Vegetable Soup with Chicken

I wanted to make a mushroom soup with the leftover turkey stock that was sitting in my freezer since Thanksgiving. But I couldn't get any dried mushrooms and didn't want to use only fresh ones (how are dried mushrooms a seasonal thing when you can get fresh ones all year round?).
So I improvised and came up with the following recipe.

1 onion
olive oil
chicken breast
chives, cut into small rings
salt, pepper, cumin, parsley
3 potatoes
1 cup frozen peas
1 cup chickpeas
4 cups broccoli
several stalks celery
white wine
cream
4 cups broth
8 oz of sliced white mushrooms
Cut the onion into small pieces and fry it in some olive oil in a big pot. Rub chicken breast with salt, pepper and spices and fry with the onions until done. Remove the chicken. When the chicken has cooled down a little but, cut it into small pieces. Add chives.
Cut the potatoes into small cubes and add them to the onion. Fry for a couple of minutes while stirring so that the onions don't burn. Add peas, broccoli and celery. Fry for another 5 minutes. Add some white wine and cream and the 4 cups of broth. Cook until the vegetables are done, add spices to taste. Then blend with an immersion blender.
In a frying pan fry the sliced mushrooms for a couple of minutes from both sides. Add to the chicken.
Serve the creamy soup with some of the chicken-mushroom mix and sour cream.

The result was quite tasty, but it made me realize that I need to stock up on my herbs. I only had parsley and basil and would have liked to add tarragon or rosemary.

Puff Pastry Roll Filled With Salmon and Spinach

Puff pastry is great! For dishes with spinach, with cheese, with tomatoes, with cinnamon, with nuts and sugar..
..and for salmon! I tried out this German recipe of a Salmon and Spinach Puff Pastry Roll and adapted it a little bit. It's now one of my favorite recipes even though I've only made it twice so far. It's easy and quick to make and tastes really good!

Puff Pastry Roll Filled With Salmon and Spinach
1 sheet frozen puff pastry
1/2 - 1lb salmon
1/2 onion, chopped
1 bunch spinach or frozen spinach
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cream cheese
salt, pepper
1 egg, whisked
Thaw the puff pastry and roll it out with a rolling pin.
Fry onion in a pan, add spinach and fry for a couple of minutes. (optional: add some flower). Add salt and pepper.
Fry salmon for a couple of minutes and cut into 1-2 inch cubes.
Mix sour cream and cream cheese and season with salt and pepper.
Spread the sour cream mix on the pastry, leaving 1-2 inches. Distribute spinach and salmon on top of the sour cream mix. Roll the pastry with the filling from one side to another, ending without the sour cream mix.
Transfer roll unto a baking dish and brush with the egg.
Bake at 375F for 25-30 minutes until golden.

This yummy roll can be served by itself, or with a simple white sauce.

For the White Sauce:
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup cream
salt, pepper, white wine, lemon juice
Melt the butter, slowly add the flour. Then add vegetable stock and cream until the sauce has the consistency you like. Season with salt, pepper, white wine, lemon juice. Serve with the puff pastry roll.

Another one of my favorite recipes that goes well with this one is Potato and Corn Casserole from Argentina.

And of course veggies :)

Vegetable Stew (with beef)

For this stew I have combined ideas that I found online with what I had in the fridge. This recipe can easily be done without the beef and as a vegan/vegetarian version.

Vegetable Stew

beef for stews (optional)
oil mustard and dressing
4-5 cups of broth
1/2 can of tomato paste
spices: bay leaves, oregano or basil, pepper, salt
3 carrots, sliced
3 big potatoes, diced
5 celery stems, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, sliced
1 apple, diced
3 tomatoes, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
3 tablespoons of flour
3 table spoons of water
In a large pot, fry the beef in oil, mustard and dressing until done on the outside.
Add broth, tomato paste and spices, bring to a boil and then simmer for 30-60 minutes (I used this time to cut the vegetables). Add carrots, potatoes, celery, onion and leek. Cook until potatoes are soft. Add apple, tomatoes and mushrooms and cook for another 10-15 minutes.
Whisk together flour and water and add to the stew, cook for another 3 minutes until the stew thickens.

Outcome:
- I couldn't taste the mustard and dressing at all and I wonder if they are necessary (I think I would have liked a little mustard taste, so I will try to add more mustard next time).
- The stew had a very strong tomato taste which I wasn't expecting since I only used half a can. I want to try to leave that out next time.
- Another thing I wasn't expecting was that I couldn't taste the celery much. I don't like raw celery and for that reason haven't used it in cooking either. Maybe it was masked by the tomato taste, but in the future I will not avoid it anymore.
- I added the apple because some sites say that it goes well will celery or celery root, but I don't think that one apple made much difference. Maybe it was also masked by the tomato taste.
- What I really liked was how the stew thickened slightly with the flour and water mixture that is added in the end.

Russian Salad "Olivier"

To go with the leftover Tarte Flambee from yesterday I made:

a Russian salad with the name of "Olivier"
3 big potatoes, cooked and diced
4 eggs, cooked and diced
4 carrots, grated
1 cup of corn
1 cup of peas
1 cucumber, diced
1 pickled cucumber, diced
1/2 onion, chopped in the food processor
quite a bit of mayonnaise
a bit of mustard
salt and pepper
Mix everything together in a big bowl or pot. Enjoy for the next couple of days :)

I used fresh carrots and grated them instead of slicing and dicing them. It seemed like less work, I wonder if I could even chop them in the food processor like I did with the onion.
The mayonnaise turned out to be much saltier than I was used to, so I will need to either not add any salt at all or add it right at the end.

Eggnog and Mini Mushroom Quiches with Potato Crust

Great thing about Christmas is that I can try out all those christmassy recipes. Something I always wanted to make from scratch is eggnog. The recipe I used won me over with its title: "Amazingly good Eggnog".
As before, I substituted sugar with coconut sugar. I also left out the cloves and nutmeg and used spiced rum instead. The result tasted very good, but I must have done something wrong (probably during the heating process) and the eggnog wasn't smooth.
Great thing about not getting yummy things right the first time: There's going to be a next time!

Accompanying the eggnog was a vegetarian dinner that I have been exited about for several days!
I am a big fan of my newly acquired muffin pan. I haven't made a single muffin yet, but I thoroughly enjoy all the non-muffin recipes I can make with it. Like Mini Quiches!!

The idea for the potato crust I got from this recipe. But I used fresh potatoes and also added an egg and a tablespoon of flour to my crust "dough". It turned out wonderful and I am a big fan of it!
The filling was made from this Mushroom Quiche recipe. I did add more cheese (Gruyere AND Compté!) and parsley. Some quiches got a little bit of salmon as well which turned out to be a great addition!