soup

spinachy mac and cheese soup

by Eva on February 12, 2013

Some people are super heroes and save the world on a daily basis. You can find their stories in comics, books and movies, no big deal. Some people impress us with their skills like steering a greyhound bus with their nose while juggling with fire torches, underwhelming! Here is the thing: my mum makes a killer spinach soup which impressed a crowed of hungry kids repeatable. How appealing does spinach soup sound to children on a playground? Would you run home as if dinner would be promising like French fries with bottomless ice cream? I bet not at all! But my mum had been cooking this soup and you could be sure we had guests for dinner. There had been copycats without success. Other mothers put their versions of this soup on the table and it was obvious, no one nailed this soup like my mum. She made us eat spinach without even hiding it, we would ignore it. The secret lies in the creamy soup but of cause the big hit is the cheese. The trick is to add the cheese and stir as less as possible to keep a net of melted cheese. Every time we dug in long strings of cheese connected our spoon with the bowl, sometimes they were rope bridges, sometimes we tried to challenge each other whose cheese string was the longest and sometimes it was an astronaut’s connection with his space ship and under no circumstances it was allowed to cut it off.

Well a couple of years later, I stopped playing with my food and don’t fight the spider and his cheese net anymore but still love a hot bowl of spinach soup. I added a truck load of elbow macaroni for this year contribution for 30 Days, 30 Ways with macaroni and cheese, brought to you by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

spinachy mac and cheese soup

ingredients

250 g / 8 3/4 oz. elbow macaroni
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter
8 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
560 g / 20 oz. frozen chopped spinach (2 packages frozen spinach or 2 bunches fresh spinach leaves)
330 g / 11 2/3 oz. Gouda cheese, cut roughly or grate
sea salt and freshly ground nutmeg to taste

instructions

Cook elbow macaroni according to package directions.
Meanwhile heat broth in your microwave oven or in a saucepan on your stove.
Heat butter in your soup pot until melted. Add flour and stir until combined. Add hot broth and whisk until smooth, bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and let simmer for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly..
Add spinach and cook 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
Add elbow macaroni and stir. Season with salt and nutmeg to taste. Add cheese, stir just a little. The best thing about this soup are the gooey stings of melted cheese, so don’t over stir this soup, the cheese shouldn’t melt completely, just soften.

some notes

If you use fresh spinach: wash, pat dry and chop into fine shreds. Frozen spinach can be added still frozen, increase the cooking time until melted.

This soup is best eaten fresh, reheated not so much…

Number of servings (yield): 6

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yellow split pea and sweet potato soup

by Eva on May 15, 2012

The summer in southwest USA can be brutal, hot and humid, I had been told. It’s going to be my first summer down here and I have to admit, saying I am not a fan of this kind of weather is high understated. That’s not me complaining, not at all, since my move in December it had been wonderful. But actually I am a fan of cozy, rainy days with warming soup. I suspect the days I can feast upon hot soup without sitting in the refrigerator, are counted and I enjoyed this soup even more as last one of these season.

Consider this soup as a plain canvas, actually not so plain. It already comes with nice flavors but the fun part is, you cook a big pot of healthy soup and vary with the toppings and you have a nice soup for several days or feed a crowd once.

yellow split pea and sweet potato soup

You don’t have to soak yellow split peas but my belly considers this is better to digestive and it shortens the cooking time.

ingredients:

200 g / 1 cup yellow split peas, soaked overnight

700 g / 25 oz. sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly sliced (about 4 3/4 cups)

1.5 liter / 6 cups (or more) water or broth

salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

instructions:

Rinse yellow split peas, add to a large pot with sweet potatoes and water. Bring to boil over medium high heat, reduce to medium heat and let simmer for 30 minutes or until soft. Puree with a hand blender, you might need more water. Add salt and pepper to taste.

toppings:

There are no limits, this is just one of many ideas. Any kind of vegetable with brown butter or olive oil and your favorite spice mixture would be divine.

enough for 2-3 servings

1 bell pepper, color doesn’t matter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 tsp pul biber (Turkish dried red pepper flakes)

Cut pepper in half, remove seeds, membrane and stem end and slice pepper in bite-size pieces.

Heat your pan over medium high heat, add the oil and butter and bell pepper pieces (make sure they are dry or oil will splatter). Fry until you got some brown spots, stirring occasionally. Add pul biber and continue cooking for 1 minutes.

Fill soup into bowls and top with bell pepper pieces and drizzle with the spiced oil from the pan.

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borscht

by Eva on January 19, 2012

My mum makes this soup several times in the cold and very cold time of the year and especially every Christmas eve. I planned to continue this tradition, but last Christmas I rather thought about pulling out my shorts, than heating me up from the inside. So I waited patiently for colder weather.

Don’t think of this kind of borscht soup in the regular way, it is not something you would scoop into your mouth, it doesn’t come in a soup plate and it’s not a meal. This soup comes in a cup, feel free to slurp if you are allowed to do so… It will warm your belly and it is a great company for your sandwich.

Snuggle in your blanket, put your feed up and sip on a cup of hot borscht, this is how I picture you enjoying this soup. Oh and some cheese straws or toasted bread or… Sounds great to me.

The weather forecast promised some cold days, so I asked my mum for the recipe and as always I got a rough list of ingredients and some suggestions and variations. We already played this game several times, if it comes to old family recipes non of my relatives seams to have something written or even notes.

This recipe is very close to what I remember it should taste. Lucky me paying so much attention while my mum had been cooking.

Sorry for the imprecise amount of ingredients for the seasoning but its on you to season this soup how you like it or how much pepper you can handle. This soup should taste tart and peppery but shouldn’t be overwhelming that you still got a taste of the good broth and the beetroots. I got some kinds of vinegar listed below, the kind you choose will also influence the taste.
If you like to make a vegetarian borscht, use vegetable stock and add a few dried mushroom while cooking.
I didn’t felt well to discard the grated beetroots but after I cooked the heck out of them, they didn’t even looked appealing. Any suggestions besides compost pile?

borscht

4 beetroots
2 liter/ quarts good quality beef broth
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 bay leaf (optional)

to taste:
2 tablespoons vinegar, many kinds will do or a mix of them: white vinegar, cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, you get the idea

sugar (1 teaspoon at least)
lots of freshly ground black pepper
salt
soy sauce or maggi seasoning (my mum’s suggestion)
some dill or parsley
a gulp of olive oil
Peel the garlic gloves and smash them with the blade of your knife.
Peel the beetroots and grate them with a box grater or food processor. Put the grated beetroots, garlic cloves, bay leaf (if using) and the broth into a cooking pot and cover. Bring to a broil over medium heat and then lower the temperature and let simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Pour everything through a colander. Discard the grated beetroots and the garlic. Pour the soup back into the pot and season to taste. Approach the seasoning until it tastes to your liking.
Wrap your cold fingers around your mug and let the soup warm you from the inside.

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chickpea- spinach soup and egg drop

by Eva on October 23, 2010

It is getting quite in our house in the Midwest. The last days were days of saying good bye, Mr. F is on a trip until Friday and my sisters left yesterday toward home. Usually I would say: ‘I will miss you girls’ but lucky me is going to visit my family and friends in Germany in three weeks. I am looking forward to this and it will be the last time this year and the first time without them all on Christmas. That is why I have to start Christmas shopping – actually right now.

Today I also said good bye to my friend Andrea. She had been in Kansas City for about 1.5 years and used to live in Vienna, Austria. But before she will (maybe) moving back home, she will spend some more month in Brazil. Pretty exciting, isn’t it? I wish you a lot of fun down there. Take care! And I hope to see you soon again.

The last two weeks with my sisters made me eat a lot of fast food. They had to try some new restaurants and also repeat each they already knew. Usually not my type of everyday food but a few of them even offer whole wheat buns and we had much fun messing around with sauces. I liked what I read in a chick-fil-A restaurant: “Food is essential to life; therefore, make it good.” (S. Truett Cathy). That was on my mind as I was craving for something healthy and searching all over for a recipe. This soup is a mix of a few recipes I found in my cookbooks. Every time I found an ingredient, which I got right now at home, I wrote it down and came out with a kind of Indian style dish. And yes, you can call me smart that I soaked the garbanzo beans a night ahead and cooked them in my small slow cooker for several hours while I brought my sisters to the airport.

Be careful with the tumeric, it is bitter and used to color curry and it is doing a great job. I had some yellow spots all over my left hand for a day, how did this happen?
The spinach made this soup look greenish and not very beautiful but green is healthy isn’t it? The flavor is really good and it is also great the next day and don’t miss the egg drop I made today. It didn’t made the soup pretty but it is a nice addition. My mum use to make this from time to time in her delicious chicken soup. Because I am home alone I have to eat this soup also tomorrow and the day after that and still later this week…

chickpea – spinach soup

serves 4-6
Serve with naan bread and sour cream, egg drop or a poached egg

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 medium chopped onion
3 chopped garlic cloves
1 teaspoon ground turmeric or curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon smoked paprika powder
1 small cinnamon stick or 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup red or brown lentils
1,5 l / 6 cups vegetable broth
1 cup cooked or canned chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans)
1 can black beans
1 piece thumb size fresh ginger
6 oz. / 170 g fresh baby spinach

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a midsize cooking pot and add the onion. Sauté for 3 minutes before you add the garlic, turmeric, cumin and paprika, stir constantly. You don’t want to brown this too much, just 2 minutes.
Put the lentils in a colander and rinse, look for little stones.
Pour in the broth, the lentils and the cinnamon stick, cover the pot and let cook for 15 – 20 minutes just until the lentils are tender. Don’t forget to check if you need to add more water every few minutes and stir occasionally.
Meanwhile peel and grate the ginger. Rinse the canned black beans. Wash, drain and chop the spinach roughly.

Remove the cinnamon stick from the soup and add the beans, spinach and ginger. Let simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and add salt if needed.

egg drop

enough for the whole soup

2 eggs
3 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of nutmeg

Put everything in a small bowl or a coffee mug, mix with a wire whisk until there are no lumps and you get a smooth paste. Make sure the soup is cooking when you let the egg drop rinse in a thin steady stream. Stir well and remove from the stove to prevent overcooking that would make the soup slushy.

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spinachy mac and cheese soup