The Greek Food

Tag: soup

  • Smoked Mackerel soup recipe with cream

    Smoked Mackerel soup recipe with cream

    The following recipe is a result of my endless efforts in cooking during the 2020 Covid lockdown in UK. Even if my life (as well as of many others) was not so exciting at that time, the soup ended up to be delicious!

    In our family we have now as a tradition to go to the local fishmonger and have a fish every Saturday. However, the situation forced us most of the time during the Covid lock down to rely on deliveries. It doesn’t matter, smoked mackerel was equally good. For that kind of recipe you can use any kind of fish you would like but i highly suggest to at least try once smoked mackerel.

    Its taste is different from any other fish you have ever tried and its believed to be incredible healthy. Dont take my word for it. Thats what NHS says!

    Oily fish (like mackerel) are:

    high in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which may help to prevent heart disease

    a good source of vitamin D

    from the NHS website

    Obviously there are many ways to cook it but the following recipe even if it is not traditionally Greek is still extremely good. Lets not forget that any Fish is really popular in Greece and we have lots of variations for our traditional fish soup.

    Any way, on with the recipe!

    Smoked Mackerel Soup Ingredients

    • 1 whole smoked mackerel or 2 packets of vacuum-sealed mackerel fillets
    • 1 peeled onion
    • 2-3 small potatoes
    • 2 carrots
    • 3 sticks of celery
    • large handful of parsley
    • 1 bay leaves
    • 1 vegetable stock
    • 100ml cream

    METHOD

    I did use for this case vacuum sealed mackerel fillets but in case you have a whole smoked mackerel then you have to clean it first. Make sure you keep the flesh, and discard any bones from the mackerel.

    Take a deep pot and add the choped onion until it begins to sizzle. Cut the carrots and the potatoes into cubes or basically small sizes. Also dice the celery and the parsley.

    Throw the vegetables and the few bay leaves to the pan and fry with the onions for a few minutes. Fill it up with around 750ml of water and throw in the vegetable stock. Cook as long as it takes for the vegetables to become tender.

    Gentle add the fish to the bottom of the pot and let it cook for 2-4 minutes in low heat. Finally, add your cream and pepper and remove from the heat after 1 minute just as it comes to simmer.

    Taste for seasoning and add seasoning based on your requirements.

  • Beef soup with vegetables

    Beef soup with vegetables

    As the winter is coming in London the amount of recipes that include the word “soup” in it is increasing all the time.

    Chicken soup is one of my favorite of all times, along with any Chinese soups which I really like. I remember that when I was young my mother used to do either beef soup or some fish soup, depending on the fish that she could find on the local markets.

    However, for some reason I never really liked it as much as the chicken soup, or the fish soup.  Nevertheless, obviously everything changes as you grow older and now i consider it one of the best comfort foods you can have.

    The more traditional way of cooking that soup is by adding orzo and red sauce which is still nice, but …well i made some small modifications. In this specific case i didn’t add orzo but rather kept the plain with lemon.

    On other cases i just add some mustard. It is equally great i have to say but i guess it is heavily influenced due to the fact that i have spent the past 10 years of my life in UK.

    Well… here it is…

    BEEF SOUP WITH VEGETABLES AND MUSTARD – INGREDIENTS

    • 1 kilo of Beef chopped.
    • 2 daphne leafs
    • 4-5 carrots chopped
    • 2 onions finely chopped
    • 1 small bunch of celery
    • 3  medium sized potatoes chopped
    • Salt/Pepper
    • Vegetable cube
    • 1 lemon
    Greek Beef Soup
    Our Beef Soup is ready. Greek style!

    METHOD

    1. In a big pot, add the olive oil in medium heat and let it sizzle. Add the beef and stir it well.
    2. Add Salt and Pepper as well and the onions and let the beef become a bit brownish. Fill it up with water, add the Daphne leaves as well as the vegetable cube.
    3. Put in the potatoes, the celery and carrots and let them boil for 2 hours. In my case i used a pressure cooker for almost an hour.
    4. After the beef is done add a spoon of butter and the celery leaves and keep boil for couple of more minutes.
    5. Serve with a bit more celery leaves and a slice of lemon.

    Obviously you can make the same soup with some variations… Sometimes i prefer to add a spoon of mustard rather than butter.

  • Hot chickpea soup recipe with lemon

    Hot chickpea soup recipe with lemon

    Writing for this blog now for almost a year I have tried to focus always in recipes that were always different. After a while I liked the challenge of cooking something that I haven’t eaten for a while or that someone never believed that I could cook.

    Other times it was curiosity and the fact that I wanted to taste different things. Couple of weeks ago it was the first time that I remembered to make the following chickpea soup. My mother was cooking it a lot when I was young and it was one of the favourite dishes of my father. Obviously for me, at that time I hated it. It is however a recipe that a Greek mother does often I think so I had to include it.

    So I decided to try and cook the same soup, just to see why I hated it when my mother was cooking it to me. The problem was that I haven’t eaten chickpeas for so long that I couldn’t even remember how they tasted. When the soup was made, I didn’t know if the chickpeas were really ready…or that’s how they should taste …

    Nevertheless, the recipe is pretty simple so its pretty difficult to go wrong. Also, I enjoyed it and so did my brother who was once again my “guinea pig” as in most of my experimental dishes. So.. here we go!

    Ingredients for Chickpea Soup with Lemon

    • 500gr Chickpeas
    • 1 onion sliced
    • 1 garlic clove sliced
    • Chili flakes
    • 1 tea spoon of cumin
    • Salt/Pepper
    • 1 lemon

    METHOD

    Let the Chickpeas in a bowl of water from the previous day to soak. iIn a big pot add some olive oil and then add the onions and garic. Stir them around and add a spoon of butter.

    Pour hot water until the middle of the pot and add vegetable stock cubes. Add the chick peas and bring it to boil for 10-20 mins. Then let it simmer until chickpeas get soften.

     Add salt pepper and olive oil while continuing to boil in low heat for half an hour. Serve while adding some lemon.

    Enjoy!

  • Creamy mushroom soup

    Creamy mushroom soup

    The following recipe I have done it for some time now and always forgot to have a picture for the blog. It became such a usual dish for me that I always forgot to find some time to write recipe.

    The following mushroom soup is one of those dishes that you always want to do when you don’t want to spend so much time in the kitchen but still have something healthy and nice.

    A really love mushrooms and try to use them in different kind of recipes from time to time. So you will see me adding them in dishes.  My original love for mushrooms brought me to search for the following recipe that I cook regular now.

     MUSHROOM SOUP

    • 1 kg white mushrooms
    • ½ onion, grated
    • ½ glass dry white wine
    • 200 g. butter
    • 1 chicken cube
    • 1½ liter of hot water
    • 3-4 tsp. flour for all uses
    • 150 ml cream
    • 3 tsp. tablespoons chopped parsley
    • Salt and pepper

    Mushroom soup
    The creamy mushroom soup is ready

    Method

    • We clean with a damp cloth the mushrooms and then mash half the amount of them in the blender and cut into slices the other half.
    • In a deep pan pour half the amount of butter, let it warm up well and saute the slices and trimmings of mushrooms and grated onion.
    • Add the white wine, lower the temperature, stirring from time to time and close with a lid until the mushrooms are tender.
    • Fill with hot water and add the chicken stocking cubes, stir until dissolved and continue cooking for 5 minutes.
    • In a glass, add flour, add 4-6 spoonfuls of water and with a fork stir until becoming a thin slurry.
    • Pour the diluted porridge to soup and continue cooking until the soup thickens, stirring with a whisk to avoid clotting.
    • Finally, add the cream and the remaining butter and stir to obtain our shiny soup texture, color and flavor.
    • Serve the soup in dishes garnished with chopped parsley.

     

  • Traditional Greek Lentil Soup -“Fakes”

    Traditional Greek Lentil Soup -“Fakes”

    Lentils were one of those foods that I hated when I was young as I found that there was nothing interesting on them. As kids the only things that you really like are meat, …meat…..pasta and meat…

    Despite that everything changes when you lose something…and after some years in the uk I realised that I didn’t had Lentils for ages… Lentils are really healthy and really tasty while there are different variations on them.  In Greek its pronounced as Fah-kes and I know that many English can make a lot of jokes regarding the name buuut…we will continue 🙂

    As I said, there are a lot of variations about the lentil soup but I am a traditional kind of guy and I still do them the way that my mother was doing them when I was young…and I was never eating them…

    INGREDIENTS FOR LENTIL SOUP – FAKES

    • 500gr of green lentils
    • 1 red onion finely chopped
    • 2 cloves of garlic chopped
    • 1 can of tomato juice
    • Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
    • Oregano
    • 2 Bay leaves
    • Vinegar
    • 1 vegetable stock cube

    greek traditional lentil soup fakes
    The traditional greek lentil soup. Fakes with a bit of vinegar

    HOW TO COOK FAKES

    In deep pot, add some olive oil and throw in the garlic and onions. Let them sizzle for 3 minutes making sure that they are not burned at all.

    Add water to fill 3/4 of the pot and then add the lentils inside. Put Salt, pepper, the vegetable cube as well as the bay leaves and bring them to boil for 45 minutes.

    When the lentils have soften a bit then you can add the can with the tomato juice and continue to boil it for another 30-40 minutes.

    Add oregano , and a teaspoon of olive oil in the end so the mixture becomes a bit more thick. Serve together with a bit of vinegar and some feta cheese.

    FAKES