Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Chicken and Pork Gumbo Chicken, pork and lardons simmering in stock It's been almost a month since I last made a soup from The Soup Book . It's a bank holiday weekend here in Dublin and the older offspring is home, so I thought I'd make a meaty soup for his delectation. Chicken and pork gumbo would be the very thing, I thought. The recipe is by Carolyn Humphries , whose Cuban black bean soup I made in March. The ingredients include chicken leg and thigh portions (Carolyn suggests substituting duck), smoked lardons or pancetta, belly pork, chicken stock, a bay leaf, red peppers, onion, garlic, celery, beefsteak tomatoes, green beans, okra, thyme, paprika (two types - sweet and smoked), Tabasco sauce and cooked rice. Vegetables simmering in stock The spouse kindly went shopping and bought most of the ingredients. All we needed was the okra (or ladies' fingers as I called them when I was growing up). We were going into town to take part in the Dublin Zombie Wa...

 Mixed Seafood Gumbo  Yesterday (22nd April) was Good Friday. Easter is falling very late this year. I heard someone on the radio explaining why Easter Sunday is a movable feast. I'm going to list the key words rather than give an explanation: ecclesiastical full moon , astronomical full moon and vernal equinox . You do the maths. For the last twenty-two years or so I have made a simnel cake for Easter - just in case people weren't getting enough calories from their chocolate eggs. My favourite part of the cake is where the marzipan in the middle melts into the cake batter around it. I felt very organised yesterday: I put out all the listed ingredients, lined the baking tin, made the batter, rolled out the marzipan circle, put half the batter in the lined tin, put in the marzipan and topped it with the remaining batter. The oven was warm, I opened the door, and what did I see on the work surface? The unopened packets of sultanas and currants! Too late to rescue it, I put t...