Minnie's Soup Kitchen

 Mixed Seafood Gumbo  Yesterday (22nd April) was Good Friday. Easter is falling very late this year. I heard someone on the radio explaining why Easter Sunday is a movable feast. I'm going to list the key words rather than give an explanation: ecclesiastical full moon , astronomical full moon and vernal equinox . You do the maths. For the last twenty-two years or so I have made a simnel cake for Easter - just in case people weren't getting enough calories from their chocolate eggs. My favourite part of the cake is where the marzipan in the middle melts into the cake batter around it. I felt very organised yesterday: I put out all the listed ingredients, lined the baking tin, made the batter, rolled out the marzipan circle, put half the batter in the lined tin, put in the marzipan and topped it with the remaining batter. The oven was warm, I opened the door, and what did I see on the work surface? The unopened packets of sultanas and currants! Too late to rescue it, I put t...

Oxtail Soup  At long last I have made the oxtail soup I pledged to make last month! The ingredients are relatively straight forward - oxtail (obviously), onion, carrots, celery, tomatoes (out of a can), parsley, a bay leaf, fresh thyme, flour, butter and dry sherry - but it required some effort to track down oxtails and the soup takes a long time to prepare. You need  to simmer the tails and onion for four hours, then add the other vegetables and herbs before simmering for a further thirty minutes. Eventually the stock is strained and chilled for at least an hour before finishing. Just as well I started cooking before midday in time to have it ready for the evening meal.  After four hours of simmering (during which time I prepared apple dumplings), I removed the herbs and meat. The meat is taken off the bones and then blended with the vegetables. I used the liquidiser part of my food processor and by the time I'd finished, smoke was rising from that hard-working machine...