Fennel and Apple Soup

Fennel and Apple Soup

This morning I decided to make fennel and apple soup - no particular reason. It looked straightforward. From the ingredients listed - spring onions, garlic, fennel, celery, a cooking apple and vegetable stock - all I needed was fennel and the apple. Off went the spouse to the shopping centre. After a while came the text: "No fennel." The spouse is very pleased with the new green grocer up at the shopping centre. He finds him very obliging and chatty. The green grocer had no fennel, having thrown the previous day's supply away. The spouse would have taken even that, saying it was "only for soup." Only for soup? Harrumph! Anyway, the green grocer explained that fennel doesn't keep well. According to Celia Brooks Brown's introduction to the recipe, fennel will store better in the fridge if you remove the feather fronds. (I hadn't heard of Celia before but she has her own website.)
I went down to the local green grocer's place and "Young Stephen" had a supply of fennel in his fridge. When I arrived home I got stuck straight in, washing, peeling and chopping. It didn't take long to cook.

I predicted that the younger offspring wouldn't like it, but he didn't dislike it. The spouse warned him against being critical. I intervened, saying that when he (the youngr offspring) said that last week's soup tasted "like nothing", it was probably because I had said to the spouse something like without the chicken, the chickpea soup would have been nothing." I suggested to the younger offspring that he might like to use words like "bland" or "insipid" when criticising food that he found didn't taste of much. The spouse retorted that I would still have been offended, to which I replied, "Yes, but I would have been impressed by his vocabulary."

The verdict on the soup: the three adult members of the household liked it very much. It can be served cold too - I'm not sure I'd like that.

Bee Brief

I didn't come across bees in my reading during the week, apart from an e-mail from MH, who is just back from France and still buzzing about a bee she named Berthe. Welcome home, MH!
Someone at Irish Seed Savers rang me during the week and asked if I'd prefer to go to a session on bees this Sunday (tomorrow). The woman running the session had said that there is more happening with the bees tomorrow than there will be during the Getting the bees ready for winter course (see blog of 8th August). I declined to swap dates, as I have other arrangements in place. I hope that workshop goes ahead - I'm looking forward to wearing a bee suit.The tension of it al!
Bee box project: project status - static. I will have to try and pin the older offspring down to a date. Or a particular week.
This is a rather tenuous link: I met a friend whom I haven't seen for a while and she gave me a late birthday present, a pendant by Alan Ardiff. This prompted me to look at his website and - lo and behold - there is a pendant entitled Honey and depicting a bee. The matching earrings have little honeycombs in them!

Miso Soup with Tuna

Miso Soup with Tuna This weekend I made a soup from the soup and shellfish section of The Soup Book , mainly because I'm aware this is the section through which I have made least progress. Leafing through the fish soup recipes, miso soup with tuna was the first one I came across that I hadn't made (the last fish soup was the creamy scallop bisque in December 2012). I read through the ingredients listed by Carolyn Humphries : what is wakame ? where do I get it and dried shitake mushrooms and miso paste? Apart from those three items, it was easy enough to obtain a carrot, spring onions, ginger, fresh tuna and chives. The spouse made a detour from the usual shopping route to his f avourite fishmonger's shop then went into town for dried wakame. So, at about 5.30pm yesterday evening, I set about making the soup. I made up chicken stock from a cube and left the shitake mushrooms and wakame soaking in cold water while I prepared the vegetables and diced the tuna. Next, I ...

Traditional Chicken Soup

Traditional Chicken Soup The weekend just gone was another busy one but for happy reasons. The younger offspring has just become a teenager. Fortunately there were no tantrums, no sulks, no studied indifference. The excitement was occasionally muted but for the most part he was unselfconscious in his enjoyment of the celebrations. I made him white chocolate brownies which are one of his favourite home bakes. The celebrations meant delaying the preparation of the soup. It was a two-staged recipe anyway which meant I could make stock in advance. We had lemon-roasted chicken for dinner yesterday so I saved the carcass to make stock for the soup. The ingredients for the stock were the chicken carcass ( Marie-Pierre Moine suggests this as an alternative to using a whole chicken), carrot, leek, garlic, dried mushrooms (which the spouse bought but which I forgot to put in the pot), celery, parsley and thyme. When I got home from work this evening I got stuck into making the soup. T...

Minted Pea and Ham Soup

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...

Minnie's Soup Kitchen

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