carrots, celery, spring onions and other items that were beginning to fade. I used the scraps of turkey meat to make a delicious turkey and red onion flan (the red onions were substituted for the leeks suggested in the recipe, but what do I care when I'm using up vegetables?). The Soup Book recipe calls this soup Camembert and celeriac soup with cranberry swirl , but in her introduction Carolyn Humprhies suggests substituting potatoes. I didn't have celeriac but I did have potatoes. And I was being thrifty. Other ingredients include onion, chicken or vegetable stock (I used my freshly made turkey stock), milk, Camembert...

Chunky Turkey Soup Still on the theme of Christmas, today's soup (the forty-first since I began the project and the first of 2011) is Angela Nilsen 's chunky turkey soup. Another theme is thriftiness. In my blog entry of 19th December I mentioned the possibility of buying turkeys cheaply after Christmas and the spouse duly bought a turkey leg for €5! There is plenty of meat on it. He cooked it for our new year's day lunch party. I used some of the remaining meat for today's soup and I'll be using the bone, meat scraps and limp vegetables from the fridge to replenish my supply of stock. Good value or what! The Soup Book recipe for chunky turkey soup calls for onion, potato, carrots, leek, peas and turkey. Then it is served with hot garlic bread. In my prevailing mood of thriftiness, I used leftover bread to make croutons (crush a clove of garlic in olive oil, coat slices of French bread in the oil and "bake" in a hot oven for about fifteen minutes). My ...