Warming red beet soup with horseradish

This soup looks so amazing, don´t you think?!? It also tastes amazing…so soothing, warming and energizing! Too bad pumpkin season is long over here, I miss the pumpkins dearly 😦

To make the soup, first sautee some sliced onion in a pot with a small amount of sesame oil and a pinch of salt. Add chopped up carrot, hokkaido pumpkin, parsley root, red beet and a small piece of apple – you have to play with the ratios and each time you will end up with a different soup depending on which vegetable you decide to emphasize! 😀 Sautee together for a while, add a bit more salt and cover with hot water so that all the veggies are submerged. At this point you can add bayleaf, allspice and whole cloves (adds great depth of flavour). Boil slowly with a lid on for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables become soft. Season with ume plum vinegar. Blend the soup in a blender or use an immersion blender (I think that´s the easier way to puree soups, because you don´t need to transfer it anywhere!).  Don´t forget to take out the spices before blending…After blending, let the soup simmer for a while longer and then turn off the flame and mix in some finely grated horseradish – the amount depends on how spicy you want your soup to be… You can still season the soup with some lemon juice and add a nice green garnish, such as chopped fresh parsley.

Baked teff dumplings with horseradish kinpira and sauteed greens

 

Long description but simple meal!

All I did was that I cooked up a batch of brown teff (the world´s smallest grain originating in Ethiopia), in a 1:3 grain to water ratio, with a pinch of salt. Then I mixed enough rice flour into the hot grain so that the porridge-like consistency got transformed into a tougher dough and I let it cool.

Meanwhile I prepared kinpira by slicing carrot, parsley root and soaked dried burdock into matchsticks, I sauteed them for a few minutes on a bit of oil with a pinch of salt, in a heavy-bottom pot. When they softened, I added about 1 cm of water into the pot, covered with a lid and let the veggies cook for half an hour on a low flame, using a flame tamer. Towards the end I added a splash of tamari and about 5 cm of finely grated horseradish which I actually mixed in when the flame was already off and just let it steam through.

I also cut up some carrot tops, curly cabbage and white cabbage and sauteed them on a tiny bit of oil with minced garlic and a pinch of salt, just shortly so that they stay crisp.

When the dough cooled off, I formed round dumplings (you might need to wet your hands slightly to prevent sticking), lined them up on a greased baking pan and baked them on 200°C until their surface got crispy. They were a bit bland as I didn´t add any flavour to the dough, so we ended up spreading some coarse mustard on top 😀