Turkish Cucumber Soup

Have you also had some of that wonderful summer weather lately? I have, and although I don’t have much time to spend outside, at least I managed to have dinner in the sun yesterday. We had a Pasta Salad (with mackerel and sun-dried tomatoes instead of chicken breast and corn) and this very light Turkish Cucumber Soup.

 

Turkish Cucumber Soup

1 cucumber
500 g yoghurt
2 tbsp. dried mint
salt
pink shrimps
garlic oil

Peel and de-seed the cucumber, then chop finely, sprinkle with salt and drain in a sieve. Wash of the salt, dap dry with a kitchen towel and mix with yoghurt, mint and shrimps. Leave to cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Salt to taste. Garnish with shrimps and garlic oil.

 
Notes:

Why should you first sprinkle the cucumber with salt, drain, make wet, dap dry and then salt again? Seriously, I have no idea. This seems to be the least logical recipe I have ever encountered. I’ll leave out this step next time. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a soup anyway, so any cucumber juices would have been welcome, as might some extra yoghurt.

The original recipe calls for two garlic cloves to be crushed, and pure olive oil to be used instead of garlic oil. I can definitely recommend that, as I thought the oil’s garlic taste was not strong enough for the soup; in fact, I didn’t like the oil at all and would not use it again (or let my guests decide that themselves).

We used shrimps because I saw that elsewhere; and pink shrimps because they were the cheapest and we have to pinch pennies at the moment (and because I wanted to add some extra seafood to our menu); but unfortunately, they weren’t really worth it. Either chose good, expensive shrimps, or leave them out altogether to make a vegetarian meal!

Smoked Haddock Chowder

This week I had Smoked Haddock Chowder. Actually, I was looking for a good recipe to use kipper, as I enjoy smoked fish of any kind and kipper is the cheapest of them all. I couldn’t find any interesting recipe for kipper, but I found this one for smoked haddock – or rather these two, as what I eventually made is a variation of this one and this one. I stuck to smoked haddock this time, just to see what the original is supposed to be like, but I will definitely try kipper next time.

 

Smoked Haddock Chowder

1 onion
butter (alternatively olive oil)
500 ml milk
ca. 350 g potatoes
2 fillets of smoked haddock (or any other smoked fish)
1 small can of corn

Chop the onion and fry in butter. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes. Add the milk and the potato cubes, bring to a boil and cook for a little while. Then add the haddock, cook a short while and add the corn. Season and serve.

 
Notes:

Neither the haddock nor the corn I used were frozen, so I had to adapt the cooking time given in the original recipes to make sure that the potatoes were cooked without having the haddock falling apart. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the recipe and the fact that everything except for the haddock (or even including the haddock, if you have a frozen one) are typical staples you would usually have at home. However, I’m not really sure how much I like the taste of it. The taste of corn is quite predominant in this chowder and, although I love fresh corn, calls up associations of cheap food – which is why I awarded only three stars. Adding bits of bacon, as suggested in one of the original recipes, might have helped to add a fuller flavour, but I don’t quite know if that had been enough. The taste of the smoked fish isn’t strong enough at all for a fish chowder, nor was the soup as mushy as I would have expected (which doesn’t mean that at a given moment I cooked the soup so long that the milk didn’t disappear…). I guess using a different kind of potatoes might help, as might using a recipe that calls for longer cooking times in general. All in all, however, this is a super-practical everyday meal.

I’m not really sure in which season I should place this. The smoked haddock indicates winter, but somehow… perhaps the corn makes me feel summer… perhaps the corn should be left out altogether (or strongly reduced), and possibly replaced by other vegetable, if any at all…

Serves 2-4 depending on for which course it is served; adapted from BBC Good Food.