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.

Great news for all Iphone users, French Cooking for Dummies has an application style theme that allows you to  read it easily when surfing with a mobile device. Fellow wordpress bloggers, here is the plugin . Now let’s go back to the real thing… Have you ever heard of  Spanish pork skewers called Pinchos Morunos? Pork fillet dices marinated in spices. They’re really worth the try…

Preparation time: 20 mn (+ overnight marinade) – Cooking time: 30 mn

Ingredients (for about 10 skewers)

1.1 lbs (500 g) of pork fillets
1 onion
4 tablespoons of olive oil (click here to buy online)
2 teaspoons of cumin
1/2 teaspoon of pimentón (smoked paprika)
1/4 teaspoon of grinded black pepper
1 pinch of saffron
Salt

Instructions

1/ Dice pork fillet. (Smaller pieces will get tastier with the marinade)

2/ Pour cumin, pimentón, black pepper and saffron in a bowl and mix them together.

3/ In a salad bowl, combine meat and spices.

4/ Add olive oil, a pinch of salt and stir again. Cover and leave it marinate in the fridge overnight.

5/ Thread 6 pieces of pork in each skewer.

6/ Heat grill on high heat. Grill skewers until inside meat is no longer pink or about 5 minutes. If you’re lucky enough to be making them on BBQ, they’ll take a little longer (around 15 minutes) but they’ll taste delicious

Here is a perfect summer salad recipe: very fresh and tasty. Mangoes and shrimps combination is close to perfection . I didn’t discover it long ago but I know I’ll be trying lots of dishes with these two…

Preparation time: 10 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

14 oz (400 g) of cooked shrimps
7 oz (200 g) of Portobello mushrooms
1 mango
1 lettuce
1 red onion
1 lime
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel and chop onions. Squeeze 1/2 lime in a glass and pour onions slices into juice. Leave it so it marinates.

2/ Peel shrimps.

3/ Peel and chop mushrooms. (Peel mushrooms by taking off the white ’skin’ they have on top and cutting their bottom end. If you wash them they’ll get soaked in water)

4/ Peel and dice mango.

5/ Wash and dry lettuce thouroughly. Cut big leaves and pour into a big salad bowl.

6/ Add shrimps, mushrooms, mango dices, marinated onion with its lime juice, salt and pepper.

7/ Add juice from the remaining half of the lime along with olive oil.

8/ Mix well, try it and adjust seasoning according to your own taste.

Here is a recipe I like to make often. It’s fast, easy and really tasty! I love Mediterranean flavors and these ones really enhance a good beef meat. I used green olives, but it’s only a matter of taste, you can replace them by black olives if you prefer. Replace capers by sun-dried tomatoes and you have a new Mediterranean meatballs recipe .

Preparation time: 20 mn  Cooking time: 15 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

18 oz (500 g) of ground beef meat
5 tablespoons of stoned green olives
5 oz (140 g) of feta cheese (1 1/2 oz for topping + 3 1/2 for mixture)
4 tablespoons of dried breadcrumbs
7 tablespoons of milk
4 tomatoes
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 big onion
2 teaspoons of capers
Salt and pepper

Instructions

1/ Soak breadcrumbs in milk in a small bowl.

2/ Peel and chop onion.

3/ Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onion and let it melt gently.

4/ In a salad bowl combine meat, eggs and breadcrumbs. Add salt.

5/ When onions are translucent and soft, take them off heat and let them cool down.

6/ Chop olives and feta cheese. Combine with meat mixture.

7/ When onions have cooled down a little, add to mixture along with capers.

8/ Shape into meatballs. (Don’t make them too big, they would be more difficult to keep in one piece. A good size is slightly  bigger than the tomato slice you’re going to add on top )

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

10/ Heat in a pan over medium/high heat 2 minutes on each side.

11/ Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to an ovenproof dish and dispose meatballs.

12/ Rinse and slice tomatoes.

13/ Add a tomato slice on top of each meatball. Top with feta cheese, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, salt and pepper.

14/ Bake in oven for 15 minutes or until feta cheese has a nice golden color.

Serve with gratin dauphinois,  green asparagus, mushroom baked potatoes or spinach soufflés.

I hadn’t had cuttlefish for so long I almost forgot how good it was! This recipe was made with a fresh cuttlefish, but if you’re a beginner you might rather use frozen pieces… I must admit that cleaning it was pretty disgusting although the result was totally worth it

Preparation time: 20 mn  Cooking time: 1 h

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

3,3 lbs (1.5 kg) of cuttlefish
3 garlic cloves
2 1/2 cups of white wine (dry)
2 onions
2 bay leaves
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of thyme
1/8 cup of Cognac
Saffron
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Clean and dice cuttlefish.

2/ Pour olive oil in a frying pan and heat it over medium heat. Add cuttlefish.

3/ Peel and chop garlic and onions.

4/ When all the water from the cuttlefish has evaporated, add garlic, onions, bay leaves, thyme and a small amount of saffron.

5/ Add Cognac. (If you’re an advanced cook, you can ‘flamber’ which means setting the alcohol on fire for a short amount of time. In this case you need to warm Cognac before adding it to the pan, take pan off heat, then lit it on fire).

6/ Pour diced tomatoes and wine into the pan. Add salt and pepper.

7/ Get to a smooth boil for approximately 5 minutes then reduce heat and leave covered for 1 hour.

8/ Serve with rice or tagliatelle pasta.