Spring cold soups

Polish: Chłodnik
Belarusian: Хaлaднiк
Russian: Холодник
Ukrainian: Холодник
Lithuanian: Šaltibarščiai

Chłodnik means cold summer soup. It is eaten not only in Poland but also in other east-European countries. The most popular variant is made with beets and/or young beet leaves, kefir or soured milk and many differrent young fresh raw vegetables and vegetable greens. There are also non-beet variants, sour: with sorrel, tomato, kohlrabi or cucumber, and several fruit ones: especially with currants, strawberries (or wild strawberries), melon or cherry soup. And countless new creative versions. As a child, when my mum was pregnant with my brother, we had to eat meals at a dairy bar and we were eating chłodnik and crepes with curd cheese filling. My homemade chłodnik tastes much better :) The one made with beet leaves is called botwina. If you don't have baby beet fresh leaves, hopefully you could see, to inspire yourself, my attempts of making chłodnik when I was abroad and far away from beet leaves :)

for 3 portions:
2 bunches young beet leaves (each bunch contains 3-4 tiny beets)
2 medium beets
2 bunches radishes
1 bunch chives
1 bunch dill
1/2 lemon
3 cups kefir
1 cup yoghurt
3 eggs



1. Boil eggs for 10 minutes.

2. Cut beet leaves and stalks very finely. Peel tiny beets (those from leaves) and normal beets. Cut those bigger into fourths. Cook them in few (1 cup) water (some people take vegetable broth) until beets are soft. When ready, add freshly squeezed lemon juice.

3. Chop very finely other vegetables: chives, dill and radishes. Pour kefir and yoghurt into the bowl and add chopped vegetables.

4. Using a vegetable grater, grate cooked beets. Add beets, beet leaves and the water in which they were cooked, to the kefir.

5. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice or apple vinegar and maybe also with garlic. Serve with egg halves (and probably some chopped parsley green)



and here comes another recipe, less popular but also tasty: sorrel chłodnik with whey(chłodnik szczawiowy na serwatce)

250 gr sorrel leaves
3 cups whey (see here how to make whey)
1 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons flour
3 eggs
1 tablespoon butter
dill

1. Bring whey to boil. Whisk cream (of room temperature; not taken directly from the fridge!) with flour until there are no clumps and add to warm whey. Stir and let boil again. Set aside.

2. Chop sorrel finely and stew it with butter and probably very few water for about 10 minutes. Set aside.

3. Add sorrel to cooled whey, salt to taste and sprinkle with dill. Serve with potatoes (serve warm boiled potato chunks on a separate plate or pour cold soup over warm potatoes in a bowl). You can also add boiled egg halves.

French radish leaves soup

Polish: rzodkiewka
Silesian: radiska
Tongan: lētisifoha
Greek: ρεπάνι
Mohawk: yotsihkwatskàra
Ukrainian: редиска
Lithuanian: ridikas
Gujarati: મૂળો
Scots Gaelic: meacan-ruadh
Calabrese: rafanèddru

Soupe de fanes de radis, is a French spring soup, made from radish leaves. I must say that when I wait for spring, I am thinking about: Easter, blooming forsythia, beet leaves (to prepare botwina, cold beet soup) and radish leaves (to prepare radish leaves soup). If you have bio radishes around you, don't hesitate and try this soup, it's worth your effort!



(3 portions)
leaves from 2 radish bunches
2-3 potatoes
2 onions or 1 leek
broth (3 cups)
milk (1 cup) - can be replaced by broth
creme fraiche / grated cheese

1. Chop radish leaves and onions/leek. Fry onions (leeks) in oil until golden, add leaves and slowly simmer few minutes more (let's say, 5 minutes)

2. In a saucepan, boil cubed potatoes in broth. Add simmered vegetables and cook just until potatoes are soft. Puree or press through a sieve (which is not recommended, cause it won't be that easy with radish leaves...), pour into the saucepan again, add milk and seasoning (salt, pepper) and slightly heat again. And that's it! Oh, and you can garnish it with grated cheese or crème fraîche just before serving.

Polish whey borscht

Polish: serwatka
French: petit-lait
Luxembourgish: Wässeg
Lithuanian: išrūgos
Hindi: छाछ
Albanian: hirrë
Xhosa: ingqaka
Spanish: suero
Slovakian: sirotka
Arabic: شرش اللبن

Whey soup, again! This time a very winter-to-spring-turn recipe. In Poland, beetroot is often eaten during the wintertime, while one of the first culinary appearances of spring is rhubarb chard (botwina / boćwina). Chard is often used in cold or warm spring/summer soups, like chłodnik. If you already have chard, you can prepare a great borscht (sour beet soup) with whey. Actually, beet-whey borscht (podhalański barszcz na serwatce) belongs to Polish Tatra cuisine. It is cheap and easy to make. I decided to modify this tasty recipe a bit, so I added chard.

How to make a whey at home? Check here

see also: Polish horseradish-whey soup
see also: Polish millet-whey soup
see also: Moldovan whey soup

(3 portions)
4 medium beets
4 medium potatoes
1/2 cup yoghurt / sour cream
2 cups whey
seasoning: salt, sugar, apple vinegar
(+ 1 bunch rhubarb chard, 1 onion)*

1. Cook beets and potatoes separately. Peel and dice. (chop onion and chard, fry in oil about 5 minutes)*

2. In a saucepan, put diced beets (and chopped fried chard with onion)*. Add 2 cups water and bring to boil. Add whey and season (with salt, sugar, vinegar and probably also garlic) to taste. Turn off the heat, add sour cream (yoghurt) and stir well. Don't bring to boil anymore, just heat if needed.

3. Put some diced potatoes into an eating bowl and add soup. You can also serve potatoes separately, on a small plate.

Polish whey-millet soup

Polish: serwatka
Pashto: چکه
English: whey
vietnamese: nước sữa
German: Molke
Punjabi: ਛਾੰਛ
Suahili: gururu
Icelandic: mysa
Estonian: vadak
Sestwana: mokaro

Polish (and East European) soups with groats (usually barley, but also buckwheat or millet) are called krupnik. This word comes from old-Polish word krupy, which means just groats. Krupnik contains also lots of differrent vegetables and often dried mushrooms. The recipe I am going to show you now has no vegetables besides potatoes, but tastes nicely sour because of whey. This recipe comes from Miechów, a town in southern Poland. Ladies and gentlemen, Polish whey-millet soup, miechowski krupnik na serwatce!

see also: Polish horseradish-whey soup
see also: Moldovan whey soup

5 cups whey
200 gr millet
500 gr potatoes
1 bunch dill
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup sour cream
salt, sugar

1. Wash millet in cold water. Plunge into boiling water, after few minutes set on a colander and place under cold running water. Now you can simply cook millet in 2 cups water or broth for 15 minutes (don't overcook, just observe the grains!)

2. Separately, cook unpeeled potatoes.

3. Pour whey into a saucepan, add chopped dill, cooked millet, cooked, peeled and diced potatoes, lemon juice and a pinch of salt and sugar. Bring to boil.

4. Turn off the heat. Pour sour cream to a bowl, add 1 cup of whey soup and stir well. Add it to the pan with the soup and stir. Don't boil anymore.

Polish dill soup

Polish: koperek
Berber: aslili
Dhivehi: ދަމުއި
Manx: lus veein
Greek: άνηθο
Spanish: eneldo
Japanese: イノンド
German: Dill
Persian: شوید
Basque: ezamihilu

Dill was the most favourite seasoning of a Polish medieval poet, Mikołaj Rej. I guess Mikołaj never ate young boiled potatoes with butter and dill, accompaigned by a glass of fresh kefir or soured milk, a popular summer Polish meal, cause in medieval Poland potatoes were still unknown. But I guess he could know the taste of herring in dill, soured cucumbers pickled with dill, fish in dill sauce or dill soup (maybe a bit different than mine). Polish zupa koperkowa, dill soup, is really a very tasty dish. And an extremely easy one, you will be done in 10 minutes!!! Eat dill and you'll be strong, dill was stimulating Roman gladiators and strengthing Egyptian pyramid constructors :)

2 buns dill (from 1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped dill)
1 l vegetable or chicken stock
1 carrot
1 onion
100 gr processed cheese (melted cheese - Polish serek topiony, German Schmelzkäse) or thick sour cream (but it tastes better with cheese!)
tiny noodles (like those , those or those or any other small noodles. Eventually, take 1/2 cup rice and cook it in the stock just like it would be noodles)

1. Chop dill finely and slightly fry in oil. Grate carrot and chop onion and fry them, too. Add them to the stock (homemade or from cube). Add noodles. Cook until noodles are done.

2. Take a cup of the soup and, in a bowl, whisk well with processed cheese or sour cream. Add to the soup and stir. It's ready! You can sprinkle the soup with some fresh (not fried) chopped dill before serving.

Polish horseradish soup

Polish: chrzan
Ossetian: туттургъан
Hebrew: חזרת הגינה
faroese: piparrót
Galician: labestro
Spanish: rábano picante
Greek: αγριοραπάνια
Estonian: mädarőigas
Latvian: mārrutka
Ukrainian: хрін

Horseradish is an important ingredient of Easter menu in Poland. I am slowly composing Easter menu, so last week I was trying a regional recipe for a horseradish soup from southern Poland highlander town, Lanckorona (chrzanówka lanckorońska), to be able to choose the best soup for Easter breakfast. I recommend this spicy soup to all fans of horseradish, turnip, rutabaga, garden cress and radish.

see also: Polish whey-millet soup
see also: Moldovan whey soup

1l whey*
5 tablespoons freshly ground horseradish
5 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon flour
2 garlic cloves
3 eggs
1 teaspoon lovage
salt, pepper to taste
(+ originally ribs and a bit of sausage)

1*. Don't have whey? To obtain about 1l of whey, take 1,5l milk and 2-3 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice. Bring milk on a low heat with vinegar/lemon juice without boiling, until it curdles. This is it, now you have to separate curd from whey using a fine sieve. (Of course, don't throw the curd, just eat it with scallions, dill and garlic on a slice of fresh bread!)



2. In a saucepan, put ribs and sausage (or a vegetable stock cube), ground horseradish and chopped eggs. Pour whey over the ingredients and slowly bring to boil. Season with salt and pepper. Take the meat off.

3. In a bowl, perfectly whisk flour with sour cream to omit lumps. Add 1 cup of your warm soup from the pan and whisk again. Now add this mixture to the soup and cook. Add lovage and ground garlic 1 minute before serving.

4. Serve with cooked potatoes sprinkled with fresh dill and parsley green.

Iraqi carrot soup

Polish: zupa
Cornish: yskel
Guarani: jukysy
Pitjantjatjara: tjuupa
Irish: anraith
Japanese: スープ
Slovenian: juha
Valencian: brou
Hindi: सूप
Zulu: isobho

A delicious Iraqi soup, again!

500 gr carrots
4 medium tomatoes
4 celery stalks
2 medium onions
2 garlic cloves
100 gr vermicelli noodles
1 teaspoon curry powder
salt, pepper

1. Grate carrots on the finest grater. Cut celery stalks into thin slices. Puree peeled tomatoes. Cut onions into slices. Grate garlic cloves.

2. In a saucepan, fry onions in oil. When they turn golden, add garlic and tomato puree. Fry until tomato puree thickens. Transfer to the pot with 6 cups of water

3. Now it's time to fry grated carrots and celery slices (separately). When carrots are sligltly yellowish and sceleries a bit brownish, transfer them to the soup pot, too. Season and bring to boil. Cook about 10 minutes, add noodles, cook 10 minutes more (or until noodles are done)

Iraqi lentil-pumpkin soup

Polish: zupa
Bashkir: Һурпа
Armenian: սուպ
Quechua: chupi
Hebrew: מרק
Chinese: 汤
Tatar: aş
Marathi: रस
Mari: шӱр
Czech: polévka

I could eat soups for breakfast, lunch, supper, dessert, five o'clock tea... The one I am gonna write about now, Iraqi lentil-pumpkin soup (schurbat adas ma qar) is one of the best soups that a human being could ever imagine.

1 kg pumpkin flesh*
500 gr tomatoes
300 gr red lentils
2 big onions
pepper, salt, paprica to season

1. Cook (washed) lentils in 2 l water for 1/2 hour

2. In a frying pan heat some oil and fry chopped onions until goldenbrown. Add diced pumpkin flesh (cubes should be rather small) and saute. Puree peeled tomatoes (or grate tomatoes with kitchen grater as I always do) and add to the pan; stew few minutes more (tomato puree should thicken a bit)

3. Add the content of the pan to the pot with lentils, season and simmer on a low heat 1/2 hour more. Serve with Arabic bread and slices of lemon.

*you can take zucchini instead of pumpkin

Russian milky rutabaga soup

Polish: mleko
Vepsian: maid
Udmurt: mel
Sakha/Yakut: үүт
Tatar: söt
Kalmyk: sün
Tuvin: süt
Bashkir: Һөт
Buryat: hün
Chuvash: cĕт

Language freaks will surely enjoy a small translation list of milk in few Russian Federation languages (plus, Polish, as always).
Food freaks will surely enjoy a milky recipe. So everyone is content :)

Milk soups are a part of my childhood memory. In eastern Poland milk soups in hunderts of varieties are eaten especially as a breakfast or a light evening meal. After milk, they can contain noodles (bought or homemade ones), grits, rice, millet, carrot or pumpkin. Milk soups as a dinner are more popular in Russia. There are plenty of varieties and I want to share milk-rutabaga-buckwheat soup recipe, cause it is one of those which I already tried and really liked.

see also: Polish milk and couliflower soup
see also: Polish milk and pumpkin breakfast soup

So here it is, Russian молочный суп из брюквы. To prepare it you will need:

500 gr rutabaga
500 gr potatoes
100 gr buckwheat
1 tablespoon butter
1 l milk
salt and caraway

1. Cut rutabaga in 2 halves. Put into a saucepan with cold water and bring to boil. Pour the water away, peel and cut rutabaga into cubes. Peel and cut potatoes into cubes, too.

2. Wash buckwheat. Boil 1 l water, add buckwheat, cubed vegatables and butter. After 10 minutes of cooking, add milk. Cook on a low heat and season with salt and caraway.

Turkish rosehip-meatballs soup

Polish: klopsik
Hungarian: fasirt
Italian: polpette
Sicilian: purpetta
Bahasa Indonesia: bakso
French: boulette
Catalan: mandonguilla
Sardinian: coyetta
Albanian: qofte
Portuguese: almôndega

Meatballs are one of the essential ingredients of this great autumn Turkish soup. Aparts of them, kuşburnu çorbası contains not much more than rosehips. In opposite to Swedish rosehip soup, this one is not sweet at all. Tastes unforgettably.

(makes 3 portions)
500 gr rosehips
1 l water
200 gr chopped meat
a pinch of salt, pepper and cumin
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 - 1 teaspoon dried mint

1. Wash rosehips, cut into halves and cook in 1 l water 30 minutes or until soft. Drain very well but don't throw the rosehip water away! Pour it into a deep bowl. Press the resting rosehips (as much as you can) through a sieve into the bowl with rosehip water. Throw seeds and peels away.

2. Prepare meatballs from meat, season with salt, pepper and garlic. I also added chopped fried onion but this is my little invention which original recipe didn't contain. Fry them shortly in oil together with dried mint

3. In a saucepan, melt butter and add flour. Stir and add rosehip water and puree from the bowl. Bring to boil, it will be thicker after cooking with flour. Reduce heat, add meatballs with mint and cook about 15 minutes more. Serve and enjoy!

I dedicate this recipe to my dear friend Asuman who nabbed me when I was collecting rosehip buds under her window :)

US-American autumn vegetable soup

Polish: jesień
Armenian: աջռւն
Uzbek: kuz
Erzya: cёксь
Pashto: منۍ
Võro: süküs
Chuvash: Кĕркунне
Tigrinya: tzödia
Abkhasian: хкаарачан
Somail: dayr

Autumn slowly appears in central Europe again. Autumn is for me always more than welcome. There are not many things in this world better than floundering in colourful leaves, buying lovely orange pumpkins at the local markt and cooking and eating one of the most delicious soups of the world, US-American apple-rutabaga soup .

(makes 4 portions)
about 100 gr buter
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup grated rutabaga
1 cup grated apples (unpeeled)
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup grated sweet potato
1 cup grated squash or pumpkin
1l stock (vegetable / chicken)
1 cup heavy cream
salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin (optionally: mashed garlic clove)
1/4 maple syrup (I added Turkish mulberry molasses)

1. Fry onions in butter until goldeb brown. Add the rest of the vegetables, stir constantly, fry them all together for about 10 minutes more on a low heat

2. Add sock, increase heat, bring to boil and cook about 20 minutes or until vegetables are soft.

3. Puree the soup or press through a sieve (I pureed only a half of my soup cause I like to bite little vegetable chunks). Add the rest of the ingredients and season to taste, reheat and serve!

ps.
I am sorry, but you have to use your imagination while looking at this picture. Its colour is much mre intensive but due to my poor camara it is impossible :(



ps2.
Top this soup with chopped dill or parsley. Pumpkin or sunflower seeds would be a great idea too!

German elderberry soup

Polish: bez czarny
Manx: berrish hrammanagh
Persian: آقطی سیاه
Turkish: kara mürver
Bosnian: zohva
Russian: бузина черная
German: Holunder
Basque: intsusa
Italian: sambuco nero
Swedish: fläder

Holunderbeerensuppe / Fliederbeersuppe is a kind of late summer-autumn north German delicacy. Must be made from very ripe elderberries; if the winter is not frosty people enjoy elderberry soup even in the wintertime. As a rule, elderberry juice tastes tart but after some sesoning it becomes deep fruity rich flavour.

(3-4 portions)
1l elderberries
1l water
1 pack vanilla sugar (or vanilla stick) + more sugar to taste
2-3 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon juice (i added instead a teaspoon of freshly made sea-buckthorn juice)
a zest from 1/2 lemon
1 apple, 1 pear
1 tablespoon potato starch

1. Wash berries, take off from the stalks and measure about 1 liter. Cook them in 1 liter water for about 20 minutes (until they soften and break). Press through a sieve and throw the seeds and rests away. Pour into the saucepan again. Add vanilla stick/sugar, cinnamon stick, lemon zest, cloves, lemon juice and sugar to taste. bring to boil. if it is still too tart for you, add 1/2 cup apple juice.

2. Mix potato starch with a little bit of water and add to the soup. Whisk well and boil. Lower the heat.

3. Peel apple and pear (throw seeds away), cut into slices. Add to the soup.



Advice:
Usually this soup is eaten with milk-semolina balls, but I don't like them. You can serve your soup plain, with noodles (for instance ribbons), with crepes cut into long noodles or with semolina balls (Grießklößchen). How to prepare them? Cook thick semolina in milk or milk mixed with water with a pinch of sat and vanilla sugar. Add egg (half egg, one egg or more, depending on how much semolina dough you have) and cook them in water. When ready, put on the soups surface and let them swim :) Some people cook them directly in the soup but it's up to you.

Cuban green plantain soup

Polish: plantan / banan skrobiowy
Swedish: kokbanan
Portuguese: banana-da-terra
Dutch: bakbanaan
German: Gemüsebanane / Kochbanane
French: banane plantain
French Antillais: banane farine
Korean: 요리용 바나나
Arabic: ‏موز الجنة

Green (unripe) plantain soup could be eaten anywhere where plantains grow, but the recipe I post here is Cuban. Sopa de plátano verde has some variants, as you will realise while reading the recipe, and tastes absolutely wonderful. Plantains should be green. I don't know what happens if they are ripe and yellow, well, surely the taste won't be the same.

see also: Ecuadorian green plantain stuffed fritters

600 ml vegetable stock (optionally water)
*1 unripe, green plantain
1 onion
**(optionally some more vegetables, like 1/2 sweet potato, 1 carrot, a handful of chickpeas, 1 potato, chopped parsley green, 1 celery stalk)
cumin, salt, pepper

1. Peel green plantain. It may be easier if you cut the peel lengthwise. Cut into 1-2 cm chunks or cut very thin chips. Fry them in oil.

2. Heat the stock in a saucepan and when starts to boil, add resting vegetables (**but this is optionally; some people prefer just to taste plantains. Anyway, I took 1 small potato, diced, and a handful of canned chickpeas. *If you decide to not take any other vegetables, you may want to take 2 plantains).

3. Back to plantains. If you have chunks, work with a fork to mash already fried pieces, add 1 cup of stock, bring to boil (it will be thick) and pour into the saucepan with the rest of the stock. If you chave chips, fry them until crispy, pulverize in a blender and add to the stock. Cook until all the ingredients are soft. Now it's up to yu if you want to puree everything until smooth or puree only a half or mash vegetables with a fork. I like smooth pureed soups but some crispy pieces are always welcome.
You may put some fried onion chunks on the top and serve with lemon slices

1st variant: smoothy pureed

2nd variant: with chunks

Polish (Kashubian) rutabaga soup

Polish: Kaszuby
Kashubian: Kaszëbë
Catalan: Caixúbia
Occitan:Cashobia
Czech: Kašubsko
Romanian: Caşubia
Italian: Casciubia
German: Kaschubien
Slovenian: Kašubsko
Estonian: Kašuubid
Upper Sorbian & Silesian: Kašuby

Kashubia pretends to be one of the most beautiful regions of Poland and deserves this denomination. Even called "Kashubian Switzerland". Well not because of mountains or chocolate, no... But if we start to divagate, we will easily find several common points. Kashubians speak their own ancient beautiful language (similar to Polish, Kashubian belongs to Slavonic language family) which is unluckily out of national protection, unlike then in Galicia, Catalonia or Bavaria... Without entering into complains or monologue about Kashubian culture, I would like to share with you some Kashubian cooking traditions, and today it will be a delicious and easy recipe to make Kashubian rutabaga soup, in Kashubian: zupa z żeltich wreczi / in Polish: zupa z brukwi.

1/2 kg (about) goose meat (traditionally goose necks)
(+ optionally broth vegetables, which means for example 2 carrots, 1/2 leek, 1/2 celeriac and 1 parsley root - if you are lazy, use vegetable broth instant but of course it won't be the same. If you are a vegetarian, cook a vegetable broth from the vegetable listed above, or take instant broth, and add 1-2 tablespoons olive oil or any other native oil: flax, pumpkin seed or canola)
1/2 kg rutabagas
1/2 kg potatoes
1 1/2 l water
a pinch of marjoram
salt and pepper

1. Cook meat and broth-vegetables (no need to cut them) in water. You may, as said above, prepare broth in another way.

2. Peel and slice rutabagas. Pour boiling water on them - they will loose some of its bitterness. Add rutabaga slices to broth and cook on a medium heat. In the meantime, peel and dice potatoes. Rutabaga has to be added first cause it needs more time to be soft. Take the meat off. Some people would take the broth vegetables off, too (like me, I hate cooked celeriac). Divide the soup from vegetabels using a sieve and a) blend vegetables, b) mince them with a fork, c) blend half of them and mince another half. Season with majoram, salt and pepper.
Put pieces of cooked meat in serving soup bowls and pour the soup. You may serve it with bread.





my version: vegetable Kashubian soup with chunks (no blended rutabagas!). I really hope that Kashubian purists will not be angrily oppositing by argumenting that the real Kashubian rutabaga soup needs to contain goose necks... Surely, traditionally it HAs to contain goose meat and I am sure it tastes much better made this way. But if you don't eat meat or at the moment you can not find goose necks, try the vegetarian version and you will not be disappointed!

Swedish rosehip dessert soup

Polish: owoc dzikiej rozy
French: cynorrhodon
Armenian: Մասրենի
Luxembourgian: Mullebutz
Hungarian: csipkebogyó
Finnish: ruusunmarja
Catalan: gavarró
Russian: Шиповник
Breton: agroazenn
Danish: hyben

Summer is a great time. From now until October you can pick rosehips and prepare yourself this delicious nutritive thick sweet velvety soup. The recipe comes from Sweden, where rosehip soup is called nyponsoppa and is very popular, even ready to buy in tetra boxes in supermarkts.

see also: Polish rosehip dessert
see also: Turkish rosehip-meatballs soup
see also: German elderberry soup

1l ripe rosehips
1l water
sugar (about 4-5 tablespoons)
vanilla stick
(optionally heavy, sour or whipped cream)
almond flakes, raisins, little almond cookies (amarettini)



1. Wash rosehips, cut into halves and pour into boiling water with vanilla stick. Cook on a low heat until rosehips are soft (it takes about 30 minutes). Put rosehips aside and keep the water in which they were cooked.

2. Press rosehips trough a fine sieve. Keep rosehip puree in a bowl and pour the rest (peels and stones) back to the rosehip water. Cook again and strain, it should be quite thick. Take 3 amounts of this rosehip water to 1 amount of rosehip puree, add sugar to taste and it should be thick enough. if not, add more rosehip puree. It takes a bit more time than cooking rosehips and adding cornstarch but the soup has a rich intensive taste due to this proceedings.





I am not sure if Swedes eat their sweet fruity soup just like Poles, in the summertime as a light dinner, or rather as a dessert. Anyway, serve with heavy, sour or whipped cream (if you like), sprinkle with raisins, almond flakes and amarettini.





What to do with the rest of rosehip puree? heat it in a saucepan with vanilla mark and 2 tablespoons butter. You will receive a delicious breakfast spread :)

Nepalese lentil soup

Polish: imbir
Tamil: இஞ்சி
Portuguese: gengibre
Turkish: zencefil
Twi: kekadru
Silesian: zozwor
Arabic: زنجبيل
Italian: zenzero
Finnish: inkivääri
Basa Jawa: jae

Ginger is one of several ingredients that make this Nepalese lentil soup differrent to the Egyptian one, and deffinitely adding ginger changes the taste a lot. Ginger also stimulates the secretion of saliva so your reaction by tasting this soup would be differrent, too :) This time the recipe is from "the second hand"; I found it in a German missionary magazine so I don't have the original name of this dish and I am not 100% sure if it is really original Nepalese recipe and a soup often eaten in this country and made of those ingredienta and prepared in this way. But I have to believe the recipe, cause it was given by a nepalese restaurant chef living in Germany. I tried it and I am in love in this soup :) The ingredients are the following:

350 gr red lentils
1 l vegetable stock
200 ml cream (I took sour cream 10% fat)
1 stick ginger (2 cm)
3 tomatoes, medium
1 big onion
1/2 teaspoon curcuma
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons butter
salt, pepper

1. Wash lentils carefully. Boil some water and pour it over tomatoes; peel them and throw the seeds away. Cook lentils, tomatoes, finely grated ginger and curcuma powder in vegetable stock until lentils are soft (20-30 minutes). When ready, puree everything or press through a sieve.

2. Add cream to the soup, season with salt and pepper and make warm.

3. Cut onion into thin slices and fry in butter with cumin powder.

4. Divide the soup into portions, put some fried onion in the middle of each bowl (you can decorate it with parsley green, too) and enjoy!

Spanish liver soup

Polish: wątroba
Zazaki: kezebe
Maltese: fwied
Lingala: libale
Aymara: k'iwcha
Basque: gibel
Bahasa Indonesia: hati
Nahuatl: Ēltapachtli
Vietnamese: gan
Russian: Пе́чень

Liver is, in my opinion, a food that you love or hate. Contrarily to what you may think about eating liver, it doesn't have to be boring and monotonous. Livers fried in onions; livers mashed with hard-boiled eggs into a breakfast spread; livers stewed in tomato sauce with sweet red pepper slices... and even eaten raw, as liver sashimi. What I didn't know is that there is also a liver soup. Eaten in several regions of Spain (and also Latin America) especially during the slaughter, named originally sopa de hígado; pureed or with liver chunks, tastes really good. The ingredients for 2 portions are the following:

1 - 1 1/2 cups liver (poultry)
3 cups water (some will add 1 cup wine, too)
1 big onion
1 green or yellow pepper
1 garlic clove
3/4 cup yesterday's bread chunks (or rice or thin small noodles*)

1. Prepare liver (cut what has to be cut out) and clean it (I spread it with flour and pepper and then I wash it - to reduce the smell). Cut into small pieces and fry 5-10 minutes while stirring.

2. Pour water over fried liver and bring to boil.

3. Chop onion and pepper and fry. Add to the soup. Control the softness of liver. When almost soft, add bread chunks. Cook a bit more and liquidate the soup. Bread chunks will make the soup thicker and velvety. But you can also add rice or noodles. You can reserve some liver chunks to serve on the top of the soup or you may cook the liver and set fried vegetabels aside and sprinkle them over the soup before serving. You can sprinkle the soup with chopped scallions or parsley. Some people add almonds to the soup and cook and grind them together with the liver, some people don't puree the soup but just leave liver chunks - the coise is yours :) My soup (liquidated, with some chopped liver and scallions on the top) looks like this:

Polish milk-cauliflower creamy soup

Polish: kalafior
Estonian: lillkapsas
Hindi: फूल गोभी
Bahasa Indonesia: kubis bunga
Romanian: conopida
Latvian: ziedkāposti
Cree: ᑳ ᐙᐹᒡ
Gujarati: ફૂલગોબી
Czech: kvìták
Albanian: lulelakër

This Polish milk-couliflower soup, zupa kalafiorowa na mleku, comes from Kresy - this is how are called in Polish language the regions that formerly belonged to Poland and today to Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Kresy literally mean borderland and factually, those regions were Polish eastern and boundary grounds. Those places, be it western Ukraine or Lithuania, are magical. It was a place where "east" met "west" and cultures, languages and religions were coexisting. I could write pages about this places but don't wanna introduce more nostalgy, since this soup reminds of a happy summertime. Observe: cauliflower cooked in milk loses its unpleasant smell.

see also: Polish milk and pumpkin soup

(for 4 portions)
500 gr cauliflower
250 gr potatoes
3 cups milk
salt, sugar, pepper, nutmeg, curry (to taste)
1 onion + butter + a handful of parsley
lemon juice

1. Divide cauliflower into same size "roses" and put for 15 minutes into a bowl with water and a tablespoon of lemon juice.

2. Take 2 cups milk and two cups water. Peel and dice potatoes. Add potato dices and couliflower roses to boiling milk with water, add salt and sugar (1/2 teaspoon of each) and cook until vegetables are soft. It takes about 15-20 minutes (try with fork)

3. Using a sieve or a food processor, puree vegetables. Heat the 3rd cup of milk, pour the milk with water inwhich vegetabels were cooked, add vegetable puree and season to taste with nutmeg, salt, pepper, curry powder (the last one not too much!) and lemon juice (or vinegar); you can add a bit of fresh ground garlic, too

4. Fry finely chopped onion in a butter together with parsley (or coriander) green. They are ready when golden.

5. Serve the soup in plates / bowls and pour butter-onions on the top

Spanish cold tomato soup

Polish: pomidor
Czech: rajče
Hausa: tùma̋tìr
Tagalog: kamatis
Malagasy: voatabiha
Inuktit: ᒥᓗᑦᓱᑳᒐᖅ
Kazakh: Қызанақ
Hungarian: paradicsom
Romanian: roşie
Telugu: టమాటో

Tomato is a perfect ingredient for summer cold soups. In Spain there are two famous cold soups which main ingredients are tomatoes: salmorejo and gazpacho. They contain similar ingredients and are made in the same way, so what's the differrence between them?
Salmorejo cordobés, the most typical one, differrently to gazpacho, contains no other vegetables than tomatoes and garlic, while in gazpacho you will also find cucumber, pepper and onion. Salmorejo has a thicker texture due to higher amount of bread and oilve oil and lack of water. The detailed recipe for this extremely simple and tasty summer soup is the following:

(2-3 portions)
1 kg tomatoes, very ripe
2 slices / 100 gr of yesterday's bread (only the white part)
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
salt, pepper to taste
(optionally: 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar)
boiled eggs (1/2 egg pro person)
(optionally: jamón serrano slices)


tomatoes without seeds / tomato juice (don't throw it away! Drink it!) :) /bread slices

1. Peel tomatoes and throw the seeds and juice away. Grate or puree in food processor.

2. Mince garlic and mash with a pinch of salt

3. Soak bread in olive oil, add vinegar and mash until homogeneous

4. Combine all the ingredients. Soup should be creamy and thick. You could set in the fridge for 1/2 hour. Serve with chopped boiled eggs (and serrano slices)


(soup is deliciously red but unluckily you can't see it on my picture, made in the evening...)

Turkish yoghurt soup

Polish: mięta
Portuguese: hortelã
Aymara: muña
Hindi: पुदीना
Ossetian: Битъына
Croatian: metvica
Breton: bent
Maltese: nagħniegħ
Kazakh: Жалбыз
Tagalog: polios

Dried mint gives the essential flavour to this delicious Turkish yoghurt soup, called yayla çorbası. What does exactly mean this name? Well... plateau soup :) Western Turkeys landscape consists of plateaus, where mountain countryman families pasture their herds and where it is too hot to keep fresh milk sweet, that is why yoghurt is much more popular. Yoghurt soup has a pleasant sour taste and is a great ligt meal for the summertime.

2 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
2 cups yoghurt
2 tablespoons flour
1 onion
1/3 cup rice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon mint (dry)

1. Chop onion finely and fry in oil until golden. Add rice and fry 5 minutes together with onion. Add water and broth and cook until rice is done.

2. Separately, whisk yoghurt with egg and flour. Stir all the time while heating on a very low heat. Add several spoons of cooked, warm onion-broth little by little and whisk constantly, until you combine broth and yoghurt. Do it carefully and gradually to accustom yoghurt to high temperature, so that it won't curdle. Rice and lemon juice should be added, too.

3. Melt butter in a saucepan, add dried mint and fry for 5 minutes, without burning butter, on a low heat. Pour soup into a bowl and add a bit of mint-butter-sauce on the top. Serve!