Minnie's Soup Kitchen

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...

Allotment Soup  The recipe for allotment soup by Thane Prince is the first in The Soup Book and in the summer vegetables section. I made it last Wednesday (11th April) in advance of visitors coming the next day, one of whom (a friend of the younger offspring) is a vegetarian. The listed ingredients include dried haricot beans (I used canned cannellini beans), leek, turnip (I don't think I've ever cooked white turnip before), carrots, courgette, celery, potato, tomatoes, garlic and green beans. I increased the quantities stated in The Soup Book , just in case there wasn't enough to go around: I wanted a lot of allotment soup. The most labour-intensive part of the preparation was dicing the vegetables and I'm glad I avoided soaking dried beans. The only things I had to do to finish the soup for my guests on Thursday were to reheat the soup and add in the fresh green beans and cannellini beans. Five of us sat down to eat and there was far too much soup. My guest...