Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Borscht It's been just under a year since I made a beetroot soup from The Soup Book . A convert to hot beetroot, I'm still not sure about cold beetroot. Anyway, it's a weekday and a work day, but I thought I'd give this borscht recipe a go as the younger offspring would be home later than usual. It's a cold and miserably wet day, so what better than a hot flavoursome soup. The ingredients include butter or goose fat (I used up the last of a jar of duck fat), beetroot, onion, carrot, celery, a can of chopped tomatoes, garlic, vegetable stock, cloves and lemon juice. Having met Juno (my mother-in-law) for lunch, I dashed around the shops in the vicinity of my office. No fresh beetroot in the two supermarkets, so off with me to the organic green grocery. A nice little bunch of beetroot for €2.49. Where would you be going?! On arriving home I laid out the ingredients. The first job was to peel the vegetables before roughly grating them. Out with the faithful old...

Tomato Borscht Sofia Larinua-Craxton , the author of this recipe in The Soup Book , promises that you will love the rich colour and fantastic taste of this unsual version of borscht. With cinnamon among its various ingredients, it certainly smelt fantastic while being cooked. The other ingredients are onion, garlic, beetroot, ground toasted cumin seeds (I cheated and used pre-ground), fresh tomatoes, tomato juice, sun-dried tomatoes, vegetable stock (I inadvertently used chicken), soy sauce and seasoning; it's served with soured cream or creme fraiche and more toasted cumin seeds.  Delicious tomato borscht served with yoghurt and ground cumin. I made the borscht for lunch and three of us (the older offspring is out touting for work) have just eaten it. It lives up to Sofia's promise. I am hesitant about beetroot, but this is a soup I would definitely make again. The spouse and I agreed it was the spices and the richness of the tomatoes that have made it palatable. There...

Beetroot Soup with Goat's Cheese One of the first soups I made from The Soup Book was Juliet Kindersley 's beetroot and apple soup (see blog of 16th January 2010). The other beetroot soup recipes in this book are chilled beetroot and tomato soup, borscht, and beetroot and gin soup.  I wasn't sure about beetroot as it was something I resisted strenuously in my childhood. That said, time passes and tastes change or mature. I passed a vegetable shop last Friday and the beetroot on display outside caught my eye, so yesterday I called into "Young Stephen's" shop (my local green grocery) and bought some. The other ingredients in today's effort (a recipe by Rebecca Sullivan ) are tomatoes, apples, olive or sunflower oil (I've used the latter because we're low on the former!), onion, beef stock. The soup can be served hot or cold with Childwilkbury 's goat's cheese crumbled on top. There are two stages in cooking the soup: roasting the tomatoes...

My Secret Life with Bees in Literature The other night as I was going to bed I turned on the radio (RTE 1) and happened to hear the reading from The Book on One . It was an extract from Virgil's Georgics concerning bees. The Georgics is a poem completed c.29 BC, comprising four books that deal with crops, trees, livestock and bees. What I was listening to was a translation by Peter Fallon (www.peterfallon.com), founder of the Gallery Press. The reference to honey as manna caught my attention and I continued to listen to Virgil's ideas on providing an ideal environment for bees to thrive in. The translator was the reader. The spouse and I agreed he didn't read well. Nevertheless I soldiered on for the sake of my blog! Other bee-related books I have enjoyed in recent years are The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and The Beekeeper's Pupil by Sara George. As far as I can remember the former is about a community of women protecting each other and the latter a fictio...