Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Seafood Chowder Let there be no doubt about it: I love seafood chowder. If I see it on a menu anywhere I have to try it. It's my adventure, my search for a culinary holy grail. Sometimes I am very pleased with what I eat, sometimes I am very disappointed. Recently I was having a quick lunch in a hotel bar in Waterford. Seafood chowder was on the menu and I ordered it, only to be advised that it would take twelve minutes to cook, too long to wait if I wanted to catch my train. I made do with a very disappointing tomato and fennel soup. Let's just say if you have ordered a soup with tomato as the main ingredient, you would expect fresh tomatoes rather than canned ones. So, back to my own little chowder venture on the 15th February. Still trying to get value out of our various cookery books, I picked on one I bought a few years ago: Complete Comfort Food edited by Bridget Jones. (I used it last weekend to make boeuf bourguignon and key lime pie for the spouse's birthda...

Harissa and Chickpea Soup A couple of week's ago the spouse expressed an interest in making this soup from The Soup Book . Well, it's my blog and I make the soups. That said, I let him make the harissa that's needed to flavour the soup I made last Saturday (10th November). The recipe is by Roopa Gulati so I expected spice and richness. We weren't disappointed. The spouse is becoming a collector of harissa pastes and enjoyed making this one, which called for a red pepper, olive oil, seeds (coriander, cumin and caraway), tomato puree, garlic, red chillies, smoked paprika and lemon juice. I don't know how this was made as the spouse was the boss of the harissa. I needed only a couple of tablespoons for the soup, but we can use the rest with couscous (a favourite with the younger offspring). By the way, we now have three jars of smoked paprika due to inadequacies in our spice filing system. I hope that binding them together with a rubber band will help prevent any m...

Gazpacho We've been enjoying unexpectedly warm and sunny weather lately, so I thought a chilled soup would be apt. Flicking through The Soup Book  I came across Geetie Singh 's recipe for gazpacho . After a busy week and a busy Saturday spent preparing dinner for guests last night (actually, the spouse was busy preparing dinner), I was delighted to see that the preparation for the gazpacho was limited to peeling and chopping. Even having to get the food processor out didn't pose too much of a challenge. Tough decision-making was the theme of this recipe, starting with the options for certain ingredients: spring onions or red onion thyme, marjoram, parsley, mint or basil fresh chilli or cayenne pepper. I have underlined the choices I made. Gazpacho Breaking free from the constraints of the ingredients list, I used an orange pepper rather than the red indicated in the recipe. Other ingredients included garlic, cucumber, tomatoes, stale bread, red wine vineg...

Chicken and Pork Gumbo Chicken, pork and lardons simmering in stock It's been almost a month since I last made a soup from The Soup Book . It's a bank holiday weekend here in Dublin and the older offspring is home, so I thought I'd make a meaty soup for his delectation. Chicken and pork gumbo would be the very thing, I thought. The recipe is by Carolyn Humphries , whose Cuban black bean soup I made in March. The ingredients include chicken leg and thigh portions (Carolyn suggests substituting duck), smoked lardons or pancetta, belly pork, chicken stock, a bay leaf, red peppers, onion, garlic, celery, beefsteak tomatoes, green beans, okra, thyme, paprika (two types - sweet and smoked), Tabasco sauce and cooked rice. Vegetables simmering in stock The spouse kindly went shopping and bought most of the ingredients. All we needed was the okra (or ladies' fingers as I called them when I was growing up). We were going into town to take part in the Dublin Zombie Wa...

Aubergine and Red Pepper Soup Today was a double effort as this aubergine and red pepper soup comprises two separate soups. In her introduction to her own recipe in  The Soup Book , Sophie Grigson sums it up as "a two-in-one" with the "mild and gentle aubergine cream yanked into high gear with a swirl of the sweeter, hotter red pepper." The aubergine soup ingredients are olive oil, onion, carrot, parsley, coriander seeds, aubergines (obviously), risotto or pudding rice, and chicken or vegetable stock. The first seven ingredients are sweated together before the stock and seasoning are added. Similarly, the first few ingredients for the pepper soup (olive oil, garlic, red chillies and red peppers) are sweated together before tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar, seasoning and stock are added. The two soups are whizzed in a blender and reheated separately, of course. The aubergine soup is divided between the soup bowls and then a ladleful of the pepper soup is added to eac...

Roasted Red Pepper, Fennel and Tomato Soup   The recipe for roasted red pepper, fennel and tomato soup in The Soup Book is by Roopa Gulati so expect spice. The ingredients include fennel, a red onion, red peppers, tomatoes, garlic, rosemary leaves, fennel seeds, nigella seeds (I substituted cumin seeds for nigella seeds), passata, vegetable stock and a red chilli. I didn't have some of the ingredients so I called down to Young Stephen's greengrocery. As soon as he saw me he said, "I've got something for you.!" "Chervil?" I guessed. "No," he replied, "I can't find chervil. It's this - summer savory ." There was no way he could have known I'd be calling to his shop today, but he had the savory in a pot ready to go. It wasn't a gift - I had to buy it but did so willingly. Back to the stove. The fennel, onion, peppers, tomatoes and garlic were sprinkled with sugar, olive oil and the rosemary leaves before being roa...