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Showing posts from 2012

Creamy Scallop Bisque

Creamy Scallop Bisque I hadn't planned to make soup at the weekend of the 8th-9th December but the older offspring was at home, keeping his room tidy, and I let myself be persuaded. The recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine and calls for dry white wine, onion, shallot, a tomato, prawns, cod or pollock, scallops, parsley, dill seeds, brandy, cream, chorizo or black pudding, and chives. One of the factors driving this choice of soup was the presence of some delicious black pudding which the spouse had bought at the National Crafts and Design Fair the previous Friday. White wine, prawns, scallops, brandy and cream can be pretty persuasive, too. Scallops, prawns and blossom fish with the younger offspring's spatula! On the Saturday morning I prepared my list. There was a little breakdown in communication regarding the type of scallops needed for the recipe but we overcame any difficulties. The spouse headed off to his favourite fishmonger 's where he was told that pollock

150 Soups

Puy Lentil Soup I am very pleased with myself. It's three years since I started this blog and I have made 150 soups from the 200 recipes in The Soup Book . The latest recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine . I made it on Monday (3rd December) with the assistance of the spouse. While I was on my way home from work he chopped the onion and crushed the garlic. When I arrived home I took over, rinsing and draining the lentils and gathering the herbs. The other ingredients included gammon steaks, thyme (from the garden, of course) and fresh parsley. I can't remember when I last ate gammon and I wondered if it was still available. Obviously it is! So I fried the onion and garlic, then stirred in the lentils. I have to admit I couldn't find canned puy lentils so I used green lentils. Having seasoned this mixture I lay one of the two gammon steaks on top of the lentils and added the herbs. A covering of water and I was ready to leave the pot simmering. About twenty minutes later

Triple Whammy!

Soup Review Mixed mushrooms Since my last post on 13th November I have made three soups: mushroom soup (on the 17th), Thai chicken soup (18th November) and garbure (25th November). All that activity has meant I've now completed 149 soups since I started working my way through the recipes in The Soup Book back in December 2009. Nearly three years after I made spinach and rosemary soup I can hardly believe I'm three quarters of the way through the book. I am not sure that I will get through all the recipes and so will change my approach to making soup. I may make it less frequently and try out soup recipes from other cookery books that the spouse and I own. We'll see. Mixed mushrooms: chopped and cooking The spouse and I now have a new favourite vegetable shop . It's not cheap nor is it especially convenient to get to from where we live, but the selection of fresh fruit and vegetables and other produce is impressive. The spouse has been talking about this p

Teamwork, My Chick-a-Pea!

Harissa and Chickpea Soup A couple of week's ago the spouse expressed an interest in making this soup from The Soup Book . Well, it's my blog and I make the soups. That said, I let him make the harissa that's needed to flavour the soup I made last Saturday (10th November). The recipe is by Roopa Gulati so I expected spice and richness. We weren't disappointed. The spouse is becoming a collector of harissa pastes and enjoyed making this one, which called for a red pepper, olive oil, seeds (coriander, cumin and caraway), tomato puree, garlic, red chillies, smoked paprika and lemon juice. I don't know how this was made as the spouse was the boss of the harissa. I needed only a couple of tablespoons for the soup, but we can use the rest with couscous (a favourite with the younger offspring). By the way, we now have three jars of smoked paprika due to inadequacies in our spice filing system. I hope that binding them together with a rubber band will help prevent any m

Waterzooi - What a Triumph!

Waterzooi I hadn't heard of it before but apparently waterzooi is a classic Belgian dish . In her recipe Marie-Pierre Moine lists the ingredients as potato, carrot, courgette, asparagus, monkfish, sole, fish or chicken stock, dry white wine, spring onions, mussels and cream. Oh yes, and chopped tarragon to garnish. A quick internet search tells me that these are not typical ingredients. What do I know? I'm just following The Soup Book 's orders. Ingredients for waterzooi Anyway, I wanted to make a special soup to celebrate the older offspring's presence. We don't often splash out and buy monkfish, sole and mussels. The spouse was assigned to fishing duty. He headed up to his favourite fishmonger 's shop and did the necessary. Mr Fishmonger kindly advised him that the mussels were from a different supplier and that we should give them a good wash. The prep time for this soup was given as twenty minutes and the cooking time thirty minutes. Not for this

Two Soups and a Soup Kitchen with a Twist

Turnip Soup with Chilli, Pimento and Noodles Just like buses, you wait ages for unusual root vegetable recipes to arrive, then two turnip together! Sorry, I couldn't resist. You see, I was shopping on Saturday 20th October and there were those red-skinned turnips, just like the ones pictured in The Soup Book , so I bought them. It was decided that I would cook the dinner that evening and the spouse would get some of the ingredients for me. He's discovered this wonderful shop not too far away and has come home with tales of wondrous types of honey. I shall bestir myself to venture to this awesome place. So, I arrived home from work on Wednesday (24th October) and laid out my ingredients: spring onion, turnips, jalapeno, dried chilli flakes, star anise, tomato puree, soy sauce, stock, Chinese egg noodles, preserved pimento and coriander. Carolyn Humphries advises you to use larger turnips with a stronger flavour - I consider myself lucky to find any turnips at all. P

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth Open a book, any book. Ready? Is it a cookery book? Is it a book with soup recipes? Is it The Soup Book ? Now, open it and find a recipe, one you haven't made before and one that won't require too much effort to find the ingredients. It's getting trickier, isn't it? Let's look in the Poulty, Game and Meat section. Aah! There's one and it's by Roopa Gulati , so there's a good chance we'll all enjoy the finished product. I looked at the ingredients: ginger or galangal, lime leaves, garlic, coriander (the stems!!!), lemon grass, chicken breasts, bird's eye chillies, shallots, lime juice, fish sauce, sweet chilli sauce, pak choi and bean sprouts. Yes, I could get anything I didn't already have at home. Off to the shops and then home. I spent yesterday afternoon (20th October) baking for a cake sale: apple and fig cake, lemon and ginger cake, banana, coconut and walnut cake, and fudge. Phew! I was exhausted. An

Chomping on the Savoy: So Not a Joy!

French Cabbage Soup This weekend's foray into soup-making involved Savoy cabbage, onion, garlic and lardons (I used ordinary rashers). When I was out at the supermarket I spotted pre-chopped cabbage, which I eventually bought when I couldn't find a whole head. Incidentally, after my long search last weekend for turnips, what did they have this week in the supermarket? Only white turnips!!! I thought I'd buy them for the remaining turnip soup recipe in The Soup Book (turnip soup with pimento, chilli and noodles). Could I get my phone to work so that I could ring the spouse at home and get him to check the ingredients? No, of course not. It was one of those mornings: I thought I'd lost my house keys and went into every shop looking for them, only to find them at the bottom of an empty shopping bag when I got home. It's all sorted now. Deep breath. Anyway, I started to cook yesterday evening at about 5.30pm. The pre-chopped cabbage saved a lot of time, so all

Turnips Turned Up!

Turnip Soup White turnips: what greenery? For some time now I've been keeping an eye out for turnips (red- or white-skinned ones, not swede turnips) as there are a couple of recipes for them in The Soup Book . I haven't seen them around very often. I did the shopping on Saturday (6th October) but didn't see any turnips in the supermarket. The spouse tried down the road in Young Stephen's - no luck. I brought the younger offspring into town and chanced to go down Moore Street. None of the stalls had the sort of turnip I was looking for and I was about the give up. Fortunately, my curiosity drove me into an Asian shop where among all the more unusual vegetables were a few white turnips. "They'll do," I thought to myself despite their rather flaccid appearance. And so to my kitchen. Alice Waters ' recipe instructs the reader to remove the greens from the turnips and keep them for a later stage of cooking. There wasn't much greenery to remove.

Swedes for My Sweets

Creamy Swede Soup Swede soup in the making Having been busy outside and away from my kitchen I just wanted to make a fairly simple soup this weekend. Another factor influencing my choice of recipe was the need to make more progress through the winter vegetables section of The Soup Book . I chopped my onions, trimmed and cubed my swede, made up my vegetable stock from bouillon mixture and lined up my honey, nutmeg and cream. Then I started to cook, frying the onions in butter before tipping in the swede. Ten minutes later I poured in the stock and eased in the honey. While this mixture was coming to a boil I sprinkled in a teaspoon of nutmeg powder (not the grated half of a nutmeg called for in the recipe). This was then left simmering until the swede was soft, at which point I left it to cool while I went off for a shower and some retail therapy. Revived by a new dress, I whizzed the soup in the liquidiser ready for reheating later that evening. Swede soup and messy cream

Hooray for Harira!

Harira Harira: browning the meat and bones Oh, happy day! Oh, happy tastebuds! Yesterday's soup was one of those soups that I have no qualms about adding to my "make it again" list. Using Sophie Grigson 's recipe for this Berber speciality, I made a soup that  all four of us enjoyed: the spouse, the younger offspring, Juno (my mother-in-law) and I. Yes, that's right: even the younger offspring was unstinting in his praise. All it took was an onion, a shoulder of lamb, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, parsley, coriander, brown lentils, tomatoes, vermicelli, chickpeas, flour and lemons. And my smaller dekshee.  I chopped what needed to be chopped then set to cooking. First I fried the onions until translucent, after which I added in the ground spices, the chopped herbs, the meat and the bones. Next in were the brown lentils, chopped tomatoes (tinned) and sundried tomato paste. When these were well mixed I poured in water and left the lot to simmer. H

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

Split Pea and Bacon Soup

Split Pea and Bacon Soup Last Sunday was another sunny day in Dublin so why did I make a hearty winter's day soup? Partly because I had the packet of split green peas from last weekend and partly because I love bacon-flavoured meals. The other ingredients included smoked streaky bacon, celeriac, carrot, leek, potato, dried marjoram and onion. The first task was to get the peas cooking in water. Then in went the piece of bacon. In the meantime I sliced and diced the vegetables and added them to the peas with some marjoram. When the bacon was cooked, I took it out of the pan, chopped it up and it back in the pan. I fried the onion in a second pan and then I was ready to dish up. I stirred the fried onions into the soup and sprinkled chopped chives over the top of each bowlful. Verdict: Delicious. I'll definitely make this soup again one cold winter's day. Bee is for Baking I've been very busy lately and haven't had much time for doing some of the things I l

Potage St Germain

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

Guess What? Gazpacho!

Gazpacho We've been enjoying unexpectedly warm and sunny weather lately, so I thought a chilled soup would be apt. Flicking through The Soup Book  I came across Geetie Singh 's recipe for gazpacho . After a busy week and a busy Saturday spent preparing dinner for guests last night (actually, the spouse was busy preparing dinner), I was delighted to see that the preparation for the gazpacho was limited to peeling and chopping. Even having to get the food processor out didn't pose too much of a challenge. Tough decision-making was the theme of this recipe, starting with the options for certain ingredients: spring onions or red onion thyme, marjoram, parsley, mint or basil fresh chilli or cayenne pepper. I have underlined the choices I made. Gazpacho Breaking free from the constraints of the ingredients list, I used an orange pepper rather than the red indicated in the recipe. Other ingredients included garlic, cucumber, tomatoes, stale bread, red wine vineg