I made this British classic for the first time last week, and fell in love, if that is possible with a soup.
I love the smooth velvety texture and the combination of sweet carrots and flowery coriander really works. We will certainly eat this a lot this autumn and winter!
Carrot and coriander soup, serves 2
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
600 g carrots, peeled and cut into smaller pieces
water
vegetable or chicken stock
50 ml single cream
salt, white pepper
1/2 bunch fresh coriander, chopped
Fry the onion until soft but not brown in the oil on medium heat, in a large sauce pan. Add the carrots and fry for a minute or so. Pour boiling water to cover the carrots and add a pinch of salt. Bring to the boil and cook until the carrots are soft (about 15 minutes). Drain most of the cooking water, but set it aside. Pureethe carrots and add enough of the cooking water so you have a very thick soup. Bring to the boil and add cream and stock until you have the thickness you want. Season with salt and pepper. Add the coriander a minute or so before serving.
I have mentioned green pea soup on this blog before, but that was a while ago now and I think it is time for a gentle reminder. The reason for this is, that I think this is one of the nicest soups around and probably the only one I find light enough to enjoy during the summer. Hot, that is. I don’t really do cold soups.
I live for the weekends, although I like doing things during the week as well, I adore weekends when you have time to prepare and eat a meal with plenty of time on your hands. That’s why I usually make three courses at the weekends, or at least two. And when one is busy at the weekend, then this works just as well on a Thursday.
I suggested to Christopher that we would have a nice bottle of wine with dinner, and then I made the one course weekday meal I had planned into a three course meal quite easily. The peas in the freezer made this lovely soup, the main course was the aubergine dish I had already planned (it needs some modifications until it gets posted on here) together with garlic bread. And some cheese and crackers left over from the weekend was our dessert. Easy peasy and incredibly fulfilling.
The cheese board consisted of, from the top: Rebluchon (creamy, French, cow’s milk); a lovely French blue cheese that I have forgotten the name of; Brie de Meaux (French, cow’s milk) and last but not least Ossau Iraty (Basque region, France, ewe’s milk, hard). My must-have crackers with cheese are both British; Carr’s water biscuits and Bath Olivers (the two types to the left in the bread basket).
Greenn pea soup, serves 2
300 g frozen petit pois
water to cover
a dash of concentrated vegetable or chicken stock
100 ml cream
2 dashes (3 tbsp approx) dry white wine
Place the frozen peas in a sauce pan, just about cover with water. Bring to the boil and let it boil for a minute or two. Drain but keep the water. Blitz the peas with about two ladles of the water until you have a thick soup. Pour it back into the pan, add cream, wine and stock and bring to the boil again. Add more liquid if the soup is too thick. Season. Pour into bowls and decorate them with whirls of cream and truffle oil.
We had fresh prawns for dinner on Friday. With salad, boiled eggs, mayonnaise and garlic bread. Yum! And when you peel prawns yourself you are left with the stinking shells. Either you need to take them out to the wheely bin straight away or put them in a ziplock bag in the fridge and make stock on them the next day. I did the latter.
And when the stock is ready (it only takes 20 mins) it is not a far cry from a delicious prawn soup.
Prawn soup, serves 2
Shells after 350 g of prawns with shell
2 carrots
5 cm leek
1 piece of celeriac
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tbsp tomato purée
100 ml white wine
water
some more tomato purée
200 ml cream
dill
salt, white pepper
12 peeled prawns
Heat up a large pan, add oliveoil, fennel seeds and the vegetables. After a few minutes, add the prawn shells and stir around until they are almost white. Add the tomato purée. Add the wine and cover with water. Put on the lid and bring to tapidly to the boil. Boil on medium heat for 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Put the stock through a sieve into a clean pan. Reduce until half is left. Taste and reduce some more if it is weak. Add tomato purée, salt, white pepper, dried or fredhly chopped fill and boil for another few minutes. Lower the temperature and add cream, let it thicken for a while. Put the prawns in the soup bowls and pour the hot soup over them. Serve immediately. I found the taste of this soup quite summery, and it works in nice weather too as long as you serve a glass of chilled dry white wine alongside it.
I like sweet potatoes in any shape or form, but it is a vegetable I have only got to know the last couple of years. It is very easy to cook with sweet potatoes because they cook through so quickly and have so much flavour in themselves.
A warming dish is this soup with cumin, coconut milk and chilli. I made some cheese straws from left over puff pastry and grated cheese, and they are really nice too.
Sweet potato soup with coconut milk and cumin, serves 4
4 sweet potatoes
a dash of concentrated vegetable stock
water
400 ml coconut milk
3 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp chilli flakes
Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into even pieces. Place in a pan and just cover with water. Add a splash of stock and bring to the boil. Cook until soft, about 10-15 minutes. Drain the sweet potatoes but keep the water. Purée the vegetables and add the coconut milk to the pan. Bring to the boil, season with cumin, chilli, salt and pepper. Add some water if the soup is to thick. Serve with perhaps a dollop of creme fraiche and chopped coriander.
Cheese straws, serves 2
ca 20 cm x 10 cm puff pastry
100 ml grated mature cheddar
Cut the pastry into inch-thick straws and sprinkle cheese on them. Place in 200C oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the straws are a golden brown. Serve with soup or with drinks.
I’m trying to get better at not wasting food. I am actually pretty good, but there is always room for improvement.
So I saved the lobster shells from NYE to make stock wihich I then reduced and froze as ice cubes. I also made stock from the wild ducks, which I reduced even more and froze as well, but I was exceedingly clumsy and dropped the tray and lost half of the stock. The same evening I also broke a china bowl. 😦
Lobster stock
the shell from two lobsters
1 large carrot
1/3 fennel
1 onion
some peppercorns
1 tbsp tomato paste
a few sprigs of parsley
1 garlic clove
olive oil
Rinse the shells thoroughly. Cut into smaller pieces. Fry with the vegetables in olive oil to get more flavours out. Cover with water. Add the spices, herbs and tomato paste. Bring to a boil and continue to cook until about half the water remains. Strain and pour back into the pan. Add some salt and reduce until you have the concentration you would like. Leave to cool. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Put the cubes into a freezer bag and keep in the freezer.
Since we ate the lovely beetroot soup at the Wolsley has someone been nagging me to cook beetroot soup. I had never cooked it before but am always keen to try something new in the kitchen. I used this Swedish recipe for inspiration but didn’t follow it eaxtly… You know me. 🙂
The combination of thyme and beetroots was lovely, and nothing I would think of myself, but I chose to top my soup with parmesan shavings instead of pecorino, because that was what I had at hand. Christopher had the day off when I was to cook this and I asked him to cook the beetroots before hand as it can take quite a long time. I had asked him to cook them with the skin on, but he only heard half the sentence and had peeled them and everything. Really great, as that is what I dread with beetroots; getting stains everywhere. I think the soup would have tasted even more if the beets were cooked with the skin on, but this was delicious anyway. A good first atempt!
Beetroot soup with thyme, serves 2
500 g beetroots
500 ml vegetable stock
50 ml cream
dried (or fresh) thyme
salt and pepper
lemon oil
to serve: parmesan shavings
Peel the beetroots and cook them in water until soft. Divide into smaller pieces and cook in vegetable stock for 30 minutes. Add cream and blend the soup until smooth. Season to taste with thyme, salt, pepper and lemon oil. To serve, sprinkle on some parmesan shavings.
I really like soup, and ideally I’d like to eat soup at least twice a week. But because I have some issues with my stomach and too much fiber in the food, I haven’t had as much soup as one should during the autumn. At the moment it is trial and error to see where my level for eating fibre is. I always thought that beans were too fibery and would make you bloated, but I don’t think that is true. I read somewhere that all beans apart from green beans contains more soluble fibers than insoluble fiber, and therefore gave this soup a go. So far so good, and it was really tasty and filling.
Freshly made garlic croutons!
The recipe is from the olive oil company Zeta, and I did follow it for once. 🙂 It needs a lot of salt and pepper towards the end, but it was really nice. Not really four portions though…
Tuscan bean soup, serves 2
homemade croutons (fry bread cubes in olive oil and garic and some salt until crisp)
1 red onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 cans of cannellini beans (and the water they are in)
350 ml chicken stock (or water + stock cube)
15 fresh sage leaves
1 tsp tomato paste
Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil without browning. Add the sage and cook for another minute or so. Add the beans, stock and tomato paste. Bring to boil and cook for a few minutes. Mix the soup smooth with a stick blender. Add plenty of salt and white pepper. Serve with the croutons.
My mother used to (and still does) distinguish weekday food from weekend food. On weeknights we used to have mostly peasant food like meatballs, sausages and mash, soups etc and on the weekends she would go all out with fillet of beef, seafood etc.
Fry the potatoes......until they're done.
I take after her, I always make the weekends something extra, I definitely spend more money on meat for the weekends, but my weekday food can sometimes be quite different from my parents’. I use more pasta and make different kind of soups, whereas my dad would be happy with boiled potatoes five days a week. I need to mix it up a little and try new things. But sometimes I go back to the peasant food. Last week I made this stewed spinach served with lots of fried things; diced potatoes, eggs and frankfurters (it works with bacon too).
Nice and green!
I have actually never made this before, or asked my mother for a recipe, but I was really happy that it tasted like my mother’s version. Yum!
Stewed spinach, fried potatoes, eggs and frankfurters, serves 2
4 large potatoes
butter
olive oil
salt
white pepper
sugar
flour
milk
nutmeg
frozen chopped spinach
eggs
frankfurters
Peel the potatoes and cut into small dices. Fry in plenty of butter and oilve oil on medium heat until they’re done. Season with salt, white pepper and 2 pinches of sugar (very important and the key to perfect fried potatoes). Make a roux of butter and flour, add milk (warm milk makes it quicker), stir the whole time and let it thicken. Season with nutmeg, salt and white pepper. Add as much frozen chopped spinach as you think is good (I used about 400 g for 750 ml milk). Let the spinach heat up. Fry eggs and frankfurters and serve with the potatoes and spinach-bechamel.
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.
It felt like winter yesterday evening. Cold wind and after a short short walk I was freezing. So when I finally got in I put on sheepskin slippers and made a warming soup. As much as I hate being cold I love when you finally get into your warm home and get the body temperature up again by making and eating something warming. That’s what autumnal food is all about, and this soup is a pretty good example of this.
Christopher was very pleased with the result as I didn’t use any cream in this soup (which I often do in soups) but this one doesn’t need it, and I’m not sure if butternut squash and cream is a great combo. The soup was slightly hotter from the chilli than I expected, so a dollop of creme fraiche was nice with it. I also made some parmesan sticks from leftover puff pastry and some quesadillas with spicy Hungarian salami.
Quite out of focus, but you get the idea...
Buttnernut squash soup with chilli, serves 2
1/2 butternut squash (I know I should have weighed it, but was way to hungry, mine was a medium-sized one)
1 medium potato
olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 clove of garlic, grated
1 pinch of salt
water
a splash of concentrated vegetable stock
1-2 tsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp chilli sauce (a mild sweet one)
1 tsp ground cumin
adjust with more salt and stock
Take the pits out of the squash with a spoon and cut the skin off. Cut the squash into 1 inch cubes. Peel the potato and cut it into equally sized cubes. Heat up some olive oil in a large pan and add the cumin and garlic and then the squash and potatoes. Let it soak up the flavours for a few minutes without browning, then add boiling water (or cold, but boiling water is quicker) to cover, add a splash of stock or a piece of a stock cube and bring to a boil. The squash cooks soft in a few minutes, but wait until the potato is soft too. Then remove the vegetables from the saucepan and mix them, adding a bit of the cooking water until you have the thickness you like. Pour the rest of the cooking water out of the pan and pour in the mixed soup. Bring to a boil and add the chilli, more cumin, some salt and maybe some more stock, all after your own taste. Serve with maybe a dollop pf creme fraiche to take the edge off the chilli, some nice bread or quesadillas.
Parmesan sticks
Cut puff pastry into 10 cm long and 1 cm wide strips and place on a baking tray. Grate over plenty of parmesan and bake for 8-10 minutes in 200 C.
Quesadillas
Spread salsa on two soft tortillas, sprinkle grated cheese over one of them, add some salami, a little more cheese and put the other tortilla on top. Fry the tortillas in a dry skillet until they’re brown on both sides and the cheese has melted. Cut into wedges and eat straight away. These are great with soups or with guacemole as a snack.
I made this British classic for the first time last week, and fell in love, if that is possible with a soup.
Scandelights 