Creamy Cabbage Soup with cream cheese pastries

Thinking about what to cook for a dinner with friends and family and talking about it with my best friend I decided to make a cabbage Soup. My friend also intended to do one for her family Dinner. Here is my recipe for this creamy winter soup that one may enjoy after a walk in those grey, cold, little bit rainy days that we have at the moment... But after every rain sun comes sooner or later, isn´t it? Perhaps this soups gives you a little bit of somewhat of a sunny side.. :). My friend made it with a litle bit of orange juice. Next time I would add to my soup a little bit more stock because for me it was a tick to creamy... My friend told me that also her soup experience went very creamy.... But our guests ate all and did not complain.... In my case perhaps of my cute cream cheese pastries.....?

You need (for 4 - 6 persons)

300g Shredded Cabbage

200 ml heavy cream

400 ml vegetable stock

1 small, fine cut onion

1 garlic

1 Thyme sprig

Some Milk, white Balsamico, salt an pepper to season, some sunflower oil
For the cream cheese pastries:
Some ready rolled puff pastry , some herb cream cheese, 1 small egg, shortly beaten with a fork 
To prepare:
1. Heat up a good lug of oil in a big pan and sweat in it cabbage and onion.
2 . Fill up with the warm stock , heavy cream and a big dash of milk. Add crushed garlic and the thyme sprig. Let simmer until the cabbage is soft.
3. Take out the thyme and season with salt, pepper and a dash of white balsamico. Mix all until creamy (if you do it with your kitchenblender or your freestandmixer you should do it in portions or you have a great machine like I have :). With my "wondermachine" I cook and mix all in- and with- only this one kitchenmachine: My Thermomix from Vorwerk!)

For the decoration:
- Cut the puff pastry in stripes and smear the herb cream cheese on one part. Then lay over an other stripe without cheese. 
- Cut out with cookie cutters different forms.This way the edges will be pressed automatically together.
- Brush every pastrie with the eggmix, put on a oventray lined with parchment paper and bake in the 180 C preheated oven for 20 minutes until golden brown.
- Then put them on a wooden schaschlik-spit and decorate the bowls with the soup....

Creamy Pumpkin Soup

NUTMEG PUMPKIN

NUTMEG PUMPKIN

Pumpkins are not only usable for Halloween lanterns... At the moment Pumpkins emerge on every corner, as decoration, in the supermarket or at the farmers market, in different shapes and sizes... To prepare pumpkins in a tasty way in my opinion is not so easy. On one hand because if you buy a whole pumpkin I find it not so easy to cut him into pieces, even with really sharp knifes...And on the other hand quite often pumpkin ends up in a or too hard or too soft cooked way.... Nonetheless I have to try each year some new pumpkin recipes. One of my evergreens is this creamy pumpkin soup that I love because of its mild spicy taste and its creaminess and its recomforting, warming "action". Especially when it´s a cold, grey day... looking at the bright colour of the soup and then savouring a hot pot of it, will get you soon warmed.

I made this soup with a so called nutmeg pumpkin which I like for his mild, sligthly sweet taste.

For the soup you will need (for 3 - 4 persons)

- 600 g pumpkin cut in cubes (weight without peel and seeds..)

- 250 ml vegetable stock

- 2 onions (about 80 g), cut in cubes

- 1 crushed garlic clove

- 1 can (400g) peeled tomatoes (pomodori pelati)

- 300 ml coconut milk

- 1 tsp. salt

- 1 tsp. paprika powder

- 1/2 tsp. chili powder (or less if you like it milder or more.... )

Pepper to season and some more coconut milk to drizzle over the soup before serving

To prepare:

1. In a big pan pour the incomplete drained tomatoes, add the onions and the hot vegetable stock and cook for 8 minutes covered with a lid

2. Add the pumpkin, coconut milk, garlic and the spices and continue cooking for about 15 - 20 minutes until your pumpkin is soft (always with a lid)

3. Now mix the soup until completly smooth (the easiest way is to give the soup in a normal mixer - you might have to do it in several portions - depending on the size of your mixer - or you have a "wonder" machine as I have where you can cook the soup and mix it in the same machine... it´s really the greatest kitchen machine I´ve ever seen and bought..not the cheapiest one but taking into the account all the things one can do with her.... It is a "Thermomix TM31" from Vorwerk.... if you wanna have a look on it: http://thermomix.vorwerk.com/de/)

4. Pour the soup in your plate or bowl  and drizzle with some coconut milk and serve for example with some roasted garlic bread

rocket - Soup

As Fall seems to continue.. Just let me look into my calendar.. is it really August? Must be a mistake..

Have to do something to bring back summer almost in the kitchen and on our plates. A friend of mine just wrote that he is craving from the heat.. he stays at the moment in Greece.. And in fact I have no compassion for him... how fine it is here in my hometown.. cool temperatures, cloudy, not sweetening... Damned!Could´nt he send us a little bit of the heat? So you can understand why I had to made a soup.. But to bring a little bit of summer into the dish I choosed Rocket as a basic ingredient. One can find Rocket easily today on quite every market and even at the supermarket. Normally it is used in salads. But it is also very tasty in soups with his distinct flavour and his beautiful green colour.

You need (serves 4 persons):

- 100 g Rocket

- 600 ml vegetable stock

- 200 g heavy cream

- 1 small onion, chopped
- 3 Tbsp. oil
- 2 boiled eggs (rather soft than hard)
- Salt and pepper to season
How to prepare:

1. Heat up oil in a deep pan and sweat the onion

2. Add vegetable stock and bring to boil. Now add heavy cream and boil for 15 minutes

3. Add the coarsely chopped rocket (washed and the harder strunks cut away) to the soup and reboil.

4. Mix everything in a mixer until well blended and frothy

5. Peel the precooked eggs and put one half in each plate. Add soup and decorate with some rocket leaves and grissini.
Now you can wait for the Summer....