Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Lamb Meatball Soup Yesterday I decided to go off piste from The Soup Book . I leafed through The Lebanese Kitchen by Salma Hage and found a fairly simple recipe for lamb meatball soup. Meatballs, tomatoes, sweetcorn, spices: what's not to like? Whenever I think of minced meat I think of minced beef rather than minced lamb, but minced lamb is becoming increasingly available. The recipe calls for seven spices seasoning (also known as Lebanese mixed spices ), which I haven't heard of before. The spouse searched on the internet for me and found several different combinations of spices. Eventually I opted for a mix of black pepper, cumin, paprika, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamon. Decision made, I set to making the meatballs. These consisted of minced lamb, grated onion, flour and the spice mixture. Rings off and hands washed, I began mashing and pounding the ingredients together. I then shaped seventeen meatballs, all the while thinking of an old song my f...

Chicken pieces rubbed with spice mix The first time I made mulligatawny was back in May 2011. On that occasion I used The Soup Book , of course. Yesterday I used another book that has been idling away, not earning its right to be on my kitchen bookshelves: The Essential Asian Cookbook (edited by Jane Bowring and Jane Price).  The ingredients include chicken pieces, flour, Madras curry powder, ground turmeric, ground ginger (I used fresh ginger on the last occasion), cloves, peppercorns, an apple(!), chicken stock, lemon juice and cream: not dissimilar to, but less extensive than the ingredients listed in The Soup Book recipe. The spouse had bought a whole chicken, which I cut into pieces. These pieces were then rubbed with the mix of flour, turmeric, ginger and curry powder. I fried them in butter, threw the cloves and peppercorns into the pot (not wrapped in muslin. Where do I buy muslin, anyway?), poured in the stock, added the diced apple and left the lot simmering for ...

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...

Cuban Black Bean Soup Why on earth did I choose to make a Cuban soup on St Patrick's Day? I don't know. I think I just wanted to push on through the pulses section of The Soup Book , so I picked Carolyn Humphries ' recipe. Not willing to go to the effort of soaking and cooking dried black beans, I asked the spouse to find me a can of the chosen beans. You're supposed to cook the beans with a bay leaf, so I had to use the bay leaf after it was supposed to have been discarded. Another substitution was turmeric for the required annatto . The remaining ingredients and garnishes were easily available: a bay leaf, onion, garlic, cumin, ground cloves, tomato, white wine vinegar (a new bottle to replace the one with the 2008 expiry date!), ham, coriander leaves, corn tortilla chips and grated Cheddar. One listed item that I got out ready to use was brown sugar, but its use wasn't stated in the cooking instructions. The spouse and younger offspring were watching Ireland...