Tomato soup, twice

This would be my last MoFo post - didn't make it to 15 recipes this time, but at least I dared to try:) This time I've got two tomato soup recipes, one classic and one mine: quick and spicy.

Tomato soup is omnipresent in polish houses: this would be the most popular soup too. Everybody makes it and there are various kinds that people swear to be the only original ones: the basic questions is, do you use pasta or rice? Then: sweet or salty? white (=with sour cream) or not? Parsley on top? 

This is my family recipe, with rice, not sweet (I never really understood how people can add sugar to a soup with a carrot cooked in broth in it!) and without sour cream, with parsley on top. Enjoy!

Classic Tomato soup for 6 people

veggie broth, 2 l

2 medium carrots

a quarter celeriac root

 one parsley root (save the leaves)

 one medium leek

3-4 allspice berries

1-2 bay leaf

5-6 big ripe tomatoes

a big handful of rice

salt

Boil the broth and cook whole carrots, celeriac, parsley and chopped leek in it with allspice and bay leaf. In a separate pan cook peeled tomatoes until they fall apart and blend. Take out of broth all the veggies except a carrot and discard (=eat apart if you like it). Mix in the tomato puree and boil again; when boiling add rice and salt to taste. The soup is ready when the rice is cooked.

Now my fast food version. I especially enjoy making it at eleven PM when you're not supposed to eat anything, but you're hungry anyway and maybe a little cold too. Great to warm up in a snowy day (do you have snow yet? Too much in here)

1 cup tomato puree

1 cup veggie broth

2 spoons olive oil

1 teaspoon powdered garlic

1 teaspoon powdered sweet chili

1 handful of tiny, quick-cooking pasta

salt and pepper to taste (I use cayenne pepper for better kick)

Boil the broth, add tomato puree and olive oil and boil for 5 minutes. Add spices to taste and pasta; the soup is ready when pasta's ready. Simple and so good.

I'm really glad I started this blog again and that I participated in MoFo. I promise to not disappear next month and show you some delicious Christmas recipes.

Quick side dish: breaded green beans

My parents were renovating the kitchen last week (actually, they still didn't finish, but at least the oven is plugged and accessible), so I couldn't cook anything.  Bad luck; I may not make it to the 15 recipes I promised.

I heard, once, that the only practical innovation in world cuisine that polish kitchen has made was the custom of topping the veggies with breadcrumbs. I strongly disagree with that, but it occurred to me lately that maybe some people don't know about this simplest way to serve veggies ever. Polish kids tend to eat them just for the crumbs.

The recipe is very simple, actually a no-recipe. first, cook your green beans (or other veggie; it is traditionally used with cabbage, cauliflower and other stinky things) - I like to steam mine - and heat a pan. Put some oil on it, I use olive oil for the taste, then begin to stir in the breadcrumbs. Some people add salt and pepper, I like to experiment with tastes and often produce very spicy crumbs. Fry them until golden brown, stirring constantly to prevent from sticking. Now top your green beans with it and serve warm as a side dish.

BTW, if you like green beans, here's a recipe I recently found and it's amazing; I cooked my beans in dried sage infusion and they came out fantastic.

Ogórkowa

A classic wintertime comfort food: cucumber soup made out of pickles. To clarify things, I found this article on Wiki and repeat that for this soup we use cucumbers pickled in salt water. In Poland, we have three ways to make pickles and each one is used in other recipes:

- konserwowe: pickled in vinegar for a few days, can be bought in a jar as "swedish salad", used for salads and herring dishes. Also some degenerates like me eat them out of jar while watching movie, especially when I run out of popcorn
- kiszone: pickled in closed jars or kegs , in salted water, for a few weeks. Used in salads, raw, as a side dish, to eat with vodka, for soups or stuffing
- małosolne or kwaszone: pickled in salted water for a few days, usually in an open dish. Have mellow taste, are not that sour as kiszone and much lighter in colour. Eaten raw in summer, with crackers or between vodka shots:)

In here, we use that second type. The soup is sour and rich due to potatoes that are cooked in broth, releasing starch to the liquid. Some people add sour cream to it before serving: I leave that up to you, personally find it disgusting.

Pickle soup:
2 l veggie broth
2 big carrots, peeled
1 big parsley root
4 medium potatoes
a quarter celeriac root (optional, I don't like the taste it brings)
3 large pickles
3/4 cup pickle juice (the liquid pickles are floating in)
some allspice and pepper, salt
optional: sour cream, chopped dill to garnish

Cut the carrots in cubes, shred the celeriac and parsley roots. Add to broth, salt a bit and begin to cook till carrot is al dente. Then add peeled & cubed potatoes, cook till tender again. Finally add shredded pickles and coo for 10-15 minutes more. Pour in pickle juice and turn off the heat.

If you want to serve the soup with cream, wait till it cools down a bit and first mix the cream with a cup of soup liquid, then add to the pot. Traditionally served sprinkled with fresh dill.

Apples with marjoram

This is my favorite side dish: caramelized onions, sautéed apples, all covered in marjoram and lightly salted. My mom always made it for liver dishes; I always hated liver and ate apples only. Today I make them to eat with baked dishes and casseroles or root vegetables; they go well with beans.
I use sour apples and big, juicy onions.


Apples with marjoram, serves 4


1 kg apples
2 big onions (there should be about 1 cup of diced  raw onion)
4 tablespoons dried marjoram
olive oil ( I use it for the taste, the most common option is sunflower or rapeseed oil)
a pinch of crushed allspice and some salt

First, dice the onion and cut peeled apples in cubes. Heat the oil you use on a pan and add marjoram and allspice; stir and add the onions. When translucent, add the apples and stir to cover them in herbs. Sprinkle with salt, wait till they start to pour out their juice and cover, so they steam in low heat (you may add some water to start). Sauté until tender, uncover and let the juice evaporate. Serve warm as a side dish to a savory, salty meal.


I'm having trouble with the photo, so I'll try adding it later, from another computer.

Fancy a little touch of spring?

First, I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts; I promised myself to write one entry per week, but so far it didn't work. I was very busy at work, then I went to Spain and the vision of wonderful Spanish food limited my culinary horizon :) But now I'm back with a fresh spring soup I made last week and I hope you'll enjoy it.

Usually the winter weather in Poland is oscillating between lots of snow and a complete lack of it, and the temperature is between +5 and -15 Celsius degrees. Last week it was -20 in my city. There were spots of dirty snow around, but generally the world was gray and sad with no sun and no hope. I went shopping and all the fresh veggies were so expensive it was hard to believe somebody buys it at this price; I went for canned tomatoes, frozen peas and then I saw a jar of salted sorrel.

(If you're curious, it took me so long to write the post cause I couldn't find the name of that herb :P )

As wikipedia can tell you, sorrel is a tiny herb that grows in the garden (rather grows itself than is cultivated), or in meadows, rather in places that are shadowy and have a lot of water. It looks kinda like spinach, but the taste is completely different: sorrel is sour, a bit lemony, with a slight taste of chives and something else, maybe spinach too.

Sorrel is commonly used in Poland to make a spring, green, refreshing soup and actually just for that; I don't think I've ever seen it in salads or used as a stuffing. The original recipe uses 1 egg per portion, to boil it hard, cut in half and put the peeled halves in the soup where they turn green and look suspicious. We just won't use it and that's all.

We're gonna need a big handful of fresh sorrel for 4 portions of soup; if you can't find it fresh or frozen, look for pureed sorrel in a jar - you'll need 1 overfilled cup of it. If you have fresh sorrel, sautée the leaves on sunflower oil (the basic oil for polish kitchen) - it will reduce visibly - and then mash/blend it to a puree


Sorrel soup

200 ml (1 overfilled cup) of sorrel puree
1,5 l (8 cups) of vegetable stock
1 garlic clove
some onion if you like it
3 potatoes if you like the potatoes
100 g (1/4 pound) of regular firm natural tofu (the more solid your tofu is, the better for the aesthetic of your soup)
salt & pepper % some chopped fresh dill if you like it
some egg salt for the tofu

maybe some soy cream (I don't like it that way, maybe you will)


If you're using the potatoes first you have to take care of them: peel, cut in cubes and boil them, then leave apart.

Chop and sautée the onion and the garlic on sunflower oil, then pour in the stock and make it boil. Add sorrel puree and stir well; make it boil, then reduce the heat to minimum, cover leaving some uncovered space for the steam and let it simmer for half an hour.

Break the tofu in chunks and dry it well. Boil some water and pour the tofu chunks in the boiling water; wait till tofu starts to emerge on the surface, then reduce the heat and let it boil for 2-3 minutes. Then take it off the heat, get rid of the water and sprinkle the chunks while hot and steaming with egg salt if you use it.

Now get back to the soup; add the salt and pepper and taste it; if the soup doesn't taste like water or broth and you can clearly distinguish the sorrel taste - which means sour - the soup is ready.

Portion the soup and add tofu chink and potatoes (if using) to each bowl; sprinkle with fresh dill and decorate with soy creamer if you fancy so.

Here you can see my version, with tofu chunks only:


It wasn't as good as made with fresh herb, but still gave me a little hope in this wintery, people-unfriendly weather.