Minnie's Soup Kitchen

January started off at its usual crawl then got a wiggle on. I didn't do too much out of the culinary ordinary for the first half of the month.  I found a recipe for a marmalade fruit cake that I remembered making years ago. The recipe turned out to be in our old M&S cookery book, bought in 1983. Not an exciting recipe but it was a good way of using up some rather dull shop-bought marmalade. (As an aside, I thought my handful of readers might be interested in the spouse's marmalade venture . He even designed his own jar labels.)  Muttleys with cheese and walnut scones and fruit scones Later in the month I travelled to North-East England to look after my youngest sibling (I can't remember my earlier pseudonym for her so I'll call her "T Rex" for now). She broke her leg before Christmas and is enduring enforced rest at home. Anyway, my other sister J'Zo gallantly took care of T Rex for ten days then I jetted over for five days. It gave me a grea...

Eggs molee with vegetable biryani If you're still reading this blog then you'll know that my posts have become quite infrequent compared to when I was still enthusiastically engaged in my soup-making project. That started about ten years ago. I was gung-ho to work my way through the 200 recipes. Still, 170 wasn't bad going. Yesterday I made curried parsnip soup, which I first made in May 2012. It was very tasty and well received by the spouse and younger offspring.  So much has happened in the last ten years and even in the seven years since I first made the parsnip soup. The older offspring is now married. The younger offspring is at university. The spouse has become prodigiously creative in the last eighteen months and  blogs prolifically  about his accomplishments. I have dabbled in various things - poetry, calligraphy, comedy improv, knitting - but baking and cooking remain my favourite pastimes and creative outlets. So far this year I've tried about ...

These days I am spending my spare time trying out new recipes. Well, new to me even though the recipe books have been on my shelves for some years. Walnut and halva cake Three of the books lingering on the shelves are Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty , Plenty More and Jerusalem . Plenty More has definitely found favour with me. I made Ottolenghi's  walnut and halva cake . Not just full of flavour but also full of texture: the chalkiness of the halva contrasted with the moist baked batter and chopped nuts. The savoury recipes were for cauliflower cake , ricotta and rosemary bread pudding (the recipe is more interesting than the taste), and aubergine cheesecake (essentially, roasted slices of aubergines baked in a cheesy custard).  This year's simnel cake While Felicity Cloake's recipe for tagine worked well, it's her cake recipes that have scored me lots of  likes on FB: her rhubarb frangipane cake was heavenly. More importantly, her  simnel cake  ha...

Over the land is April  Coconut and pine nut cookies Over the land is April, Over my heart a rose; Over the high, brown mountain The sound of singing goes. Thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson for the title of this entry. April activity This month I made Chetna Makan's coconut and pine nut cookies. Distracted by something, I left them in the oven a little too long. Even so, I quite liked them but I'm not sure that my tasting audience was hugely impressed. Easter bark with Smarties I haven't bought a copy of Good Housekeeping for a long time so I treated myself to the April 2017 issue. There were lots of tempting chocolate cake recipes but I opted for the fairly straightforward Easter bark recipe . I made two batches: one with the suggested chopped mini eggs, the other with chopped up Smarties. These were very much appreciated by my tasting audience. Sometimes I have to remind myself of why I started writing this blog: to encourage...

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave...