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.

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!)

Feta-spinach pastry

Not sure how Finnish this is, but this kind of pastries (resembling the quiche en France) are very common in Finland, and this recipe is originally from a Finnish recipe magazine. Attention, it's very filling. I served it along with onion soup yesterday, and it was an excellent combination.

Ingredients (for a mould of 24x24cm):
3-4 layers puff pastry
1 big onion
2 tablespoons oil
150 g frozen spinach
200 g feta cheese
3 eggs
2 dl light cream or cream-milk
1/4 teaspoons black pepper
a pinch of nutmeg

Preparation:
Chop the onion and sauté it on a frying pan with olive oil. Melt the spinach and squeeze the excess liquid off it. Pour the liquid off the feta cubes.
Cover the mould with puff pastry. Spread the spinach, onion and feta cheese on the puff pastry.

Mix the eggs, cream and spices together. Pour this mix on the mould.
Bake the pastry in the lower part of the 200 c hot oven for about 45 minutes.