Food / Cold Soups - Recipes for Summer [2]

Tired of constant heat we dream about something really light to eat. Cold soups create separate page in many national cookery books. There is a huge variety of them. Literally every tasty and ripe vegetable or fruit might become the basis of such a dish.

In Southern Europe cold soup with melon, sparkling wine and cayenne pepper is eaten. The English appreciate strawberry cold soup, with green pepper and a drop of whisky. Spain is the fatherland of classic gazpacho, the Balkans have tara-tora: cold soup with yoghurt, cucumber and plenty of garlic. In Poland we have Lithuanian cold soup. I am not even bothering to try to explain the origin of the name, but the soup is so popular and so typically Polish, one may find its recipe in every cookery book.

Here are some tasty recipes for some Polish cold soups:

1. Lithuanian cold soup

Ingredients:

1 l of sour milk
250 ml of sour cream
0,3 – 0,4 kg of young beet greens
0,1 kg of crayfish meat
Dill
Chives
Hard boiled egg
0,1 kg of veal roast or roasted chicken
0,1 kg of cucumber
0,05 kg of radish
Salt
Pepper
Beet leavening for taste

Preparation Method:

Rinse and dry young beet green, chop and cook in water with beet leavening. Rinse and slice your radish, rinse and chop your cucumber. Pour sour milk and sour cream together and give it a whisk, add cooled young beet green liquid, radish, cucumber, crayfish, sliced egg, chopped dill and chives, diced meat, ad salt and pepper to taste and leave to cool for a couple of hours.

2. Mazovian cold soup

Ingredients:

Leaves of 2-3 beetroots
0,15 – 0,2 of veal
1 cup of sour cream
1 cup of dill pickles liquid
1 dill pickle
2-3 eggs
Dill
Chives
Salt
Pepper
1 tablespoon of vinegar

Preparation Method:

Take equal parts of sour cream and dill pickle liquid and mix it thoroughly. Cook beetroot leaves in water with vinegar, chop it and add to sour cream and then stir. Cook the eggs, cut into quarters, chop veal and pour all the ingredients to your soup. Add salt and pepper. At the end chop dill and chives and pour into soup. Place your dish in a fridge until it is ready to be served.

3. Mazurian cold soup.

Ingredients:

0,25 l of broth
Rye leavening
Leaves from 2-3 beetroots
0,5 l of sour cream
3 eggs
2 dill pickles
Dill

Preparation Method:

Prepare rich broth, either from beef or veal meat. Strain, add rye leavening to taste. In a separate pan cook beetroot leaves with dill, chop it thoroughly and put into a soup tureen. Pour 0,5 l of sour cream and stir. Then pour in 1 cup of your broth constantly stirring. Add eggs, boiled and sliced into quarters, and chopped dill pickles to hot soup. Place your tureen on ice. Instead of rye leavening you might use dill pickles liquid, which I to be cooked with broth for w while. Serve cool.

All cold soups taste delicious with typical Polish rye bread.

Smacznego!

Food / Polish Soups - some Recipes [5]

Autumn this year is exceptionally sunny and warm in Poland. There are however cooler evenings approaching soon. For such weather we might need something nutritious and warm to cheer us up. Here are some recipes for tasty Polish soups:

Polish Beef Broth with Yeasts Dumplings

Ingredients:

Broth: 0,75 kg of beef meat, boneless
Soup vegetables with cabbage, bay leaf, parsley or dill, ground pepper, salt
Dough: 0,70 kg of flour, 0,07 kg of yeasts, milk, salt
Stuffing: meat from your broth, onion, ground pepper and salt.

Preparation method:

Prepare your broth with the ingredients mentioned; leave it to cool, gather the fat. Melt the yeasts in a small quantity of lukewarm milk, add them to your flour, add salt and knead the dough, until springy. Set aside to grow. Take meat from your broth and mince it with quartered onion. Add ground pepper, salt and stir carefully until smooth. If the stuffing is too dense, add a little bit of broth. When your dough is ready, roll it evenly, cut round shapes with a cup brim, fill with stuffing and make dumplings. Fry them on both sides until golden brown. Pour hot broth into the bowls, sprinkle with parsley or dill. Serve with dumplings.

Nutritious Polish-Style Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

Small batch of soup vegetables
Onion, 0,25 kg of minced meat, egg, half a cup of flour, 3-4 spoons of tomato paste, 2 spoons of oil, parsley or dill, ground hot peppers, salt

Preparation method:

Clean and grate the vegetables. Fry thinly cut onion, add minced meat and fry smoothing evenly. Add vegetables and fry for a short time, stirring continuously. Pour six cups of boiling water into a pan, add meat and vegetables and cook for about 25 minutes. Knead tough dough of flour and egg, grate it and pour into your soup; cook until pasta is soft. At the end, add your tomato paste, bring to boil and spice to taste. Add water to the quantity of 1,5 – 2 liters. Pour into bowls and sprinkle with parsley or dill.

“Krupnik” with Mushroom

Ingredients:

Soup vegetables, 4 spoons of barley groats, 6 dried mushroom, 3 potatoes, dill, onion, 1 spoon of oil, salt, ground pepper, bay leaf and allspice

Preparation method:

Rinse the groats, pour into 1,5 liter of boiling water and cook for 15 minutes. Clean soup vegetables, grate carrot, parsley and celery and add to cooking groats. Rinse and soak dried mushroom in water, cut into slices and pour into the soup. Cut onion, and fry until transparent. 10 minutes before the end of cooking add leak, cut into thin slices, and potatoes, diced, fried onion and spices. Pour your soup into bowls and sprinkle with dill.

Sour Potato Soup

Ingredients:

5-6 big potatoes, 1 liter of light broth, half a cup of milk, half a cup of sour cream, parsley, 2-3 teaspoons of crushed fresh estragon leaves, 1 spoon of vinegar, bay leaf, salt

Preparation method:

Peel and dice potatoes and pour into boiling broth, add bay leaf, cut parsley and bring to boil. At the end of cooking add milk and estragon leaves, add vinegar to taste and warm up thoroughly. Take your pan off heat and add sour cream.

Food / Polish Apples and Apple Pies [6]

Apples can easily bear the name of the Polish national fruit. They are extremely popular in Poland, available in plenty of varieties all year round, tasty and healthy and, last but not least, cheap. At the end of summer apples are rich in flavor and literally warmed up with sun rays. Hence it is the best time to prepare our home preserves, jams, marmalades, apple vinegar and so on. As autumn approaches we can also be looking forward to "apple pie season." There are a number of various apple cakes and pies in Polish cookery books.

Here some of them are presented:

Apple Cake Roll

Ingredients:
Dough: 5 eggs
0,15 kg of sugar
0,1 kg of flour
1 spoon of spread fat

Filling: 1 kg of apples
0.1 kg of sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon or 1 teaspoon of lemon zest, 3 spoons of powdered sugar, 1 cup of whipped cream (optional).

Method of preparation:
Rinse the eggs, separate yolks from whites. Whisk the whites while adding your sugar. Add yolks and stir with a whisk. Strain the flour onto your egg mixture and carefully stir with a spoon. Place your dough evenly on a sheet of greaseproof paper, spread with fat, and placed on baking sheet. Bake for ca. 15 minutes in 180 centigrades. Take your cake from the oven , place it on a kitchen towel sprinkled with powdered sugar, take off the greaseproof paper and roll the cake together with the kitchen towel. Leave to cool. Rinse, peel off and grate your apples and sprinkle with lemon juice. Add cinnamon or lemon zest and 0,1 kg of sugar. Take kitchen towel off the cake and cover it with your apple mixture. Then roll it up once again and place in a fridge for an hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or add some whipped cream and serve cool.

Vilnius Apple Pie

Ingredients:
Pancake batter: 0,2 kg of flour, 0,2 liter of milk, 0,2 liter of water,2 – 3 eggs, 0,2 kg of fat, salt to taste

Apple filling: 1,5 kg of apples, 0, 25 kg of sugar, 0,1 kg of honey, 0, 05 kg of raisins, fat, bread crumbs for cake tin spread

Method of preparation:
Rinse the eggs, place yolks and whites in a blender, add milk, water and salt and blend for 30- 40 seconds. You may also use a whisk. Add strained flour and stir it thoroughly until a mixture is even and air bubbles appear on its surface. The batter density should be that of a single cream and it should spread evenly on a frying pan. Fry your pancakes, put them aside. Rinse and peel off the apples, take out the seeds and grind the fruit. Mix with sugar and simmer until slightly transparent. Spread a cake tin of a size of a pancake with fat, sprinkle with crumbled bread and place with pancakes so that they cover the rims. Add honey and rinsed raisins to apple mixture. Spread the filling on pancakes and place them one by one in a cake tin, pour with fat and place in preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Serve hot, poured with cream and cherry juice.

Food / Polish Marinated Mushroom Recipe [8]

Ingredients:

2 kg of small mushroom caps

2 cups of water

2 cups of vinegar (10%)

2 teaspoons of salt

4 teaspoons of sugar

2 teaspoons of allspice

2 teaspoons of black pepper

5 bay leaves

0.5 kg of sugar

0.1 kg of salt

Preparation method:

Bigger cups cut into halves or quarters, smaller leave uncut. Pour vinegar and water into a pan, add all spices and cover with a lid, bring to boil. Leave to cool. Clean your mushroom, rinse thoroughly. Boil 2 liters of water in a big pan, place your mushroom and simmer for 30 minutes on low heat. Strain, place in jars and when they cool off, cover with marinade. Place your spices evenly in jars. Then cover your jarred mushroom with lids, close well and store in cool, dry place.