Soup season is here! One thing I love about making soup is that you can experiment all you want, you have very few chances to come out with something really bad . Well, my last experiment was this leek and potato soup flavored with blue cheese and I must say it did taste good! It’s a very easy to make recipe that doesn’t need much work on your part. You just heat the leek and potatoes with water and mix everything together… How simple is that?! If  blue cheese’s taste is too strong for you, replace it with cream cheese.

Preparation time: 10 mn – Cooking time: 40 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1 leek
2 large potatoes
1 onion
5 cups (120 cl) of water
0.7 oz (20g) of blue cheese (a little more if you want some left for decoration)
3 tablespoons of whipping cream
Salt

Instructions

1/ Peel and wash potatoes.

2/ Peel leek by taking off the outside leaves and cutting off both the spoiled end on the green side and the roots on the white side. Wash thoroughly to take off soil that can be left inside.

3/ Peel onion and take off roots on the bottom end.

4/ Heat water in a casserole over medium heat.

5/ Slice leek, cut potatoes into 4 pieces and pour into the water along with the entire onion. Add salt and leave covered for 40 minutes.

6/ Mix together whipping cream and blue cheese.

7/ Liquidize soup and combine it with blue cheese cream. You can add half first, try it and decide how much more blue cheese flavor you wish to add. Season with salt if needed.

En papillote is the easiest and probably healthiest way of cooking fish. I use this technique quite often because you can basically put any fish you like with any vegetable you have left in the fridge in a papillote. It’s very simple, you  seal in an aluminum foil precooked  veggies and fish (or fish fillets) and bake it for 10 to 15 minutes. There are endless recipes. If you’re going for a diet meal don’t use butter or oil, ingredients will steam on their own juice.

This rainbow trout recipe is made with a lime tarragon butter and a mix of red peppers, leek and Portobello mushrooms. Don’t be afraid to invent your own variations, with the vegetables you like more .

Preparation time: 10 mn  Cooking time: 20 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

4 rainbow trouts (cleaned and ready to cook)
6 Portobello mushrooms
2 leeks
1 red pepper
1 lime
4 tablespoons of butter (at room temperature)
1 1/2 tablespoon of tarragon
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt and pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel and cut leek.

2/ Clean and cut red pepper in 2 parts. Take seeds off and dice pepper.

3/ Peel mushrooms (by taking off the white ’skin’ they have on top and cutting the end of it) and slice them.

4/ Pour olive oil in a frying pan and heat it over medium heat. Add red pepper and leek.

5/ Preheat oven to 350° F (180° C/Th 6).

6/ In a bowl, blend butter and tarragon. Squeeze lime and add juice to the tarragon butter.

7/ Place each trout on a piece of aluminum foil and stuff them with the tarragon butter.

8/ Fold aluminum paper sealing the end parts and pour leek, mushrooms and red pepper on top of the trout. Add salt and pepper.

9/ Finish sealing the pouches and bake in oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve rainbow trouts in their papillote with potatoes or rice. Great with gratin dauphinois.