i handle my breakfast needs in ready to go portions now

just like they suggestes the other day at apartment therapy.
it is a hearty, savoury oatmeal soup, by the way.

yes, soup

i am guessing cauliflower

since i always have leftovers when i make a big pot of soup it is not so unusual for me to freeze the odd batch or two. every time. my little ice box is brimful with frozen blocks of soup! and i rarely ever label the frozen jars. this makes it kind of fun to guess what i am having for dinner when i thaw a container with a generic liquid and hardly any signs of ingredients.

recently i was kind of hoping for a leeky potato soup and it turned out to be cauliflower and dill.

not so bad either!

for the soul

so, what do you do when this leek you've had in the fridge for a while seems to go the way of all earthly things? you suddenly are inspired to post to your foodblog again!



leek soup
wash, peel and cut three small potatoes into cubes. cut one leek into rounds. fry the potatoes in vegetable oil over medium heat. you only need to do this for a couple of minutes before adding the leek. put a lid on the pot and sauté the vegetables gently for a few more minutes [if you want to add any herbs, you can do it at that point. parsley, tarragon, whatever. chop a good hand full and throw it in as well! unfortunately the herbs on my balcony did not want to stay alive when i moved them inside to my windowsill ...] add one liter of vegetable stock and bring to a boil. reduce the heat and let the soup simmer until the vegetables are soft. arrange on a plate with a dash of pepper and nutmeg. since i had to get rid of some very frumpy rye bread i decided to toast some slices, break them up and make croutons.

now, this is really heart-warming ...

brewing cough medicine

i might not be the only person having a cold these days and while i managed to steer clear of nasty cough-germs for a couple of years (i never cough!) it finally hit me last week. phew, i even have a mild fever!! and that's really nasty, let me tell you!

it's a good thing i consider myself a little witch and i can brew myself all kinds of remedies!

;)

ah, not really.

but i always rely on household remedies if an illness is somewhat harmless ... this one is, i feel a little weak, i want to stay in bed all day - and i do!! the coughing is just bugging the hell out of me so i need to drench myself in vitamins despite my current state of appetitelessness (is that even an english word?)

so before i officially freak out of cabin fever i pull myself together and turn on the stove. a sick girl needs to eat, even if she's not that hungry!


peel and cut one large carrot (150 g), one large parsnip (130 g), one small onion (55 g), one green bell pepper (90 g), one yellow bell pepper (117 g). put the veggies on a baking tray, sprinkle with a little olive oil and fresh pepper and roast on 180°C until tender.



(i thought i could use the cabbage pictured above too, but i actually didn't. too bad i can't go back in time to rearrange the pic! even when i am sick i am a controllfreak / perfectionist ...)


now grab your immersion blender and mash everything up real nice! the roasted veggies need a little more liquid, so i sprinkled them with a stock cube and poured over 250 ml of hot water. i also added 125 ml of rama cremefine.


looks like i am living on the edge with all the additional cream! i even drizzled a little over the soup when i decorated the plate ... use some more pepper to season (it'll also clear your sinus!)


whoa, i feel better already! watch out nasty germs, tons of vitamins coming your way!

to poach or not to poach, that is the question

the temperatures have dropped significantly around here and we are going from cool ice cream straight to heart warming soup. global warming is really springing surprises, weather-wise.


when i saw the recipe of the week in one of my food newsletters i was intrigued.
they want me to poach an egg!
i've never done that, how on earth do i do that?

the recipe itself is rather simple: a few ingredients and a stock cube, that does not sound to challenging, right? lacking coriander i opted for parsley and since i was out of garlic i obviously did not add garlic either.

i diced a slice of bread and put it in a soup dish. i chopped a handfull of parsley and added it with a drizzle of vegetable oil to the dish as well. i also added ground pepper, one of my favorite seasonings lately ... i let the mixture rest while i was bringing 300 ml of vegetable stock to a boil.

while all that is doable and does not require any special skills whatsoever, my attempt to poach an egg was ... a mess! look at this, it really is a mess!!

tell me: are there any tricks to poaching this little squishy bastard?? as far as i know you are supposed to wrap the eggwhite around the yolk and the water should be brought to a boil beforehand and not boil anymore when you throw in the egg. it looks like i did not wrap the eggwhite around quickly enough ... but other than that i don't know that went wrong! any suggestions on why about half of my eggwhite was bustling about?


though it looked rather odd i can assure you, it tasted amazing!

yeah, i am done

how lame is this?

recipe # 10: bean soup

one small onion
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
75 g (5 tablespoons) of white beans (from a can)
150 ml water
parsley
salt

1. over medium heat fry the diced onion in one tbsp of vegetable oil
2. add the beans and stir for a while
3. add the water and bring to a boil
4. cut the parsley and add to the soup
5. season to taste

that's weird - i see an inflationary trend, soup-wise. the more i think about soup the less i crave soup. my recipes are becoming more and more plain though i want them to be more unusual and unique.

it sucks if you promise to make a different soup every day during lent and you are already out of ideas and out of motivation - only 10 days down, 30 more to go. i have never been good at resolutions, so i hardly ever make some. why on earth did i think i could stick to my vow this time?

i might be done with the soup thing. it bores me.

another quickie

it is not really the french onion soup, it looks like i just have the time for fast food soups these days ... but i keep my fingers crossed for a very high profile soup tomorrow ...

recipe # 9: onion soup

1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 tbsp oil
300 ml of vegetable stock
1 tbsp flour
one slice of bread

1. brown the onions in one tbsp of oil
2. sprinkle over the flour and stir well
3. pour in the vegetable stock and bring to a boil
4. toast a slice of bread and cut into 4 pieces
5. pour the soup in a dish and arrange the toasted bread on top

red plate day

don't you think all the green in my soup dish is getting boring?


it bores me a little, so i thought the only thing green added to today's soup will be the fresh herbs and as a contrasting colour for the soup itself i'd totally go for RED. instead of chopping the tomatoes in my farm box, i thought i'd make a much quicker soup if i finally used up those canned peeled tomatoes in my kitchen cupboard.

recipe # 8: very fast tomato soup

1 can of peeled tomatoes (250 g)
1 tbsp oil
3 cloves of garlic
fresh herbs (i used oregano and thyme)
1 tbsp crème fraîche (i take the lean rama cremefine)
salt, pepper

1. give the peeled tomatoes a quick blizz with the hand-held blender to hackle them
2. in a pot, quickly fry minced garlic and the herbs in one tbsp of oil
3. pour in the blizzed tomatoes and bring to a boil
4. whisk in one tbsp of crème fraîche
5. season to taste
   
6. you can strain the soup if you want, but i actually like it better if it's not too smooth

zucchini or courgette?

recipe # 7: seethed zucchini soup

1 medium size zucchini (250 g)
300 ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp vegetable oil
3 cloves of garlic
mint

1. chop the garlic and sautée it with the herbs (i used mint) in one tbsp of vegetable oil
2. clean and roughly grate the zucchinis
   
   
   
3. add to the pot and fry a little longer
4. add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil
5. cook the soup for about half an hour. the zucchini will start to dissolve and there is no need to purée it. i like my soup chunkier, but feel free to whip out your hand-held blender! you can even add cream or crème fraîche if you like!

this is fast food

i am cheating, you say? how dare you!!

allright, allright.

the soup of the day really is a bit of a compromise. i was so busy and i stuffed my face with gebäck all day, no warm meal whatsover - unwilling to skip my daily soup i decided i'll give you an insight into austrian fast food (is there even such a thing?).

do you have leftover pancakes? unsweetened? yes? then whip out a bouillon cube, cut your pancakes into thin stripes and throw them in the boiling broth. there you have it:

recipe # 6: frittatensuppe

i always save leftovers of palatschinken (thin and delicate austrian version of pancakes) cut them in thin stripes and stick them in the freezer. all i have to do if i fancy frittatensuppe is to throw them in the boiling water and add a bouillon cube.

in fact, the soup even tastes better if your pancakes are one or two days old. it even works if you forget to store your palatschinken in an airtight container and they end up completely dry the next day.

frittatensuppe might be the most popular soup here in austria, you can get it in every wirtshaus and it is a vital element of a traditional sunday lunch. of course we make it fresh and from scratch then. but the fast food version for my hungry self is pretty darn good too!

i'll make you a propper soup again tomorrow :)

sauer macht lustig

the old german saying sauer macht lustig literally translates into sour makes happy. that does not make much sense in english, right? it does not really make sense in german either, and i never understood why. in german we rarely distinguish between sour and acidic, so this even contributes to my confusion ...

apparently this weird saying where nobody really knows what it means derives from "sauer macht appetit" ... and if i may translate this loosely as "if you eat acidic food you will beg for more!"

yes, i totally second that!

there'd be enough for two if you follow my recipe below ... but i ate it all up myself. bring me the pot, i even want to lick every little rest out of there! and i am not even particularly hungry today.

so sour / acidic does indeed make you happy!
that dish certainly made my day :D

recipe # 5: sauerkraut roux soup (adapted from this recipe)

200 g sauerkraut
0,5 liter vegetable stock
150 g potatoes (4 really small ones)
1 bayleaf
1 juniper berry
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
1 small onion
1 tbsp of butter
1 tbsp of flour

1. put the vegetable stock, the peeled and diced potatoes, the bayleaf and the juniper berry in a pot and cook until the potatoes are tender
2. in the meantime heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pan and fry the diced onion (if you want to add meat or saussage, you can do that here ...)
3. cut the sauerkraut a little if necessary and add it to the potatoes in the vegetable stock as soon as the potatoes are tender
4. add the fried onions as well and take out the bayleaf and the juniper berry - if you manage to find it :D
   
5. make a roux in the pan where you just fried your onion by melting one tablespoon of butter and sprinkle in one tablespoon of flour. you will get out all those delicious flavours if you use the pan from before
   
6. add the roux to the sauerkraut soup and bring to a boil
   
   
   
7. if you like your soup really sauerkrauty, save some of the juices from the krautpackage and season the finished soup with it - i like mine only mildly acidic, so i don't do that
   

it's not easy being green ...

i have never been too fond of peas. whenever they are on my plate i push them aside. it is not so much the taste, i actually like that. it is the shape that i don't like. that may sound weird, but i just can't stand to put a spoon full of peas in my mouth and i end up chewing half an hour on the membrane ... silly, i know. but i just don't like that.

somehow it seems to make sense to make a soup out of peas though ... i totally like this soup and it is virtually the only way that i allow peas in my house :)

recipe # 4: pea soup and wiener würstchen
1 onion
1 tbsp vegetable oil
300 ml vegetable stock
250 g drained peas (one can)
200 g crème fraîche (i take the lean rama cremefine)
one or two wiener saussages (hot dog saussages will definitely work too)

1. sautée the onion in one tablespoon of olive oil
2. add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil
3. throw in the drained peas and cook for about 1o minutes
4. mix as smooth as possible with a hand-held blender
   
5. fold in the crème fraîche / rama cremefine
6. you could eat it like that, but in my oppinion the soup tastes better if you remove the floating bits of the peas by pouring it through a sieve
7. for an extra something cut up a wiener saussage and cook it in the strained soup for about 5 minutes

here in austria we actually call the wiener frankfurter würstel

my favorite colour

... is yellow!

so why not have a tasty yellow soup? allright, allright, you convinced me.
so curry, coconut milk and chickpeas it is!

recipe # 3: curry + coconut milk + chickpeas - soup

1 tbsp vegetable oil
leek
250 ml coconut milk
150 ml water
150 g chickpeas
curry powder
salt
pepper

1. soak the chickpeas in water overnight
   
2. heat one tablespoon of vegetable oil and saute the finely chopped leek
3. add one tablespoon of curry powder and keep stirring
4. add the water
   
5. add the coconut milk and bring to a boil
6. throw in the chickpeas and reduce the heat
   
7. let simmer until the chickpeas are tender (i guess that took about 45 minutes)
   

i should try a soup with meat one of these days

yes, gluten-free

taking an interest in my nutrition and being more aware of what i stuff in my mouth has one neat side effect: i now realise how diverse my diet has become over the past few month. i started to enjoy vegan and gluten-free food without even knowing it. i hold that accountable for a general improvement of my wellbeing. while i might not have the stamina to become a full-blown vegan, it is always delicious to try out new cooking methods off the beaten track (my beaten track, that is). i am such a huge fan of the gluten-free girl, by the way!

i started my food blog with buckwheat back in 2005. i ate it for the first time then and i fell in love with it right away. i even made a buckwheat pic my signature shot of my food-ography photoset over at flickr, and i never felt the need to change it, because i still think buckwheat is so incredibly delicious and versatile.

recipe # 2: clear buckwheat soup with veggies

3 tbsp buckwheat
1 tbsp vegetable oil
onion
leek
one carrot
500 ml water
salt
pepper
bay leaf

1. dice the onion and cut the vegetables
2. in a pot, heat the oil and sautée the onions
3. stir in the buckwheat and add the water (vegetable stock should taste fine too)
   
4. bring to a boil
5. reduce heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes (i like my buckwheat firm to the bite, if you like it softer, just increase the cooking time here)
   
6. take out the bay leaf
7. add the rest of the vegetables and let simmer for another 10 minutes
8. when the vegetables are done season to taste and serve
   

same soup, different year?

i am not really a religious person, but being raised roman-catholic, ash wednesday marks the beginning of lent and i have always followed the rule to not eat meat on that day (plus i don't eat meat on good friday). a meat-less diet is not a sacrifice for me and so i decided to not smoke today. i am not a confirmed smoker, but damn, it hurts to not have my cigarette with my coffee. but you are right, i definitely should skip this nasty habit for good. i smoked my first cigarette when i was 25 - seriously: how stupid do you have to be to make it through your teenage years without a single drag and start in your late 20ies? i have been an occasional smoker for the first few years only smoking on weekends, but somehow i ended up on a pack every day. i quit every once in a while (haven't smoked for 4 month in 2005), but somehow i don't seem to be able to stop at the moment ... i desperately need a challenge to distract me from the nicotine ...

last year i challenged myself during the 40 days of lent to cook a different soup every day. yeah, i failed with flying colours ...

soups have always been a favorite of mine, and while i often cook soups somehow i rarely blog about them. so i will renew my soup vow this year and once again try to cook a different soup every day during lent. i tried some rather interesting recipes last year and most of them really where keepers.

do i think that i am up to the challenge this year?
will i be able to really come up with 40 blog posts of soups?
i don't know yet.
we'll see.
i certainly will try harder this year.

recipe # 1: savoy cabbage and anchovy soup

about 300 g savoy cabbage (one small cabbage)
1 small onion
500 ml water (take vegetable stock if you like)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 table spoons of crème fraîche (i prefer lean rama cremefine)
salt
pepper
nutmeg
1 tbsp cress
a few anchovis

1. cut a savoy cabbage in quarters and remove the stalk
   
2. roughly cut into fairly large stripes (about 3-4 cm)
   
   
   clean them if necessary (rinsing should be fine)
   
3. dice the onion
4. in a pot, heat the oil and stew the onion and the cabbage for a little while
5. chop up two or three anchovis and add them to the cabbage
   
6. remove some of the cabbage stripes for garnish and add the water
7. bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes
8. mix it all with a hand-held blender until smooth
   
9. fold in crème fraîche
10. season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg - easy on the salt, the anchovies usually are very salty!
    
11. pour in a soup bowl and garnish with cabbage stripes, cress and another anchovi if you like
    

makes about 750 ml of soup

three kinds of wonderful

i have not been cooking at all in a while.

in a desperate attempt to save the remains of two farm boxes i found a lovely surprise today ... a violet carrot! i've never seen one before and i did not even know i had some delivered this week (stupid me, i am in such a hurry these days that i don't even read the bill of delivery in my farm box).

the violet ancestor of my regular (and much loved) orange carrot is indeed very pretty, but i had no idea that there are still so many colourful versions around!


and with the yellow carrot still in my fridge from last week i figured i'd make a carrot soup. simple, quick, plain old carrot soup. but three times as delicious as usually!

1 leek
3 carrots
olive oil
0,5 l
water
salt

1. cut the leek and fry it in a tables spoon of olive oil
2. cut carrots into cubes, you can leave some dices for decoration
3. when the leek starts to brown add half a liter of water and bring to a boil
4. throw in the carrots and boil for about 10 minutes
5. fish out the dices you'll need for decoration
6. with a handblender, mash up the soup
7. season to taste (i like salt only, but you can of course use what ever herb you like)
8. ladle onto a soup plate and decorate with the colorful discs. i also decorated / seasoned the soup with pumpkin seed oil

not only very pretty, but very yummie as well!

pumpkin soup with zucchini (hokkaidokürbissuppe mit zucchini)

my busy life almost made me abandon my nice little dinnertable here on the web ... but today i am taking on the challenge of cooking another thing i have never cooked before: pumpkin! this might even be strange for some austrians as pumpkin (rather pumpkin seed oil) is a culinary speciality of one of our austrian states, styria.

i don't actually have a recipe for that one. i cut up a medium size pumpkin, i hollowed out the middle part with the seeds. i did not peel it, because you can actually cook and eat the whole thing. i stir-fried rater large chunks of the pumpkin in a little vegetable oil for a moment and later added about 1 1/2 liters of plain water. i let it simmer on medium heat for half an hour. when the chunks were soft enough i mashed the whole thing up with a hand blender. i only added some salt to season to taste. i grated about 1/3 of a zucchini and put it on the soup for garnish, but as i was tasting the soup i figured the zucchini can be mixed in as well. this gives the dish a lovely chunky note and a fine taste too. i also added some creme fin as a garnish on the plate, but if you don't plan on taking pretty pictures for you weblog you can mix in the grated zucchini and the creme during cooking. this would make perfect sense, and if i wasn't so focused on the visual part of a nice picture of my soup i would have done it myself :)

it might be a bit silly to cook an ingredient for the first time and not use a recipe whatsoever, but i wanted it to taste as pure as possible. i have been making soups of chunky vegetables before so i thought i can benefit from my experiences and handle a pumpkin the same way. it actually pays off to try things your way rather than stick to a recipe in every little detail. well, this is my cooking style (an inherited one ...) after all and while i succeed most of the time things can go terribly wrong if you are too careless. then again, i did not only inherit this style of cooking from my mum and my grandmother, i also inherited a bunch of valuable tricks that come in very very handy if you accidentally screw up a dish. i turned many mishaps in my kitchen into successful meals thanks to the valuable legacy of emergency assistance the ladies in my family passed on to me.

i don't have to be afraid of something getting burned, for example. of course i don't set out to ruin my meals but if i get carried away with other things during cooking (mostly digging around on the internet) i am safe to say that i have some neat tricks to rescue anything burned, too salty, to spicey or whatever. so while my soup was boiling away on the stove i was looking on the internet about the history and botanic classification of my organic food, because i usually like to have a little background of whatever i eat. especially if i cook something for the first time. zucchinis and pumpkins for example are actually in the same plant family (cucurbitaceae). i was pretty surprised to learn that they are considered a fruit and not a vegetable. i guess it's because we usually cook pumpkins and zucchinis in a savory way. in some germanspeaking parts of europe the expression "cucumber-pumpkin" is also common for the zucchini (i have never heard of it though). now that i look at my zucchini it suddenly resembles a pumpkin a lot ... hm, strange ...

see? i can get carried away or i can learn new things about my food durning cooking. some might consider this sloppy, i think it's freestyle and very self-confident. well, i think i am in a pretty talkative (writeative?) mood today and before i ramble on for even more paragraphes i think i should grab the ladle and eat some more of my delicious soup!

easy bread and carrot soup

my project "40 soups of lent" is a gigantic failure. i planned on making a different soup each day during lent and so far i have only made 11. oh well. maybe i manage to try out 30 new recipes for soup in passion week, who knows ...

recipe # 11: easy bread and carrot soup

1 clove of garlic
1 slice of dark bread
1 big carrot
1/3 l water
oil
salt

01 cut garlic and fry with one tablespoon of oil
02 dice dark bread and add to the pot
03 grate the carrot and add to the pot as well, stir it all well
04 add water and bring to a boil
05 place a lid on the pot and let boil for 20 minutes
06 once the soup thickens season to taste and serve quite hot

tagged with: cooking + food + recipe + soup + suppe

knoblauchcremesuppe (garlic soup)

i read a delicious entry over at tea and cookies about austrian garlic soup which inspired me a lot to make this delicious treat. so here we go. although there are probably a thousand different recipes for garlic soup i suppose my version is not that different from hers:

recipe # 10: knoblauchcremesuppe (garlic soup)

1 small onion
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 l milk
1/4 l vegetables stock
butter
3 cloves of garlic
parsley
white bread

01 chop onion and garlic and saute on low heat in butter
02 sprinkle with flour and add milk and vegetable stock
03 keep stiring and bring to a boil
04 add chopped parsley
05 make croutons of white bread and garnish soup

tagged with: cooking + food + recipe + soup + suppe