Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Dhal Soup On Friday 3rd January (the older offspring's birthday, by the way) I went through The Soup Book and made a list of the thirty-two soups I have yet to make. Will I get through them this year? Let us see. Following the post-Christmas cull of moss-clad cookery books, I cast my eye over the kitchen book shelves this morning (Saturday 4th January) in search of soup recipes.  Rose Elliot' s Not Just a Load of Old Lentils was first published in 1972 and the spouse and I bought our copy in 1984. We went vegetarian that year in an effort to lose weight and be healthy. It didn't last. We missed meat and we found that preparing truly tasty vegetarian meals was too time consuming and not always worth the effort. That said, we gained a lot from the experience. The ingredients for this dhal soup: red lentils, a bay leaf, sliced onions, crushed garlic, ginger (I used fresh rather than ground), turmeric, garam masala and lemon juice. Cooking: I simmered the lentils,...

Creamy Pistachio Soup I have yet to be disappointed by any of Roopa Gulati 's recipes in The Soup Book  and today's effort was no exception. It's been an erratic day weather-wise on this May bank holiday - heavy rain interspersed with lovely sunshine. We had most of the ingredients in the house: pistachio nuts, cardamon pods, mace, coriander seeds and leaves, garlic, spring onions, root ginger, garam masala, vegetable stock and cream. All I had to do was dash out between showers to buy a green chilli from Young Stephen. This was not a soup to be hurried as there was a lot of preparation involved. I got the younger offspring to to shell the nuts for me - he only really got into when I handed him the meat tenderiser so that he could bash open the more reticent shells. I then cooked the shelled pistachios in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then spent more time than anticipated removing the skins. Sensing fiddliness, the spouse volunteered his skinning skills. Th...

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...

Cannellini Bean and Carrot Soup It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't made a soup from the Pulses and Nuts section of The Soup Book for a while, not since March in fact. The recipe is by Livia Firth , wife of the actor Colin ( Pride and Prejudice - great series!), who uses leeks as the base of her soups because they are sweeter than onions. The ingredients are leeks, olive oil, butter, canned cannellini beans, carrots and curry powder (optional; I used garam masala). It took me over two hours to prepare, what with slicing, chopping, simmering and whizzing in the blender, rather than the hour and ten minutes stated in the book. The final soup is tasty but bordering on bland. A reasonable warmer-upper on a cold winter's day rather than a meal for a mild summer's day. Where the Bee Sucks While I was away, the oregano and/or marjoram in my back garden flowered and I have noticed bees buzzing around. Meanwhile in the front garden the lavender is also a-buzz with b...

Curried Broth with Peppers  Today is a lovely sunny day in early June but I have chosen to make a hot curried soup. I was pondering what to make for dinner this evening and the spouse said that we had a lot of vegetables in the fridge. I knew there were quite a few peppers so checked in The Soup Book to see how I could use them up. This soup is based on yet another recipe by Roopa Gulati and contains star anise , nigella seeds , fennel seeds, fenugreek seed s, onions, root ginger, an orange pepper and a yellow pepper, basmati rice , turmeric, garam masala , vegetable stock, date palm sugar , lemon and coriander leaves. If you can't find nigella seeds, there are a few spices or herbs you can substitute for them. I didn't use a substitute for the nigella seeds, but I did for the date palm sugar - I just used dark brown sugar and hoped for the best. The different seeds smelled delicious as I fried them together before adding the onion and ginger. Star anise is a new addition...

Lentil Soup Another lentil soup (see last month's blog about green lentil and lime soup) but this time it's red. Still in "What can I use up from my cupboard?" mode and entering a new and overlapping mode entitled "Yikes! How can I economise now my pay has been cut?", I came across one and a half packets of red lentils earlier in the week, thanks to the younger offspring's thorough tidying of the stores. I checked The Soup Book and came across the recipe containing red lentils, onions, celery, carrots, garlic and vegetable stock. At half past eight this morning I got up and started my preparations. The spouse had bought the required vegetable juice yesterday. The recipe options were tomato or vegetable juice and stirred by the autonomy of doing the weekly shopping unfettered by his helpmeet, he chose vegetable. What a man! The stock is vegetable and I'm using a commercial bouillon mix for the first time. Curry powder is called for but my partly Angl...