Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Okay. So I haven't been a conscientious correspondent. I admit it but I am not making a new year's resolution about being a more consistent and regular blogger. In the interests of catching up, here's an entry I started writing last October (three months ago!) and forgot about: A few weeks ago a recipe for chicken with fennel and clementines in Yotam Ottolenghis' Jerusalem  (2012) caught my eye. All I needed was Pernod or a similar aniseed-flavoured drink. Then, as if they'd guessed, the older offspring and his wife returned from Greece bearing ouzo for the younger offspring. I'm not sure how delighted he was with it. Let's just say he wasn't unwilling to let me have some for the chicken recipe. The spouse and I are trying out a new shopping regime: we're no longer driving the mile or so to the supermarket we've patronised for years. Instead we're popping over the road to the nearby German discount stores. While we're saving money, w...

Fruited teabread and pear and cardamom teabread My kitchen was very productive this May. The doyennes of the fete cake stall retired last year and so the new stall holders were looking for donations. I girded my loins, reviewed my recipes for cakes that I could make and freeze, and set to. Nine different cakes and teabreads resulted: apple and ginger teabread, cherry and apple streusel cake, fruited teabread, pear and cardamom teabread, amaretti plum cake, rippled date and banana loaf, glazed rosemary cake, spiced fruit parkin, and prune, walnut and molasses teabread. I'm a legend in my own kitchen! And I had to make fudge for the stall I was working on.  Later on in the month I made panforte from a Good Housekeeping recipe and a mushroom and onion quiche from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course  for domestic use. 

Baking and Boasting Last year I entered a local baking competition for the first time. There weren't many entries and I achieved a couple of seconds and thirds ... out of twos and threes! I decided that I would re-enter this year, having identified that the competition is quite old-fashioned and that the judges don't seem to require anything too fancy. Fortunately, I was on leave in the run up to the competition so had the time to prepare and make seven entries: shortbread, tea brack, scones, gingerbread, cupcakes, apple tart and a deep chocolate fudge cake.  Shortbread (Norfolk recipe) I tried out two shortbread recipes: one from Delia Smith's  Complete Cookery Course , the other from the  Norfolk cookbook . Delia's book was first published in 1978 and my copy was a twenty-fifth birthday present from one of my siblings. I have to state that I was not twenty-five in 1978 - I was still a teenager. The Norfolk cookbook was a more recent present from my other sibl...

Cotriade From my "make again" list Last Saturday I made cotriade again. I first followed this recipe by Marie-Pierre Moine in July 2011 and put it on my list of soups to make again. I went about it in a labour- and time-saving way, buying frozen pieces of cod and haddock rather than fresh fish, and using fish stock cubes. The spouse and I enjoyed the soup, but the younger offspring struggled to get through his portion. He eventually admitted he didn't really like fish, only shellfish. I can understand that. Cherry tomatoes ready for roasting Today I made Eric Treuille's sausage and bean soup for the second time (see 10th October 2010 ). The weather wasn't really suited to a spicy soup, but I went ahead anyway, only to be told by the younger offspring that he was going to his friend G-Banger's house when there was only twenty minutes' cooking time left. Grumpy face. Well, let him go off to the cinema with his friend. All the more for the...

Pre-Christmas Soup Break It's the Sunday before Christmas and I've opted to have a break from soups. Yesterday I was very busy, what with chauffeuring the spouse (who had come home "by railing" from a night out) to the shops and hunting more elusive ingredients and baking and cooking.  Later today the mother-in-law is coming for lunch. It will be something of an expedition, the cold and ice having played havoc with her travel arrangements and the logistics for the entire day.  The plan at present is for the spouse to go and collect her. As I write, he's preparing the vegetables for our lunch. We're having some sort of smoked salmon and smoked mackerel roulade to start, followed by roast beef and various vegetables (I'll be making Yorkshire pudding). I spent a lot of time yesterday preparing the pudding for today: compote of figs in port and prune ice cream using Delia Smith's Christmas recipe book (our copy was given to the spouse by one of my sibl...