Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Sometimes Things Go Pear-Shaped As you know, I enjoy baking and usually things turn out well. Last month (16th March) things went pear-shaped when I attempted to make what should have been a delicious, caramel-flooded sticky pear and ginger cake from my Norfolk cookbook . I carefully weighed the ingredients, I followed the instructions to a T so I'm not sure what caused the problem. First of all, you have to make caramel which will sit in the bottom of the baking tin. Unsalted butter was specified for the cake batter but not for the caramel. As I was short of unsalted butter, I used salted butter for the caramel. The other ingredient was soft dark brown sugar. I melted the two ingredients together and stirred but the mixture seemed too thick and grainy, and it was too salty.  Once the caramel had set in the baking tin, I placed pear halves over it before getting on with the batter. This contained chopped pears, chopped crystallised ginger and ground ginger. I checked the oven ...

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, ...