Minnie's Soup Kitchen

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 chervi...

  Onion and Garlic Soup  Regular readers will spot immediately that the spouse has done what he's good at and found the camera connector that I misplaced. Below is his photograph of yesterday's soup from the The Soup Book .  It was onion and garlic soup by Marie-Pierre Moine . The ingredients include a Spanish onion, a banana shallot, a small head of garlic, dry white wine, vegetable stock, milk, egg yolks, double cream and Dijon mustard.  Trying to avoid the onion fumes, I used a handheld blender to chop the onion and shallot together. These were then cooked until the water had evaporated. Onion and garlic soup with croute Meanwhile, I boiled the unpeeled garlic cloves until they were soft enough to squeeze the flesh from the skin. I added the wine, stock and milk to the onion mix before dealing with the garlic flesh. To this I added the egg yolks, mashed them together then spooned in the cream. This mixture was stirred into the onion mix, and finally...

Cherry Soup   I had been wondering recently how I could even out my progress through the different recipe sections in The Soup Book . It had also occurred to me that I hadn't made a fruit soup for a while (there are only six recipes for fruit soups in the book). Today, serendipitously, a solution presented itself, literally on my doorstep. A friend, "Bella", called around for coffee bearing a punnet of morello cherries! I remembered that there is a cherry soup recipe in The Soup Book and hence today's blog entry. In his introductory note, Shaun Hill states: "This Hungarian soup is meant to taste fresh rather than sweet." The ingredients are morello cherries (fresh or canned), white wine, water, sugar, lemon and soured cream. I simmered the cherry stones and stalks in the wine and water, strained out the debris, and then heated the fruit, sugar and lemon in the cherry stock. The final addition was the soured cream and now the soup is being chilled. It'...

I'm not writing about soup today. I thought I'd just write a few notes about the family visit to Bloom 2011 . Not the entire family, I should add. The older offspring is away enjoying irresponsibility ... while he can. The spouse, the younger offspring and I cycled over to the Phoenix Park yesterday, arriving at the Conyngham Road entrance just in time for the rain. Then we cycled up Chesterfield Avenue, ringing our bells at pedestrians who had the temerity to walk on the cycle path. We locked our bikes to railings close to the entrance to Bloom and made our way in. The flowers are something to behold. I love fuchsia and was very taken by one called Black to the Fuchsia ! At the food stalls I sampled Mella's Fudge . The stall-holder and I chatted about whether to use evaporated or condensed milk and whether to use a thermometer or go for the boil (she uses a thermometer). We both wrinkled our noses in unspoken agreement at another brand of fudge which really isn't...

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 natu...

African Sweet Potato Soup   This soup is another one from the winter vegetables section of The Soup Book , the second recipe by Angela Nilsen that I have used (see blog of 2nd January 2011) and the second soup I have cooked using sweet potatoes (see blog of 27th February 2010). There are just three recipes that call for sweet potatoes: the two I have already mentioned and one called "penny" soup, so called because the some of the vegetables used are sliced in rounds and stacked in a mound in the middle of the soup bowl when serving. Back to the African sweet potato soup. The ingredients include onion, garlic, root ginger, dried crushed chillies, sweet potatoes, red pepper, a can of tomatoes, cumin and coriander seeds (dry roasted and crushed), vegetable stock (I had to use commercial bouillon today), peanut butter and Tabasco sauce. Yes, I was surprised too when I saw peanut butter on the list (smooth or crunchy), but it "lends a rich, satisfying earthiness", ac...

Crab Bisque If you'd asked me last weekend which soup I'd be making next, I wouldn't have have said crab bisque.  The choice was made because last Friday (6th August) the spouse fortuitously spotted and bought a pair of frozen crabs from his new favourite fish shop on Upper Rathmines Road. As soon as I saw them, I thought "Soup!" and looked up crab recipes in The Soup Book .  There are two options - the bisque and gazpacho.The latter requires clams or mussels, so we chose the former and began thawing the crabs ready for cooking yesterday afternoon. There is quite a lot of preparation involved in this recipe - crab meat to remove from shells, onions, carrots, celery, leeks, fennel, ginger and garlic to chop, as well as cooking, blending and sieving - so I called upon the younger offspring's pair of hands.  I bashed the crab shells with my rolling pin and cracked open the legs with the kitchen scissors so that the child labourer could prise out the meat.Then ...