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...

Two Soups Celeriac and Bramley apple soup ingredients Last Saturday (27th February) I made celeriac and Bramley apple soup using Tom Kerridge's recipe in his book Proper Pub Food . I should have ended up with enough soup for 4-6 people but I was lucky to get two bowls. Because I'd used too much celeriac, once I had processed the cooked mixture, the resulting soup looked liked stodgy porridge. I strained as much as I could and it was very tasty indeed, especially with the crumbled Roquefort and chopped walnuts. Celeriac and Bramley apple soup with walnuts and Roquefort cheese Ingredients for butternutsquash soup and tomato salsa The next day I made roasted garlic and butternut squash soup with tomato salsa from Complete Comfort Food (edited by Bridget Jones). Lots of nice ingredients: whole garlic bulbs to be roasted, thyme, squash and ground coriander in the soup; tomatoes, red pepper and red chilli in the salsa. Much to my surprise, I have just found a ve...

White Bean Soup Two milestones achieved yesterday (22nd February): soup number 170 from The Soup Book and the last of the soups from the Pulses and Nuts section. I'm getting there, slowly but surely. Finishing touches: pancetta and shallots   Ingredients:  onions, garlic, cannellini beans (I used canned rather than dried), celery, a bay leaf, parsley stalks (no leaves!), lemon juice, vegetable stock, shallots, pancetta and Taleggio cheese (you could also use fontina). Cooking method:  I first fried the onions over a low heat then added the garlic. Next into the pan were the cannellini beans, celery, the bay leaf, parsley, lemon juice and stock. I left the mixture simmering for about an hour before blending. I then left the soup sitting while I watched the Low Charioteers beat the Boys in Green (13-10). Separated at birth? The younger offspring signalled that he would be home by 7 o'clock so I went back to the kitchen to finish the soup. I had sliced t...

Seafood Chowder Let there be no doubt about it: I love seafood chowder. If I see it on a menu anywhere I have to try it. It's my adventure, my search for a culinary holy grail. Sometimes I am very pleased with what I eat, sometimes I am very disappointed. Recently I was having a quick lunch in a hotel bar in Waterford. Seafood chowder was on the menu and I ordered it, only to be advised that it would take twelve minutes to cook, too long to wait if I wanted to catch my train. I made do with a very disappointing tomato and fennel soup. Let's just say if you have ordered a soup with tomato as the main ingredient, you would expect fresh tomatoes rather than canned ones. So, back to my own little chowder venture on the 15th February. Still trying to get value out of our various cookery books, I picked on one I bought a few years ago: Complete Comfort Food edited by Bridget Jones. (I used it last weekend to make boeuf bourguignon and key lime pie for the spouse's birthda...

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,...

Lobster Bisque If you've read my previous blog entry, when you see the words "lobster", "brandy", "white wine" and "cream" you may immediately think "fire" and "burnt hair". Surely I can't have made another lobster soup so soon? Well, I have. Don't forget that I mentioned having bought two lobsters from the nearby German discount store. (By the way, the spouse and I have called in a couple of times and managed not to be tempted by telescopes and tambourines.) My one hundred and sixty-eighth soup from The Soup Book was lobster bisque and the listed ingredients include lobster, onion, carrot, celery, leek, fennel, bay leaf, tarragon, garlic, tomato puree, tomatoes, brandy, dry white wine, and cream. What's not to like? I had to make a couple of substitutions: fennel seeds for fennel bulb, dried tarragon for fresh, a mix of tomato puree and sundried tomato paste, and a mix of cream and creme fraiche. The b...

I've made two soups from The Soup Book so far this month: creamy kidney bean by Roopa Gulati (7th December) and brandied lobster chowder by Carolyn Humphries (yesterday - 21st December). Creamy kidney bean soup The kidney bean soup was the 166th from The Soup Book and the first soup from the Pulses and Nuts section in six months. With ingredients such as fresh root ginger, green chillies and lime juice to counteract the kidney beans and tomatoes, I expected my tastebuds to be tingling with delight. Unfortunately, they weren't. As Eamon Dunphy might have said, it was a good soup but not a great soup. The older son was the food critic on that occasion and I think he was a little disappointed. I brought the remainder into work for my lunch the following Monday and thought it had improved slightly. It's not on my "make again" list. Brandied lobster chowder   Now this is my sort of soup! Lobster , white wine , shallots, brandy , tomato, anchovy essence ...

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...

Roast Squash Soup Soup number 164 from The Soup Book was made from butternut squash roasted with tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, thyme and red onion. They smelt deliciously rich as they roasted away until ready to be whizzed in the blender with some hot stock. Sophie Grigson suggests that winter squash such as onion squash, red kuri, crown prince or pumpkin can be used for this recipe. I knew that I would be lucky to find any of those so I plumped for butternut. Nothing wrong with that. Having blended the soup, I made the rouille to be spread on croutes. This rouille was made from saffron soaked in warm water, garlic, a red chilli, egg yolk, red wine vinegar, and olive and sunflower oils beaten together. Not all together at the one time, just a little at a time. I prepared the croutes, re-heated the soup and set the table. Then I called whichever male persons were still in the house, ie, the spouse and the younger offspring. I ladled the soup into warmed bowls and left everyone t...

Rocket and Parmesan Soup Soup 160 from The Soup Book . The recipe by Celia Brooks Brown looked simple, the preparation was simple. No processing: just the hand blender. Simple. What did I need? Olive oil, onions (chopped), potatoes (skins left on and cubed), garlic (crushed), vegetable stock, Parmesan rind (yes, that's right - rind ; "tiny diced"), and rocket (roughly chopped). What made it even simpler was that I had everything except for the rocket. I had to go into town anyway so I decided to go to Temple Bar for fresh organic rocket. My first stop while in town was at Merrion Square to see what was happening at Dublin Pride 2013 . Then I sauntered along Nassau Street, through the Trinity College campus, across College Green, down Anglesea Street, an errand in Cope Street and then to Curved Street. Having bought rocket from the stall-holder, he told me about pesto he'd made using rocket, mantega and walnuts (mmmm!). Home. The spouse was back from Be...

White Gazpacho We've had a few lovely sunny warm days here in Dublin so yesterday I thought I'd pick a recipe for a chilled soup  from The Soup Book . On a hot day you don't want to spend too much time peeling and chopping and standing over a hot saucepan.  Similarly, while the recipe requires you to grind blanched almonds, I had a rebellious moment and used pre-ground almonds. Naughty me. I cut up white bread and left it soaking in iced water while I whizzed the ground almonds with a little iced water in the processor. I probably shouldn't have used ice cubes. Then I put the bread and garlic into the processor and whizzed the mixture together. This was followed by the addition of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. A little seasoning and I was ready to go. I placed seedless green grapes in the bottom of the bowls and ladled in the soup. Verdict: The poor younger offspring wasn't able for much, mainly because of the garlic. The spouse and I both liked it but h...

Minnie's chervil three weeks after planting Vegetable and Chervil Soup This recipe from The Soup Book is by Raymond Blanc and in order to make it I had to plant chervil specially! You'll see how it's grown in the last three weeks (see my blog of 11th May). The vegetables needed were onion, carrots, celery, leeks, courgette and tomatoes (yes, I know: technically a fruit). I peeled and chopped as necessary then went off for a rest. I also needed "a scant ounce" of chervil. By the time I'd obtained this, there was very little left of my plant! The photo to the right shows it before I'd stripped it nearly bare. When it was time to start cooking, I set to, pleased with myself at having everything ready. The first step involved sweating the onion, garlic, carrots, celery and leeks in melted butter. After this in went boiling water, the carrots and tomatoes for a five-minute fast boil. Finally, I added a little more butter and the finely chopped chervi...

Swiss Chard and Coconut Soup  Today's recipe from The Soup Book is by Sarah Raven , who was involved in a BBC documentary called Bees, Butterflies and Blooms . So there you have it! This entry has already mentioned bees! Back to the business in hand. The ingredients for this soup include Swiss chard (or spinach), Red Giant mustard (or kale or more chard), onions, garlic, vegetable stock and coconut milk. I bought the chard and spinach yesterday at Meeting House Square, having decided to substitute the latter for Red Giant mustard. The younger offspring gave me a hand to prepare the chard and spinach by shredding the leaves once I'd pulled them off the stalks. The rest of the prep work and cooking was straightforward: peeling and chopping the onion and garlic, sweating them, adding the leaves, stock and coconut milk, and pureeing the lot before serving. The spouse wasn't too keen on the soup but preferred the thin texture to that of yesterday's nettle soup: ...

Winter Minestrone with Barley and Beans This weekend I have something to prove, namely that this blog is regularly updated. The older offspring was lonely and sad in his temporary accommodation so the spouse and I phoned him. During our conversation he mentioned that my blog was more regular than my spouse's, which led to my decision to make soup sooner rather than later. I chose a book given to me by my brother-in-law "Tod" and his wife "Sal" a couple of years ago: the Riverford Farm Cook Book   by Guy Watson and Jane Baxter. The spouse, younger offspring and I were staying with them and they had a glut of courgettes, which they had cooked using various methods. On leafing through the book I came across a recipe for chocolate and courgette cake. I baked it for them: you couldn't taste the courgette at all, smothered as it was by the cocoa. I digress. Back to the minestrone. The recipe in the Riverford book lists leek, celery, carrots, turnips, garlic, ...

Pause for Thought A month has passed since I last made a soup from The Soup Book but it seems like many more. Christmas and the associated festivities, preparations, socialising and recuperation have all intervened, all requiring their own investment of time and effort. The preceding months had been emotionally fraught as my family dealt with a serious health issue. Other events of significance included the younger offspring's initiation into the business of secondary school, a family wedding and adapting to the demands of a new role at work. And all the while I was trying to keep up with my self-imposed soup-making schedule. So this year calls for a new approach: less frequent soup-making and more experimentation with other recipe books. The spouse and I have a lot of cookery books, a few of which were my parents' and date from the 1970s. I flicked through one of these yesterday: Alison Burt's The Gourmet's Guide to French Cooking , first published in 1973. Its r...

Soup Review Mixed mushrooms Since my last post on 13th November I have made three soups: mushroom soup (on the 17th), Thai chicken soup (18th November) and garbure (25th November). All that activity has meant I've now completed 149 soups since I started working my way through the recipes in The Soup Book back in December 2009. Nearly three years after I made spinach and rosemary soup I can hardly believe I'm three quarters of the way through the book. I am not sure that I will get through all the recipes and so will change my approach to making soup. I may make it less frequently and try out soup recipes from other cookery books that the spouse and I own. We'll see. Mixed mushrooms: chopped and cooking The spouse and I now have a new favourite vegetable shop . It's not cheap nor is it especially convenient to get to from where we live, but the selection of fresh fruit and vegetables and other produce is impressive. The spouse has been talking about this p...