The best soup in the world

Well, hello there. It's been a while since I posted something. 

Frankly I have been busy neglecting my health by working and studying. 

But now spring has arrived and I have more time and energy to put on deliscious and healthy food.

First harvest in the garden comes from weed, the nettles. Use gloves and a scissor to pick them, you surely know why. Nettles makes a perfect tasty and healthy soup, filled with vitamins and minerals.

Nettle soup

Pick 3 L lightly packed nettles. Wash them in the sink with lots of water.

Boil a large pan with water and boil the nettles a few minutes.

Drain off the water, but save it to water the plants (great fertilizer)

Chop the nettles finely in a blender

Take the large pan and melt a large piece of butter (or coconut oil)

Whisk down 3 tablespoons of flour in the melted butter

Add 2-3 liters of boiling water while stirring

Add vegetable broth (3 chunks or 1 dl liquid)

Add the nettles and boil for 5 minutes

Give the soup some spices, pepper and chili

Eventually add salt.

Serve with egg halves

Hot summer and zucchini harvest

Gosh, what a hot summer we had. It's so hot it's hard to keep the spirit up. Yesterday I was home with headache propably caused by the heat, sun and too little to drink. It's very important to drink and to eat something sweet and salty.

The positive thing though is that the veggies that thrive in this heat are giving lots of fruits, like zucchinis. I need to be inventive now. Zucchini can be boring, but the neutral taste gives you a wide range of flavours to combine it with. Today I made a frittata with basil sauce. Here's the recipe. Oh by the way. In this recipe you can gladly use those zucchinis that has grown too big.

Zucchini Frittata with basil sauce

Frittata

2 large zucchinis

1 onion

4 eggs

1 hand full of sundried tomatoes

50 g of feta cheese

seasoning

Put the sundried tomatoes in a glass of water to soak (I took my home made tomatoes and those are hard). Grate the zucchinis and onion and put in a colander. Pour over some salt and toss around. Whisk the eggs in a bowl and season with your favourite spices. Chop the feta cheese and the drained sundried tomatoes in fine bits. Squeeze the juice out of the zucchini mix to get rid of some water and mix everything in the egg bowl. Fry in a pan on low heat with butter or oil, put on a lid for a while to cook the top of the frittata.

Basil sauce

3 dl of sour cream

1 hand full of fresh basil leaves

1 garlic clove

salt and white pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a blender until you get a smooth light green liquid. This sauce works excellent with a salad or with roast beef, if you like. 

Vegan dinner: grey pea burgers with roots and avocado mayonaise

I'm so sorry that I dont have a photo of the soo delicious dinner we ate yesterday. It was too dark for taking good photos and I have already digged in on the plate before I realized I had a good recipe to share. Really embarrassing... I will post a photo nex time, because I'm sure I will make this recipe again.

Grey peas is a very old crop that the vikings grew as one of the daily grocery staples. It is filled with proteins and minerals. The pea is smaller than the usual pea and is patterned like a birds egg, very beautiful.

Grey pea burgers
 serve 4
3,5 dl grey peas or green lentils.
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes, soaked in warm water
fresh basil leaves ca 7
1 garlic clove
1 small onion
1,5 tsp vegetal buillon powder
1,5 b- yeast powder
salt and pepper

Baked vegetables
Swedes, parsnip, potatoes, carrots in the amount for 4
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes

Avocado mayonaise
2 ripe avocados
0,5 dl rapeseed oil
stenches of tabasco choose your own amount
1 pressed lime
salt and pepper

Soak the peas (or lentils) in plenty of water over the night. Boil the peas on low heat for 15 minutes.
Peel the roots and chop in big chunks and bake them in the owen for 40 minutes in 200 degr C, with some ground pepper and rapeseed oil. Peel and chop the garlic and onion finely fry in a pan with a little oil on low heat. Strain the boiled peas pour in the mixer with the other ingredients and mix.
Heat a frying pan with vegetable oil (rapeseed oil). Spoon up some pea mix and roll burgers and fry. Fry the burgers in quite a high temperature for a minute per side. If you fry too long the burger will be soft and falls very easily apart. Set the burgers aside on a serving plate and keep them warm.

Throw in the soaked dried tomatoes in the owen on top of the roots the remaining 6 minutes.

I didn't rinse the mixer from rests of pea mix, because I thought it just added some extra filling and spared me some time. Mix all the engredients for the mayonaise except the oil. Pour slowly the oil during mixing in the blender.

Hopefully the roots are baked and ready to be served with the burgers and the mayo.
The burgers and the mayo can also be served like a hamburger between breads with some fresh salad. Hm, thats what I'll do next time and post a photo of it.
I hope you'll try this recipe. My fellow who can be a bit picky with vegetables and loves meat, he loved this dish (the best dinner I have eaten for ages, he said).

I use cold pressed rapeseed oil because of it's perfect balance of fatty acids and it adds a mild nutty taste to the dishes.

Below is a photo of the flower of grey peas. It has a lovely two toned purple that changes colour after one day.

Friday evening dinner

Our supermarket has started a campain to make their customers to eat more vegetables. I think this is a excellent thing. They promote fruits and vegetables of the season and often sell for lower prices. When I walk past the sweet potatoes I couldn't resist them. In a second, the dinner plan was set.

Roasted sweet potatoes and hot salsa

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C. Peel the sweet potato and cut into wedges. Pour them in a oven pan and add a tsp of coconut oil and Tbs of sunflower oil. sprinkle sea salt and ground some pepper over them before you roast them in the oven. 30 minutes is enough because they get squishy very easily.

The salsa is made of 3 finely chopped tomatoes, 1 finely chopped onion, 3 mashed and finely chopped garlic cloves, a half finely chopped red bell pepper. The green herb is fresh chopped chervil (a good replacement for those who doesn't like coriander). Blend all ingredients in a bowl and season with himalayan salt, chili flakes and ground black pepper.

For the meat eaters I served grilled chicken filets with lots of barbecue seasoning on top.

Serve with a green salad.

Note: Sweet potato is literally a sweet potato, it contains 10 times more sugar than potato so if you would like to cut down on carbs, this is not a choice for you.