Minnie's Soup Kitchen

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 ...