Minnie's Soup Kitchen

It's 5th January and I have been busy in the kitchen. We started the new year with a favourite old recipe - cinnamon duck with redcurrant sauce - from Good Housekeeping (April 1992).  Basically, you sear duck breasts in a pan with a stick of cinnamon, then transfer the breasts to an oven (skin side up) to roast while you make a sauce with onions, thyme, stock, red wine and red currant jelly. A delicious start to the year.  Getting ready to roast tomatoes Yesterday I decided to make soup from one of our cookery books other than The Soup Book . I selected River Cottage Veg Everyday! (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, 2011, Bloomsbury) but didn't go for a straightforward recipe. In order to make Hugh's Mexican tomato and bean soup , I first had to make roast tomato sauce (1.5kg of tomatoes yielded about 550ml of sauce) and go on the hunt for a tin of black beans. Finding black beans was the hard part. Once I found them, there was no holding me back. The spouse said o...

Well, what a surprise! I have made two soups in the last week, one from The Soup Book and the other from Riverford Farm Cook Book (Watson and Baxter, 2008). The first soup was a spicy lentil soup I have made twice before and I used up the spice mix I had made for the curried parsnip soup. Today's soup was leek and potato with chicken, bacon and sage . I even made my own chicken stock, something I haven't done for a long time. Into the stock went thyme and a bay leaf from the garden, and the sage in the leek and potato soup was also from the garden. It still pleases me to use herbs I have grown myself.  Leek and potato soup with chicken, bacon and sage Not only did I make soup today, I also made carrot and parsnip compost cookies (Liam Charles, The Guardian ), so called because you're supposed to use the entire vegetables, skin and all. I have to admit I wasn't brave enough to do so.  Any one who knows me knows that I am not a fan of parsnips and yet I have u...

Nigel Slater's sausage and potato pie Where has 2018 gone to? And while it was evaporating around me, have I been baking? Yes. I am not going to write a dreary list of what I've made but I'll share some of the highlights. Back in February I took out Nigel Slater's "Real Food" and made his sausage and potato pie. It was delicious. I used sausages containing black pudding. A little bit fiddly but worth the effort. "Quality!" said the younger offspring. "Put it on the 'make again' list." In the same month I made Yotam Ottolenghi's plum, marzipan and cinnamon muffins, which I first baked five years ago. On that occasion I went to the trouble of making fresh plum compote according to the recipe. Subsequently I've used jam out of jar. Life's too short. Other bakes in February were muesli muffins, banana gingerbread (Paul Flynn's old reliable recipe) white chocolate fruit and nut slice.   Simnel cake (Irish ...