Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Since my last post I have made another soup and done a fair amount of baking. The soup recipe was from The Guardian Feast  (2 November 2019) and was a hit in this house. Pasta soup with potato and sausage , cheese, leek - what's not to like?  On the baking front I've made a marmalade ring and date and walnut biscuits (both recipes from Doreen's Country Fare ), an apple pie (guided by my M&S cookery book published in 1980), and two types of flapjack (both recipes in my Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Baking ).  I do like flapjacks and am always very interested in other people's produce. My earliest memories of flapjacks date from my mid-teens when I was still living in England. Butter, brown sugar, oats and golden syrup. How can you go wrong?  The ones I made last Thursday were for different purposes: ginger flapjacks for the younger offspring's associates and orange flapjacks for the office; and some spares for my nextdoor neighbour. (Spouse and offspr...

Broccoli and Gruyere tart: oven ready Yesterday (23rd January) I made broccoli and Gruyere tart using the recipe from Norfolk's Own Cookbook: Everything Stops for Tea . The listed ingredients for the filling include eggs, cooked broccoli, grated Norfolk Dapple or Gruyere cheese, chives, double cream and mustard powder. The spouse is on a weight loss maintenance programme in advance of a family wedding later this year. I'm sure he'll appreciate that I substituted yoghurt for double cream. I couldn't get hold of fresh chives so used parsley instead. I made the pastry in the food processor. I don't mind making it by hand. I was thinking of the woman who taught me how to make pastry. She was a friend of my parents. My sisters and I were staying with her one summer. She lived in Cardiff near a park that I now know is called Pontcanna Fields. She brought us to Porthcawl, Barry Island and up into the Brecon Beacons. I've always used her method for making past...

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 ...