Soup Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

01
Aug
2024

July 2004 – No A’s

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Cheese, Delicious, Fish, Magazines, Muffins, Soup

Hello friends and welcome to today’s Twenty Years Ago Today Post where I am creating a meal from the pages of Delicious magazine from July 2004. But, as usual, the menu comes with a challenge – this month the challenge was to create a meal where none of the recipes contained the letter A. In the event that you ever have an Alphaphobic over to dinner, I have you covered with this one.

And, even if I do say so myself, July 2004 did not disappoint in the taste department. Last week I mentioned that the Grapefruit Oat Brulee was Top Ten in the things I have cooked this year. And this week we have another, not one but two contenders for that list! Life is good – at least in the eating department!

Pop Culture – July 2004

We’ll get along to the deliciousness soon but here’s a little reminder of what was big in July 2004 to help set the scene. Looking first at films, Spiderman, I Robot and The Bourne Supremacy where respectively 1-3 at the box office. Personally, I would have been more interested in Anchorman, Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Notebook at 4, 5 and 7.

In books, the Da Vinci code was yep, you guessed it still number 1! Will the reign of this book never end? Angels and Demons also by Dan Brown was sitting at #7 this month so we might be looking at a Dan Brown double next month! And speaking of doubles, Usher had the number 1 and 2 songs on the Billboard charts with Burn and Confessions Part II.

And now we’ve set the scene, let’s take a look at our menu!

The No A Menu – July 2004

Minestrone

This was, without a doubt the best Minestrone I have ever eaten. I made a huge pot of it and ate it everyday for my lunch for the entire week. Now usually when this happens by Thursday I am starting to get a bit bored and by Friday I am dreading the meal, Not so this time, I would have eaten this for another 5 days if I had more!

This Bill Granger recipe is a little different from most other minestrones for two reasons. First, it has meatballs made from Italian sausages and second it has no pasta. It is also LOADED with veg so, outside of those little meatballs, it is also very healthy. This minestrone was definitely worthy of being on my Top Ten for the Year!

Minestrone Recipe

Smoked Fish Pie

The Smoked Fish Pie was also delicious! I used smoked trout in my pie and it was really yummy! This one is definitely something I will make again! We ate our pies on a frosty cold winter’s night and it was perfect comfort food!

Smoked Fish Pie Recipe

Lemon Meringue Muffins

Now…I could have sworn I took photos of these but no…not on my phone. Not in the cloud….and not enough time to remake them! Also, to be honest, these were probably the weakest part of the meal. They were ok but a little dry. This though, could have been my fault. I cooked the muffins until they were nearly ready but then I had to go out. I left them in the turned off oven to finish the cook and cool. Maybe they were in there a bit too long. I did however love the little secret stash of lemon curd in the muffin and the meringue top was delightful.

I thought for want of my own photo, I would include the photo from the magazine as inspiration. However, there wasn’t one. The recipe was included as a reader asked why there was a recipe for Lemon Meringue Muffins indexed in April 2004, however there was no such recipe in the magazine. The editors explained that the recipe had been pulled for space at the last minute.

There certainly seems oto be something slightly cursed about this recipe!

Lemon Meringue Muffins Recipe

My Nigella Moment – Baked Brie with Braised Cabbage

For first-time readers, this refers to the moment at the end of Nigella Lawson’s cooking shows when she sneaks back to the fridge to have another bite of something delicious. In these Twenty Years Ago posts, it is something contained in the magazine that does not fit with the overall menu theme but I’m sneaking it in because it is too good not to share.

Oh wow…this was sooo good! This was the other recipe that is Top Ten so far this year. There is so much to love in this – warm oozy cheese, salty crispy pancetta, the sweetness of the apple in the cabbage….this was luscious!

Baked Brie with Braised Cabbage Recipe

Well, for me Delicious Magazine from June 2004 was great. Shame about the muffins….but maybe they should have been left out of this issue too!

Have a great week!

08
Sep
2020

London Peculiar

categories: Great Name, Soup

I love food that has an evocative (or just plain weird) name. So, when I found myself with a large ham hock in my freezer and some green split peas in the pantry, London Peculiar was top of my list of things to make! Who wouldn’t want to eat London Peculiar rather than plain old pea and ham soup?

London Peculiar, (aka London Particular) takes its name from the thick “pea-soup” fogs that used to cover London. You would think that these noxious swirling greeny grey fogs were a thing of the long distant past. Surely they were from the times of Dickens and Jack the Ripper? Not so! There was actually a “fog event” as late as 1952!

The 1952 Fog

The fog in ’52 was so dense and so intrusive that the opera La Traviata had to be stopped because people at the back could not see the stage! Even if they could, the actors and other audience members were coughing so much no one could hear anything over the noise. On the Isle of Dogs, the fog was so thick, people could not see their own feet!

12, 000 people died from the fog, which was full of toxic chemicals.

Just like today, (but more eerie because of the fog), the people of London took to wearing masks to protect themselves. Then, as now, wise advice was to stay home when you can and wear a mask if you couldn’t!

And of course, when times get tough, there is nothing like a warm bowl of soup to soothe the soul! There is an old Jewish proverb that says “Worries go down better with soup than without”. So true!

Soup is cheap to make, quick to reheat, and usually fairly healthy. It is great working from home lunch food but also perfect for a cold winter evening. It is also a great way to hide veggies if we have little people or even big people, who don’t love their greens! Watch the salt in this one though, ham hocks can be quite salty so I would not add more salt until you had tasted the soup to check.

London Peculiar – The Recipe

I found my recipe for London Peculiar in the July 2010 edition of Delicious Magazine. You can find that same recipe here.

PS The amazing pictures of London in 1952 and the factoids I used came from here and here. These are both amazing articles that are worth reading in full too.

Stay safe and stay peculiar friends!!!

And enjoy Shirley Bassey singing about history repeating!

20
Jul
2018

Tomato and Tarragon Soup with Sun Dried Tomato Bread

categories: Bread, Soup, Tarragon, Tomatoes

Bonjour mes amis, aujourd’hui nous faisons une soupe de tomates inspirée par un jardin d’herbes françaises.

It is actually a tomato and tarragon soup but the French word for tarragon is “estragon” which I kept reading as “oestrogen”. That’s not generally an ingredient I want in my soup so we’ll keep it English!

It also seems to be a particularly French time of year, Bastille Day just, gone, the World Cup victory and the Tour De France. And of course, nothing says celebrate like soup right? Don’t answer that.

Whatever, this soup is super! 😏

Back in the summer, I grew both tarragon and tomatoes in the backyard. But it wasn’t until late in the season after the tomatoes had finished that I came across this recipe for tomato and tarragon soup. I had never heard of that combination before – tomatoes and basil? Definitely. Chives – most certainly. Parsley – why not? But tarragon? Not so much.

Since then, I have learned that they are both ingredients in a Sauce Choron which is a tomato flavoured Bearnaise sauce. The only comment I have to make about that is “What took me so long?” Next summer, Salmon with Sauce Choron will be featuring on the menu but for the meantime as the cold of winter sets in, I will remind myself about the joys of summer produce by remembering how good this soup was!

The tarragon here is homegrown even if the tomatoes are not.

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh. It tasted of summer! The recipe came from a book called Recipes From a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt.

Next month, I am heading to France. On my travels, I will be visiting the Ville Rose (Toulouse). And then on to Bordeaux. Where I definitely will not be sampling any of the local wines!!!! 😉 Given it will be the height of summer when I am there, I wonder if there will be a tomato and tarragon soup on the menu anywhere?

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh. It tasted of summer! It is so cold and miserable here in Melbourne at the moment but even looking at these photos brought back memories of warmer days and anticipation of the warm weather ahead in Europe!

I served the soup with a sun-dried tomato bread which I feel is a very 90’s adaptation of the Spanish Pan con Tomate where bread is rubbed with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. In this version, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes, some garlic, added some finely chopped basil and a little bit more tarragon and mixed these through some butter. I then spread this onto some rustic, toasted bread and popped it under the grill until golden.

Teamed with the soup it was a double delight of tomato-ishness. And tarragon-yness

Here is the recipe for the soup:

And the bread:

Print

Sun Dried Tomato Bread

Print Recipe

Delicious herby, garlicy, tomatoy bread, perfect for dunking into soup!

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

2 slices of rustic style bread
1 tsp butter
4 sun dried tomatoes, finely chopped
1/4 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp mixed chopped herbs, (I used basil and tarragon)
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Combine the butter, cheese, tomatoes and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Spread over the bread.
Transfer to a baking tray and place under the grill until golden brown.

Have a great week everyone!

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25
Jul
2015

Margaret Fulton Cookbook 6 – Missing from the Modern

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Bad Retro Food, Margaret Fulton Cookbook, Soup

This is worse than the trout of nightmares.

I’m voting that this has to rank pretty high in the list of three words that should never be put together.

JELLIED. TURTLE. SOUP.

W.T. F. People of 1977?

You had a lovely Olive and Onion Tart and some fabulous canapés to eat. Why on earth would you choose to eat soup made from turtles? First that’s just gross and second, they don’t even look like they’d taste good.

Don’t even try to make it better by adding some totally delicious avocado. I’m calling shenanigans on you on this one!

Even worse. I was alive then. My mother better never have fed me turtle soup jellied or otherwise. Or we’ll be having words when I get back.

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The Margaret Fulton Cookbook 4 – Soups

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Margaret Fulton Cookbook, Soup

“What wonderful memories I have of soup and my Scottish mother’s kitchen. We had soup everyday and each one had it’s own character and charm”

– Margaret Fulton

To me, the character and charm of the soups in the 1977 picture are rather overwhelming. How much nicer are the modern pictures? I do however like that there is a nod to the past in the dish for the Soup Chiffonade…

And I just love the orange pumpkin soup in the blue bowl.

In fact, I have used this particular combination more than once on this blog. Once in one of my posts on Valli Little’s Slow:

And it will shortly feature in my post on Cantina…hmm…maybe it already has?

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Tag: Soup

Pop Culture – July 2004

The No A Menu – July 2004

Minestrone

Minestrone Recipe

Smoked Fish Pie

Smoked Fish Pie Recipe

Lemon Meringue Muffins

Lemon Meringue Muffins Recipe

My Nigella Moment – Baked Brie with Braised Cabbage

Baked Brie with Braised Cabbage Recipe

The 1952 Fog

London Peculiar – The Recipe

Sun Dried Tomato Bread

Ingredients

Instructions