Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Salma's Chicken and Yogurt Soup with Chili and Lemon Yes, it's been a while since I last wrote a blog entry but I have been making soup. We had a lovely October bank holiday weekend here in Dublin. The two offspring were away at different events, so the spouse and I relaxed and had plenty of time to cook. I made this soup using Salma Hage's recipe from The Lebanese Kitchen . Ingredients: leek (sliced), garlic (crushed), a bay leaf (picked from the garden), chicken stock (home-made and thawed out), chicken breasts (cut into strips), cornflour, yogurt, canned chickpeas (drained and rinsed), chili flakes, lemon juice, chopped coriander, and a pinch of paprika. I sweated the leek in butter and olive oil, before adding the garlic and bay leaf. In went the chicken stock and then the chicken strips, which were then left to simmer. I took out the chicken strips (difficult to separate out the leek slices) and then tried to thicken the soup with a little cornflour paste. This...

Harissa and Chickpea Soup A couple of week's ago the spouse expressed an interest in making this soup from The Soup Book . Well, it's my blog and I make the soups. That said, I let him make the harissa that's needed to flavour the soup I made last Saturday (10th November). The recipe is by Roopa Gulati so I expected spice and richness. We weren't disappointed. The spouse is becoming a collector of harissa pastes and enjoyed making this one, which called for a red pepper, olive oil, seeds (coriander, cumin and caraway), tomato puree, garlic, red chillies, smoked paprika and lemon juice. I don't know how this was made as the spouse was the boss of the harissa. I needed only a couple of tablespoons for the soup, but we can use the rest with couscous (a favourite with the younger offspring). By the way, we now have three jars of smoked paprika due to inadequacies in our spice filing system. I hope that binding them together with a rubber band will help prevent any m...

Harira Harira: browning the meat and bones Oh, happy day! Oh, happy tastebuds! Yesterday's soup was one of those soups that I have no qualms about adding to my "make it again" list. Using Sophie Grigson 's recipe for this Berber speciality, I made a soup that  all four of us enjoyed: the spouse, the younger offspring, Juno (my mother-in-law) and I. Yes, that's right: even the younger offspring was unstinting in his praise. All it took was an onion, a shoulder of lamb, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, parsley, coriander, brown lentils, tomatoes, vermicelli, chickpeas, flour and lemons. And my smaller dekshee.  I chopped what needed to be chopped then set to cooking. First I fried the onions until translucent, after which I added in the ground spices, the chopped herbs, the meat and the bones. Next in were the brown lentils, chopped tomatoes (tinned) and sundried tomato paste. When these were well mixed I poured in water and left the lot to simmer. H...

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...