Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Cauliflower and Stilton Soup I like cauliflower but I love Stilton cheese. Always a good combination. The spouse and I have long since disposed of a cheese recipe book we bought in the 1980s but I remember making Stilton and cauliflower soup in that decade of the big shoulder pads. A more recent addition to our cookery books is the Riverford Farm Cook Book , which is where the current recipe can be found. Check out the website too. I ate the soup on my own, the spouse and younger offspring being otherwise occupied by a significant rugby match. I enjoyed it. The next day the spouse enjoyed it too. The offspring made positive noises but did not finish his portion. Hurrummph! Honey Bakes After a little faffing about, some of my improv acquaintances came round to practise last Saturday. Just as well, because I had baked for them: a traditional honey tea bread and walnut and honey cookies, the recipes for which are in the Collins Beekeeper's Bible . Bee Brief   A few month...

Samphire Soup with Poached Eggs My one hundred and sixty-third recipe from The Soup Book is by Carolyn Humphries. I'd been looking to making this soup once I realised it was possible to buy samphire . Of course, when I wasn't looking for samphire, I could see it on sale in various shops; but when I wanted to use it, it couldn't be found. Anyway, the spouse found it and bought it for me yesterday: "€8 for 300g is not cheap," said he.  I trotted down to Young Stephen's for a potato and a leek. I asked him if he ever stocked samphire, to which he replied in the negative. Another reason I wanted to make this soup was because of the addition of poached eggs (or "pouched eggs", as they were called on the menu in the Italian hotel I stayed in recently). I love poached eggs and the spouse is becoming quite an expert at making them for me. Carolyn Humphries specifies that white wine vinegar should be added to the water in which you poach your eggs. We...

Creamy Scallop Bisque I hadn't planned to make soup at the weekend of the 8th-9th December but the older offspring was at home, keeping his room tidy, and I let myself be persuaded. The recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine and calls for dry white wine, onion, shallot, a tomato, prawns, cod or pollock, scallops, parsley, dill seeds, brandy, cream, chorizo or black pudding, and chives. One of the factors driving this choice of soup was the presence of some delicious black pudding which the spouse had bought at the National Crafts and Design Fair the previous Friday. White wine, prawns, scallops, brandy and cream can be pretty persuasive, too. Scallops, prawns and blossom fish with the younger offspring's spatula! On the Saturday morning I prepared my list. There was a little breakdown in communication regarding the type of scallops needed for the recipe but we overcame any difficulties. The spouse headed off to his favourite fishmonger 's where he was told that pollock ...

Puy Lentil Soup I am very pleased with myself. It's three years since I started this blog and I have made 150 soups from the 200 recipes in The Soup Book . The latest recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine . I made it on Monday (3rd December) with the assistance of the spouse. While I was on my way home from work he chopped the onion and crushed the garlic. When I arrived home I took over, rinsing and draining the lentils and gathering the herbs. The other ingredients included gammon steaks, thyme (from the garden, of course) and fresh parsley. I can't remember when I last ate gammon and I wondered if it was still available. Obviously it is! So I fried the onion and garlic, then stirred in the lentils. I have to admit I couldn't find canned puy lentils so I used green lentils. Having seasoned this mixture I lay one of the two gammon steaks on top of the lentils and added the herbs. A covering of water and I was ready to leave the pot simmering. About twenty minutes later ...

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...

Harira Harira: browning the meat and bones Oh, happy day! Oh, happy tastebuds! Yesterday's soup was one of those soups that I have no qualms about adding to my "make it again" list. Using Sophie Grigson 's recipe for this Berber speciality, I made a soup that  all four of us enjoyed: the spouse, the younger offspring, Juno (my mother-in-law) and I. Yes, that's right: even the younger offspring was unstinting in his praise. All it took was an onion, a shoulder of lamb, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, parsley, coriander, brown lentils, tomatoes, vermicelli, chickpeas, flour and lemons. And my smaller dekshee.  I chopped what needed to be chopped then set to cooking. First I fried the onions until translucent, after which I added in the ground spices, the chopped herbs, the meat and the bones. Next in were the brown lentils, chopped tomatoes (tinned) and sundried tomato paste. When these were well mixed I poured in water and left the lot to simmer. H...

Traditional Chicken Soup The weekend just gone was another busy one but for happy reasons. The younger offspring has just become a teenager. Fortunately there were no tantrums, no sulks, no studied indifference. The excitement was occasionally muted but for the most part he was unselfconscious in his enjoyment of the celebrations. I made him white chocolate brownies which are one of his favourite home bakes. The celebrations meant delaying the preparation of the soup. It was a two-staged recipe anyway which meant I could make stock in advance. We had lemon-roasted chicken for dinner yesterday so I saved the carcass to make stock for the soup. The ingredients for the stock were the chicken carcass ( Marie-Pierre Moine suggests this as an alternative to using a whole chicken), carrot, leek, garlic, dried mushrooms (which the spouse bought but which I forgot to put in the pot), celery, parsley and thyme. When I got home from work this evening I got stuck into making the soup. T...

Crab Gazpacho I'm trying to catch up in the fish and shellfish section of The Soup Book. I've made less than 60% of the fish soups so far (the same goes for the meat soups) so I chose crab gazpacho for this weekend's effort. The spouse had brought home some cheap pre-packed crab during the week and I thought I'd use it up. The recipe is by Marie-Pierre Moine and a little on the fiddly side. The ingredients include clams or mussels (I chose the latter), shallot, spring onions, garlic, dry sherry, parsley, fennel seeds, piquante pimenton (which I discovered is a type of paprika after I had substituted a type of whole chilli), tomatoes, boiled eggs, sherry vinegar (never heard of it before), and crab meat. The brown meat is, strictly speaking, not an ingredient of the soup as it is mixed with oil and chopped egg, then spread on croutes and served floating on the soup. I'll come to the crab meat presently. The spouse was working outside Dublin yesterday, so I ha...