Minnie's Soup Kitchen

A Sliver of Silvia Silvia cake My first bake of February was the Silvia cake from Hygge and Fika . Buttery batter and coconut topping: it had to be good. I was rather disappointed by the cake's blandness. I've checked a couple of other recipes for this cake, none of which stand out as making it more interesting or flavoursome. Spinach and Spice Loaf Spinach and spice loaf This is more like it. Spinach, chilli, cumin, garlic and pinenuts provide rich flavours and texture. Definitely to be made again.  Rabbitting On A new recipe from an old book was Dorset rabbit from Doreen Fulleylove's Country Fare . Our butcher had a couple of rabbits for less than €10, so why not have a go? Jointed and covered with a layer of breadcrumbs and suet, this was a tasty meal.  All Square  Hazelnut squares One weekend I made raspberry squares from Hygge and Fika and hazelnut squares from Martha Day's Baking . I've had my eye on the hazelnut s...

Kitchen Notes Has it really been over four months since I last wrote up my soup-making activities? Oh dear. I've only made soup three times in the that time: cabbage, tomato and meatball soup, wild salmon chowder and brandied lobster chowder. Preparing brandied lobster chowder (2015) I first made the cabbage soup from The Soup Book  five years ago in January 2010 . On that occasion the tasters were the younger offspring (then aged ten), his cabbage-hating pal and myself. I made it again on 8th November 2014, the husband and younger son having booked their places in front of the TV to watch Ireland vs South Africa, so I was on cooking detail. I've made the salmon chowder three times: twice for the sister J-Zo and brother-in-law G-Cro. Always a pleasure. Most recently I made the brandied lobster chowder again (cheap lobsters in the local supermarket: duty calls) without setting fire to my hair. Cherry marmalade muffins and pamperato I still enjoy cooking and bak...

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...

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...

Whipped Yogurt Soup with Sauteed Courgette Two days ago I was a little disappointed with Roopa Gulati . Today her reputation is being rehabilitated. I had a day off work and was in the mood for making soup. I've had my eye on this yogurt soup recipe for a while. And now that I have tamarind pulp and curry leaves, I was good to go. The other ingredients include dried red chillies, fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, gram flour, turmeric, Greek yogurt, coriander leaves, onion, courgette and a green chilli. So I lined up my spices, diced the onion and courgette, and finely chopped the green chilli. Then it was time to start cooking. When the oil was hot I threw in the chillies and mustard seed. Next in were the fenugreek, cumin and curry leaves. I remembered reading somewhere that curry leaves will spit when thrown into hot oil: I was not disappointed by the miniature firework display in my wok. Next in was some gram flour followed by turmeric. The next stage was tricky because I did...

Pineapple Broth with Cod Perhaps recent enthusing about  Roopa Gulati 's recipes has tempted fate. Today's recipe was ... well ... a little disappointing. Her introduction to the recipe in The Soup Book states that this combination of South Indian and South-East Asian flavours is "a marvellous match" for any firm-fleshed fish or seafood. Those flavours are derived from onion, peanuts, coconut, ginger, coriander, sesame, cumin, poppy seeds, tamarind, turmeric, chilli, pineapple, lime and mint. Add caption I started by preparing the paste: chopped onion, peanuts, desiccated coconut, ginger and four different seeds (coriander, sesame, cumin and poppy) heated until the coconut darkened. When cooled, I put the mixture into my processor, but didn't have much luck creating a coarse paste. So I got out the stick blender and had a go with that. I then added the tamarind paste, turmeric and chilli powder, but the blender was no match for the tamarind paste. It ret...

Pork Vindaloo Broth Making Roopa Gulati's pork vindaloo broth from The Soup Book has been a two-day event. It began yesterday morning with my ruling out recipes because I didn't know where to get curry leaves or kaffir lime leaves . Eventually I decided upon pork vindaloo broth because I knew where I'd be able to obtain the necessary  tamarind pulp  if it wasn't available at the supermarket we use most frequently. The spouse was working outside Dublin so I had to take up the supermarket shopping slack. And what did I find in the spice section? Only dried curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves! Later on I had to accompany the younger offspring to a party in town and I planned to call into the Asian shops near the city centre in search of tamarind pulp or paste. I bought the tamarind on Drury Street before heading off to Lower Clanbrassil Street to see if I could buy fresh curry leaves or kaffir lime leaves. First I stopped into an Indian sweet shop the spouse had told ...

Curried Parsnip Soup I do not like parsnips . There. It's out in the open. I don't like them boiled and mashed with or without carrots, nor do I like them coated in Parmesan cheese and roasted. Just in case you missed it the first time, I don't like parsnips. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when twenty years ago I reluctantly ate curried parsnip soup served as the first course of a wedding meal and I liked it. So I had great expectations of yesterday's soup. According to Sophie Grigson 's introduction to it in The Soup Book , Jane Grigson created the recipe in the 1970s and it was deemed "radical at the time". The ingredients include coriander seeds, cumin seeds, chilli flakes, ground turmeric, ground fenugreek, an onion, garlic, parsnips, stock and cream, with either chives or parsley to garnish. I ground up the spices in my pestle and mortar before peeling and chopping the onion, garlic and parsnips. Then I cooked the vegetables in butter, adding t...

Carrot and Orange Soup Yesterday I set out to buy ingredients for spicy spinach soup (from a Roopa Gulati recipe in The Soup Book ) and when I got home I realised that I had already made it about a year ago. So I thought quickly. I knew I had a lot of carrots in the fridge, and on checking the summer vegetables section of The Soup Book , I came across the recipe for carrot and orange soup. The ingredients include leeks, which I had just bought, and orange juice, a carton of which we were slowly working our way through. I also needed ground coriander, cumin, stock, a potato and a bay leaf. The sliced leek and carrots were the first ingredients into the pot, cooking gently until the leek softened. Next in were the potato, the ground spices, orange juice, stock and the bay leaf. About forty-five minutes later the soup was ready to be liquidised. There were just the two of us for lunch - the younger offspring and I. The boy tucked in and was particularly enthusiastic about the soup. W...

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...

Kichidi It's been over three months since I last made a soup from the pulses and vegetables section of The Soup Book , and I still have more than half of the recipes to go, hence my choice this weekend. Also, we were having friends over and making an Indian meal, so kichidi was an appropriate choice.  The recipe is by Roopa Gulati , of course. Despite my Anglo-Indian culinary experience and heritage, I had never heard of kichidi before and a quick search on the Internet revealed a large variety of recipes. Roopa's recipe calls for a butternut squash, garam masala, basmati rice, pink or red lentils, root ginger, ghee or clarified butter, cumin seeds, chilli flakes, lime juice and chopped coriander. There are three main stages to making this soup. The first involves baking the butternut squash, having first sprinkled the two halves with garam masala. The suggestive-looking beast that I was using was much bigger than required so took longer to reach the "meltingly tend...

Saffron Soup  This week's recipe from The Soup Book is by Shaun Hill . According to the introduction, it's a variation on leek and potato soup and was a regular item on the menu at Robert Carrier 's restaurant in London where Hill worked in the 1970s. The ingredients include onion, leeks, potato, saffron, cumin, chicken stock, dry white wine, cream and lemon juice. I fried the onion before adding the other vegetables, the spices (is saffron a spice?) and the stock. The next step was to transfer the mix into the blender, after which I poured in a splash of the wine. Finally I stirred in the cream and lemon juice. Only the younger offspring and I were at home: the spouse is away and the older offspring is nominally at home in Dublin for a long weekend. Anyway, the two of us ate our soup for lunch today and it was really quite tasty. The tang of the lemon juice and cumin worked really well. Honey Show Honey show at Christ Church, Rathgar, Dublin At last I have ...

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...

Carrot Cream with Onion and Cumin   Last weekend I observed that I was progressing slowly through the summer vegetables section of  The Soup Book (only fifteen out of fifty-eight or twenty-five per cent) so this weekend I decided I'd better tackle the deficit. The recipe for carrot cream is by Marie-Pierre Moine , the author of four recipes I have already used. The ingredients include onions, cumin seeds, ground cumin, carrots, an orange, cream and parsley. In her introduction Moine says that making this soup is "fiddly" but "worth the effort". I didn't find it too fiddly. She was referring to liquidising and sieving the soup, but I have become accustomed to this level of effort after sixteen months of soup-making. The spouse, the older offspring and I had the completed carrot cream for our lunch (the younger offspring was enjoying being off our leash). We all enjoyed it, the spouse citing the orange tanginess while the cream did it for me. It's not u...