Soup Recipes @Not Quite Nigella

Category Archives: Soup

Creamy Cauliflower and Bacon Soup with Crispy Crumb Topping

If I appear to be in the midst of a soup epidemic I plead guilty Your Honour. It’s cold here and looking after a patient at home for the next week or so (Mr NQN) means that soup is a weekly feature. The routine is simple. I make a big batch of soup (the flavour depending on what is in season or what is on special that week) and I then serve it to him for lunch for the next 4-5 days. You see the thing is is that it needs to be easy because I’m busy tending to the world’s worst patient. He won’t put the laptop or his phone down and gets terribly bored even when he has a host of things to watch on tv. All he wanted to do was show his friends (and anyone with the stomach) photos of his post-surgery open wound and play with his gadgets. Typical boy.

Many of you asked what he was in hospital for. It was “bursitis” with a Staphylococcus bacterial infection. I shall briefly explain: your elbows (as well as the knee and shoulder) have sacs of fluid that float over them and they can get inflamed from rubbing or by infection. His was infected by “Staphylococcus aureus” and most likely from leaning his elbow on his work desk. Yes really! I know, I know… how incredibly innocuous and random. Not from anything as exciting or daring as underwater caving, discovering a Mummy’s tomb or from hiking in the Amazon. It’s mind blowing to think that the result of this is almost two weeks in hospital with surgery, two weeks at home connected to an infuser and antibiotics, and another two weeks after that on oral antibiotics.

So if I can suggest anything to you my Dear Readers, it’s please keep your elbows off the table (mum was right!) and moisturise them. And despite the fact that it was exacerbated by his cracked elbows (men just don’t care about moistursing their elbows do they?), he refused to let me put moisturiser on his good elbow. And this is when I’m not wrestling the laptop out of his bandaged arms (it’s truly an amusing sight). He has kept his sense of humour though and laughed hard when I brought him a copy of Hemmingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” but at times he does get cranky -case in point was the very last sentance he uttered was “I don’t like French food” when I suggested lunch (yes it seems we’ve become Lou and Andy).

Anyway, back to the cauliflower soup. It’s incredibly silky and creamy. There is only the smallest amount of cream in it and when you see that you can get so many serves out of it I hope that the 1/3 cup total of cream will not put you off. Do make sure that the soup is blended well which really aids in achieving the silky texture. I love the crispy crumb topping to give it a crunchy texture. However feel free to leave it off as I sometimes prefer it without it. But I never leave off the crispy bacon bits at the top- ever.

So tell me Dear Reader, are you a good patient or a bad one? Do you follow orders or are you defiant and rebellious?

Click here to read the full story

47 comments | July 9, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

Carrot, Cumin and Ginger Detox Soup

I was in my pajamas and my carrots were old.

This is not the way I like to start any post admittedly but it’s the brutal truth. It was a Sunday morning and it was cold. I was awoken by the loudspeaker from the Balmoral Burn charity run nearby and I wasn’t in a great mood. And because I had woken so early I had an excess of time and my first instinct was to cook. I needed to make a soup for my husband’s lunch that coming week and the carrots I had in the fridge were starting to look a little less appealing. They weren’t awful but they lost that smooth bright orange coat that they had only a couple of days before.

A friend and I were discussing the inevitable Winter weight gain. Well lamenting it was more like it. Stews, pastas and roasts are de rigeur whereas salads and sorbets are out. One way to try and counteract it is with this soup which is very low in fat but full of flavour. Other benefits are of course that it can be made vegetarian and is very inexpensive to make so there’s no reason not to try a bit of detoxing. If only for a meal or two.

Tell me Dear Reader, what are your tactics to avoid Winter weight gain or weight gain in general? Or do you surrender to Winter and come Summer take action?

Click here to read the full story

42 comments | June 14, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

White Bean & Spinach Soup with Chorizo

My husband was sick with the flu this week and as anyone knows, men are a downright drama when it comes to being sick. They, or at least my husband is, the worst patient in the world. They turn from agreeable, pleasant, dependable creatures to babies who can’t do anything except for what they want to do. No matter how many times I told him to put the laptop away he wouldn’t. No matter how many times I told him that he had to eat something, he wouldn’t. I even bought him a gift to cheer him up (a set of boats as he is a keen sailor) and he pushed it away sulkily and asked if I could return it to the store. I felt like I had suddenly adopted a 5 year old in the midst of a 5 day long tantrum.

The rejected gift

So in the midst of this, I tried to cook him some soup to aid him in his recovery, which in turn would help preserve our marriage and allow me to keep a modicum of sanity. I had some spinach leftover from the Daring Bakers Spinach lasgane escapade, some chorizo in the freezer and some cannellini beans in the cupboard so I was pretty much there and done. I threw in some other vegetables that I thought would go well with it and and some garlic which would help with his flu and voila, I finally had a soup that would be fit for my Little King.

Did he like it? Perhaps it was the guilt from rejecting the gift, perhaps he was getting better but he loved it and ate is greedily. His appetite returned for this sustaining and healthy soup and before I knew it, he had eaten more than he had within the last few days combined. The soup somehow had a creamy texture from the white beans and the spinach and the addition of the chorizo gave it a spicy punctuation (but of course you could make this totally low fat and vegetarian by omitting the chorizo). And in return he was much less cranky and that certainly saved my sanity and subsequently, our marriage.

Click here to read the full story

55 comments | April 1, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

French Onion Soup with Blue Brie croutons

Don’t groan, please. I know French Onion Soup enjoys the same reputation as Spaghetti Bolognese, Sweet and Sour Pork and Lemon Chicken in that they were the first dishes that we were probably introduced to of the cuisine in question. And because of that, and because it seems so passe, people groan and say “Oh no, not that again”. I know I did when I, in an admittedly brattish moment, groaned when I was served French Onion Soup at Iron Chef Sakai’s La Rochelle restaurant.

Herbs de Provence: a mixture of crushed bay leaves, basil, nutmeg, rosemary, thyme, cloves, white pepper, coriander and lavender

But the culinary albatross that it bears does not pay heed to how delicious, in a non revelatory way, French Onion Soup really is. It’s comforting and thick but not too-heavy and it’s flavoured with sweet delicious brown onions. The piece de resistance of course is the Blue Brie croutons. Never has a French Onion Soup had it so good. And if you can’t find Blue Brie, feel free to use another Blue cheese that you like or the more traditional offering of Gruyere cheese.

I know that fine bone china isn’t the usual setting to have French Onion Soup but I was serving it as a light meal to an elegant friend of mine who wholly appreciated being served soup from my best Jasper Conran. And to her credit, there wasn’t even a flicker of a groan when I told her what it was.

Click here to read the full story

35 comments | January 31, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

Let it Snow! Jewelled Fruit Cake, Swedish Mulled Wine & Finnish Pea Soup

My husband is what I affectionately refer to as a “fruit bat”. He is simply mad for the stuff, in dried or fresh form, his request for Christmas every year is a fruit basket and a fruit cake. And forget eating a dainty slice with tea, the whole cake can and has been consumed in less than a day. We recently went to a lunch after friend’s baby’s baptism and they brought out a lovely home made fruit cake. I placed a firm hand on his arm and said “NO honey, leave some for everyone else” and like a puppy chastised he looked sheepish and sank back down in his chair. I’m sure he had dreams of taking that cake and running away with it.

I had originally bought him the jar of mincemeat for him to eat with a spoon and a grin on his face but I forgot about it in the cupboard. And lucky I did as I needed it to whip up a quick fruit cake. Nigella’s recipe is a ludicrously easy fruit cake at that that you could possibly whip up with what you have in the cupboard plus a jar of mincemeat (I’m not assuming everyone has mincemeat in their cupboard). I looked at another of Nigella’s recipes and it required 2 weeks of soaking that I didn’t have so this was an easy decision. The cake itself is not exactly like a fruit cake in look although a bite into it and it does taste very fruit cakey. I didn’t find that there wasn’t quite enough fruit so I’d suggest adding either more mincemeat or soaking some fruit briefly to plump it up and then adding it in. Still, for the amount of effort, it’s a pretty good cake. I loved the look of Nigella’s Jewelled cupcakes so I used her cues for decorating it.

It was also a good choice to take with us on the long 6 hour drive to the snow for his birthday as it transports easily and is a “hardy” choice (i.e. no delicate layers, no cream). Other fantastic goodies that were cooked up to stave off the Winter chills were Swedish Mulled Wine by my Sister in Law and Finnish Split pea soup by my Mother in Law. I couldn’t have asked for better or more delicious ways to warm up after a day in the snow.