A busy Soup

Over the summer while various family and friends were visiting from abroad, I picked up on a quirk I had not before as far as Bajans living abroad go. All Bajans vacationing will request two foods. The obvious cou-cou and the not so obvious soup! Reason being, when persons "over in away"  talk about soup, they are referring to some tidy broth featuring some one or two particular ingredients, you know, such as potato and leek soup or chicken noodle soup, split pea and ham soup etc. But when we Bajans talk about soup we are talking about a major cooking task! What Bajan worth their ID card would make a soup with two ingredients?  I swear I can almost hear an old relative turning in their grave at the thought.

And no one just wakes up one day and decides to cook soup. Something this intricate must surely be planned in advance. And so, every house has their "soup day". For my mother that day is Wednesday! Ingredients are included on the shopping list the week prior. My mother will revamp her menu if she has no split peas or pumpkin or chicken feet. Yes, chicken feet! Since I let that out of the bag, what exactly goes into a Bajan soup?

 The Basics

English potatoes, eddoes, carrots,sweet potatoes 

And for colour nothing beats 

Caribbean Pumpkin

And, soup is not soup in my book if it has no eddoes. They give such a smooth creamy texture to the mix.

Over the years I have had so many different variations of Bajan soup. Some people use split peas for added colour, but I love black eye peas in my soup for a rich earthy flavour. I think I picked this up as a child from a cousin's husband. He would make such an outstanding soup using black eye peas which was thick with macaroni and corned beef.!!!!! Yes corned beef floating atop soup. It would always be super hot with scotch bonnet pepper and super tasty too!
Another addition I have adopted is sweet corn but I still can't bring myself to buy the chicken "steppers" ie chicken feet! I guess I don't really need them as my eddoes do the same job of thickening the soup.
My mother also likes to mix meats. Her standard meats are lamb and chicken. I must admit I tried the lamb a few weeks back and although it was not the mutton soup I remember from my childhood, it was really packed with flavour.

Now to my soup 

Dumplings floating among corn in de pot.
Chunk of sweet potato, corn, chicken and eddoe.Unlike my partner, I don't mind my thyme and marjoram floating on my soup. What does he think this is, a restaurant?...lol

and some other interesting ones.....

 Cow heel soup








Lamb soup

 LOVE corn soup!!!

Veggies only...ITAL IS VITAL

Those steppers :O!!!!

OH...I almost forgot to mention the favourite soup ingredient for Bajans......

Click this link and get the whole story on it http://www.tastumgoodum.com/2011/12/tale-of-pigtail-soup.html

I'll even give you a hint .....LOL

Be good people and have a great one til next time.