Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Root Vegetable Soup Chopped vegetables coated in oil and ready for roasting What else would you do on a cool May bank holiday weekend except make soup? This roasted root vegetable soup from Complete Comfort Food looked interesting. Lots of vegetables to be prepared: butternut squash, onions, leeks, turnip (swede), parsnip (yes, I hate them but surely one parsnip would be overwhelmed by the other ingredients) and carrots. Prep work done and bay leaves, rosemary and thyme interspersed, I popped the vegetables into the oven to roast. I had to leave the house for a few minutes and when I re-entered, the aroma of rosemary rose to greet me. Mmmm!  Roasted vegetable soup with creme fraiche and cayenne When softened, I simmered the vegetables in stock and then liquidised them. The soup was a little too thick. We ate it with a dollop of creme fraiche sprinkled with cayenne pepper. A little bland, I thought, but the spouse and younger offspring were very pleased.  Pea...

Winter Minestrone with Barley and Beans This weekend I have something to prove, namely that this blog is regularly updated. The older offspring was lonely and sad in his temporary accommodation so the spouse and I phoned him. During our conversation he mentioned that my blog was more regular than my spouse's, which led to my decision to make soup sooner rather than later. I chose a book given to me by my brother-in-law "Tod" and his wife "Sal" a couple of years ago: the Riverford Farm Cook Book   by Guy Watson and Jane Baxter. The spouse, younger offspring and I were staying with them and they had a glut of courgettes, which they had cooked using various methods. On leafing through the book I came across a recipe for chocolate and courgette cake. I baked it for them: you couldn't taste the courgette at all, smothered as it was by the cocoa. I digress. Back to the minestrone. The recipe in the Riverford book lists leek, celery, carrots, turnips, garlic, ...

Turnip Soup with Chilli, Pimento and Noodles Just like buses, you wait ages for unusual root vegetable recipes to arrive, then two turnip together! Sorry, I couldn't resist. You see, I was shopping on Saturday 20th October and there were those red-skinned turnips, just like the ones pictured in The Soup Book , so I bought them. It was decided that I would cook the dinner that evening and the spouse would get some of the ingredients for me. He's discovered this wonderful shop not too far away and has come home with tales of wondrous types of honey. I shall bestir myself to venture to this awesome place. So, I arrived home from work on Wednesday (24th October) and laid out my ingredients: spring onion, turnips, jalapeno, dried chilli flakes, star anise, tomato puree, soy sauce, stock, Chinese egg noodles, preserved pimento and coriander. Carolyn Humphries advises you to use larger turnips with a stronger flavour - I consider myself lucky to find any turnips at all. P...

Turnip Soup White turnips: what greenery? For some time now I've been keeping an eye out for turnips (red- or white-skinned ones, not swede turnips) as there are a couple of recipes for them in The Soup Book . I haven't seen them around very often. I did the shopping on Saturday (6th October) but didn't see any turnips in the supermarket. The spouse tried down the road in Young Stephen's - no luck. I brought the younger offspring into town and chanced to go down Moore Street. None of the stalls had the sort of turnip I was looking for and I was about the give up. Fortunately, my curiosity drove me into an Asian shop where among all the more unusual vegetables were a few white turnips. "They'll do," I thought to myself despite their rather flaccid appearance. And so to my kitchen. Alice Waters ' recipe instructs the reader to remove the greens from the turnips and keep them for a later stage of cooking. There wasn't much greenery to remove....

Allotment Soup  The recipe for allotment soup by Thane Prince is the first in The Soup Book and in the summer vegetables section. I made it last Wednesday (11th April) in advance of visitors coming the next day, one of whom (a friend of the younger offspring) is a vegetarian. The listed ingredients include dried haricot beans (I used canned cannellini beans), leek, turnip (I don't think I've ever cooked white turnip before), carrots, courgette, celery, potato, tomatoes, garlic and green beans. I increased the quantities stated in The Soup Book , just in case there wasn't enough to go around: I wanted a lot of allotment soup. The most labour-intensive part of the preparation was dicing the vegetables and I'm glad I avoided soaking dried beans. The only things I had to do to finish the soup for my guests on Thursday were to reheat the soup and add in the fresh green beans and cannellini beans. Five of us sat down to eat and there was far too much soup. My guest...