Cheerful Chervil

Minnie's chervil three weeks after planting

Vegetable and Chervil Soup

This recipe from The Soup Book is by Raymond Blanc and in order to make it I had to plant chervil specially! You'll see how it's grown in the last three weeks (see my blog of 11th May). The vegetables needed were onion, carrots, celery, leeks, courgette and tomatoes (yes, I know: technically a fruit). I peeled and chopped as necessary then went off for a rest. I also needed "a scant ounce" of chervil. By the time I'd obtained this, there was very little left of my plant! The photo to the right shows it before I'd stripped it nearly bare.

When it was time to start cooking, I set to, pleased with myself at having everything ready. The first step involved sweating the onion, garlic, carrots, celery and leeks in melted butter. After this in went boiling water, the carrots and tomatoes for a five-minute fast boil. Finally, I added a little more butter and the finely chopped chervil. I ladled the soup out and left the spouse and younger offspring to top their portions with creme fraiche. The verdict: a very healthy and tasty soup. Not having tasted chervil before, I was surprised by how aniseed-y it was. A good soup, easy to make but the jury is out on whether it was worth growing chervil for.

Bee-keeping tools

Bee is for Bloom

The spouse and I cycled over to the Phoenix Park for the Bloom festival. Beautiful flowers in some perhaps not quite so beautiful gardens. We visited the FIBKA stand where they were displaying live bees but I couldn't get close enough to photograph the display case. I had to make do with a photo of the tools display!

From a floristry display at Bloom

That's it for now. I'm off to enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend.

Minnie

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