Peasoup with feta and mint

I have been posting a lot of soup recipes lately now haven’t I? Probably because a good soup is comforting, warming and – not unimportantly – it is also very quick to make. So I love trying out new soup recipes for lunch.

Especially now that the weather seems to go back into full wintermode again (I cannot believe it is snowing again, temperatures are roughly between 0 and -6 Celsius during the day.) I especially like a nice warm dish for lunch. I love salads too and there are many good wintersalads out there too, but today was a true soupday.

I guess also because my resolve to eat healthy, exercise and lose weight got a bit sidetracked lately. You know I am participating in the Ten weeks to healthy event but hmmm, I am not convinced that ten weeks are gonna be enough to get me healthy.. I have been baking too much lovely goodies lately and ok, I did give most of it away but still a good chocolate cake, lemon cake or even the nanaimo bars we made for the Daring Bakers are all fabulous and a little bit too fabulous to give it all away, so yes, I tasted. And tasted a bit more and ok, then a little bit more.. On top of that; somewhere down the line I didn’t get around to doing any sports this week, so double trouble almost… Haha… O well, never too late to start again right?

So in order to get myself back on track I figured a nice hearty lunch was a good start. I had recently downloaded a new app for my Ipod which is called 20 minute meals from Jamie Oliver, and if you’ve read this blog more often then you will know that I love Jamie! So I have picked a couple of recipes from this source and love most of them. On Monday we had a lovely szechuan stirfry and today this tasty peasoup. All of the meals take about 20 minutes to make so perfect for weekday meals.

Now on to the soup. You will need the following ingredients to make this:

PEA SOUP WITH FETA AND MINT (recipe for two people)

1 large potatoe

1 sprig of fresh mint

1 stick of celery

75 gr ready to bake ciabatta (or any other bread you have lying around)

30 gr feta cheese

250 gr frozen peas

1 small onion

1/2 liter of vegetable stock

50 ml double cream

seasalt, pepper, olive oil, butter and extra virgin olive oil

Preheat your oven to the lowest setting and place your soup bowls in the oven to warm. Put a large deep pan on a low heat. Add a splash of olive oil and the knob of butter and leave to melt. Meanwhile peel and chop the onion. Trim and chop the celery stick.

Stir the chopped veg into the pan with a splash of water. Cover with a lid and cook for 10 minutes, or until the vegetables start to soften. Meanwhile put your griddle pan on a medium heat and let it heat up. Heat the vegetable stock and bring it to a gentle simmer over a medium heat.

Peel the potatoe then roughly grate it onto your board./ Add to the pan of simmering stock.

Pick all of the leaves from the mint sprig. Discard the stallks. Add half of the leaves to the vegetable stock. Put the rest to one side for later.

Cut the crusts of the ciabatta and tear the bread into small bite-sized chunks. Toss these in a mixing bowl with a lug of olive oil. Add the bread to the hot griddle pan and let it toast on all sides, using tongs to turn it. Once crisp and golden turn the heat off.

Add the peas to the pan of softened vegetables, cook for 1 minute, then carefully pour the stock mixture into the pan and bring everything to the boil.

Stir the cream into the soup and cook for 5 minutes. Take the pan of the heat and whiz with the hand blender until smooth.

Taste your soup and season with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Cover the pan with a lid.

Tear your remaining mint leaves into the mixing bowl and add the toasted croutons. Crumble in the feta, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil then toss the whole lot together. Get your warm bowls out of the oven and ladle the soup into them. Sprinkle a handful of your crouton mixture over each bowl of soup. And enjoy!

I totally loved the feta in this dish and the warm croutons made a big difference too. As you can see in the photos I used wholewheat bread that I still had instead of ciabatta and I found that great with the soup.

All finished...

You know how you can sometimes see a photo of a certain dish in a magazine and you think ‘yes! That is going to be de-li-cious!!’ and then you go out and make it and are… well, hmmm, slightly disappointed.

That happened to me today for my lunchdish of courgette feta cookies. I think I started going wrong with not following the exact measurements since I was making this for one person and not four. Therefore I think the cookie was slightly too moist, since I used one whole egg instead of a half egg, which I should have done if I would have followed instruction and divided by four. But ok, that was not the issue I think.

To be fair to these cookies; they were not all that bad, but there is a lot of room for improvement in the flavor department. I would maybe make these again but would use a different kind of cheese to the feta. While feta is a salty kind of cheese, the general taste here didn’t really come to justice. (but then I like things to be cheesy) I would think maybe a stronger cheese would be better suited.

So all in all, I do think this little lunchdish has potential if you tweak the ingredients here and there.

If you want to give it a try; here is the recipe!

COURGETTE-FETA COOKIES

(lunchdish, 4 people for 12 pcs)

600 gr courgette (zucchini), coarsely grated

1 small onion, grated

1 clove of garlic, pureed

100 gr feta, crumbled + extra for serving

2 medium eggs

2 tbs fresh flatleaf parsley, chopped

2 tbsp fresh mint, chopped

1/2 tbsp dried mint

50 gr flour

30 gr of riceflour

1 tsp of sumak or lemon zest

2 tbsp of olive oil

roasted turkish bread, tomato slices and salad to serve

Put the courgette in a colander, sprinkle with 1/2 tsp of fine salt and mix. Leave to stand for 20 minutes, press the remaining fluid from the courgette and pat dry with kitchen towel.

Mix in a bowl the courgette, onion, garlic, feta, eggs, fresh and dried herbs with black pepper to taste. Add both the flour types and the sumak or lemonzest.

Heat half of the oliveoil on medium high heat in a large nonstick frying pan. Put 6 times a tablespoon of the courgette mixture in the pan and make sure that the cookies don’t touch. Press them a little bit to make them flat with a spatula.

Bake for 1-2 minutes on each side, untill they are golden and hot. Put them in a plate covered with kitchen towel. Continue to make all the cookies.

Put 3 cookies on each plate with some crumbled feta on top. Spread some feta on the turkish bread. Serve the bread together with the tomatoes and salad together with the cookies.

Raspberry goatcheese salad

There is something about salads that I just cannot resist. They are so versatile and you could literally make a different salad everyday and never make the same one in your life (well, not sure if that is an actual fact, but it feels like that to me anyway!) plus I also find that it is absolutely perfect for getting rid of some leftovers.

I had raspberries leftover as well as some lovely goatcheese that I bought at the farmer’s market this saturday. I had used a large part while making the goatcheese and smoked chicken quich that I had made before but still about half was left in the fridge, so it seemed like a perfect meal to make when I saw a recipe in the Allerhande (supermarket magazine) this week.

I am not sure what has happened to the weather here, but ever since last sunday it has been absolutely terrible. Remember we had that lovely sunny weather and it was so hot out there, that we couldn’t even stay out in the sun? Well, I can tell you that has all completely disappeared and I mean… completely!

Yesterday I had a hairdresser appointment with a friend and we also always use that to go shopping and yesterday that meant we went cookbook shopping… We did not want to walk too far as the downpour was just too bad to stay outdoors for longer then absolutely necessary and there is this fabulous cookbook bookstore very close to our hairdresser (let’s face it; that alone would be reason enough to go to the hairdresser and have an excuse to visit that store!!)

I bought the newest Donna Hay book, a small book about making macarons… (yes, it’s finally gonna happen and today will be the day), a book called “take away’ by Les Huynh, also full of fabulous recipes.

Anyway, more books to try out. As if I did not already own way too many cookbooks, but I simply cannot resist them. I read them at night, before I go to bed! Haha… Anyway, I am gonna go back into the kitchen after having eaten this lovely fresh salad (recipe below) and will now go and have my first ever attempt at making my own macarons!! Say tuned for the final results.

Goatcheese, raspberry and pinenut salad

Roast some pinenuts in a dry frying pan and keep aside to cool of. Make a dressing out of balsamic vinegar and olive oil (1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil) and season with salt and pepper to taste. Toss some lamb’s lettuce on a plate and add some chopped spring onions on top. Add crumbled goatcheese, raspberries and the pinenuts and drizzle some of the dressing on top.

And you’re done! How quick is that! Enjoy!

Smoked chicken and feta quiche

After having baked clafoutis today I figured the oven could use a little more exercise. I haven’t had a lot of time to do any cooking lately so I was quite pleased to have a weekend of joy in the kitchen. The weather was gorgeous today too, so in between baking and checking how things were going in the oven I have enjoyed the sunshine in the garden. All in all it was a lovely quiet day!

Now don’t get me wrong; I love Tom very much and if he is gone for more then a week I start to feel a little lonely, but every once in a while I love being on my own for a few days. A lot of people don’t understand that we sometimes take short vacations away from eachother, but I do not see what is wrong with that. Let’s face it; I think fishing is just about the least interesting hobby in the world, while Tom has – I am sure – his doubts about certain hobbies of mine. And that is all perfectly fine. We’re two rather independent people, so we like to do stuff together but we also like to do stuff with our friends. And that can be together or separate. There is nothing more satisfying then spending time with your friends and talk about “girlstuff” without the guys being there to pull funny faces…. And I know for a fact that Tom would not be happy if I suddenly decided to go along with his fishing trips. (which I would totally hate!!)

Caught a fish...

Just to give you an idea of what kind of fishes we are talking about… On the right you see an example of a carp he caught.. Not sure why those photos are on my harddrive, but I found them while cleaning up… There is always a point during each vacation we have together that there needs to be a fishing trip. I go along as obviously non of his fishing buddies are there and ok, you sometimes have to do something you don’t like for your guy (or girl), right? Anyway, once a year is all I can possibly survive. I am just glad he is having fun in Norway and is hopefully catching some fish this time. They have safely arrived (just got a text message) and they are now out fishing already.

How did I get from cooking to Tom’s fishing trips?? Lol…

Back to my day today.. lovely sunshine, baking clafoutis, little bit of work in between and in a few minutes I would say I am installing myself on the couch with a few episodes of Private practice and a nice glass of chilled wine… Ahhh… total bliss… and then I have my new bed (arrived two days ago) all by myself! Now… does that sound good or not?

In addition to that I had a lovely dinner tonight with a homemade quicke with smoked chicken, feta and dill. Now I didn’t have any proper quiche forms. I have made quiches before but always the larger variety and never a smaller one, but making a big quiche for one person seemed like a waste, so I decided I was gonna make small ones. I can freeze two and because the forms where small I figured I could eat two.

I don’t  think these forms are supposed to be for quiches, but quite frankly I do not know which ones would be, so I have to figure that out as the form was a little bit too small or maybe I just put too much stuff in it. I used two of these and two ramekins, but those are just too big. So the quiche rose to enormous soufle proportions in the ramekins. Won’t be using those for the next time!

The quiche itself was absolutely delicious. It is so easy to make and such a delight to eat that you should definitely try it. I had it with a simple salad (a little bit more dressed then on the photo) and it was fabulous.

Recipe (from Donna Hay, spring edition)

2 sheets of store bought shortcrust pastry

160 gr smoked chicken, shredded

160 gr feta, crumbled,

3 eggs

two tablespoons of chopped dille leaves

185 ml of single cream

sea salt and cracked black pepper

mixed salad leaves, to serve

Preheat oven to 180 C. Cut each sheet of pastry into 4 squares. Line 8 x 1/3 cup-capacity (80 ml) lightly greased pie tins with the pastry squares and trim excess pastry. Prick bases of the cases with a fork. Divide the chicken and feta between the cases. Place the eggs, cream, dill, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk well to combine. Pour into the cases and bake for 25 minutes or untill puffed and set. Serve with a mixed green salad. Makes 8.

in the ramekin

Sweet little lambs!

Yesterday I had a preweddingshoot with a couple that is getting married in august. For some reason my navigation system send me to this tiny backroad instead of via the normal highway and I noticed it too late, but instead I got to see a lovely part of the country that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Plus…. as a bonus I saw my first real young lamb of this spring! I always find it a real sign that spring is coming when the lamb are outside. They keep them indoors untill it is warm enough as they are still quite fragile and frost is not good for those tiny babies… Unfortunately… I was on my way to the preweddingshoot when I spotted them but since I was already running late I couldn’t stop and had to move on.

I did go back since I wanted to take a photo of little lambs jumping but by the time I got back it was the middle of the day and animals always tend to sleep around noon. Sensible animals… but not very photogenic. I waited and waited but the little babies just kept sleeping and this one here was the most awake of the bunch. I might try again this week if I have time and if I have my longer tele with me. The photo above is really a tiny part of the original as I couldn’t get close enough, but aren’t they adorable? They were still a bit wobbly on their legs.. sooooo sweet!

Cherry blossom

And the weather has been great too, although I was forced to stay indoors today. That is really hard if you work from home and the sun is shining. My office looks out over our garden and the backdoor was open, so I could see Gizmo sitting in the garden with her nose in the wind enjoying the sunshine and I was sitting in my stuffy office (really, it is an incredible mess here… I’m ashamed to admit) looking longingly out of the window, but I had too much photos to edit and finish of. Can’t have customers waiting now can I?

So while the sun was happily shining outside I was stuck inside. Boehoe…. I did have to finish though since tonight I had another appointment with a wedding customer and tomorrow it is my parents 50th anniversary! Party….!

We’re gonna have a high tea in Lage Vuursche and then we go on for dinner with just my parents, sisters, brother, the in-laws and grandchildren. Still quite a group now that I think about it… that would be 14 people in total. Well… nice little group I would say.

Anyway, today is also the day that I have decided that I am gonna lose weight again, so I started the morning with a spinning class. I haven’t done any exercise for two weeks so it was tough getting back into the routine, but also good. And for lunch I made myself a lovely feta cucumber salad.

Which brings me to my next complaint; why are salads sooooo difficult to style?? I keep messing it up and I think this looks particularly terrible. Ofcourse the colors of the salad don’t help as they are all very bland, but it was tasty nonetheless. I did wanted to add some more color to it, but the purpose of the salad was to eat it and not for it to look very pretty, so I ended up shooting it as it was. I do understand why there was no picture of this salad in the salad book!!! They’re so sneaky in that way. You can tell when it’s not a photogenic dish, by the fact that they skipped it!

Cucumber feta salad

Cucumber feta salad

(serves 2)

1 cucumber

Fresh dille

Feta

Lemon mayonaise

Red onion

Remove the seeds from the cucumber and make cubes out of it. Slice the onion into small rings. Add about the amount of onion that you like. I used about a quarter of a small red onion, as I am not too fond of raw onions in my salads. Crumble some feta in a bowl. I think I used about 50 gr and add the onion, cucumber and finely diced dille and toss together.

I had some leftover homemade mayonaise that I made yesterday so I made a lemon dressing out of it by adding lots of lemon untill the taste was just right. The original recipe calls for lemon, dried mint and olive oil combined together, but I skipped that part. It’s very fresh and would also do great as a sidesalad at a BBQ perhaps.

Anyway; in terms of styling…. how would you have styled it?

Last but not least I want to share a photo of Gizmo who is lying in het catbasket. She had been outside for a while and just loves this basket. Her eyes were closed and it took some convincing to have her look in my direction. You can almost see her thinking; “What do you want woman?? I am sleeping. Go away with the horrible flash-thing!!”

Go away! I'm having my beautysleep!

Greek inspired salad

Dinner last night with my in-law was a great success and they loved it all (and so did we) so I was quite full when I went to bed. This morning I decided that enough was enough and with the weather sooooo lovely today I figured it was time to get serious about shaping up for the summer. That means you’re probably gonna see quite a lot of salads here in the near future and possibly other healthy stuff. And ofcourse, excercise, exercise, exercise!

The weather forecast for today predicted a lovely 20-21 °C, so I was happy that I only had one appointment today to shoot a cat. That sounds horrible I mean; take photos of the cat ofcourse! Beautiful animal too!!

Jinx

I had initially planned on making something out of a salad book I have. It features 150 different salads and some will probably be really good, but this book…. has no photos or not a lot anyway. And a cookbook without photos, just cannot grab my attention long enough! I just have to look at the pictures!! Not sure why I bought the book to be honest, as I tend to buy the books based on the photos first and recipes second…:) Anyway, I had some rocket leftover from yesterday plus some other green that I wanted to use, so I ended making a sort of Greek salad version with feta. It was delicious and the one slice of bread I had with it at least makes me feel full long enough. When I eat a salad for lunch it has disappeared by 3 pm and I feel hungry again, so having some bread with it prevents that from happening!

If you would like to try; here is what is in the salad

rocket (arugola)

Mixed salad leaves (can be anything you like)

Feta

Cherry tomatoes

Chives

Dressing;

White wine vinegar 1 tbsp

Oliveoil 3 tbsp

1/2 tsp of mustard (I used coarse mustard)

Salad with tomato, feta and rocket

I am gonna be playing around a bit with backgrounds for the photos as I just want to try some other stuff, then just the regular white or plain background. I like the red here, but need to buy more pieces of fabric. Maybe when we go to cooking class tomorrow I have time to go to the market and have a look around!

Have a great weekend! It’s gonna be patisserie tomorrow in class!!