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...

Pichelsteiner   Last Sunday I spent some time making a list of all the recipes in The Soup Book after someone asked me how many more recipes did I have to get through. I counted 199 soup recipes and ten bread recipes, and I have made thirty-seven soups, including the most recent. So I still have some way to go. At this rate, it could take me five years! So, Pichelsteiner. What is it? The Soup Book lists it as a German soup containing lamb, but suggests that it is "versatile enough to work with pork or beef instead of lamb." On looking it up on the internet (including German language descriptions), I discovered that Pichelsteiner (from Buechelstein, a mountain in Bavaria) is a mixed meat stew or Eintopf (one pot). Other recipes use a combination of beef, pork and veal, but not lamb; the common vegetables are onions and cabbage. The Soup Book's ingredients include lamb (shoulder or neck), onions, dried marjoram, dried lovage or thyme, vegetable stock, carrots, leek...