Another thing that has taken up our time lately is the upcoming Green Kitchen iPad-app. We are currently beta-testing it and expect to release it in October. It looks so nice and it feels really good to flip through the recipes with the touch of a finger. The pictures are bigger than here, we have added some new features, made the recipes even easier to cook from and added a bunch of new ones. We will definitely let you know when it’s out.

One new recipe that will be on the ipad-app is a really good noodle and tofu salad. As we were shooting it we talked about that we actually haven’t showed any noodle recipes on the blog. It is kind of strange since we use buckwheat noodles often in our cooking. So today we came up with this Miso Noodle Soup for you. Miso is a fermented soy bean paste from Japan. It is very healthy, with supposedly high sources of vitamin B12 (which is important if you are a vegan) and a lot of other good stuff. Make sure you don’t boil it, since it will reduce its nutritional values. This is one of those incredibly quick recipes that is perfect when the first cold days of autumn arrives. Have it for lunch or add some tofu and have it as a light dinner.

Miso Noodle Soup
Serves 4

1/2 fresh chili
2 cloves garlic
2-inches (5 cm) fresh ginger
1 stalk fresh lemongrass
1/2 leek
4 small carrots
1/2 cup (1 1/2 dl) romanesco (or broccoli)
6 brown mushrooms (or shiitake)
1/2 cup (1/2 dl) fennel bulb with greens
1/2 cup (1 1/2 dl) green beans

8 cups (2 liter) water, boiled
4 -6 tbsp miso paste (to taste)
1 tbsp soy sauce

soba (buckwheat) or wholegrain noodles for 4 persons

1 handful cilantro
sesame seeds
1 lime

Preparing the vegetables: Finely slice the chili, mince garlic and ginger, cut the lemongrass in half and “bruise” it with the bottom of your chef’s knife. Finely slice leek, carrots (use a peeler) and divide the Romanesco into small pieces. Cut the brown mushroom into quarters, slice the fennel bulb and chop the fennel greens. Trim the green beans by removing the top stems.

Preparing the miso: Pour 4 cups boiling water in a pot, add miso paste and whisk. Add soy sauce, chili, ginger, garlic, lemongrass and set a side for a couple of minutes.

Preparing the noodles: Meantime, pour the remaining water (4 cups) in a new pot. Place it on the stow on medium heat, add a pinch of salt and the noodles, cook them according to the package.

Assembling the soup: When the noodles are done, place them and all the vegetables in the miso soup and reheat it, makes sure it doesn’t boil. Pour in 4 bowls and top with freshly chopped cilantro, lime juice and sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Ps. We are nominated in the German magazine Brigitte food-blog-award. You can read about us here (if you understand German, we don’t …) and vote for us here.

Have you met the Jerusalem artichoke (also known as sunchoke or sunroot) before? It may look like a small dirty potato to you, but it is in fact a delicious little root, who despite its name not is related with Jerusalem nor with the Artichoke – but with the Sunflower. It is actually kind of a funny story:

As I mentioned, the Jerusalem artichoke is a root. Its flowers look kind of similar to sunflowers, which isn’t strange since they actually come from the same family. The Italian word for sunflower is Girasole, which literally means turn to the sun. And here comes the funny part. Somewhere along the line the name Girasole got misinterpreted for Jerusalem (when you come to think about it, they actually sound kind of similar). And to make things even more confusing, a French explorer that sent some samples back home, noted that its taste was similar to artichokes. And somehow, 400 years later, this root is still called Jerusalem Artichoke, a name that has little to do with its origin. The ironic thing is that the Native Americans – who first discovered this root – called it sunroot. The perfect name for a root from the sunflower family. So, what do you say, shouldn’t we do as the Native Americans and just call it Sunroot?

What is so great with sunroots is that they are very nutritious. They are a good source of iron and they don’t contain regular starch, like potatoes for example do. They dissolve easily when boiled and have a sweet and a nutty taste, which makes them the perfect soup vegetables. A lot of sunroot soup recipes call for heavy cream, we left it out to make it lighter, and also because the vegetables alone are enough to make this soup creamy.

What is not so great with the sunroots is that they often are pretty small and come in very strange shapes, which makes it a hassle peeling them. But believe me, they are worth it.

Green Tea Infused Sunroot Soup
Serves 4-6

We used green tea instead of broth in this soup. The flavors from the tea really works good together with the sunroot. Tea infusion is a fun way to experiment with new flavors in your standard soups. If you are in to it, you could also add some white wine to this recipe.

2 pounds (around 1 kg) sunroots, sunchoke or jerusalem artichoke
olive oil
1 leek, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
6 cups of steeped green tea (we used sencha tea)
1 large lemon, juice
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
salt & pepper
1/2 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

Start by peeling the sunroots (or bribe someone to peal them for you). As soon as they are peeled, put them in a large bowl with cold water (and a squeeze of lemon in it), this prevents them to turn dark. Pick up the peeled sunroots from the water and chop them into 1-inch pieces. Put a big pot on medium heat on the stove. Saute the leek, garlic and the sunroots for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice, the chopped rosemary, salt and pepper and about two thirds of the green tea. As soon as it starts boiling, turn down the heat to low, and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Take the soup off the stove and blend it. If the soup feels too thick, add the rest of the green tea and let it simmer for two minutes more. Taste it, add more spices and lemon juice if needed. Serve with a dash of olive oil, fresh rosemary and some thin slices of fennel. Enjoy!

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel

Remember what we wrote in our last post about moving to a house here in Thailand for a couple of weeks. Well we did, and guess what … it was awful. We had rented it unseen, appealed by the close location to the beach, the incredibly low rent, and the kitchen. Without going in to any details, we quickly understood why the rent was so low and cancelled the deal. David’s mother has travelled all the way here from Sweden to spend some time with Elsa (what a grandparent has to go through to be with her first grandchild), and with her help we were able to instead rent a house directly On the beach. It’s the perfect house!

The last couple of months has been all about flying-boating-cabdriving-strolling-bargaining-hoteling-moteling-bungalowing-packing-unpacking-exploring & experiencing. And now we are finally sitting here on our porch in the shade – just relaxing – watching the ocean, the fishing boats and the children playing (Elsa has made a bunch of new friends). Whenever we get bored we take our tuc tuc to a market or to this incredibly cute Little Handmade Shop that we found. Next time we go there we’ll be looking for a birthday present for Elsa.

Of all the thai food that we have tried, the classic Tom Kha soup still is one of our favorites. It is creamy, mild and yet very flavorful from the big chunks of lemongrass and galangal. Another favorite is the pomelo salad, being both sweet, savory and a little spicy. And it’s the first time we have seen a recipe where the lemongrass is chopped so thin that you actually can eat it. We learned these recipes from one of the small restaurants that we have been visiting frequently. They always serve good food, so instead of attending a big arranged thai cooking class we asked if we could step in to their kitchen to learn the recipes directly from the chef.

Thai Pomelo Salad (Recipe adapted from Lanta Round House)
Serves 2

1 medium size pomelo or grapefruit
2 kaffir lime leafs, remove the thick mid-rib, roll them tight and shred very thin
2 tbsp roasted dried coconut
1 small hand full roasted cashew nuts
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 lemongrass (about 10 cm/4 inch each) slice it with a sharp knife very thin

Marinade:
1 tbsp sweet thai chili paste
a pinch of dried chili powder
1 tsp olive oil
1 lime, juice
10 mint leafs

Peel the Pomelo with a knife, cut of the ends and place it on the side and cut vertical slices down the sides and peel the rest by hand. In order to get to the sweet flesh, you have to peel past the thick rind and the bitter membranes that seperates each slice too. Seprate the fruit flesh in quite big pieces by hand, place it in a bowl and set aside.

Roast the coconut flakes and the cashew nuts on a dry pan until golden and let it cool of. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a medium size bowl and add pomelo, coconut, cashew, onion and lemongrass. Place the salad on a plate and garnish with mint leafs. Yum!

Tom Kha Tofu (Recipe adapted from Lanta Round House)
Serves 2

1 tbsp olive oil (in thailand they mix a bit of sweet chili paste in the oil, to get the red color)
1/2 chili (without seeds)
6 coriander (cilantro) leaves
2 tomato
2 lemongrass (about 10 cm/4 inch each)
8 cm galangal (also called Kha root or blue ginger), you can also use fresh ginger
500 ml coconut milk
2 kaffir lime leaf, remove the thick mid-rib, roll them tight and shred very thin
1 handful mushrooms, cut in halfs
1/4 white cabbage, sliced
300 g tofu (firm) cut in quarters
1 lime, juice
a pinch of salt
a little bit of vegetable stock

Place oil, chili, koriander and tomatoes in 2 bowls and set aside. Crush and slice lemongrass, galangal or ginger roughly and put it in a pot, add coconut milk, when it boil add lime leaf, mushroom, cabbage, tofu, juice from the lime, salt and stock. Let it boil on high heat for 1-2 minutes and taste. Pour the coconut milk soup over the tomatoes and spices in the bowls, garnish with fresh koriander and chili. Enjoy!

Hello! We are still in Vietnam. We are having a great time and we’re eating so much amazing food. We promise to share some photos soon and maybe even some vietnamese recipes, but for now we are continuing with our series of guest bloggers.
Today we present Sarah from My New Roots!
You might remember that we mentioned My New Roots in our post about the Raw Chocolate Shake. What we wrote then still applies. It is one of the most interesting and fun to read, healthy food blogs out there. If you like to eat nutritious food and you haven’t read it before, you have to head over to My New Roots. You will find great recipes, learn lots of interesting facts about food and have a laugh while reading it. Enough said from us, here is Sarah:

The snow just won’t stop. The world is quiet and soft. It’s time for a bowl of soup.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a soup recipe, and this weather is serving as divine inspiration for a piping hot bowl of creamy comfort food. It combines a few of my favorite things, roasted veggies and velvety lima beans, all blended up to create the most creamy, rich-tasting, delectable soup to cross my lips this new year. And whether your 2011 resolution was to eat more whole foods, lose weight, or cut back on meat, you’ll be checking off all three with my White Velvet Soup that tastes like anything but deprivation – it’s down-right dreamy!

White food. It’s gotten a pretty bad rap in recent years while our food focus has finally begun to shift from processed to whole foods; white bread to whole grain bread, white rice to brown rice, white potatoes to sweet potatoes. This is a very good thing so let’s move with the momentum!
However, there are some white foods that still belong to the whole foods family, boasting all kinds of nutritional benefits. This white velvet soup is an excellent combination of many white foods– cauliflower, onions, garlic, and lima beans – that are not only delicious, but super health supportive. Here’s an idea of just how powerful these white foods are…

Cauliflower – As an excellent source of vitamin K and a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid, or ALA), cauliflower provides us with two powerful anti-inflammatory nutrients. Cauliflower is also jam-packed with phytonutrients (those are the super-charged healthy compounds found exclusively in plants), such as the familiar beta-carotene, as well as the lesser-known beta-cryptoxanthin, caffeic acid, cinnamic acid, ferulic acid, quercetin, rutin, and kaempferol (there will be a quiz at the end of this post ;) This broad spectrum antioxidant support helps lower the risk of oxidative stress in our cells. By providing us with such a great array of antioxidant nutrients, cauliflower helps lower our cancer risk by helping us avoid chronic and unwanted oxidative stress.

Onions – Members of the Allium family (like garlic), onions of all colours are rich in sulfur-containing compounds that are responsible for their pungent odors and for many of their health-promoting effects. Several servings of onion each week are sufficient to statistically lower your risk of some types of cancer.
Human studies have shown that onion can even help increase our bone density and may be of special benefit to women of menopausal age who are experiencing loss of bone density. In addition, there is evidence that women who have passed the age of menopause may be able to lower their risk of hip fracture through frequent consumption of onions. “Frequent” in this context means onion consumption on a daily basis! Pass the soup, please.

Garlic – The selenium in garlic can become an important part of our body’s antioxidant system. A cofactor of glutathione peroxidase (one of the body’s most important internally produced antioxidant enzymes), selenium also works with vitamin E in a number of vital antioxidant systems. Garlic is also rich in another trace mineral, manganese, which also functions as a team player in a number of other important antioxidant defense enzymes, for example, superoxide dismutase. Studies have found that in adults deficient in manganese, the level of HDL (the “good form” of cholesterol) is decreased.

Lima Beans – are a total super food. They are loaded with protein (much like other legumes), and when eaten in combination with whole grains and whole grain products they provide the protein comparable to that found in meat or dairy foods without the high calorie content or saturated fat. And when you eat lima beans instead of animal products, you also experience the health benefits of dietary fiber, which lowers cholesterol, stabilizes blood sugar, prevents constipation, but also helps prevent digestive disorders like irritable bowel syndrome and diverticulosis. Just one cup of lima beans will give you 65.8% of the daily value for fiber.

Surprised, are we? I told you some white foods deserved a little love. Whole foods always have some kind of health benefit because they are not processed, and therefore contain all of the lovin’ nutrition nature intended.

This soup is a total breeze to make – most of the work is done for you in the oven! All it takes is a quick blend up and you’re done. So simple. Who says gourmet food can’t be incredibly fast and easy?

White Velvet Soup

1 head cauliflower
2 medium onions
1 head garlic (about 6-8 cloves)
3 cups cooked lima beans (about 2 cans)
2 cups water
2 cups vegetable stock
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt to taste
olive oil
smoked paprika

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Cut up cauliflower into bite-sized chunks and place on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil or melted ghee. Sprinkle with sea salt.
3. Peel onions and slice into chunks. Peel garlic cloves. Place onions and garlic baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
4. Place all veggies in oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes until everything has golden edges and is nicely caramelized.
5. Let veggies cool slightly and add to blender along with all other ingredients except olive oil and paprika (process in batches if you have a small blender). Blend on high until very smooth. If you have a Vita-Mix, I would highly recommend using it.
6. If the soup is not hot enough after blending, transfer soup to a large pot and warm until steaming. If the soup is too thick, simply add water to thin to your desired consistency.
Bonus: For each bowl of soup, combine 1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil with 1/8 tsp. smoked paprika and drizzle as a garnish (this is optional, but there is something very delicious about the mellow richness of the soup, with a slightly spicy and smoky accent).

Tip: I always highly recommend using beans you cook yourself instead of canned, as the flavour of freshly cooked beans is simply better. If you choose to use beans you’ve cooked yourself, reserve the cooking liquid and use in place of the water and stock.

I hope you enjoy making this warm bowl of velvet for you and your lucky friends. Now I’m off to frolic in the snow to build up an appetite! This soup is on the stove and ready to wrap me in warmth when I return.

Text & photos by My New Roots
Info source: World’s Healthiest Foods

We started Green Kitchen Stories to challenge ourselves to keep trying out new nutritious recipes. We hoped that our recipes could inspire others who wanted to eat good, healthy food, but we never expected to reach as many as we’ve done. And we never ever imagined that we would also meet new friends through this blog.

When we first wrote about our trip around the world we got lots of tips on where to go and what to see. A lot of people told us that we had to come to Santa Cruz, so we spent last week there. And while we were there we actually met a couple of our readers that quickly became new friends.

Meet Damaris from Kitchen Corners! She invited us to celebrate Halloween with her family (Elsa’s super cute skeleton costume was a gift from them). We ended up spending almost the whole week with her and her sweet husband Christian, their oh so funny and cute son Enzo and their little beautiful baby Maria.

We cooked (the salad is a version of our Quinoa & Kale Salad), went to the beach and to the aquarium together. They made us ice cream and we did our frozen pink cheesecake. They learned us how to cook brazillian cassava root, beans and rice, acai with granola (Luise’s new obsession) and to pray before eating. We had a blast!

We also met Nancy and her friend Jennifer. Nancy has got an avocado orchard, a couple of miles south of Santa Cruz. We were invited for lunch to see her orchard and vegetable garden. It is a beautiful place with an amazing view, and their avocados … so much flavor! They made us a delicious and wholesome lunch with sweet potato hummus, gluten free crackers, pumpkin bread, dosa, goat cheese, apple sauce, avocados and a lot more. And for dessert she had made homemade avocado chocolate fudge pop-sickles. Yum!

Before we left we got a basket of handpicked avocados and limes to take with us, this is what we cooked.

Warm Avocado Soup
Serves 4 as a starter
Since it’s autumn we wanted to make a warm soup, but it actually tastes good cold as well. The lime and mint gives a fresh touch to it. Perfect as a starter or a lunch.
If you aren’t lucky enough to handpick your own avocados we guess store bought will have to do …

olive oil
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 inch fresh ginger, minced
a pinch of dried chili
2 lime, juice
10 mint leaves
3 medium size avocados
1 cup water
salt & pepper

Mint olive oil:
Stomp 15-20 mint leaves in a mortar, add 3 tbsp olive oil. Let it sit for a while before dripping it over the soup.

Add olive oil to a pan on medium heat. Sauté onion, garlic, ginger and chili until soft. Place in a blender together with the rest of the ingredients. Pulse it and taste, add more salt and water if needed. Pour it into a pot and heat it before serving. Top with a couple of drips of the Mint olive oil. Enjoy!

Remember what we wrote about our gazpacho obsession this summer? Here is another favorite. This version has a completely different taste than all the other gazpachos that we’ve tried. The grapes, lemon and cucumber makes it very light, citrusy and fresh, while the almonds add richness to it. You can make it in five minutes (well almost), you only need a few ingredients, it’s raw, it’s vegan and it’s the perfect food to fight the heat with.

On another note. We have finally pulled ourselves together and started to work on our about us page. It’s aaaalmost done, so check back on sunday and we promise that you will learn a couple of new things about us. Maybe not the most yummy stuff, like David’s most embarrassing moment or who Luise kissed in third grade, but we still think that it will be worth reading.

White Gazpacho
Serves 4

If you want this gazpacho to be completely white you need to blanch the almonds, we haven’t since we’re kind of lazy during the summer and want our gazpacho to be quick. Most white gazpacho recipes also call for a dash of white wine vinegar but we wanted to keep our soup raw so we left it out, and if you use good grapes you really don’t need it.

1 cup almonds
1 tbsp canola oil
2 cups green grapes, pitted
1 cucumber (300 g), peeled and chopped
1 white bell pepper, chopped
1/2 lemon
1 cup water
6 ice cubes
salt & pepper

1 handfull sprouts
fresh lemon balm

Pour the almonds in a blender. Blend for about a minute, you want the almond pieces to be as small/smooth as possible. Add canola oil, grapes, cucumber, bell pepper and lemon. Blend for another couple of minutes until smooth. Add half of the water, ice cubes, salt & pepper. Blend it and then taste it, if you want a thinner soup add the rest of the water and more salt and pepper if needed. Serve with sprouts and a couple of lemon balm leaves.

As much as we love to spend time in the kitchen, this time of the year we prefer to stay outside. So when we are inside, preparing a meal, we usually make a short story out of it. Throw some salad in a bowl or blend a few vegetables into a soup.

One of the things that we’ve been quite obsessed about this summer is Gazpacho. We’ve tried different recipes every time; a classic recipe, a mango version, a white gazpacho (we might actually make a post of that too) … But the gazpacho that stayed in our mind was the one where watermelon replaced the tomato juice. It made it a little sweeter and a lot fresher than a classic recipe. And it is super easy to make: chop, blend, freeze, eat.

We served it in small glasses and had as a starter, but you could just as well put it in bowls and have it as a light dinner, maybe together with a slice of our lemon spelt bread?

Before we move on to the recipe I just want to say that I love these pictures! This time my talented sister helped us out and we took them in the evening sun. She works as a photographer, shooting for both glossy travel magazines and cool literary magazines. She has also been my photographic mentor, teaching me about natural light, reflectors and raw format. And when she helps us out she always seems to not only make the food look great but also catch that vibrant feeling.

Watermelon Gazpacho (adapted from simple blueprint)
Serves 8 as a starter or 4 as a dinner

6 cups watermelon, seeded and diced in 1-inch dices
2 stalks celery, chopped
3 medium size tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cucumber, roughly chopped
2 red bell peppers, roughly chopped
fresh ginger, about 1 inch, peeled and minced
1/2 chili pepper
juice from 2 limes
handfull of fresh basil
salt & black pepper

Put 5-6 dices of the watermelon and a couple of celery pieces in each of the 8 glasses. Pour the rest of it in a blender or a food processor together with all the other ingredients. Pulse it until it’s got soup consistency, taste it and add more salt & pepper if needed. Divide it in the glasses and set them in the freezer or fridge (depending on how soon you serve it), it should be cold but not frozen. Serve with a thin slice of watermelon attached to the glass.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel

Elsa had her first meal of solid food a couple of days ago! Luise made her potato mash with a splash of oil and water. It was a big day for her and also for us, now we can start to make her our own all-good baby food. Although it seems like everybody have their own opinion on what kind of food is good for babies and children.

– Surely you will give Elsa normal food, a friend recently asked me. And with normal she meant meat, dairy products, gluten and sugar. She is not the only one. Another comment that we heard a lot of lately is that children doesn’t like vegetables but love meatballs and hot-dogs, so we would have a lot of trouble raising her without eating meat. I have just recently realized that most people actually believe that the way they eat is The Right Way. And our way – not eating meat, focusing on whole foods with a low intake on dairy products, gluten and sugar – represent some kind of diet that is good for you for a while, but not in the long run. Well, we believe that the way we eat is all-good for our bodies and that everybody probably would feel better cutting down on meat as the centre piece of the dinner and focus a little bit more on whole foods and vegetables.

With that said, it would make us feel very strange not giving Elsa the kind of food that we believe is best for her. Call me naive but I believe parents who complain that their kids won’t eat whole foods or vegetables have a lot to blame on their own eating habits. But if we fail I promise that I will be the first to admit it. And if Elsa some day decides that she wants to try a hamburger with her friends, we will be totally fine with that.

Maybe this could be mistaken for a convert-to-our-way-of-eating speech, it’s not. We have no problems with other people eating meat or not giving their kids vegetables, everybody must live after their own beliefs. Just as we do.

This soup is not for Elsa, not yet anyway. We were inspired by the Tuscan bean and bread soup Ribollita, and wanted to make our own version of it, replacing the bread with barley and the cannellini beans with these beautiful borlotti beans. When the soup was done we had changed so much that we decided not to call it Ribollita. But it is just as good, and more nutritious. Scroll down for the recipe.

Barley & Bean Soup
Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil
2 spring onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 small carrots, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 bay leaves (can be replaced with sage)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 glass white wine
8 cups vegetable stock
1 cup pearled barley
1 zucchini, cut in quarters
10 cherry tomatoes, divided in half
2 cups fresh green beans
1 cup fresh borlotti beans, removed from pods and preboiled for 20 min.

Heat olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot and add onion and garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes. Add carrots, celery, rosemary, bay leaves, lemon juice and white wine and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes. Add vegetable stock and let it cook for 30 minutes. Add barley, zucchini, tomatoes and let it cook for another 25 min. Then add green beans and borlotti beans and let it simmer for 10 more min. Remove the bay leaves and add salt and pepper. The soup is done when the barley and the beans are done. Serve with olive oil, lemon juice and fresh herbs.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel

Waiting. That is what it is all about right now. Luise only has a couple of days left of her pregnancy and we are in some kind of vacuum of nothingness. Everybody tells us how life suddenly get a new meaning when you have your first child. So here we are, trying to be prepared for this big evolving change. Sitting around waiting for it, not doing much. Except from cooking lots and lots of food. Since last weekend our fridge has been stuffed with all kind of vegetables, beetroot burgers, mushroom loaf and this wonderful cauliflower soup. Maybe it’s a primal instinct to bulk up with all this food?

However, we have already shared the recipes of the loaf and the burgers. Here is the soup. The great thing about cauliflower, beside the lovely nutty taste and all the vitamins, is that the soup get a creamy thick consistence without using cream, potatoes or any other kind of thickener. By also adding lemon to the soup you get this fresh taste!

Cauliflower Leek Soup
Serves 4

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 pinch of chili powder
1 cauliflower
2 leeks
4 cups (1 l) water
1/2 to 1 lemon, depends on the taste (juice and peel)
fresh thyme
sea salt & pepper
roasted almonds (roughly sliced)

Add olive oil to a pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onion, garlic and chili and cook until the onions soften. Add cauliflower and leek and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Add water and let it boil and then lower the heat and let it simmer until the vegetables are soften. Pour half of the water into a bowl and set aside. Use a hand blender to puree the soup. Stir in lemon juice and peel, thyme, salt and pepper. If the soup is to thick add some of the water.
Pour into bowls or cups and serve with fresh thyme, lemon peel or juice and roasted almonds.

We must have had some kind of carrot obsession lately. Without thinking about it we’ve used carrots in three different ways during December. First in a bread then in a cake and now as a soup. We learned this recipe from David’s mum. She always cooks great vegetarian food when we visit her, this Orange & Carrot Soup is one of our favorites.

Orange & Carrot Soup

1 clove garlic (chopped)
2 onion (chopped)
4-6 carrot (grated)
1 piece fresh ginger (chopped)
2 big oranges (juice and peel)
2 tbsp olive oil
7 dl vegetable broth
sea salt & pepper
thyme

Add olive oil to a pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onion and garlic. Add carrots and ginger and let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the broth and orange juice and let it boil for 10-15 minutes. Use a hand blender to puree the soup, but don’t blend it all if you like your soup chunky. Add the orange peel, salt and pepper and let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Serve with thyme and some orange peel.