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...

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 ...