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...

Carrot Soup with Coconut and Lemongrass "It's a soup day!" I thought to myself yesterday as the spouse got ready to go out shopping. "I'll run downstairs, choose a soup and give Dinks a list of ingredients." Too late! He'd already left the house. I cast an eye over our cookery books, considered Keith Floyd 's Floyd on Fish briefly but then chose The Soup Book . "A summer vegetable soup, I think," I said to myself. The book practically opened itself at this carrot soup recipe. We had onions, garlic, garlic, ginger, coconut milk and other ingredients. I rang the spouse and ordered carrots, lemongrass, red Thai curry paste and kaffir lime leaves. The latter wasn't available at our usual shop so I strolled down to Young Stephen's, not really expecting him to have them in stock. There he was, too absorbed in singing along to Return to Sender   to pay me any attention so I checked myself what was available on the herb and spice ra...

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...

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...

Mussels in a Ginger and Chilli Broth October was the eighth month of the year until it was shifted back by July and August (I blame the Roman Empire). On the eighth day of what was formerly the eighth month of the year I made my eighty-eighth soup from The Soup Book . Another recipe by Roopa Gulati (the eighth time I've mentioned her), and it was another culinary and olfactory triumph! The main ingredients are mussels, butter, onions, bird eye red chillies, root ginger, garlic, lemongrass, ginger wine, fish stock, coconut milk, coconut cream and coriander leaves.You heat the butter and throw in the onions, chillies, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. I forgot the ginger, so had to fry it separately then added it to the broth when I added the mussels at a later stage. Dishing up the broth I wasn't sure where I'd get mussels. The spouse said he'd try his favourite fishmonger . It's been a several months since his last visit, but the fishmonger remembered him ...

Vietnamese Noodle Soup  It's only two weeks since I last made a soup using one of Angela Nilsen 's recipes and I'm not sure what it was that attracted me to this particular one. It's in the winter vegetables section of The Soup Book , even though chicken breasts are listed among the ingredients. The other ingredients include chicken stock (I have an ample supply in the freezer), root ginger, coriander seeds, star anise, lemongrass, rice noodles, pak choi, Thai fish sauce, bean sprouts, coriander, mint leaves, spring onions, red chilli and lime wedges. Having checked what the spouse would need to buy for the soup, I left the book lying open on the kitchen table and headed out on a couple of errands. It was a beautifully sunny morning and I enjoyed my walk around this little part of Dublin. On returning home I found the older offspring had left a note by the book. He'd written "ALL ABOUT THIS PHO!" When he appeared in the kitchen he explained that he had ...