Tuesday, 27 August 2013

Organic Cabbage Soup

In my last posting I told you that we visited our friends who has amazing Kitchen garden.
We got an amazing gift from Jonathan and Christina when we left home on monday, Bank Holiday.
Bags full of crop from their garden.. ah I am just planning what all I will cook from all beautiful things that I have sitting on my work top now!

My forever favourite autumn and winter food is:

Cabbage Soup

It always reminds me about my childhood in Karelia, eastern Finland. It is still warm and nice weather but I will give you recipe for this easy and amazing soup so that when weather get´s soon cooler, you know what to do!

You need:
1kg Cabbage chopped very thin slices and those slices cut on size that is easy to eat.. ea. fit in to your soup spoon..
800g Lean mince meat ( beef or even better lamb)
1 big Onion
2 Beef stock cubes.
1 vegetable stock cube
3l of Water
5 Garlic cloves
Salt
Black pepper
Parsley

You can use normal green Cabbage, I use red as I love colour and got this as a gift!

Put big kettle on gas, add stock cubes, chopped garlic cloves, and some black pepper already in to water.

Chop Cabbage in to think slices, and chop those slices in to nice size so that soup is easy to eat.. if you have too long cabbage slices it will be difficult to eat with spoon if you see what I mean..  when chopped, add cabbage on to water that has already some spices, and stock cubes etc. let it boil when in mean while you deal with mince meat.

Fry Mince meat on a frying pan, add chopped onions, again tiny bit of black pepper, salt and fry it well with salted butter.

Add fried mince meat in to kettle ( see it has to be big to accomodate all this!) and add also good junk of salted butter in to water, and let it boil as long as cabbage becomes soft. Try the taste, you might need more black pepper or salt.

You might need to add water in the middle of everything.. as we are trying to do very thick soup here.. There should be liquids more than cabbage and mince meat in the end, so that liquid levels comes above them, but not so much that there are few sad peaces of cabbage and mince meat in one HUGE bowl of water..

Some people like adding also one carrot sliced for "coins" in to soup, to give it a colour, but as I had red cabbage I wanted to keep colour theme simple.

Put on your plate, decorate with parsley, and enjoy!

This is real food.. can´t get any better, and all from organic materials. 

"This soup is especially great on cold autumn and winter days and is very typical traditional dish in eastern Finland, where I come from. "

Bank holiday weekend with friends

We are blessed to have such a wonderful friends that they invited us for long weekend at their house at the countryside.

I was waiting  this weekend a lot, as first of all it is heart warming to see Christina and Jonathan,  but to also enjoy their beautiful surroundings, and amazing food that Jonathan tends to cook when we are visiting.

..and one important thing.. Sauna. I miss it so much from Finland that it was wonderful to get to go there, use all my hair masks, face mask and what ever silly ladies secret beauty regime you can think of, and step on a readily laid table to enjoy beautifully done food, wine and jolly company.
Perfect eh?

Next day we helped at harvesting at our hosts Kitchen garden. (It was just excuse to get to hold Jonathan´s girls, like he calls he´s  chickens, and I was so besides my self about it that it is almost embarrassing.. I will torture you all with few photos of me doing so...)
It is amazing with all the wonders that is growing in there. Pears, peaches, melons, apples, different kind of berries, tomatoes ( that where so sweet that they are almost like berries) onions, and most of them in several different variety, like Chili, Tomato, and oh so many things that I can not even remember everything.
You must go and see the great blog that Jonathan is writing.
 I really enjoy reading it. It is especially nice for me when I have seen "The Kitchen Garden" with my own eyes and got to put my hands on soil and help. It was great all and all.
Here are some photos, hope you enjoy!

And..don´t forget to go and see "THE BLOG" that Jonathan is writing, here is link:
http://kitchengardenblog.co.uk/blog/


Melone

This one was HUGE! Pumpking

Dark Brown ones where perfect, and very very tasty!

Deep yellow colour was amazing, and they tasted beautiful

These where interesting, fresh and little citrus like

You just MUST love them.. they are so sweet

Pear giving a crop too

Girls are broody, so we lifted them out from their hut

I understand why Dovager Duchess of Devonshire loves her Chickens so much.

Look how beautiful they are

In perfect order



Very curious

One just thought: I´ve had enough of this and left.. 

Pretty girls

Secret photo of gardener him self

what an beautiful colour of onions

I was amazingly happy to get to harvest some of the tomatoes to take home.. 

Beautiful 

Everything just grows so healthy, and big.. Organic garden.

THIS is going to be my food next day

My hubby in black and Jonathan in red shirt. Harvesting