Purple & Green Weekend Dinners

We did have our steak last night and it was wonderful. I made a kohlrabi-stilton gratin to go with it - because I adore the taste of salty, pungent blue cheese with red meat. I found this gorgeous purple kohlrabi at the farmers market yesterday. I can´t say that it tastes very different from the regular kind, but it sure was pretty!



Dinner tonight was a bit more frugal but equally delicious. I had this beautiful, squeaky fresh bunch of parsley, also from the farmers market, and I decided to really showcase it in a dish instead of just using it as an accent or garnish. It turned out to be an excellent soup, very clean and fresh and green-tasting.



I always serve pureed soups topped with something crispy, to make it more interesting to eat. A bowl of pureed soup can get a bit boring because every bite is essentially the same. Croutons work very well for this, as do little cubes of potatoe, fried until crisp, bits of bacon or chorizo, onion rings.. Today I fried some strips of oyster mushroom until they were brown and crisp and piled these on top.

Parsley soup, for 2

75 grams of very fresh and bright parsley, stalks and all, washed thoroughly and coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon of butter
2 fat cloves of garlic, chopped
1 large potato, peeld and cubed
1 tablespoon flour
500 ml light chicken or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons of milk
1 egg yolk
salt, pepper, freshly grated nutmeg
your crispy garnish of choice

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the potato and garlic. Cook over very low heat for 5 minutes or so, making sure that the garlic does not brown. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well. Add the stock, then the parsley. Bring to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer and let the soup cook for about 20 minutes. Test a parsley stalk, it should be tender by now - if not, cook for 5-10 minutes more.

Puree the soup in a blender or with a stick blender. Pour it back into the pan and taste for salt and pepper. Add a tiny grating of fresh nutmeg. Beat the egg yolk in a small bowl with the milk. Add a tablespoon of hot soup to the mixture to temper the egg, then add this egg mixture to the soup. Stir it in to slightly thicken the soup, making sure the soup does not boil anymore - or you´ll end up with bits of scrambled egg in your soup, which doesn´t really matter with regards to flavor, but doesn´t look as nice.

Spoon into bowls and add your garnish.