Minnie's Soup Kitchen

September: it's all back to school, sunny days and increased traffic volumes. Then someone injures himself and earlier events fade from the memory. But there's always baking. My fifteenth recipe from Norfolk's Own Cookbook was for lemon and blackberry cake. The key ingredients were grated lemon zest, rapeseed oil, sugar, ground and flaked almonds and sugar. The blackberries were added to the top for the last fifteen minutes of baking. I have to admit I didn't pick my own blackberries. I bought these ones and I am not a fan. Next time I will put my boots on and scramble among the brambles.   As it was the younger offspring's birthday earlier this month I made him one of his favourites: rocky road muffins from Gill MacLennan's Chocolate recipe book. He was appreciative. Then as a treat for when he was in hospital I made him Nigella Lawson's rocky road crunch bars .  Yesterday I reverted to The Soup Book and made a lentil and vegetable soup that I...

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...

Bigos Nestled in the Winter Vegetables section of The Soup Book is Marie-Pierre Moine's recipe for bigos , a meaty Polish stew rather than soup , according to many internet sources. I identified the recipe last weekend and thought it would be a substantial "soup" for sharing with others, but only sent out invitations yesterday afternoon. We had two guests to share our meal with and there was a substantial portion left over. The ingredients include Savoy cabbage, sauerkraut, smoked bacon, smoked Polish sausage, duck breast (you can substitute venison), a red onion, garlic, brown mushrooms, smoked paprika, a bay leaf, juniper berries, marjoram, caraway seeds, red wine and beef stock. Getting all the ingredients together was the fiddliest part of a fiddly soup. The spouse might as well have gone to Poland when trying to find the smoked sausage and sauerkraut. Or so he said. I went out yesterday evening after the rugby match had started to buy a bottle of red wine and...

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...

Parsnip and Apple Soup I was determined to have completed fifty recipes from The Soup Book by the end of this month. In making today's choice I noticed I hadn't made a soup from the winter vegetable section of the book for some time, so thought I had better re-visit that section.  The recipe for parsnip and apple soup is on page 170 and coincidentally I made the recipe on the opposite page, Moroccan Roasted Sweet Potato Soup, exactly a year ago. Written by Marie-Pierre Moine , the recipe lists the following ingredients: onion, garlic, mild curry powder (I don't keep such a thing in the house so made up my own concoction), parsnips, a Bramley apple, vegetable or chicken stock, cream and lemon juice. I am not a fan of parsnips (see my blog of 4th September 2010), but the spouse loves them and the offspring are not immune to their charms. It took me longer than expected to cook the soup (Moine's times are twenty minutes for the preparation work and thirty for cooking)....

Chickpea Soup Yesterday (Saturday 21st August) I made chickpea soup. The spouse and the younger offspring were away camping in the west of Ireland, so I had to do the shopping, make the soup and cook the dinner myself. The choice had to be something quick and easy to prepare. Furthermore, I wanted to shift the cans of chickpeas that have been languishing in the cupboard (the spouse objects to this, saying they've only been there a week). The recipe calls for dried chickpeas to be soaked overnight but I didn't feel like making that much effort. The only overnight work I did was to thaw out a leg of chicken. The introductory text for this recipe mentions Shaun Hill of The Walnut Tree , near Abergavenny, who states that the chicken "makes this a questionable dish for your vegetarian friends - unless you are an accomplished liar."  Apart from chickpeas and chicken, other ingredients that go into this soup are olive oil, celery, onion, leek, garlic, white wine and lemon...