This is one of my favourite soups! I love the beautiful green colour, that it only takes a couple of minutes to cook, and of course the lovely taste. And it is very filling too. I prefer to have some nice bread and maybe some cheese with soup, but you don’t actually need it with this one. We had some nice cake for dessert instead.
If you add some white wine, this soup is known as creme ninon, and it is even more fabulous. Perfect for dinner parties. But on a weeknight, the below recipe is great.
Green pea soup, serves 2
about 400 g frozen peas
water
a pinch of salt
1 dl single cream
a splash of concentrated vegetable stock
salt & white pepper
Pour the peas into a pan and just about cover them with water, add the salt and bring to a boil. Let them boil for a few minutes, then blotz it smooth with a mixer, pour back into the pan and add the cream, stock, salt and pepper (and the wine), bring to a boil and serve.
I really love pasta bakes, they are the ultimate clearing-out-the-fridge-companion, as you can thow anything in it and it still tastes good, and I love the crispy cheese on top, very comforting. So Christopher and I have been debating the pasta bake for a few weeks. Me pro, he against. But then suddenly, he gave in and said we could try it. That means I won, right? 😉
This is the sausage I used, but if you haven’t been to Hungary recently chorizo works just as well.
When I put the dish down in front of him, he said it looked really good and smelt lovely, and to his surprise he really enjoyed it, he didn’t just have a second helping but a third. Smugly I said ‘Well I wasn’t going to make a crappy pasta bake’, and he explained that he ate a lot of pasta bakes at Uni but they weren’t as good, so that was he expected. I think I have converted him now.
Adding the cheese to the sauce. Yum!
I find it much easier to make this creme fraiche based sauce instead of a proper bechamel, it is much quicker and perfect for a weekday dinner. And you can use the half fat creme fraiche, I sometimes do.
I promise your kitchen smells good by this step! 🙂
Pasta bake with spicy sausage, mushrooms and chilli, serves 3-4
250 g dried pasta (any shape but spaghetti/tagliatelle)
150 g spicy sausage/chorizo
1 can sliced mushrooms
For the sauce:
300 ml creme fraiche
3-4 tbsp chilli sauce (I used Heinz and Reggae Reggae)
Cook the pasta and drain it. Fry the mushrooms in a knob of butter and olive oil until they have a nice colour, remove from frying pan. Cut the sausage into slices and fry these in the same pan until the have a nice colour (this intensifies the flavour). Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a saucepan and bring to a boil, season to taste. Grease an oven-proof dish with butter and pour in half of the pasta. Distribute half of the mushrooms and sausage on top, and add some of the red cooking juice from the sausage too, it will add some more flavour. Then pour nearly half of the sauce on top as well. Repeat with another layer and sprinkle plenty of grated cheese on top. Bake for 15-20 minutes in 200C.
On my lunch break on Friday, I made a quick visit to the wonderful Borough Marke. I found some girolles, cepes and Jerusalem artichokes that got to come home with me. I didn’t really have a plan of what to use the mushrooms for when I bought them, I just can’t resist the golden girolles. If I had known I was to use them in a nice creamy sauce with a splash of cognac, with pasta, I would have bought lots more, so the pasta – girolle ratio isn’t what it should be, but it still tasted lvoely.
Pasta with girolles, serves 2
pasta of your choice (about 250 g dried pasta)
girolles
olive oil
a knob of butter
400 ml cream
1-2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 splash of cognac
1 tsp chilli sauce
2 tsp persillade
grated parmesan (Parmiggiano reggiano is to prefer)
chopped parsley
Cook the pasta. Heat up oil and butter in a sauté pan until it is really hot. Fry the mushrooms for a while, sprinkle on some salt and pepper. Turn the heat down and add the cream, add the other ingredients apart from the parsley, and adjust the seasoning to taste. Drain the pasta and add it into the sauce. Serve with some more grated parmesan, some nice bread and a glass of wine.
At least in Sweden this dish was a popular starter in the 70s, and it is something I have picked up from my mother’s repertoire. I love this as a simple dinner for one, but can’t say I serve it as a starter very often. It is a very simple dish, but I love the combination of crispy potato, salty caviar, creamy cream fraiche and a bit of crunch and a punch from the red onions.
Rosti with creme fraiche, caviar and red onions,serves 1 as supper or 2 as a starter
2 large potatoes
knob of butter
olive oil
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
creme fraiche or soured cream
lumpfish caviar (you find this at Waitrose)
Peel the potatoes and grate them. Heat butter and oil in a pan and divide the grated potato into 4-6 rounds in the pan. You need nothing more than the starch from the potatoes to hold it together. Fry them golden and crisp on both sides on medium-high heat and season well with salt and black pepper. Mean while chop the onions and place a dollop of creme fraiche and caviar on each plate and divide the chopped onions between the plates as well. Serve immediately for the potatoes to stay crisp.
Christopher is of the opinion that I cook too much with butter and/or cream and sometimes I listen to what he has to say. 😉 Without any dairy products I tested (and altered) this recipe by Jamie Oliver. I’m very proud.
Our nearest supermarket is a real messy one. The other day I was looking for glue for 15 minutes before I gave up, and before that I was searching for lightbulbs for 10 minutes because it wasn’t signposted or logical at all in there. On top of that, the fish counter is terrible, they only have salmon, and all over the shop they sell out or don’t stock it properly. It’s not for me. And since it’s not a Waitrose either (I heart Waitrose) I’m incredibly happy with my Ocado deliveries. It is great to avoid the stress of shopping while hungry on your way home from work, and lovely not to have to carry the heavy bags at all.
Only downside is that when they are out of stock, they choose what to replace it with. In this case I had ordered proper chorizo sausages, but ended up with the thinly sliced version. No harm done, it tasted lovely, but the texture of the other sausage would have made it so much better. Oh well. Next time.
Chorizo and butterbean stew, serves 3-4
1 onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, pressed
250-200 g chorizo, sliced
olive oil
400 g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
a dash concentrated stock
salt and black pepper
2 tsp smoked paprika
400 g tinned butterbeans
a large handful spinach
optional: vegeble stock to thin the stew
Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the inion, garlic and chorizo for a couple of minutes, without browning very much. Add the tomatoes, stock, vinegar and spices and season to taste. Let it simmer for a few minutes, and add some stock if you think it is too thick. Add the beans and the spinach and let it simmer for another couple of minutes. Serve with rice and garlic bread. Autumnal and warming!
I really like Nigella. Even though she loves to eat in bed (I prefer a proper table) and has a spoon in her dressing gown pocket. 🙂
Most of her recipes are really good, especially her cookbook Nigella Express is perfekt for weekdays when you’re in a rush. This recipe, where you marinate the meat after cooking it, than before, comes from that cookbook.
Do you like Nigella?
A slightly out of focus photo of my new Le Creuset dish, in the colour Granite. Love it!
Steak slice med citron och timjan, serves 2
300 g rump steak (preferrably thick)
2 cloves of garlic, smashed up
1/2 lemon, zest and juice
1 tsp salt
black pepper
40 ml olive oil
3 stalks of thyme, just the leaves
Cut the fat off the meat and fry it in olive oil a couple of minutes (2-3 mins) on each side. Meanwhile mix the ingredients for the marinade. Put the meat in a dish and marinate each side for 4-5 minutes. Slice it into small pieces and put it back in the dish and serve it. A potato gratin and broccoli are good accompaniments.
Christopher was out playing cricket yesterday, which meant that he wasn’t hungry when he came home. I’m still amazed that they have tea and sandwiches during the game (that’s just so British!) and because it was the last game for the season they had dinner afterwards as well, so absolutely no hope that he was hungry after the game, so I had to come up with something to eat for myself.
I don’t particular like to cook for one, I just don’t see the point in it. For me, having a meal is a sociable thing – you eat together. Although my family isn’t a big and loud one, the three of us still had all meals together, apart from breakfasts, as I’m tired in the mornings and my parents are not. So when I cook for one I don’t enjoy it as much as when cooking for two or more, so I try to keep it simple and quick. Like these jacket potatoes, with a really simple yet very tasty topping. Try it when you’re home alone, and you won’t be disappointed.
I was hungry and made two potatoes but it was a bit too much. Sometimes the eye is hungrier than the tummy...
Jacket potatoes with easy peasy topping
Grab one or two large potatoes/baking potatoes and cut a cross on the top pf each potato. Bake in 200C for a little more than an hour. Take out the potatoes and press the sides towards the middle so the cut comes open. Put a knob of butter, either persillade or berbecue seasoning, some grated cheddar, creme fraiche, crispy bacon and some more seasoning on top. Enjoy!
I love aubergine! So this is a weekday favourite of mine. Christopher doesn’t love them, but tolerates them, and together with pasta he quite enjoys it. This is a speedy version of lasagne as you use a tub of cream cheese instead of the bechamel sauce. Together with the soft vegetables the cheese becomes nice and creamy.
Quick lasagne with aubergine and courgette, serves 4
1 aubergine
2-3 courgettes
oilve oil
lasagne sheets
1 tub (200 g) Philadelphia
1 can chopped tomatoes with basil (I love Ciro’s)
vegetable stock
salt pepper
grated cheese
Wash the vegetables and cut the ends off, slice in 5 mm thick slices. Fry these until soft in olive oil on medium heat. Make them in batches. Meanwhile, pour the chopped tomatoes into a saucepan and reduce on low-medium heat, add vegetable stock and season. In an oven dish, start with a layer of tomato sauce, next a layer of pasta, a little bit more tomato sauce, a layer of courgettes, dollops of cream cheese, and start again from the pasta layer but substitute the courgettes with aubergine this time around and use courgettes in the top layers. Finish off with pasta sheets, tomato sauce and the grated cheese. Bake for 25-30 minutes in 200 C.
I never know what to serve with this dish, it feels a bit unnecessary to serve a salad with this amount of vegetables, have you got any tips?
I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but the last two months or so I have cut out a lot of fiber. This was my doctor’s orders and to prevent my stomach cramps.
In the beginning I saw it as an excuse to eat everything unhealthy, as I had to cut out fruit, berries, seeds, nuts, vegetables and everything whole grain. But it wasn’t as fun to cut out vegetables as I had imagined. I really suffered, not being able to eat avocado, asparagus, berries… Cutting it out makes the food you eat seem really dense, and sometimes I was really struggling with motivation on what to cook. But it did help my stomach enormously!
I have also learnt that maybe society exaggerate the importance of fiber, my stomach has worked better than before without it, and I haven’t gained weight from eating white bread and pasta. I think variation in your diet as well as normal-sized portions is the key rather than eating a lot of fibers.
Since a week and a half I have started to introduce certain vegetables, berries and fruit into my diet, so we’ll see how that works out. I am thrilled to be able to eat vegetables again, and enjoy the fact that my food seems much lighter now.
In spring and summer I prefer salads, but in the autumn and winter I love my soups and am so happy I can have it for lunch everyday if I want to! This is what I had today, at my desk, as you can see. 😉
Parsnip and sweet potato soup, serves 1
1 parsnip
1 sweet potato
olive oil
vegetable stock
cream/creme fraiche
persillade
chilli flakes (only a few)
salt
Peel the vegetables and cut into pieces. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and add the vegetables, cook for only a few minutes to add flavour. Pour boiling water into the pan, and add a little stock, cook for about 15 minutes until the vegetables are very tender. Drain the cooking water into a bowl and puree the vegetables, gradually adding the cooking water and cream until you get the thickness you want. Bring to a boil again and adjust the salt with stock and salt, add the seasoning and serve with a dollop of creme fraiche.
An easy and tasty everyday dinner are these tasty greek lamb scewers with tzatziki, a simple sallad and toasted pittas. The meat doesn’t need to mariande for more than 20 minutes, so it is easily done when you get home from work, or why not put the meat in the marinade in the morning and it’s all ready to get cooking when you get home from work?!
Use a very hot pan The tzatzikiYum!
Souvlaki, serves 2
400 g lamb
oilve oil
soy sauce
1/2 lemon, juice from
2 cloves garlic, pressed
3-4 tsp oregano
salt
black pepper
Cut the fat off the meat and cut it into cubes. Put the meat in a bowl and pour the ingredients for the marinade over it (more oil than soy), stir, cover with cling film and put in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
Put the meat onto scewers and fry in olive oil in a very hot pan until the meat is cooked through and they have a lovely colour. It would work even better on a grill pan or on the barbecue.
Tzatziki, serves 2
300 ml strained greek yoghurt
5 cm cucumber
2 small or 1 large cloves of garlic
salt
white pepper
Pour the yoghurt into a bowl. Grate the cucumber coarsely, and squeeze it to drain from water. Add the drained cucumber to the yoghurt, add the pressed garlic, salt and pepper. The garlic flavour will become stronger after a while, so leave it for 10 minutes or so until you taste it and add more garlic if needed. Pour over a little olive oil before serving.
I made a simple salad of cucumber cubes, thin slices of red onions, olive oil and lemon juice to serve with this, but make any salad you like and maybe add some feta. Serve with toasted pitta bread.
Scandelights 