Masterkurt or Disasterkurt?

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Its four pm on a dullish, coolish winter’s eve … I’ve restauranted twice this week and I don’t feel like doing so tonight … so that means my intensely inexperienced home cooking. Hmm supplies are a bit low. But I feel like soup … and I have a nice cabbage …

A glimpse at the Internet. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/82923/healing-cabbage-soup/ sounds nice. But here’s another http://allrecipes.com/recipe/13233/cabbage-soup-i/?internalSource=rr_recipe&referringId=82923&referringContentType=recipe&clickId=right%20rail%203&AnalyticsEvent=right%20rail%20nav. Bit complicated the URL!

Well. All sorts of variations. Carrot? Celery? Don’t have those things … so let’s combine a couple of the recipes with a bit of impromptu and see what happens.

In my big new iron stewpot, I put a good slurp of olive oil and slowly cook

(a) A large onion chopped and sliced

(b) 3 cloves of garlic crushed and sliced

and (c) 1 good teaspoon of Patak’s curry paste

Then when they’re all glabrous and limp, I add the chopped up bits of last week’s peppered sliced brisket, pour over four veggie stock cubes dissolved in 2 litres of water. Put in a quarter of a big cabbage, rough cut, two chopped taties and a big teaspoon of cumin.

It’s coming to the simmer. I have parsley and chives from the terrace garden and one nice hard chopped tomato to add at the end.

Should I have put more cabbage? Its supposed to be a cabbage soup? It's not too late … its hasn’t come to the boil yet …

Done. The yummy stalk makes an excellent fresh nibble with my (first) apéritif …

Oh ho! I can smell the cumin!

Quick, chefs and cooks out there. What else should I have done? Pepper! In with a spoonful of peppercorns. Soy? Instead of salt. Maybe not. That’s about all I can do. The frig now contains limes, cheese, ginger-beer, frozen spinach, ice-cream, one lemon, eggs and margarine. So it will HAVE to do!

Here goes. It’s three hours till Masterchef comes on the TV. By that time I’ll know whether I’m a Disasterchef!