Soup

Butternut Soup

The first time in my life that I ate butternut soup was on my 21st birthday. I never had an end of school education celebration due to the fact that I didn’t finish school – this in itself is a story for another time. My mother decided to celebrate my 21ste birthday as a celebration of my life, which the enemy tried to rob many times. She decorated the house and bought me a beautiful dress and then she hired caterers for the evening. On the menu was butternut soup. It was absolutely delicious! So this soup is more a fond memory then just a recipe.

Ok I will come right out and say this, there are very few times that we follow the recipe exactly. Many times we just guess the amounts without weighing it out exactly.

What you need

5 kg butternut
4 x 200g Granny Smith apples
2 x 100g chopped onions
1 Cup of orange juice
2 packs of cream of chicken soup
2 l of milk
Salt and pepper
3 teaspoons of Curry powder
A half a teaspoon of chicken spice
250ml mayonnaise
250ml cream

We have found that butternut is a hard vegetable to peel and cut, so we prefer to wrap up the whole butternut in foil and roast it in the oven until it is soft. Once it has cooled down enough that we can handle it, we remove it from the foil and remove the skin and seeds and then mash it. We also feel this enhances the flavour instead of boiling cut pieces of butternut in water. You can do it either way you want.

Peel the apples and cut and core them. Peel and cut the onions into pieces and boil it together with the apples until it is very soft. Then drain off the water.

Like many of our adventures in the kitchen, Jacques does certain things while I do others. This way we work together seamlessly. Jacques blends together the butternut and some of the milk until it is nice and smooth. He then continues to blend the soft boiled apples, onions with the orange juice until it is a nice fine pulp texture. We often use a bit more orange juice than what the recipe calls for.

I heat the the rest of the milk, curry powder, chicken soup powder, salt and pepper together until everything is combined. As I said, we don’t really follow the precise recipe and most time we have more butternut than we should so we then add a liter or two of chicken stock as well. Then we add the butternut, apple, onion, orange juice pulp with the milk and spices.

Heat up everything together making sure that it is a nice smooth texture. We sometimes blend everything a bit more in the pot with a stick blender. Then we add the mayonnaise and cream into the soup, making sure everything is combined well.

Again presentation is key so we like to serve the soup with some dried pumpkin seeds on top of each bowl.

This recipe goes very well with some of our homemade breads.

Lentil Soup

Winter in Israel is very cold and wet. On such days a nice hearty soup is always a good idea. There used to be a lot of nice 5 shekel coffee shops who would also sell a very nice cup of lentil soup. Today very few of these places are still operational and their soup is no longer only 5 shekel.

We recently started making our own lentil soup and the advantage of this is that we can add anything that we want. We discovered that lentil soup with the addition of meat is really yummy. Now we always add meat to our lentil soup and although it takes extra time and effort it is definitely worth it.

What you need

Slow Roasted Meat
Lentils (we used brown and red)
Onions
Celery
Carrots
Olive Oil
Beef stock
Salt
Hawaij Soup Spice – A mix of Cumin, Turmeric, Blackpepper, Cardamom and Clove
Extra Cumin
Chutney optional
Fresh Coriander

First you need to slow roast a cut of meat. We like brisket but any boneless cut of beef that you prefer should work. Add your preferred spices but smoky flavoured spices enhance the taste of the soup. One of our favourites is Sweet Mesquite Seasoning. Add some water to your roasting pan and roast at 125-150 degrees Celsius for a few hours. When the meat is cooked you can either shred it with an electric beater or let it cool and cut it into small 1cm cubes.

We cook our lentils in a pressure cooker with the spices and salt. You could also cook it in a pot but then you need to let the lentils soak for a few hours before hand.

While the lentils are cooking, chop up some onions into small squares. Cut the celery lengthwise once or twice and then chop it into cubes. In a saucepan start frying the onions and celery in olive oil. You can also alternatively fry it in the beef fat that rendered out while roasting.

Peel and cube the carrots and add it to the saucepan. Add some beef stock, or even better, the juices from the bottom of the roasting pan. Cook until the carrots are ready.

When the lentils are done cooking in the pressure cooker some of them get puréed but when cooking on a stovetop this might take a while. You might want to take a stick blender and blend it a bit. Add the meat, onions, celery and carrots. Add chutney to taste.

In Israel we are not fortunate enough to be able to buy chutney from the shops, thus we have started making our own. We have found that adding a bit of our own homemade chutney adds just enough sweetness and acidity for a wholesome taste to the soup.

If the soup is too thick, add some water. Taste it, add more salt or spices if needed.

Serve with some fresh coriander.

Butternut Soup

Lentil Soup

Introduction

Testimony about Our Kitchen

Recipes

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