Posts Tagged ‘soup’

 

Green pea soup

Friday, May 16th, 2008

It’s spring! I love it, every minute of extra sunshine, all the flowers, the green trees.. it’s amazing. Last week we had some crazy weather with summer temperatures and not a cloud in sight. It’s been cooler for a while now but definitely lovely. The day we had this soup I had to put my jacket on when I went to work, it was sunny but the winds were cold. I knew I wanted something warming but preferably not the thick and hearty soups of winter. So green pea soup it was. Green peas are not my favourite vegetables. I dislike them immensely and would not voluntarily have them with my dinner. Except for one exception.. they’re delicious with wasabi.

Green pea soup

With a swirl of horseradish-wasabi yoghurt and a toasted bagel with cream cheese on the side this was satisfying but light.

Green pea soup: Serves 4

  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 5 dl (2 cups) vegetable stock
  • 700g (1.5 lbs) frozen green peas
  • 150 ml (0.5 cup + 2 tbsp) soy milk
  • black pepper to taste
  • 150 ml (0.5 cup + 2 tbsp) yoghurt
  • 1 tbsp minced horseradish
  • 0,5 tsp wasabi

Chop the onion finely. In a medium size soup pot sauté the onion over medium heat until translucent and soft. Add in the vegetable stock and the peas and let boil for about 7 mins. With a stick blender or in a food processor blend the soup and add in the milk. Season to taste with black pepper and reheat.

Mix the yoghurt with the horseradish and wasabi. Serve the soup with a yoghurt swirl and some nice bread.

And a link to my recipe for wasabi pea pureé. The only other tolerable way to eat peas.

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We’re women and we rock.. except for Alex who just isn’t

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Today is the international womens day and while I do appreciate it as a day for hanging out with friends and being able to nag at Alex to do things for me because of what day it is I still think it’s sick that we need this day every year to bring up issues of inequality and womanhood. It’s sick that women still get paid less for doing the same job and it’s sick that women have to work twice as hard to get the same cred men do. And don’t even get me started on rape, women’s health problems that go unnoticed because we need to just ‘go home and rest a little and take an aspirin’, how women are treated in school and sick beauty standards. Anyway, this is a food blog and I don’t want to rant much.

I celebrated being a woman today by hanging out with my sister and eating good food. We had a great time together.

Here’s Sofie in all her glory!
She has the pretties

And here’s the gang at Sofie’s house. It’s Alex, Elin (a friend of Sofies) and Sofie herself. I was taking the picture of course..
The rest of the gang at Sofies

And the food, omg the glory of the food. I bet cooking runs in the family because I’m not the only one that makes good food. We had borscht with home baked bread and hummus and some hemp seeds and tomatoes on top. It was delicious.
Borstj and homebaked bread with hempseeds, hummus and tomato

And for dessert we had raspberry cupcakes with litchi and mandarin frosting and some fruit salad. Putting litchi juice in the frosting was genius, it’s such an awesome flavour.

Litchi and mandarin frosted raspberry cupcake with fruit salad

(And it looks damn good too!)

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Quinoa soup

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

You should make this soup because:

  1. It’s one of my favourites
  2. It’s easy and cheap
  3. You can easily replace something or add something
  4. Quinoa is a complete protein (you haven’t heard that before, right? ;p )

When I made this soup end of summer I put very little chilli in it, this time I put more in, I need the heat on cold, late winter days. It’s good either way. It’s a very brothy and light soup, but with great taste and some heat that satisfies. What more can I say? It’s good it’s god it’s good it’s good!

Tastiest quinoa soup in history

Quinoa soup that rocks your boat: (Originally from a Swedish cookbook called Det vegetariska köket)

  • 2/3 cup quinoa
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion, chopped
  • 1 carrot, julienned
  • 1 leek, white part cut in half, rinsed and cut
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • ½ - 1 red chili pepper
  • 1 can (400gr/15oz) crushed tomatoes
  • 4 cups vegetable stock (or 4 cups water + 2 stock cubes)
  • salt and pepper to taste

For garnish:

  • 1/3 cup finely chopped parsley
  • 2 tbsp grated lemon peel
  • Green part of leek, finely chopped

Variations: (Add these to the soup, or use instead of something else. Don’t want carrot? Or just feel like adding somethign else to the soup? These are great.)

  • 1 big handful spinach leaves
  • 1 can white beans (rinsed and drained)
  • 1 red bell pepper, cut into small pieces

Add quinoa and water together and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes and in the meantime prepare your vegetables. Peel and chop onion and garlic. Cut leek in half lenghtwise and rinse it. Chop up. Peel and julienne the carrot. (If using bell pepper cut it into small pieces). When the quinoa has simmered for 5 minutes drain it. Pour oil into a large soup pot and add the vegetables and garlic (if using spinach in the soup, don’t add it yet). Sauté for a few minutes and then add finely chopped red chili, saute for another minute. Add quinoa, the can of crushed tomatoes, vegetable stock and let the soup simmer for about 20 minutes, until the quinoa is soft and has started opening. (If using spinach add this in just a few minutes before taking the soup of the hob and if using beans add them in 5 mins before taking it off, just enough to get them hot). Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add the garnish ingredients to a small bowl and sprinkle over the soup before you eat it.

Quinoa soup

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Vegan Jerusalem artichoke soup

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

We’re currently working on translating all the recipes here to Swedish and adding them to a separate blog with just recipes so that my fellow Swedes don’t have to do lots of crappy translating. When I started speaking English on a daily basis (that is, when Alex moved in with me) I quickly discovered I was nowhere near fluent in kitchen English ( a typical session of cooking would go ‘Alex can you hand me that.. thing. I need it for this.. thing. You know the thing? For the thing?). I’ve picked up a lot since then and now know most of the necessities of cooking English. No more lying awake at night thinking about what a colander is or trying to understanding what all those weird sounding spices were. I thought the word for whisk was whip since you used it for whipping cream. Anyway, so we’re translating things at the moment. We’re also trying to get an index together of all the recipes on here. So that’s taking quite a bit of our time at the moment.

I found a bag of organic Jerusalem artichoke tubers for almost no money at all (less than a dollar or 50 pence) and so decided to make us some delicious soup. I love this creamy sophisticated soup so much but we rarely get to eat it because Jerusalem artichokes are usually ridiculously expensive. Being on a tight budget usually doesn’t allow this kind of luxurious food. I sprinkled some store bought ‘bacon’ bits on top and served it with some nice white bread on the side.
Jerusalem artichoke soup

Jerusalem artichoke soup: Serves 2

  • 250 g (1/4 lb) Jerusalem artichoke tubers
  • 3 small potatoes
  • 1 smallish garlic clove
  • ½ tbsp oil
  • 1 dl (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) white wine / cooking wine
  • 250 ml (1 cup) water
  • 1 stock cube
  • 150 ml light cooking ‘cream’ (half and half? Mine’s 5% fat but light cream or medium would work too)
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 tsp thyme

Peel the artichoke tubers and the potatoes. Chop into smallish pieces. Mince the garlic. In a medium pot sautée the potatoes, tubers and garlic in the oil. Add wine and boil for about a a minute. Add water and stock cube and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes until everything is soft and a bit ‘mushy’. With a handheld mixer or a blender, mix the soup until smooth. Add back to the pot and add the ‘cream’. Heat. Add the thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with a nice bread and maybe some ‘bacon’ bits (they’re so good!).

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Posted in blog, gluten free, soup, vegan | 3 Comments »