Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave...

White Bean Soup Two milestones achieved yesterday (22nd February): soup number 170 from The Soup Book and the last of the soups from the Pulses and Nuts section. I'm getting there, slowly but surely. Finishing touches: pancetta and shallots   Ingredients:  onions, garlic, cannellini beans (I used canned rather than dried), celery, a bay leaf, parsley stalks (no leaves!), lemon juice, vegetable stock, shallots, pancetta and Taleggio cheese (you could also use fontina). Cooking method:  I first fried the onions over a low heat then added the garlic. Next into the pan were the cannellini beans, celery, the bay leaf, parsley, lemon juice and stock. I left the mixture simmering for about an hour before blending. I then left the soup sitting while I watched the Low Charioteers beat the Boys in Green (13-10). Separated at birth? The younger offspring signalled that he would be home by 7 o'clock so I went back to the kitchen to finish the soup. I had sliced t...

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...

"Penny" Soup Today I made my first The Soup Book soup in 2014 - it's also the 169th soup from that book that I've made. Ingredients: a leek, potatoes, carrots, small sweet potatoes, vegetable stock and parsley (from the garden, even though it's January). Preparation: basically, slice the vegetables into thin rounds. Cooking: sweat the vegetables, pour in the stock, simmer until all the vegetables tender; liquidise some of the vegetables with a little of the liquid. To serve: stir in the parsley, pour the soup into the bowls and make a little stack of sliced vegetables in the centre. The bliss of a day off on a weekday! I woke up thinking it was my usual wake-up time: "Oh no! I'm awake! I'll never get back to sleep." Then I discovered it was 8 o'clock, not 6 o'clock. I began the day in a good mood. My friend Bella was coming for lunch and I was pleased to have a new soup taster. I had the soup ready in good time for ...

Dhal Soup On Friday 3rd January (the older offspring's birthday, by the way) I went through The Soup Book and made a list of the thirty-two soups I have yet to make. Will I get through them this year? Let us see. Following the post-Christmas cull of moss-clad cookery books, I cast my eye over the kitchen book shelves this morning (Saturday 4th January) in search of soup recipes.  Rose Elliot' s Not Just a Load of Old Lentils was first published in 1972 and the spouse and I bought our copy in 1984. We went vegetarian that year in an effort to lose weight and be healthy. It didn't last. We missed meat and we found that preparing truly tasty vegetarian meals was too time consuming and not always worth the effort. That said, we gained a lot from the experience. The ingredients for this dhal soup: red lentils, a bay leaf, sliced onions, crushed garlic, ginger (I used fresh rather than ground), turmeric, garam masala and lemon juice. Cooking: I simmered the lentils,...

Lobster Bisque If you've read my previous blog entry, when you see the words "lobster", "brandy", "white wine" and "cream" you may immediately think "fire" and "burnt hair". Surely I can't have made another lobster soup so soon? Well, I have. Don't forget that I mentioned having bought two lobsters from the nearby German discount store. (By the way, the spouse and I have called in a couple of times and managed not to be tempted by telescopes and tambourines.) My one hundred and sixty-eighth soup from The Soup Book was lobster bisque and the listed ingredients include lobster, onion, carrot, celery, leek, fennel, bay leaf, tarragon, garlic, tomato puree, tomatoes, brandy, dry white wine, and cream. What's not to like? I had to make a couple of substitutions: fennel seeds for fennel bulb, dried tarragon for fresh, a mix of tomato puree and sundried tomato paste, and a mix of cream and creme fraiche. The b...

I've made two soups from The Soup Book so far this month: creamy kidney bean by Roopa Gulati (7th December) and brandied lobster chowder by Carolyn Humphries (yesterday - 21st December). Creamy kidney bean soup The kidney bean soup was the 166th from The Soup Book and the first soup from the Pulses and Nuts section in six months. With ingredients such as fresh root ginger, green chillies and lime juice to counteract the kidney beans and tomatoes, I expected my tastebuds to be tingling with delight. Unfortunately, they weren't. As Eamon Dunphy might have said, it was a good soup but not a great soup. The older son was the food critic on that occasion and I think he was a little disappointed. I brought the remainder into work for my lunch the following Monday and thought it had improved slightly. It's not on my "make again" list. Brandied lobster chowder   Now this is my sort of soup! Lobster , white wine , shallots, brandy , tomato, anchovy essence ...