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...

Carrot Soup with Coconut and Lemongrass "It's a soup day!" I thought to myself yesterday as the spouse got ready to go out shopping. "I'll run downstairs, choose a soup and give Dinks a list of ingredients." Too late! He'd already left the house. I cast an eye over our cookery books, considered Keith Floyd 's Floyd on Fish briefly but then chose The Soup Book . "A summer vegetable soup, I think," I said to myself. The book practically opened itself at this carrot soup recipe. We had onions, garlic, garlic, ginger, coconut milk and other ingredients. I rang the spouse and ordered carrots, lemongrass, red Thai curry paste and kaffir lime leaves. The latter wasn't available at our usual shop so I strolled down to Young Stephen's, not really expecting him to have them in stock. There he was, too absorbed in singing along to Return to Sender   to pay me any attention so I checked myself what was available on the herb and spice ra...

Oxtail Soup Oxtail beginning to simmer. The first time I made oxtail soup in the interests of this blog was November 2010 . On this occasion I used a recipe from Floyd on Britain and Ireland , which was first published in 1988. Our copy is signed by Keith Floyd himself. I met him that year at the book launch on Dawson Street. In my innocence I recommended a restaurant in Kinsale to him, ignorant of the fact that he was a partner in the business! Looking at the photo of Keith and his red braces on the cover of the book, you'll be transported back to the 1980s! His recipe for oxtail soup lists butter, carrots, onion, turnips, brown stock, a shin bone, fine sago, dry mustard and sherry among the ingredients. Turnips seem to go into hiding when I'm looking for them so I substituted swede turnip. I have concluded the main reason for using white turnips is that they have a weaker taste than swedes. As for sago, where would I find sago? The only time I ever ate sago was at s...