Spicy Spinach Soup

Spicy Spinach Soup

There are three spinach recipes in The Soup Book and Darina Allen's spinach and rosemary soup was the first soup I made at the commencement of this project (see my first blog of 28th December, 2009).Today's soup was appetisingly alliterative and as spicy as its name suggests. At this stage in my project, I have come to expect spiciness from the author Roopa Gulati. Skinned and boned chicken thighs are left to marinate for an hour or two in a mix of finely chopped garlic and root ginger, garam masala, lime juice, yoghurt and salt. The meat is then cooked on a griddle pan and left to cool before being chopped up (it's added to the soup later).  The ingredients for the next stage are onion, green chillies, garlic, ground almonds, chicken stock, a piece of root ginger, baby spinach, and coriander and mint leaves. Before adding the chicken pieces, the cooked mixture is liquidised and the soup turns a vivid shade of green that I would hardly believe was natural if I hadn't cooked it myself. 

I didn't start cooking until about six o'clock this evening and the spouse arrived home from the south east just in time to eat with the offspring and me. This soup was delicious. The spouse, the older offspring and I weren't sure if the youngest member of the household would manage to eat his soup. He surprised us by not only getting through his allotted portion and refusing to add any yoghurt - he had a second bowlful! A tribute indeed!

Year of the Honeybee

This weekend sees the launch of the Year of Honeybee by the Federation of Irish Beekeepers' Associations. There are celebratory events taking place at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, including a talk on honey by Philip McCabe. While driving home from work yesterday afternoon I was in time to hear Philip talking on the Mooney Show (a programme on RTE Radio 1) about the growth in the number of bee-keepers or bee-keeping courses on offer in Ireland (something to do with the recession). He was followed by another guest speaker who talked about this year's Apimondia.

I didn't come across any mention of bees in my reading during the last week, but there is a page on Wikipedia entitled List of fictional bees, wasps and hornets!