Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Bouillabaisse Sophie Grigson's introduction to this recipe in The Soup Book describes bouillabaisse as "nothing more than a humble fisherman's soup using the remains of the day's catch [that] has evolved into one of the great Provencal dishes." For the mix of fish she suggests gurnard, John Dory, monkfish, red mullet, prawns and mussels. The spouse took the list up to Fergal (his favourite fishmonger   - by the way, that link will bring you to a radio item about the fish shop) and bought monkfish, John Dory, hake, salmon, tuna, crevettes and mussels. Not a cheap selection but only for the fishmonger's advice it would have been almost twice as expensive. I first mentioned this fishmonger in my blog on 16th August 2010 because he gave me a bag of samphire free of charge to try. Today he boned the fish. If I'd thought about it, I should have asked the spouse to bring the bones home so that I could make my own fish stock. The Soup Book advises soup-makers t...

 Mixed Seafood Gumbo  Yesterday (22nd April) was Good Friday. Easter is falling very late this year. I heard someone on the radio explaining why Easter Sunday is a movable feast. I'm going to list the key words rather than give an explanation: ecclesiastical full moon , astronomical full moon and vernal equinox . You do the maths. For the last twenty-two years or so I have made a simnel cake for Easter - just in case people weren't getting enough calories from their chocolate eggs. My favourite part of the cake is where the marzipan in the middle melts into the cake batter around it. I felt very organised yesterday: I put out all the listed ingredients, lined the baking tin, made the batter, rolled out the marzipan circle, put half the batter in the lined tin, put in the marzipan and topped it with the remaining batter. The oven was warm, I opened the door, and what did I see on the work surface? The unopened packets of sultanas and currants! Too late to rescue it, I put t...

Avgolemono I first mentioned avgolemono in my blog of 2nd January. The name had cropped up in the book I was reading at the time for my book group. For some reason, The Soup Book lists this recipe by Shaun Hill as "avgolemone" but internet searches seem to indicate that the correct spelling is "avgolemono." Anyway, the family feasted on a Thai take-away meal last night (MH met me while I was en route to the restaurant) and we fancied a lighter meal today. The ingredients of avgolemono are rice, well-flavoured chicken stock, eggs, the juice of a large lemon, seasoning and lemon wedges.A small amount of rice is cooked in the stock and gradually combined with the eggs and lemon juice. The spouse, older offspring and I sat down to our egg and lemon soup and were pleasantly surprised. "I'd go for that again," pronounced the spouse. "It's a summery soup." Shopping and Supping Earlier today the younger offspring and I were in town. I tr...

Beetroot Soup with Goat's Cheese One of the first soups I made from The Soup Book was Juliet Kindersley 's beetroot and apple soup (see blog of 16th January 2010). The other beetroot soup recipes in this book are chilled beetroot and tomato soup, borscht, and beetroot and gin soup.  I wasn't sure about beetroot as it was something I resisted strenuously in my childhood. That said, time passes and tastes change or mature. I passed a vegetable shop last Friday and the beetroot on display outside caught my eye, so yesterday I called into "Young Stephen's" shop (my local green grocery) and bought some. The other ingredients in today's effort (a recipe by Rebecca Sullivan ) are tomatoes, apples, olive or sunflower oil (I've used the latter because we're low on the former!), onion, beef stock. The soup can be served hot or cold with Childwilkbury 's goat's cheese crumbled on top. There are two stages in cooking the soup: roasting the tomatoes...

Roast Tomato Soup There are seven tomato soup recipes in the summer vegetable section of The Soup Book   - classic tomato soup, cream of tomato, tomato borscht, gazpacho, sopa de tortilla and smoked tomato. I chose roast tomato by Sofia Larrinua-Craxton  because it looked simple and reasonably straightforward and today I had a lot to do.  As you might expect the ingredients include tomatoes (plum are specified but I couldn't find any in my supermarket), a red onion, garlic, vegetable stock (not home made, I'm afraid) and sun-dried tomato paste. The recipe involves roasting the tomatoes, onions and garlic, then liquidising them with the stock and and paste. Very simple. The complete mix tastes good and it'll be re-heated for lunch tomorrow. Earlier today I was down at the Dublin Food Co-op where I chatted to one of the co-founders. I can remember going to it years ago when it was located on Pearse Street, but before that it was in Temple Bar. Anyway, I bought a nice ...