Swiss mirabelle tarte

Polish: mirabelka
Spanish: ciruela amarilla
Persian: آلو قطره‌طلا
Portuguese: mirabela
Austrian German: Kriecherl
Romanian: corcoduş
Swedish: mirabelle
Russian: мирабель

Mirabelle is the oldest kind of plums. My father makes a delicious mirabelle syrup which we drink later during cold winter dark evenings, and my mum prepares wonderful mirabelle jam, sweet and sour.



It is not a season to buy mirabelles now, you will have to wait until next late summer, but if you like these yellow small plums, don't forget to try Swiss mirabelle tarte, Mirabellenwähe!

150 gr flour
50 gr ground almonds (almond flour) + 3 tablespoons (separately)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
80 gr butter
1 kg mirabellen (weight with seeds)
50 ml milk
150 gr cream cheese
2 eggs
3 tablespoons sugar + 3 tablespoons vanilla sugar
icing sugar to sprinkle

1. Sieve flour, add ground almonds, sugar, salt and cold butter. Knead fast while adding 5 tablespoons water. Leave in the fridge for 1/2 hour (or more, can be left overnight) and after that, fill the tarte mold with the dough.

2. Throw the seeds from mirabelles away. Spread 3 tablespoons of ground almonds over the dough (which is already in the mold) and put mirabelles on it.

3. Mix milk, cream cheese, eggs and both kinds of sugar together. pour over mirabelles. Bake about 50 minutes in 180 C oven (or until the top is golden)

Polish bilberry dumplings

Polish: czarna borówka / jagoda
Lithuanian: mėlynė
Ukrainian: Чорниця
Estonian: mustikas
Northern Sami: sarri
Saterland Frisian: bikbäie
Catalan: nabiu
Irish: sméar gorm
Turkish: yaban mersini
Welsh: llus

Bilberries are one of the most favourite summer fruits of Poland. Depending on the region they are called jagody, czarne borówki, czerniny, jagodziny, czernice... The list is long :) You can buy them on a markt but many people collect them on their own in the forest, just like they do with differrent types of mushrooms. Then you can only bake bilberry muffins or typical sweet yeast buns called jagodzianki, prepare bilberry soup, kissel, jelly, cheesecake, eat bilberries with whipped cream or blended in a smoothie, with noodles and cream or as a filling to the most beloved dumplings, called pierogi. I am gonna share with you today this delicious summer recipe: pierogi z jagodami, Polish dumplings with bilberries!

(for about 20 dumplings)
dough:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup hot water
a pinch of salt
filling:
1 cup bilberries*
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon dried breadcrumbs
+ 1/2 cup sour cream
+ flour to roll

1. Sieve flour into a bowl. Pour boiling water over it and knead when it becomes bearable to handle. Add salt and knead until elastic and homogeneous. Set in fridge for 1 hour to rest.

2. For the filling, mix berries with sugar and breadcrumbs. Without breadcrumbs the filling may flow while cooking and will splash while eating all the time :)

3. Sprinkle your workplace with flour. Roll the dough so thin as only possible and using a glass, cut circles out. You may also take a bit of dough (walnut size), roll it in your hands and then roll thinly to obtain same circles

4. Fill each circle with 1/2-1 (depending on how big is your circle) teaspoon bilberry mix and join both sides of teh dough to form half-moons. You may decorate the rands the way I did or by pressing them with a fork.





5. Put the dumplings into boiling and salted water and cook 5 minutes. The dough is thin so they are ready so fast. Drain and serve with sour cream sprinkled with sugar.





*Nota bene:
you can use other fruits, too: raspberries, brambles, strawberries, sweet or sour cherries

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...)

Austrian apricot dumplings

Polish: morela
Armenian: ծիրան
Albanian: kajsi
Tajik: зардолу
Kannada: გარგარი
Greek: βερικοκιά
Chech: meruňka
Mongolian: чангаанз
Kurdish: mijmij / qeysî
Uzbek: o'rik

I don't know any recipe how to prepare prunus armeniaca in Armenian way... (suggestions more than welcome!) but for sure, one of the most delicious ways of eating apricots is Austrian Marillenknödel in Butterbröseln: apricots hidden in creamy dumpling, cooked and coated in roasted breadcrumbs. Attention! This dough is different than the one in strawberry dumplings recipe! That dough was more fluffy, light and very delicious but unluckily didn't form solid balls after cooking. If visual effects are important to you, choose this dough ;) (In Poland, Germany and Slovakia similar dumplings are prepared, but with potatoes as one of the ingredients of the dough. I will post some recipes for them soon!)

see also: Austrian strawberry dumplings

dough
200 g flour
250 g Quark (in Austria: Topfen) or fresh cheese curd of 20% fat
4 tablespoons semolina
1 egg
100 g butter
a pinch of salt
a bit of flour

filling
8 medium apricots (fresh!)*
8 cubes sugar* (the best would be brown)
50 gr butter + 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
powdered sugar

1. In the evening prepare the dough: combine all the ingredients and leave in the fridge overnight

2. Wash apricots, cut slightly just to take the seed off. Put 1 cube sugar into each apricot (if you don't have them, take 1 teaspoon sugar instead of each sugar cube, but never use honey! It will flow away and you will be unable to close the apricot in the dough)



3. In a pan, bring water with a bit of salt and oil to boil. Divide the dough into 8 equal portions (dough balls should be about the size of apricots - see picture above), form balls and roll them. Cover each apricot with a dough "pancake" and roll well in yur hands until you get lovely shaped balls. Put into the saucepan and cook 12-15 minutes.

4. Put dried breadcrumbs and butter (you can add a pinch of cinnamon too) into another pan. butter should melt and breadcrumbs should fry in it until golden. When dumplings are ready, drain them well and put into the pan with breadcrumbs and butter. Move the pan this way so that the whole dumplings are covered with breadcrumbs. Put on the plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar; you can serve them with cream or vanilla ice-cream.

* of course you may have bigger or smaller apricots... the main rule is: so many sugar cubes as many apricots you have. I also suggest to not take the huge, apple-sized apricots. Walnut-sized are perfect.

Mexican avocado soup (2 versions)

Polish: awokado / smaczliwka
Greek: αβοκάντο
Lingala: sabúká
Nahuatl: āhuacatl
Quechua: palta
Swazi: lí-kotapéni
Uyghur: ئاۋكادۇر
Suahili: parachichi
Lao: ໝາກອາໂວກາໂດ
Vietnamese: bơ

Butter pear? Alligator pear? Midshipman's butter? Vegetable butter? Yes, "the fertility fruit" :) If you wonder why is avocado called this way, take Nahuatl language dictionary and you will find that "āhuacatl" means "testicle", due to its shape. Considered as aphrodisiac and perfect for beauty purposes (face masks and so on) but in the past Spanish conquistadors in Mexico were using the juice of the stone as a substitute of ink! I wonder if they knew the taste of Mexican avocado soup, sopa de aguacate. I guess they did :)

1st recipe
1 medium avocado
2 cups broth
1 clove garlic
100 g heavy cream
1 tablespoon lemon juice



1. Puree avocado with lemon juice. Add minced garlic and heavy cream, conbine until homogeneous.

2. Add gradually lukewarm broth to avocado cream and whisk. You can sprinkle the soup with chopped coriander or parsley leaves.



2nd recipe
1/2 cup chili pepper, red or green, chopped
1/2 cup chopped onions
1 medium avocado
1 clove garlic
2 cups broth
1 tablespoon lemon juice
oil to fry



1. Chop peppers and onions finely (so many to obtain 1/2 cup of each vegetable) and fry until soft. Add minced garlic and fry a little bit more. Add 1 cup broth and bring to boil. Set aside to cool.

2. Puree avocado with lemon juice. Add gradually second cup of broth (lukewarm) and whisk. Add broth with vegetables. Now you can puree the whole soup or leave vegetable chunks. My first soup was without any vegetable chunks so I didn't puree the second one.



Notes
- some people replace 1/2-1/4 of broth with white wine
- chopped parsley and / or coriander are a great accompaniment to this soup
- serve lukewarm or cooled. Never boil avocado!
- if this kind of soup seem too "thin" for you, serve it with croutons, toasts, tortillas (or any other kind of flatbread) or boiled and fried tomato slices. Fried gambas would be a tasty alternative too.

Lime tree blossoms syrup

Polish: lipa
Hungarian: hársfa
Catalan: tell
Finnish: lehmus
Estonian: pärn
Ukrainian: Липа
Chinese: 椴树
Basque: ezki
Vietnamese: chi đoạn
Persian: نمدار
Danish: lind

Rose petals, robinia blossoms and dandelions are gone, sweet woodruff starts blooming so is since then useless in this season, elderberries grow instead of elder blossoms but still I have one suggestion for all those who will dream in the cold winter evenings about some sweet delicious homemade blossom syrup in their tea, instead of sugar: lime tree (linden) blossoms. Great for all who bear with sleepless nights, cause just like lime tree blossoms tea, this syrup helps relaxing and brings sound sleep. Lime tree blossoms syrup is to be prepared this way:

3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lemon juice
optionally: one orange
2-3 cups lime tree blossoms


(uncleaned blossoms)

1. Clean lime tree blossoms from the resmaining leaves. I know it sounds hard and takes some time, but you need only the blossoms. Leave them on a white sheet of papter for about 1 hour so that all the tiny insects leave their homes. It is important to gather the blossoms from clean, non-polluted areas away from the contamination, cause basically you shouldn't wash them to preserve pollen!
2. Cook a syrup from sugar, water and lemon juice. Leave for some time (let's say, about 1/2h) on a low heat to thicken. Take away from the heat and Set aside to cool downs

3. When the syrup is lukewarm and the blossoms clean from insects, put the blossoms into the syrup. You can add slices of orange (with or without peel, depending on the quality of the orange and your personal taste) to taste or add some more lemon juice according to your palate. Cover and put in the fridge for 3-5 days



4. Strain well, squeeze lemon slices, bring to boil, pour into clean bottles.

ps. There is no picture of the syrup in the bottle. it just looks the same as sweet woodruff syrup... golden and thick.

Danish buttermilk dessert soup

Great recipe with a bad picture :( Koldskål is a Danish summer dessert, actually something between sweet cold soup and (butter)milky drink. Some people drink it with a straw, other eat with a spoon. If you prefer the second variant, serve it with Danish kammerjunker cokies, or your favourite biscuits, wafers or butter / cardamom (or other) cookies.

1 portion:
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg yolk
25 gr vanilla sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
cookies (kammerjunker or similar)

1. Beat yolk with vanilla sugar to obtain a creamy froth

2. Slowly add buttermilk and lemon juice and continue whisking. You can season it with lemon peel. Optionally, sprinkle with crunched cookies. Very refreshing, enjoy!




(my version, delicious even without any cookies)

Polish summer cold soup

Polish: burak
Turkish: pancar
Ossetian: цæхæра
Finnish: punajuurikas
Slovak: navadna pesa
Bahasa Indonesia: bit
Sestwana: segwere
Portuguese: beterraba
Hebrew: סלק
Albanian: panxhar

The last entry was about beets. This one will be about beets, too. And it is not the end of beet entries ;) I am sorry, but I like beet soups too much :) And this one is perfect for the summertime: cold Polish beet soup, called chłodnik. Actually, some people call it here in Poland chłodnik litewski, which means Lithuanian cold soup. he fact is that a similar or even same soup is eaten in Lithuania (known as Šaltibarščiai), Belarus, Ukraine and probably Russia, too. My recipe is Polish. this is the most beloved summer soup of my father. As a child I didn't like it but believe me, there is nothing better and more refreshing during the summertime, when you just don't want to eat anything warm. Especially recomemnded for gazpacho, tzatziki and tarator fans :)

see 2 other cold soup recipes

(2 portions)
1 bunch young tiny beets with leaves*
1 beetroot, medium (1/2 cup shredded beet)
1/2 cup radish slices
1/2 cup cucumber slices
1 handful chopped dill
1 handful chopped chives
1 big garlic clove
salt, vinegar, sugar
2 cups buttermilk / soured milk / kefir
2 eggs

1. Cut young beets into small cubes and chop the leaves finely. Cook with a little bit of water, only to cover the vegetables, until soft. If you can't find young beets with leaves, *take a handful of parsley green instead plus 1/2 cup beet juice (from the jar with pickled beets) instead of the water that should be cooked with the leaves and young beets.


(this time I had to use canned beets, too)

2. Peel and cut beet into cubes and cook with salt, a bit of sugar and vinegar. If you don't have fresh beet, take the one from the jar or pre-cooked and packed and don't worry cause it will taste really good, too.

3. Chop finely all the herbs. Vegetables have to be cut finely or shredded, too. Mince garlic and mash with salt. Boil eggs for 10 minutes with a bit of salt.



4. Pour buttermilk into a bowl, add cooled *beet-leaves-water or *beet juice from the jar, chopped vegetables, herbs and garlic with salt, optionally a bit more salt to taste. Leave for 1 hour or more (even overnight) in the fridge. Serve with boiled egg cut into halves pro portion, sprinkled with some more fresh dill. You can eat it like that or serve with young boiled potatoes with dill and butter.


(chłodnik is gonna have some rest in the fridge now)