Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave...

Chicken pieces rubbed with spice mix The first time I made mulligatawny was back in May 2011. On that occasion I used The Soup Book , of course. Yesterday I used another book that has been idling away, not earning its right to be on my kitchen bookshelves: The Essential Asian Cookbook (edited by Jane Bowring and Jane Price).  The ingredients include chicken pieces, flour, Madras curry powder, ground turmeric, ground ginger (I used fresh ginger on the last occasion), cloves, peppercorns, an apple(!), chicken stock, lemon juice and cream: not dissimilar to, but less extensive than the ingredients listed in The Soup Book recipe. The spouse had bought a whole chicken, which I cut into pieces. These pieces were then rubbed with the mix of flour, turmeric, ginger and curry powder. I fried them in butter, threw the cloves and peppercorns into the pot (not wrapped in muslin. Where do I buy muslin, anyway?), poured in the stock, added the diced apple and left the lot simmering for ...

Mulligatawny   As usual, the spouse did the shopping this morning. He brought home a chicken, saying that they were cheap today and he would make stock with it. So I thought that I would check in The Soup Book to see if there were any recipes calling for cooked chicken. That's how I decided upon mulligatawny.  The recipe in The Soup Book is by Roopa Gulati , who describes it in her introduction as "as Anglo-Indian soup from colonial days." Although I have Anglo-Indian antecedents (in the original definition of the term), mulligatawny did not feature in my Anglo-Indian parent's repertoire of dishes. I do, however, remember eating a canned version of it. Today's recipe lists the following ingredients: onion, root ginger, garlic, apple, carrot, celery, mild curry powder, flour, tomatoes, tomato puree, hot chicken stock, bay leaves, coconut milk and cooked chicken. As the weekly shop had been done by the time I had picked out this soup, I was running the...