Category: Soup

29th August 2014

Cauliflower soup with Avesnes cheese and smoked ham

Cauliflower is a very healthy vegetable with anti-cancer and detox properties. However, it stinks when cooking and has a very bland taste. Basically, it is boring and needs something to liven it up. Often it is combined with cheese, as in the British cauliflower cheese dish or the Dutch cauliflower with cheese sauce dish. In France, cauliflower is often prepared with a white sauce of […]

Beef Main dish Pasta Soup

4th August 2014

Beef and chervil soup with pasta

This is a very pleasant and nutritious soup for when you are trying to lose weight after spending some nice holidays. I found some interesting beef shank at the supermarket – my butcher’s is closed for a few weeks – and started by making a beef broth. The next day I removed the (little) fat from the stock and added vegetables, chervil and pasta. The […]

Soup Vegetables

22nd May 2014

Pea pod soup

Fresh peas are in season and I like to use them as a vegetable side-dish. It is a bit of work to get them out of the pods. I usually leave the peas like they come but in gastronomic restaurants they remove the outer skin and use the two inner halves. At least that is what I learned at the cooking school of Alain Ducasse. […]

Soup

14th May 2014

Soup with young fresh garlic

At the moment you can buy fresh garlic in France. They look a bit like spring onions. The bulb has not developed much yet and there is a long green stem. Over the next few months the bulbs will grow and the stems will dry out and lather either be cut off or be used to string the bulbs together.

Beef Main dish Soup Vegetables

8th April 2014

Beef and barley soup with an Asian touch

It is Monday and the butcher’s is closed because they open on Sunday morning. Go figure. I had abandoned buying meat at the supermarket because it is better from the butcher and, surprisingly, often even cheaper. However, when I saw a kilo of beef at the supermarket at 5 euros, with the mention “Limousin” for the provenance, I fell for the offer. At first I […]

Beef Main dish Soup

30th January 2014

My French oxtail soup

Here we have a culinary and national identity conundrum. Let’s start by saying that oxtail soup is a hearty winter dish using relatively cheap ingredients. Personally, I always associate oxtail soup with England, so my French version replaced the porto with a Banyuls and added some root vegetables that do not enter in the original recipe. But what is the original recipe?

Cheese Soup Vegetables

23rd December 2013

Creamy roasted garlic soup

This soup is delicious in itself but it is also a very good remedy against hangovers. Perhaps it is an idea to have some ready that you can simply warm up the morning after the evening in the festive season… There are several versions of garlic soup, especially from the southwest of France where they have the tourin – with onions and eggs – or, […]

Beef Cabbage Main dish Soup Vegetables

26th November 2013

Beef and vegetable soup

A hearty soup is a great dish for Autumn. This is a variation on a recipe for a clear beef soup with kale, principally because there was no kale available on the market. After making the broth, I was supposed to dispose of the beef. Instead, I used it for another preparation.

Main dish Soup Vegetables

30th October 2013

Pumpkin soup with chestnuts

In France, there is no Halloween apart from among expatriates. Perhaps the Celts in Brittany celebrated the evening of Oct 31 as the start of the year but in the rest of France the catholic church has decreed Nov. 1 as All Saints’ day (Toussaint) and even the non-religious enjoy a day off, this year even an extended weekend break. Many French people will visit […]

Fish Seafood Soup

10th October 2013

Lobster bisque, a creamy soup without cream

The last of my three recipes with one lobster. Okay, I had a relatively large lobster but this also works with smaller ones. After you have eaten, or presented, a lobster, you are left with a lot of broken shells as well as the soft parts in the head that not many people like to eat. You could throw it away, or use it for […]