Croatian Sour Soup

This was one of my favorite recent trial recipes that have have done recently. Its hearty and the broth is a really lovely consistancy.
What you will need:
2 medium potatoes
1 large onion, diced
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
2 tablespoons oil
2 cloves garlic
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
1 carrot, diced
1 parsnip, siced
2 stalks celery, chopped (you can include the green stuff on top if your stalk still has it)
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
2 Tablespoons Cider Vinegar
5 cups vegetable stock
½ cup sauerkraut
Sour cream for topping
Fresh chives for topping

Ok, I realize that looks like a lot, I promise its not!
*First you need to peel and chop the potatoes and start them boiling in some salted water. They need to be partially cooked before they are added to the soup because the other stuff doesn't need to cook for quite as long in the broth.
*As that is cooking put the oil in the bottom of the soup pan and saute the onion and the paprika until the onion starts to soften. Add the garlic and saute a little bit more. This should only take about 5 minutes.
*Add the fennel, bay leaf, carrot, parsnip, and celery and continue to saute them, making sure that everything is coated in the oil and that the vegies have a good start on cooking. Stir every once in a while but not too much. This should take about five minutes.
*Sift the flour onto the cooking vegies. Mixing it in now prevents lumps! Stir it in well and let it simmer a little bit so the flour can soak up the liquid and the oil that is in the pan.
*Add the salt, pepper, vinegar, and vegetable stock and get it up to a simmer.
*Add the potatoes in to cook the last little bit (about 10 minutes) with the other ingredients.
*Stir in the sauerkraut and it is ready to serve.
This is really good with some rye bread (the stuff here doesn't have caraway seeds in it which I don't like) or any of the heavier breads out there. The sour cream and chives are just dolloped and sprinkled on top when the soup is served!

Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon!

So I have been spending most of the last month cooking some tasty, tasty food while trying to get to know Helsinki (mostly from the window of the apartment). I’ve been posting pictures of what I have been up to a Facebook group page and a few of the folks have asked for recipes and been interested in what it was exactly that I have been cooking so I offered to start a blog where people could better get to know what I am cooking and what I have been doing. Plus that way I am not taking over the group with yummy images! Ok to start with this is going to be mostly veggie food! Often the meals that I make would be simple to add meat to or to add a meat dish on the side to go with it, but at least for now most of the foods I am making are vegetarian.

Tonights meal was a tasty lentil soup with lemon and spinach in it. Its pretty simple to make and doesn’t require a lot of complicated steps or huge amounts of attention to be paid to it while it is being made. The spice palate is really fresh and this is a really good both on the first day it is made and reheated as lunches or for later meals. My mom, a wonderful person who is super busy, likes to make this and have it for meals throughout the week as it doesn’t look any of the vivid flavors through refrigeration or reheating.

So here is the dish!

Doesn’t it look fantastic?

Ok here is the ingredient list:

1 1/2 cup lentils 

4 cups water

1 cup chopped tomato with juice (or canned tomato)

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1/4 teaspoons turmeric

8 whole cloves garlic, peeled

4 slices ginger (size of a quarter)

1 sprig fresh rosemary

1 bay leaf

10 oz. baby spinach

2 Tblsp lemon juice (or more depending on how much you like lemon)

Salt and pepper to taste

Ok so to start with the cooking you need the lentils and the water. I honestly think that you can use any of the lentil types out there but the ones that you pick will change how long it takes to cook. I made these with the little red lentils and it was a fast cook and turned out well. So put the lentils and the water in a pan and start the heat. Get them to boil. These, like other legumes, have the annoying tendency to over boil if they are left alone for too long and make a mess with that froth they seem to make after two minutes of boiling. Add the tomato, olive oil, turmeric, and the cloves of garlic all peeled and turn it down a little so that it is simmering but not at a rolling boil.

  So the next piece is as complicated as this recipe gets really and its not all that complicated, though it does call for a specific piece of kitchen equipment; the cloth cooking bag! It looks like this but can be replaced with tied up cheese cloth, or any porous material which the ginger, rosemary and bay leaf (of if they are really small, leaves) can be put inside to flavor the soup without the herb pieces floating freely and intermixing with the soup. Just drop it in and let it cook until both the garlic and the lentils are totally cooked and soft, stirring occasionally. This shouldn’t take more than an hour and will depend on what sort of lentils you have chosen to use. With the red lentils it took about 40 minutes after the bag of herbs was added.

Once everything is cooked, remove it from the heat and add the juice of the lemon (fresh is best and I tend to use the whole lemon, I just love how it tastes). Squish the garlic cloves against the side of the pan and stir the paste into the rest of the soup. Finally, add in the washed spinach and let it wilt while you stir it in to mix it with the soup evenly. With the baby spinach being the cute perfect size that it is, there is no need to chop it up as it is already bite sized.

Voila! It is ready to eat! I like to top mine with a little bit of sour cream but there are any number of things that you can add to it as a topping if you have it or like it! We tried a little parsley tonight and it was really great! Hope you enjoy making it and eating it as much as we did!

    K&I