FOR A COLD DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1938, Page 4

FOR A COLD DAY

NOURISHING SOUPS There are many occasions when a bowl of thick soup is all you need for a meal. It makes a quick luncheon or a light supper, is just the thing for the children when they come in cold and wet from school. If you have thick cream soup you can add nourishment and interest by putting in croutons of friend bread. The Dutch add chopped breakfast sausage to pea soup, and in Spain they make it up like force-meat balls, fry them in butter and add them to the soup. The German marrow dumplings add a substantial note to a soup meal, and ordinary little suet dumpling will be particularly appreciated by the children with meat or pea soup. Vegetable Soup.

Here is a nourishing soup which can be made when there is no stock available. Cut into small dice two large onions, a carrot, a turnip, and two leeks. Melt a lump of butter in a saucepan and put in the vegtables. Fry for a few minutes until the onion begins to brown, add a quart of water, and bring to the boil. Skim until clear then cover and simmer gently for about an hour, until the vegetables are soft. Season well with celery salt, salt cayenne, and mace, and add a pint of hot milk and a handful of rice or soaked barley. Boil until the rice or barley is cooked, then serve very hot. Kidney Soup. Take Jib each of ox kidney and stewing beef, parboil, cut into pieces and fry lightly in dripping with a tablespoon of chopped onion and a teaspoon of chopped parsley. Put in a pan with a pint and a-half of stock, season, bring to the boil and simmer for two hours. Take out the meat, rub through a wire sieve, return to the soup, thicken with a tablespoon of flour and boil for 15 minutes longer, stirring all the time. Mutton Broth. This is delicious if properly made. Cut 21b of neck of mutton into pieces, cover with three pints of water and simmer for three hours with herbs, two large turnips, a large onion, and four carrots. Then take out the meat, take it from the bones, and reheat with the chopped vegetables, 2 tablespoons parboiled pearl barley, and good seasonings. Add more vegetables if liked and stew for 45 minutes more. Green Pea Soup. Two large cups dried green peas, 1 or 2 onions, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 1 stick celery, a handful of chopped green celery leaves, 2 quarts water or stock, 2 or 3 springs mint, bacon bones or any fresh soup bones available, salt and pepper to taste, J-teaspoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon flour if needed. Soak the peas overnight, using a pinch of baking soda if they are very hard. Next day pour off the water, and put the peas into the saucepan with the grated or chopped fresh vegetables, and all the other ingredients, except the flour. Boil gently until the peas are soft, thicken if liked, and serve very hot —with dumplings on a cold day! Lentil Soup. When peas become monotonous as winter fare, there are still lentils, those very cheap and small pulses that look

like reddish-brown split peas. Use them exactly as you would split peas, and with a good variety of soup vegetables, and serve the soup just as it is, or as a puree.

Dried haricot or lima beans (soaked overnight) can also be used in the same way to give a nourishing soup of entirely different flavour. Both are inexpensive.

The Art of Flavouring. If you live where there are no fresh herbs, remember that a teaspoon of the dried variety (in muslin) is a great help in flavouring a soup. If there is no celery remember that dried celery seed is obtainable from the grocer, and that a teaspoonful, again tied in muslin gives the celery flavour, besides helping your rheumatism. You can also achieve variety with an occasional dash of spice or with bacon bones instead of fresh bones.