Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Corn and Crab Soup with Coriander Last weekend I dipped into one of those books that sits on my kitchen bookshelves waiting to be pulled out, dusted off and put to use: The Essential Seafood Cookbook  edited by Wendy Stephen.  I'm not sure why I chose this recipe - perhaps I liked the idea of the tang of lemon grass and ginger together with crab (tinned) and coconut milk. Other ingredients included garlic, Asian shallots (I stuck with western shallots), chicken stock, frozen sweetcorn kernels, fish sauce, lime juice and brown sugar. Unfortunately, the spouse wasn't able to find fresh coriander. I did my prep work. I added chopped garlic, shallots and lemon grass and grated ginger to heated oil in a pan. Next in were the stock and coconut milk. Then in went the sweetcorn. The last additions were the crab meat, fish sauce, lime juice and sugar. The four of us sat down to sup. I was a little disappointed by the blandness of the soup, despite the appetite-whetting spice an...

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth Open a book, any book. Ready? Is it a cookery book? Is it a book with soup recipes? Is it The Soup Book ? Now, open it and find a recipe, one you haven't made before and one that won't require too much effort to find the ingredients. It's getting trickier, isn't it? Let's look in the Poulty, Game and Meat section. Aah! There's one and it's by Roopa Gulati , so there's a good chance we'll all enjoy the finished product. I looked at the ingredients: ginger or galangal, lime leaves, garlic, coriander (the stems!!!), lemon grass, chicken breasts, bird's eye chillies, shallots, lime juice, fish sauce, sweet chilli sauce, pak choi and bean sprouts. Yes, I could get anything I didn't already have at home. Off to the shops and then home. I spent yesterday afternoon (20th October) baking for a cake sale: apple and fig cake, lemon and ginger cake, banana, coconut and walnut cake, and fudge. Phew! I was exhausted. An...

Prawn, Chicken, Coconut and Lemongrass Soup Chicken simmering in coconut milk and stock Every so often The Soup Book throws up a real gemof a recipeand this one by Sophie Grigson falls into the gem category. The ingredients are coconut milk, chicken stock, chicken, lemongrass, galangal or ginger root, uncooked prawns, a red chilli, spring onions, lime juice, fresh coriander and fish sauce. Still on my economy drive, I was glad to be able to use up some chicken fillets from the freezer and the last of the coriander from the other day (see the previous blog entry on potato and coriander soup). Sophie claims that this “lively soup can be made in a jiffy.” I’m well used to The Soup Book ’s underestimating the time taken to prepare and cook. Sophie’s jiffy is inversely proportionate to a man’s inch!    The finished prawn, chicken, coconut and lemongrass soup So, I heated the coconut milk, added the slivered chicken, lemongrass and ginger and simmered for the requi...