Skip to main content

First Soup of 2011

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 thriftiness in relation to food will no doubt manifest itself in other ways in the coming days and weeks!

We had the soup for dinner this evening when my old friend MH came round. I think it was a success. The carrots and peas made it quite sweet, but there was a succulent meaty taste too. MH lavishly praised our cooking and we were flattered.

Soup in literature

For my next book group meeting I am reading Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch-22. At present I am up to chapter three and enjoying it immensely.  I mention this book only because there is a reference to avgolemono soup. Hitchens refers to having lunch with Chester Kallman - life-partner and verse-collaborator of W. H. Auden - in a restaurant in Syntagma Square, Athens: "He was fifty-two and looked seventy, with an almost grannyish trembling and protruding lower lip and a quivering hand that spilled his avgolemono soup down his already well-encrusted shirtfront." Only for The Soup Book I wouldn't have bothered finding out more about this soup. I recognised the word in Hitchens' book, even though The Soup Book uses a different and possibly incorrect spelling (avgolemone).


Bad Puns Involving Bees: W Bee Yeats

During the week I came across these lines in W. B. Yeats' poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree:

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade."

You can hear Yeats reading the poem at this link. Apologies for the pun above.
Labels:

Comments

  1. MH5 February 2011 at 16:24

    Since I was a child I have thought that "bee loud-glade" is wonderfully evocative....now even more so.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

A Sting in the Tale

Nettle Soup I have hesitated to make nettle soup from The Soup Book but last weekend I decided to overcome my doubts. The spouse and I were having a leisurely, offspring-free day in town and I spotted bagged nettles on a vegetable stall in  Meeting House Square . I checked with the stall-holders that they would have nettles again this weekend and determined to go back. The next day I was at a friend's and her husband was about to make nettle soup. My fate was sealed. I had to bring the younger offspring into town this morning and once I had completed various other errands I made my way to Meeting House Square. I bought the nettles and some chard and spinach for my next soup-making stint.  Yesterday the younger offspring and I could have picked all the free nettles I could ever have wanted down by the local river, but I wondered if they'd been sprayed with anything or by any beast. On arriving home from town this afternoon I put on my rubber gloves and washed the nett...
3 comments
Read more