Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Blue July, bright July,  Honey flapjacks Month of storms and gorgeous blue;  Violet lightnings o'er thy sky,  Heavy falls of drenching dew; ... So wrote George Meredith.  I certainly saw some lightning in July but not here in Ireland. The spouse, the younger offspring and I were on the continent. Despite the time away from my own hob and oven, I still managed to get some baking done.  Pecan toffee shortbread: a favourite My first offering consisted of honey flapjacks from a recipe in the Irish Times . You'll see that the basic recipe can be varied: butter can be replaced by coconut oil and honey by maple syrup. Four days later I made pecan toffee shortbread - a personal favourite.  Prize-winners: apple crumble cake and plum and amaretti tray-bake Shortly afterwards I entered the local baking competition, making plum and amaretti cake for the tray-bake section and apple crumble cake for the miscellaneous section. Much to ...

June: my favourite month. Not least because my birthday falls in June. This year I spent my birthday across the water with my siblings but my absence didn't hold me back from baking at home. I tried five new recipes and repeated Bronte Aurell's banana cake recipe from Hygge and Fika . I made it to bring in to work for a departing colleague and it had the best reception of practically everything I've ever brought in. You'll find the recipe here .  Strawberry flan Blondies with lavender and lemon My other June bakes were a strawberry flan with rich sweet flan pastry, banana flapjacks, walnut biscuits, lavender cupcakes (from Norfolk's Own Cookbook ) and blondies with lavender and lemon (another Hygge and Fika recipe). The blondies went down well with the younger offspring's friends.  Words to the wise: (1) strawberries dipped in hot melted chocolate seem to start fermenting and (2) when you have whizzed lavender sprigs to make lavender sugar, d...

Recipe Round-Up An e-mail went around at work on 1st June: baked goods were being sought for a fund-raiser. Great! I was home early from work but I had to cook the dinner before going out. Somehow I managed to make two batches of scones (one containing sultanas and the other cheese and chives) and a coconut jam slice from Successful Cooking: Slices . We were planning a quiet bank holiday weekend after the spouse's busy week. Flicking through Doreen Fulleylove's Country Fare I came across a recipe for wine cobbler, the ingredients for which are a bottle of white wine (this book was published in the days when no one was expected to know anything about wine regions), ice cubes, sliced lemon, mint, maraschino cherries (I substituted fresh blueberries), lime juice and a pint of soda water. This quantity was supposed to give you fourteen cups! The spouse and I had about two glasses each before it disappeared. Very tasty and refreshing, all the same. I also baked a cheesecake....

 Baking is one of my favourite things. I like the process (usually) and I like the end product (more often than not). My mother didn't bake so I definitely didn't pick it up from her. I can remember the first time I tried to bake a cake. Was I nine? Ten? Did I need a recipe? No. Intrepidly I gathered ingredients and mixed them all together willy nilly: flour, sugar, margarine, dried fruit, glace cherries, milk. No weighing, no measuring, no recommended temperature setting. There must have been a baking tin in the house because I remember putting the mixture into a round tin. I probably kept opening the oven to check the progress. The cake was edible and I thought I'd try baking again. In those days certain shops gave out Green Shield stamps  with purchases, the quantity depending on how much you spent. My mother would distribute her stamps between my siblings and me, and when we had each had filled our first book, she brought us off to the nearest depot where we exchan...

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...

Mexican Chilli Bean Soup As I was leafing through The Soup Book the other day and looking at recipes I have yet to cook, I spotted Angela Nilsen 's recipe for Mexican chilli bean soup. I read the ingredients (onion, red pepper, garlic, minced beef, cumin, chilli powder, oregano, plum tomatoes, stock, kidney beans, etc) and it crossed my mind that I had made this soup before. I have gone through my records (i.e., my notes made in my copy of the book, this blog and my spreadsheet) and can't track it, but I still think I've made it. The cumin and oregano are interestingly different flavours to this household's usual chilli con carne recipe taken from our M&S cookery book which the spouse and I have owned since the 1980s (our edition was published in 1983, to be precise). Anyway, the only item I didn't have at home was the red pepper so I went down to Stephen's to buy one. The recipe specified a small pepper but there were only large ones on display. I decide...

German Chicken Broth According to the introductory lines in The Soup Book , this recipe is "based on a Thuringian vegetable soup" and "requires a good-quality, well-flavoured chicken stock, so make your own for best results." The last batch of chicken stock made in this house had pork chop bones added to it, so that's the stock I've used. The other ingredients are green beans, carrots, kohlrabi and mangetout or sugar snap peas: the finished broth is garnished with cream and finely chopped chervil. Kohlrabi is also known as German turnip ( rassica oleracea L. Gongylodes group). Of course, when I'm not looking for them, I see them in the shops but on the day when I want to buy some, I can't find them. So I substituted ordinary (white) turnips. They might even be just what I wanted. I bought them at the green grocer's cum garden centre (tiny) cum bistro (more below). The broth is cooked. The recipe is ver...

Bee Part of It - BBC Campaign The BBC launched this project on Monday 17th May. Here are some links to relevant information: BBC London -  news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8668000/8668141.stm BBC Breathing Places -  www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/beepartofit/ Facebook -  http://www.facebook.com/bbcbeepartofit Flickr -www.flickr.com/groups/bbc_beepartofit/ National Trust -  www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-nature/w-nature-bee-part-of-it.htm Other links of interest: Bumblebee Conservation Trust -  www.bumblebeeconservation.org/ PS (Added Sunday 23rd May) It's another beautiful day and I have a freezer drawer full of home-made chicken stock but I won't be making soup this weekend. Who wants to eat soup on a day like this? I have been planting some new plants in my back garden, including two new lavenders, which should attract bees. While on the subject of bees, I was listening to and wat...