Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Mushroom Stoup  Mushroom stoup: prep work done Yesterday (12th March) I made Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's mushroom stoup. In his book River Cottage Veg Everyday , he describes this mushroom fest as "somewhere between a soup and a stew." The ingredients include dried porcini mushrooms, onions, carrots, celery, fresh mushrooms, garlic, parsley and dill. There's the usual chopping in order to prepare, but there is also the soaking of the dried porcini mushrooms, the liquor from which is used later in the stoup. What really tempted me to make this stoup was the addition of dumplings. As might be expected from a vegetarian recipe, vegetarian suet was required. Vegetarians should look away now. I couldn't find any vegetarian suet so I used the well known non-vegetarian brand.  I haven't made dumplings in a long time. The spouse thinks he remembers me making them but can't say when. I can remember making them in domestic science at school as an accompa...

Carrot Soup with Coconut and Lemongrass "It's a soup day!" I thought to myself yesterday as the spouse got ready to go out shopping. "I'll run downstairs, choose a soup and give Dinks a list of ingredients." Too late! He'd already left the house. I cast an eye over our cookery books, considered Keith Floyd 's Floyd on Fish briefly but then chose The Soup Book . "A summer vegetable soup, I think," I said to myself. The book practically opened itself at this carrot soup recipe. We had onions, garlic, garlic, ginger, coconut milk and other ingredients. I rang the spouse and ordered carrots, lemongrass, red Thai curry paste and kaffir lime leaves. The latter wasn't available at our usual shop so I strolled down to Young Stephen's, not really expecting him to have them in stock. There he was, too absorbed in singing along to Return to Sender   to pay me any attention so I checked myself what was available on the herb and spice ra...

Pre-Christmas Soup Break It's the Sunday before Christmas and I've opted to have a break from soups. Yesterday I was very busy, what with chauffeuring the spouse (who had come home "by railing" from a night out) to the shops and hunting more elusive ingredients and baking and cooking.  Later today the mother-in-law is coming for lunch. It will be something of an expedition, the cold and ice having played havoc with her travel arrangements and the logistics for the entire day.  The plan at present is for the spouse to go and collect her. As I write, he's preparing the vegetables for our lunch. We're having some sort of smoked salmon and smoked mackerel roulade to start, followed by roast beef and various vegetables (I'll be making Yorkshire pudding). I spent a lot of time yesterday preparing the pudding for today: compote of figs in port and prune ice cream using Delia Smith's Christmas recipe book (our copy was given to the spouse by one of my sibl...

Broccoli Soup I suppose I could try and get away with writing that as this week encompassed the St Patrick's Day celebrations, it was appropriate that I made a green soup. I won't try. I chose broccoli as I had a lot of it in the fridge and decided to use it up. The Soup Book contains two recipes with broccoli: broccoli soup and potato soup with broccoli, shallot and mascarpone. Another reason I chose the former is because it also includes leeks and celery and I had some of those in the fridge too. The other ingredients are lemon juice, butter, flour, cream and chives (garnish). I made the soup this afternoon (Saturday 20th March). I didn't have quite enough homemade chicken stock, so I topped it up with the water in which I cooked the broccoli (Step 1). Good idea - I was very impressed with myself. The recipe involves cooking half of the broccoli and putting it aside for later when it is added to the soup. It's ready now and we'll probably have it for lunch to...