This week is soup week in the Elmlid residence. Tuesday was chicken soup with kim chi. A brutal classic that I just dare to serve my closest circle of friends. Kills any sickness and keeps the bad spirits away. Tonight I will be making a cream soup with Jerusalem artichokes. It is a old time classic that I learned in Copenhagen that year when the Root where hitting the Danish charts of being the coolest winter vegitable (2006?).

But Queen of Soups came to me last night. Spicy, foamy Red Beet soup with strawberries, sweet potatoes and puy lentil. Topped with crispy goat cheese and mint oil. I need to make it very soon again so I don’t forget how I did it. As far as I remember I did it like this:

First of all, I like to base my soups on leftovers. Yup, sounds boring but it isn’t.

This Monday, I screwed up and made a pretty lousy  salad with puy lentil, sweet potatoes, fig and goat cheese. So, I decided to experiment with it.

I put the Monday Salad in the blender together with some high quality chicken broth and red beets and made it really fine and foamy. Using lentil (preferably from Puy) as a base in your soup is a great idea if you want to skip the milk products. It gives it a creamy texture and adds a full taste. Now, I also used goat cheese in the soup so it got really smooth.

Since I had used a dressing on the monday salad I already had sweetness (fig/ginger jam) and sourness (vinegar) in the base.

I let some garlic, chilli and ginger sweat on the stove. Then added the soupbase and brought it to cook. Finally I added the wine (I used a blanc e blanc – what is your fav? Sometimes I imagine that a sweeter wine is better. Please give me your thoughts! Gewurztraminer??)

At last I put everything back into the blender together with strawberries. Fertig!

Soup deco is as usual crucial, not only for the hobby photographer. I made crisps out of goatcheese and sprinkled mynthe that had been soaked in olive oil.

Holy shit, this was sooo good. Serve it with a very black bread. Preferebly Finnish of Russian.

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Feel free to share me your winter soups. But, please, not too heavy. A good soup should be firery but I like when it reminds me of warm days to come. Like the hint of strawberry in this soup.

Picture is of the day after left overs. I was out on the goat cheese and the topping is made with a 2 year old Gouda instead. Taste was nice, but the color is a bit too yellow. Personally I prefer the  contrast you get to the pink soup when you use the white goat crisp.