Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Root Vegetable Soup Chopped vegetables coated in oil and ready for roasting What else would you do on a cool May bank holiday weekend except make soup? This roasted root vegetable soup from Complete Comfort Food looked interesting. Lots of vegetables to be prepared: butternut squash, onions, leeks, turnip (swede), parsnip (yes, I hate them but surely one parsnip would be overwhelmed by the other ingredients) and carrots. Prep work done and bay leaves, rosemary and thyme interspersed, I popped the vegetables into the oven to roast. I had to leave the house for a few minutes and when I re-entered, the aroma of rosemary rose to greet me. Mmmm!  Roasted vegetable soup with creme fraiche and cayenne When softened, I simmered the vegetables in stock and then liquidised them. The soup was a little too thick. We ate it with a dollop of creme fraiche sprinkled with cayenne pepper. A little bland, I thought, but the spouse and younger offspring were very pleased.  Pea...

For the sake of keeping this blog alive I am making notes on some of my activities in 2015. Edmund de Waal's The White Road: A Pilgrimage of Sorts appears to be a collection of notes made as he strove to uncover the origins of porcelain while at the same time exploring the creative process. Not that I am claiming to uncover the origins of soup-making. 2015 was not a year for breaking soup-making records. I made six soups from The Soup Book : wild salmon chowder (3rd January), brandied lobster chowder (17th January), beef chilli (31st August), soupe de poissons (3rd October), chunky turkey (26th December) and minted pea and ham (28th December).  Baking Log I continued to bake frequently for fetes and other fund-raising events, baking being an activity that soothes me and the results of which bring pleasure to others.  From Martha Day's Baking :  Cherry marmalade muffins (15th January)  Orange cake (14th February) Toffee bars (16th March, 28th March and ...

Chicken Liver and Noodle Soup It was 1982 and the spouse and I were setting up home together. One of first cookery I bought for our first shared home was The Chicken Cookbook by Anne Mason. I don't remember using it often but I picked it out from our crammed kitchen bookshelves two days ago, just in case there were any promising soup recipes. We had made a terrine recently which meant that we had some chicken livers going spare. In the run up to Christmas the spouse wants to use up all the packets of chicken legs, wings and breasts that are clogging up our freezer, hence the choice of recipe book. Yes, there was a recipe for soup and yes, it required chicken livers. Finally, yes, there was some home-made chicken stock in the freezer. A perfect storm. We didn't have fine noodles, but we were planning on going into town where we would pick some up in an Asian market. The ingredients for this soup include stock, fine noodles, cooked peas, chicken livers (sliced) and butter...

Potage St Germain What would I make this weekend, I wondered. I hadn't made a soup from the Pulses and Nuts section of The Soup Book since early May, and I'm trying to get at least seventy per cent of each different type of soup made by the end of the year. I've made all four of the cheese soups, and as of last week I've made seventy-two per cent of the summer vegetable soups. The winter vegetable and fish soups are the laggards. Potage St Germain: lettuce and peas added to the stock Potage St Germain is a kind of pea soup, in case you're wondering, and the recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine .  The ingredients include butter, large spring onions, split green peas, peas (I used frozen ones), lettuce, egg yolk, creme fraiche, and Madeira or port. Much to my surprise, it took me two hours yesterday to prepare the soup, forty-five minutes longer than I expected. I should be used that by now. Anyway, I started by lining up the ingredients and then I used blades ...

Widow's Soup A quick search on the internet comfirms Sophie Grigson 's introductory remarks about widow's soup, namely that it is a Maltese soup. That search also throws up lots of recipes, all with different ingredients, so for now I'll stick with those listed in The Soup Book . You'll need onion, potato, cauliflower florets, carrots, a small lettuce (I used gem), fresh or frozen peas, tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar, red wine vinegar, eggs and ricotta or goat's cheese (I used the latter). There was quite a bit of preparation involved, certainly not the seven minutes Sophie suggests. Who are all these fast peelers, skinners and choppers? Despite nearly two and a half years of soup making, I still haven't speeded up. So, after I had prepared my vegetables, I got cooking. I fried the onions until they were soft. Next into the pan were the potato, cauliflower, carrots and lettuce (if you were using fresh peas, you'd throw them in too at this point). I ...

Minted Pea and Ham Soup I didn't get a chance to make soup at the weekend. Sometimes life gets too complicated to make soup. Not to worry. I made some this evening. Although the recipe is by Roopa Gulati , no spice was used in its making. The ingredients include shallots, butter, potato, stock, peas, mint and cooked ham. When I arrived home from a busy day out, I had a cup of tea then got stuck in to making the soup. We had ham stock in the freezer (I'd left some out to thaw before going out this morning), and the spouse had cooked a piece of ham yesterday so I diced up the leftovers. The chopped shallots were softened in the butter, then the chopped potato was thrown into the pan. When this was tender I poured in the stock. While the stock was simmering I cooked the peas, adding mint for the last twenty seconds. When ready I added them to the stock then whizzed the lot in the blender. I reheated the soup and stirred in the diced ham. The younger offspring and I ate the so...