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...

Lamb Meatball Soup Yesterday I decided to go off piste from The Soup Book . I leafed through The Lebanese Kitchen by Salma Hage and found a fairly simple recipe for lamb meatball soup. Meatballs, tomatoes, sweetcorn, spices: what's not to like? Whenever I think of minced meat I think of minced beef rather than minced lamb, but minced lamb is becoming increasingly available. The recipe calls for seven spices seasoning (also known as Lebanese mixed spices ), which I haven't heard of before. The spouse searched on the internet for me and found several different combinations of spices. Eventually I opted for a mix of black pepper, cumin, paprika, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamon. Decision made, I set to making the meatballs. These consisted of minced lamb, grated onion, flour and the spice mixture. Rings off and hands washed, I began mashing and pounding the ingredients together. I then shaped seventeen meatballs, all the while thinking of an old song my f...

Creamy Swede Soup Swede soup in the making Having been busy outside and away from my kitchen I just wanted to make a fairly simple soup this weekend. Another factor influencing my choice of recipe was the need to make more progress through the winter vegetables section of The Soup Book . I chopped my onions, trimmed and cubed my swede, made up my vegetable stock from bouillon mixture and lined up my honey, nutmeg and cream. Then I started to cook, frying the onions in butter before tipping in the swede. Ten minutes later I poured in the stock and eased in the honey. While this mixture was coming to a boil I sprinkled in a teaspoon of nutmeg powder (not the grated half of a nutmeg called for in the recipe). This was then left simmering until the swede was soft, at which point I left it to cool while I went off for a shower and some retail therapy. Revived by a new dress, I whizzed the soup in the liquidiser ready for reheating later that evening. Swede soup and messy c...

Butternut Squash Soup Today's recipe from The Soup Book is by Clodagh McKenna , an Irish writer. The first time I ever heard the name Clodagh was when a Northern Irish singer called Clodagh Rodgers represented the United Kingdom in the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest. She sang "Jack in the Box" and wore hot pants. I was thinking about the contest because I heard during the week that Engelbert Humperdinck will represent the UK this year. My interest in him stems from a shared Anglo-Indian heritage and that fact that he was born in Madras (now Chennai), as was my father. One of my siblings once asked Dad if Engelbert came from the other side of the jungle to him! Butternut squash soup: yum! So, back to the soup. Butternut squash. Mmm. Can be hard work to get through the skin. Can be bland. Should I avoid it or just get on with it? I didn't feel like making anything too complicated and this recipe looked straightforward. I cut into the squash and chopped it up bef...

Mixed Fungi Soup Today The Soup Book opened practically unaided at this soup recipe! I had planned to make a soup using the stock the spouse made last month from the left-over crudites from our party. (Parsimony or good house keeping?) The ingredients include onion, garlic, flat-leaf parsley (I used the curly-leafed variety available in my garden. I'm a rebel, me. It's there, it's free and the slugs haven't dragged themselves out of the compost bin to feast on it yet), mixed wild mushrooms and nutmeg. The spouse had expressed an interest in going to the farmers' market up in Marlay Park (www.dublintourist.com/details/marlay_park.shtml) and I reminded him about the Dublin Food Co-op (see my blog of 4th March; www.dublinfood.coop/). So then a discussion ensued about which market to go to. The spouse, the younger offspring and I ended up heading into Newmarket Square, me armed with my copy of The Soup Book in case I couldn't get a mix of mushrooms and needed t...