Butternut pumpkin cream

Hei guys! sorry for the long silence! During this christmas we have been in Spain, eating a lot, so we came back with few extra kilos!

So thought we could make a post of a light vegetable cream for those days after heavy xmas meals.

Ingredients

• Half butternut pumpkin
• 1 large leek
• 1 tbsp philadelphia cream cheese
• 1 tbsp cashew nuts
• olive oil, salt, pepper

Preparation

Easy preparation, clean and chop a large leek and saute in a casserole with a bit of oil. Meanwhile clean half a butternut pumpkin and chop in dices, when the leek is changing color, add the pumpkin. Saute it for few minutes and cover with water.

After 15 min, when the pumpkin gets soft, add the philadelphia and the cashew nuts and blend together.

For serving you can add a bit of salt flakes and sunflower seeds.

Hope you like it!
Mr South

Sopa castellana (garlic soup)

Winter, is time for heavy warm meals, and soups are in the top of the list. Today I decided to post about one really traditional Spanish dish, if a top 5 typical Spanish food was to be made, sopa castellana would be there (and no, paella wouldn´t not even be in top 10.

So what is sopa castellana? a humble, cheap ingredients, surviving meal for many, many generations throughout the last centuries (yes so old). The main ingredients were; old, hardened bread, garlic and couple of eggs, and if the family was lucky, a bit of pork in the form of chorizo or jamon. This soup, was the main caloric intake for the day.

Today, such hard times are over, but Spanish people keep on eating this humble dish, not because of some sort of past heritage but for the amazing flavors. 

Ingredients

• Garlic
• half tbsp Pimentón dulce (Spanish paprika powder)
• 2 eggs
• olive oil
• half baguette
• 0,6L vegetable or meat broth
• Optional: some chorizo or jamon and parsley

Preparation 

I used a baguette because it is easy to find, ideally you would use a thick, dense bread.

Serving for 2
In a casserole, cover the bottom with olive oil and add fine chopped garlic and laurel leaf. The amount of garlic for this dish has to be substantial, for me (garlic addict speaking) this starts around a large head, but up to you.
I just found this video, it is always nice to see new tricks to make cooking easier and faster, it works, I tried!!

When the garlic starts to get golden, pull the casserole out of the heat and add the half tbsp of pimentón dulce. 

Stir quickly, you don´t want to burn the pimentón and add the bread sliced. Mix thoroughly, trying that the bread soaks all the flavors.
Add the broth and mix for couple of minutes in medium fire. Let it cook for 5 minutes.

Add two full eggs and the chopped parsley. Leave it for couple of minutes so the eggs cook a bit.

Hope you like it!
Mr South


By the way, in the pics I added 1L of broth, but I like it a bit thicker, that´s why in the recipe I suggested 0,6L would be enough.

Salmon soup

Finally!! we get to cook salmon soup for you! It is the dish you have to taste if you visit Finland. In Catalonia we usually eat soups when it is cold and dark outside, but Finns do salmon soup whether is summer or winter!

This is serving for 6

Ingredients

• 300g salmon
• fresh dill
• 2 potatoes
• 3-4 carrots
• 2 onions
• 4dl cooking cream
• Salmon broth
• Salt
• Black pepper 

Salmon broth

• Head, bones and trims from a salmon
• Half onion
• Half tomato
• 1 garlic
• laurel
• vegetables for broth (carrot, turnip, celery, etc)
• water

The salmon broth is not mandatory, but it is much better. If you go to buy salmon, either to a supermarket or a small fish shop, they will ask you if you want the head and bones, say YES!!! for the soup it gives so much more flavour! of course you can always use the stock cubes.
 

Preparation

 

Salmon broth

I do what in Catalan cooking call sofregit, this is the base of all catalan cooking and I believe gives much more intense flavor to everything you cook with it. It is really simple to do a sofregit, in a pan or in our casserole (we are going to use always the same) add like a tbsp of olive oil, half onion, a nail or two of garlic and saute it for 5 min, grate half a tomato and fry it together 5 more minutes. And that´s it! this is a sofregit!

Next step is add the vegetables for the broth with the laurel, give a quick mix everything together, cook 5 min and add the water. How much water? Enough as to cover everything plus 3 fingers more.

Keep in mind that I haven´t added any salt, no, I haven´t forgotten! quick chemistry class!

In a broth we want all the flavors to dissolve into the water as to create the broth. All the aromas are dissolved withing the water or oil of each ingredient, if we add salty water we are limiting the amount of flavor the water can gather from the ingredients. Surely there is someone who can give a better explanation, but this chemical aprox and the wisdom of past generations says not to put salt to broth till the end.

Let the broth to boil for an hour at least, then pour it through a stainer into a bowl, just to avoid the bones to go into the broth.

Salmon soup

We have a nice salmon broth, so add the potatoes, carrots and onions peeled and chopped.

From the remaining of the head and bones, try to rescue as much meat as possible and cut small pieces of 300 gr of salmon.

After the vegetables have been boiling for 15 min add the salmon, salt and black pepper, cook it for 10 more minutes.

Add the 4dl of cooking cream and the dill finely chopped, let it cook for 5 min and it is ready to serve!

Hyvää ruokahalua!

Mr South

Mushroom soup with smoked reindeer and potato bread

Today comes the first recipe with reindeer, probably the most famous animal in Finland, for those who don't know much about this animal, here comes few facts:

• It is mostly grown in Lapland, in a sort of semi-wild fatten

• It is quite expensive, fresh is around 60-80€ kilo, frozen starting from 40€ kilo but you can find reindeer frozen minced meat for 10-20€ kilo (don't bother to buy it, it is disappointing)

Although today reindeer is not the main part of the dish, it gives a nice touch. So for this soup you can use fresh mushrooms as we did, or dried, if you use the dried normally takes 30-60 min to rehydrate the mushrooms with slightly hot water. 

As a nice side dish for this soup we cooked a potato flat bread, a really useful way to not waste that little bit of boiled or mashed potatoes that always are left behind.

This serving is for 6-8 people.

Ingredients

• 500gr of mushrooms, we used suppis
• onion
• 2tbsp butter
• 3tbsp regular flour
• 3dl vegetables broth
• 2dl cooking cream
• 75g finely chopped cold-smoked reindeer 

 For the potato bread

• 1kg potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 2,5 dl regular flour

Preparation 

Chop the onion in small pieces and saute it with butter for 5-10 min, add the chopped mushroom and let boil the excess water. sprinkle the flour with the help of a strainer and add the vegetable broth.

Let it boil for 10 min and then add the cream, let it cook 5 min and season at your desire.

Here you have a choise, if you don't like to find the little mushroom pieces, a blender and a stainer will make it a smooth soup.

Chop the cold-smoked reindeer and add it before serving.

For the potato bread, if you have already mashed potatoes skip till point 2

1. Peel, cut and boil the potatoes as for making mashed potatoes. Once soft, smash the potatoes and add a bit of milk to have an homogeneous mixture.
2. Add eggs and regular flour and mix it together, work the dough and make balls and flat them, use the barley flour to prevent the dough to stick.
3. Place the flat dough on a baking sheet and cook at 230ºC for 10-15 min until it gets a nice brown colour.

 Enjoy it!