Parsnip soup with smoked cheese and soy sauce

Call it spring stress, call it searching for my muse, call it a stupid gap, but here I am - back after two months without a single post about food. I am terribly sorry, for I must be to be polite, but fortunately (so you can cheer and forgive me right away) I can say that I've found the muse and have some great stuff to show you.

Only that...I have to make most of them again to make pictures. Silly silly me.

This soup stayed a dream for quite some time, until one day I got it all right and I literally went 'mmmmmmmm' till my bowl was empty. I couldn't believe it! There was actually competition to my all-time-favourite carrot soup with coriander and aniseed.

Keep the stock light and your heart open for the best experience.

Parsnip soup with smoked cheese
(serves 4)

300 g parsnip, diced
1 onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, diced
2 dl chicken broth
4 dl milk
100 g smoked cheese, diced
1 tbsp butter
salt, sugar
soy sauce

1. Melt butter in a soup pot, add diced parsnip, onion and garlic, cover with lid and sautee about 10 minutes, until the onion is transparent.
2. Add broth and boil for 30 minutes, until parsnip is tender.
3. Puree the potful, then add the smoked cheese and puree until very smooth.
4. Pour everything back to the pot, add milk, stirring and flavour with salt and a bit of sugar. Heat up.
5. When serving, sprinkle with soy sauce.

The soup is full of taste. It has got this sweet flick to it, from the natural sweetness of the parsnip (which, much like the carrot, can cheer up any savoury dish) and also from the essential dash of sugar. The smoked cheese makes it creamier, gives it an attitude, intensifies the taste.

The soy sauce, as the final key to the taste combination, gives the soup the sparkle of life. I wanted to taste a bit with every mouthful, so I just added some more when I'd done with half of the soup. Don't mix it, enjoy it as a contrast, a treat. I'm not a fan of soy sauce, but I love it with red fish and I adore it on this soup.

Creamy broccoli soup with pesto oil and pumpkin seeds

I didn't even have the time to say 'broccoli is a supervegetable' to myself subconsciously while eating this soup on Saturday, because I was too busy enjoying.
Considering how super broccoli really is, that has to mean something.


Creamy broccoli soup with pesto oil and pumpkin seeds
(serves 4)

500 g broccoli
2 medium potatoes
chicken stock
100 g cream cheese
salt, white pepper, sugar

for serving:
basil pesto
olive oil
pumpkin seeds

1. Cut off broccoli florets, chop broccoli stems and potatoes. Put the potatoes, broccoli stems and 1/2 of the florets into a saucepan, cover barely with chicken stock. Boil, covered with a lid, for 20 minutes.
2. Puree the potful, add the cream cheese and flavour with salt, white pepper and a dash of sugar.
3. Pour the soup back into the pot, add the remaining florets and heat for 5 additional minutes.
4. Mix a bit of oil into the pesto. Serve the soup with pumpkin seeds and pesto oil drizzled on top.

The soup is very creamy indeed. If the florets are cut small, there's enough for almost every mouthful. They remain a bit crisp and are a good crunch together with the pumpkin seeds in the overall creamy-creamy soup. The potatoes give good body and the pesto attacks an otherwise mild soup with a strong taste, creating a great combination.

I suggest using light stock if you don't want overpower the delicate taste of the broccoli. The supervegetable needs its attention!:)

My favourite quick carrot soup

You say 'pureed soup' - I think 'carrot soup with coriander and aniseed'

For me, it's the quintessence of pureed soup, it's a liquid dream, it's the warm comfort of a cold evening, the cooling pleasure of a hot afternoon. It's versatile, it's under my skin.


I've almost always got organic carrots in the fridge that we've grown ourselves. They're full of taste and have got a homely flavour. Making this soup is very easy and, fortunately, someone has usually peeled the carrots before I get my hands on them:) In wintertime, it's great to enjoy it warm, but it's just as wonderful when eaten cold. I especially love that during summertime! We do have 1-2 weeks of hot weather here!;)

Chicken broth can be replaced by vegetable broth, heavy cream or sour cream can be used in place of cream cheese. Whatever you've got handy! Cream cheese can also be flavoured with herbs /onion/garlic/whatnot.

Carrot soup with coriander and aniseed
(serves 4)

400 g carrots
1 onion
1 tbsp butter
8 dl chicken broth
ground coriander seeds
ground aniseed
4 tbsp cream cheese
1 tsp sugar
salt, pepper

1. Slice the onion and the carrots, sautee in butter in a saucepan until onion is transparent, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the broth and boil until carrots have turned quite tender, 20 minutes will do fine.
3. Puree the potful, then return to the saucepan.
4. Add cream cheese and flavour with coriander, aniseed, salt (if needed), pepper and sugar to taste. Heat, but don't let the soup reach boiling point.

The soup is creamy, even a little portion of cream cheese does wonders! The flavour of carrots is sweetish, but the spices push it to a limit. Coriander and aniseed are not very strong flavourers, they're rather mild, so they suit carrot perfectly. What pleasure!

This time I served the soup with some crispy rye bread cubes, but it's equally good with white bread cubes or grilled chicken. More often than not I like to eat it plainly, without a topping, because the soup itself completes the taste. That sounds weird enough:)

So I guess it's also the perfect recipe for this month's Monthly mingle, themed Comfort foods. Although it's not something from my childhood or anything I'd eat together with my family, I'm sure this soup will guide me through the best and worst moments of the life still ahead of me:D

Fennel and pear soup

I guess you all have some dishes you make just for yourselves. Maybe you mix together a chocolate dessert when home alone, maybe you have your special sandwich that everyone stares with a you're-really-eating-that face while you're at it.

For me the lonely dishes are pureed soups. Yes, really. My mother refers to them as baby food. My father...well he rather has a problem with what I put into the soups. Or...into almost any savoury dish.

The soups may be lonely, but...at least I can have the whole potful for myself. I must thank Janelle of Let's talk of tomatoes for this lovely soup - half the amount made a good portion of warm food for two days:)

Fennel and pear soup
(Talk of Tomatoes, serves 6)

2 bulbs fennel
1 onion
2 (comice) pears
2 tbsp butter
9 dl chicken broth
2 tbsp flour
salt, white pepper, sugar
1 dl light cream

1. Trim the base and stalks of fennel, thinly slice bulb. Do the same with the onion.
2. Add fennel, onion, butter and 2 tbsp water into your soup pot. Cover and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.
3. Add 2 tbsp flour, heat stirring for 1 minute.
4. Add peeled and chopped pears and broth. Cover and simmer until pears are soft, for 5 minutes.
5. Puree the potful (You can leave some of the soup as it is to have some pices in it).
6. Return the soup to the pot, add cream and flavour with salt, white pepper and a bit of sugar.
7. Simmer 6-8 minutes, serve. (optional garnish: fennel fronds).

The more I ate, the more I liked it. When the soup reached a kind of moderately warm temperature, I decided to start loving it. The obvious wonderful flavour of fennel in creamy consistency, supported by the faint presence of pears. If I hadn't known there were pears in the soup, I probably wouldn't have guessed the 'secret ingredient', but they do deserve the name 'secret ingredient', as they seem to somehow bring out the best in fennels.

Do add a bit of sugar! Although there are pears in the soup the sweetness - on the whole - needs your tiny support. The soup tastes good when it's cooled down too, but I'd still recommend this 'moderately warm' temperature - it'll wake up your taste buds!

Honeyed onion and apple soup with caraway

Potatoes and cabbage - that was everybody's opinion when they first saw this soup. But it's tricky with me. I'd rather suspect dishes obviously made of potatoes and cabbage and make sure those cabbage leaves aren't actually some sweetish and divine tasting onion strips. But the trick was accidental this time. As our unexpectedly warm weather started to turn, I felt an urge to eat a warming onion soup. Enough with those potatoes and cabbage now!


I have ate simple onion soup a few times, but I usually like to add a little something to it. We have a nice bowl on the kitchen counter that's always full of home-grown organic apples. When I need to peel some for a dish, I actually stick the peels into my mouth instead of throwing them away. So the vitamins beneath the skin (there are hell of a lot vitamins there as you know) don't get lost. And the caraway and honey...well, today feels organic.


Honeyed onion and apple soup with caraway
(serves 2)

150 g diced apple
150 g diced onion
1 tbsp butter
1/3 tsp ground caraway
1 tbsp honey
3 dl vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
1 1/2 dl milk
salt, pepper
1-2 tbsp grated cheese

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add onion and apple. Cover and cook about ten minutes over medium heat until onion is transparent and golden.
2. Take the cover off and turn the heat up. Cook for additional five minutes.
3. Add caraway and honey, then milk and broth. Boil the soup for about five minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Serve it hot sprinkled with grated cheese and green onion tops.



The soup has quite much sweet taste - the word honeyed has hit the spot with its yum stickyness. Caraway is the ingredient that shows its character and makes the dish more earthly. The apple dices are really tender, but not yet losing their shape. Onion tops and cheese...well they're like cherries on top of a cake. Adding milk makes the broth hazy, but milder in taste, so I really like to use it in onion soups.
And of course, perfect accompaniments for this soup - a slice of bread and a hope for more sun.