Cabbage and Caraway Soup

 I was planning this soup as a nice winter warmer, but now it's unseasonably warm...  Anyhoo - this week I was away at a wedding, and no, I didn't cry, but I did get rather drunk and sing and dance until I felt creaky the next morning.  So I resolved to get more healthy (which, on reading some old posts I seem to do a lot, yet I'm still not healthy.  Maybe it's a problem of willpower not diet?)

In the veg box this week was some lovely cabbage, which seemed to be ideal for forming the basis of a healthy soup.  Now cabbage soup always seems to get a bad reputation, either as the basis for another fad diet, or as a symbol of poverty (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a lot to answer for there...) or as a symbol of perceived Eastern European austerity.

Not pictured - 3 caterpillars that crawled out of the cabbage...

When I was thinking about cabbage, two things came into mind, one was bacon, which always livens up a dull vegetable (or anything else to be honest...) and caraway.  I have recently fallen in love with the humble caraway seed, after getting into bread making a bit (well, with the help of a bread making machine - it's not cheating is it?) and caraway seeds make fresh bread even tastier.  I love the aniseed-y flavour, so I thought, why not throw it all together and see what it comes out like.

As it happens, the soup was rich and filling and the caraway smelled so nice when the soup was cooking I was drooling all afternoon.

So think cabbage soup is boring?  Give this a whirl and see if it doesn't change your mind...

Recipe after the jump

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup

I first had Hot and Sour soup in a restaurant and was a bit wary, due to my dislike of Sweet and Sour Sauce served in Chinese Take-aways (you know, that radioactive red/orange stuff that they all serve.  Where does it come from anyway? )  But anyway, I was persuaded to try the Hot and Sour soup and needless to say, found it rather lovely.

This recipe seems to be an American version of a Szechan style soup, on account of the egg and cornflour in it, which makes it a lot thicker.  There are a number of variations, for instance Tofu makes a good chicken substitute, or you could go the other way entirely and add pig's blood to flavour it! Or at least use pork as the meat