Soup of beans, leek and potato

Ingredients (x2):
400g green beans
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 leek
1 big potato
500ml chicken bouillon
1,5 tablespoons olive oil
salt
(croutons or bread)

Preparation:
Chop the onion and garlic and cut the washed leek into rings. Cook these ingredients in a pan with olive oil and add the beans. Cook this mix of vegetables on low heat for 10-15 minutes. Peel the potato and cut it into cubes. Prepare the bouillon by letting a bouillon cube dissolve in water. Add the potato cubes to the rest of the vegetables and pour the bouillon on top. Cook the soup covered, on low heat, for one hour. When an hour has passed, take your immersion blender and give the soup a puré-like composition with it. Add salt according to your taste. Serve the soup with croutons or bread.


The recipe of the bread pictured above can be found here.

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

I have been completely absent in this blog for several weeks, and I am really sorry about that! I was working a lot of hours each week, and even if I did make yummy food worth posting here and I even took pics of them, I never got down to updating. Now I want to update more regularly again.

So, here goes. This is the recipe of what I made for lunch today, and it was praised by my bf and he smiled for a long time after the lunch. I think that is enough to describe how delicious it turned out!

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):

3 bell peppers (any colour you like)

filling #1:

2,25 dl cooked rice
3,5 dl table mushrooms
1,5 tablespoons butter or margarine
½ a small leek
1,5 dl grated cheese
paprika spice
pepper

filling #2:

1,5 dl cooked rice
150 g grinded soy
1 small onion
pepper
aromatic salt OR salt + half a grinded vegetarian bouillon cube
1,5 dl grated cheese

Preparation:

Cut the bell peppers in halves horizontally. Remove their insides and wash them. Cook the bell peppers in salted water for 8 minutes. When cooked, remove the water from the pan and let the bell peppers vapour.

Prepare the filling #1: Cut the mushrooms into small pieces. Heat the butter in the pan and add the mushrooms into the pan. Fry the mushrooms for 5 minutes. Chop the leek finely and add it into the pan.

When they both look good and and the leek has become more yellow, add this mushroom-leek-mix into the rice. Spice it up and add one dl of grated cheese. Mix.

Prepare the filling #2: Fry the grinded soy on a pan and add the finely chopped onion into it. Add spices. The spicing can be rather abundant. Mix the grinded soy + onion with the rice. Add 1/4 dl of grated cheese into the mix.


Place the bell pepper halves into an oven mould and fill them with the fillings. Add what remains of the grated cheese on the filled bell peppers.

Bake them in an oven heated to 200'c for half an hour.

Vegetarian pyttipannu

Here's my vegetarian version of pyttipannu (Swedish: pyttipanna). It is a lot more unhealthy if prepared with sausage, like traditionally (but luckily I am vegetarian!) It is part of the Swedish and Finnish food tradition, and it used to be prepared of leftover ingredients, which isn't always the case nowadays. The name of this dish probably derives from "pytteliten" (=very small), which describes how all the ingredients are cut into small spieces.

Ingredients (x2):
4 middle-sized potatoes
250 ml water
½ vegetarian bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons olive oil
150 g chopped onion
150 g soup vegetables
1 teaspoon salt
a pinch black pepper
½ dl chopped parsley

Served with:
2 eggs
2 tomatoes

Preparation:
Wash and peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes of 1 cm. Heat the vegetarian broth and add the bay leaf. Cook the potato cubes for 5 minutes so that they get a bit softer. Pour the broth off and let the potatoes emit steam. Heat a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil and add the chopped onion into it. Add the soup vegetables and let them steam off the liquid. You can take the vegetables off the cooker when they have gained some colour. Spice them with salt. Keep them warm under the cover. Heat the rest of the olive oil on a frying pan and add the potato cubes on it. Keep the pan hot and keep on turning the cubes around.

When they have gained some colour on all sides, add them into the rest of vegetables. Dust some black pepper on the food. Add parsley and mix. Fry the eggs on the frying pan and slice the tomato and serve the pyttipannu with them.

(Here in the Netherlands the [not-frozen] soup vegetables included a lot of greenery, in Finland they have a pretty different makeout of vegetables. Don't care, as long as they are soup vegetables.)

Soup of three onions

This is a nice onion soup that differs from the traditional onion soup by having 3 key ingredients: yellow onion, shallot and leek. Worth a try next time you want to make onion soup! To be served with croutons, a good idea is to make them yourself the way I suggest here (they come out pretty luxurious!)

Ingredients (x2):
2 yellow onions
2 shallots
½ leek
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
½ l water
2/3 bouillon cube
1 small bay leaf
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Garlic-croutons:
(semi-)dried bread
1 tablespoon oil
1-2 cloves garlic
(1 teaspoon dried parsley)

+ grated cheese

Preparation:
Peel the onions, cut them in halves and then cut them into thin slices or pieces. Wash the leek and cut it into pieces.
Melt the butter in a pan and add the onions. Give them 5 minutes to gain some colour, but don't let them become brown.

Add the water, the 2/3 bouillon cube and the spices. Cook under cover on mild heat for half an hour.
Cut the bread into cubes. Grind the garlic and fry it on the pan with oil. Add the bread cubes on the pan let them become slightly brown in colour. Optionally add some parsley on them.

Serve the soup with the croutons and grated cheese.

(Sorry for taking the picture a bit too late!)

Risotto of spinach, leek and peas

Here's a recipe for a very green risotto. It tastes fresh and in winter it reminds me of summer, even if using frozen spinach and peas! I created this recipe once when these three vegetables were the only ones I had at home and I had to improvise. Good that I did.

Ingredients (x2):
200 g risotto rice
500 ml vegetarian broth
1 onion
200 g frozen spinach
100 g peas
1 small leek
3 tablespoons ricotta
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
nutmeg
salt
pepper
soft cheese (In Italy I'd use Fontina, in Finland Koskenlaskija, not sure what the equivalent is over here!)
parsley

Preparation:
Chop the onion into fine pieces. Chop the leek first into circles and then cut them in 4. Pour these two vegetables on a frying pan with olive oil and fry them for 5-7 minutes. Put a bouillon cube into 500 ml of water in a pan and let it dissolve on the cooker.

Put the rice and the butter into the saucepan. Put them on the cooker and keep them in medium heat, mixing continuously. When the rice has got a golden and more transparent colour, add the spinach and a part of the broth. Mix all the time so that the rice doesn't get stuck in the bottom. Check the indications in the package for the cooking time of the rice. Add more broth little by little. Add salt, pepper and less than a teaspoon of nutmeg. At halfway of the cooking time add the peas and the leek you have previously chopped.

By the end of the cooking time, add ricotta. Cut the soft cheese into pieces that you will set on the food when serving. Cut the parsley leaves smaller and add it on the portions.