Today I’m going to make sweet potato and carrot soup. I have already cooked the sweet potatoes, so I’ll cook the carrots too. Maybe I’ll fry some onion, leek and celery, and obliviously add a little garlic, not too much just a little. I’ll probably add spices… cumin, coriander, a tiny piece of star anise, that sort of thing and a few grinds of black pepper. I’ll blend all the vegetables together and probably sieve them as that seems to be partly the secret of my recent success with soup making. I’ll adjust the seasoning, maybe add a stock cube… then add cornflour to get it to hang together… it should be nice.
There are loads of potatoes so I could also make some potato soup – – I have a leek – leek and potato – but its only a little leek. Perhaps I could use some of the potatoes to make some potato dumplings…
I’ve just had a look at some recipes for potato dumplings; most of them require riced potatoes – Bari should be happy he loves the potato ricer. Cook the potatoes first, boil them in salted water, andthen use the ricer, or you could just mash them lightly. Mix the riced potato with flour and egg then simmer in boiling water. Some of the recipes include bread crumbs, scattered over the cooked dumplings, or included in the mixture; one recipe even has croutons mixed into the potato dough… which sounds… odd. Another recipe uses raw grated potato and then the dumplings are boiled for forty minutes. There was another which has a mixture of cooked and raw potatoes – maybe that would produce a nice texture, like hash browns but boiled.
I think I will boil them and then simmer them in a stew. There was a nice stew recipe where you marinade the beef for three to four days… sounds tender… I might try that.
I haven’t given recipes for these dumplings, you can find them on the internet but I guess its trial and error and doing it by feel and personal preference… and of course imaginative cooking is always experimental, and like with all experiments, some a re successful, some are less so… and some are disastrous! The Battle of the Marchpanes… but that’s a whole different story!
Lois Elsden 
Hi Lois,
I also love making my own soups because a) they taste so much better than tinned and b) I always feel I’ve made something for virtually nothing. This is especially true when we’ve had a chicken. I roast it for the first day’s meal, fricassé it with mushrooms onions, herbs, cream if I’ve got some left over and serve with a jacket potato for the second day and then I boil up the carcass with onions bouquet garni seasoning and water to make a delicious stock for a thick vegetable soup the next day. I usually include onions, carrots, parsnips, leeks and anything else I have sculling about the place. It can be served chunky or liquidised to make a smooth thick soup. Other favourite soups I make are leek and potato, pea and ham and French onion soup wityh a circle of toast on top with melted cheese.
Isabel
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Wonderful, Isabel! It makes me so mad when people are disparaging about English food and English cooks! Most people are good cooks, and most people reminisce about their mum’s pastry, or their grandma’s cakes, or their great uncles soups and stews! We have great produce in our country and we’re inventive and particular about what and how we cook!
I feel a new blog post coming on!
Thanks for your comment!
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