Creamy Spinach Soup + Our New Book!

Woot woot! Before we jump into today’s recipe, we can finally share more information about our next book! It’s called Green Kitchen At Home and it’s something we have been working on under wraps for the past year. And now we have finally received a pre-copy of it. As the title suggests, this book is a gathering of all the recipes we eat most often in our home – our family’s favorite dishes really.

The book focuses on simple and comforting dishes that are easy to like, adapt and cook. We have tried to minimize weird ingredients so your mom, brother or non-vegetarian best friend also will find it inspiring and useful. Many recipes in the book have naturally started off here on the blog, but we are also sharing loads of previously unpublished recipes that we have kept within our family until now. You’ll find the golden millet porridge or the Spinach & Banana Pancakes that we often make in the mornings, the savoury broccoli muffins that travel well in a backpack, sheet pan dinners for stressful weeknights, our super simple rye bread waffle toast, a fun vegetarian version of fish & chips, wine-baked mushrooms for a weekend with friends, and our children’s favorite – our va-va-voom baked donuts that have been a success at many kids parties. And lots more. It’s not a vegan book as we eat egg and cheese in our family, but just like our other books, many recipes have vegan suggestions. A lot of the recipes are based on our fridge staples and in the book we show how to vary these staples into a multitude of easy shortcut dinners. The book has about 100 recipes in total – and all of them have been tested by a separate tester. We will be sharing more info as we are closing in on the release.

It feels crazy and completely unreal that we have actually written a fourth cookbook and we are immensely grateful for all your support along the way. We hope that you will love this book and find it useful at home. We are planning a small US book tour and will let you know more about that really soon. The book is released already on 1 April in Australia and NZ, 20 April in the UK and 2 May in the US. It will also be released in several European languages after the summer.

Here are some pre-order links: 

 Amazon.co.uk (UK).

Amazon.com (USA).

Booktopia.com (Australia & NZ).

To celebrate the book, we made soup. A very green soup. The soup itself is good and simple. Basically just leek, potatoes and spinach. But what gives it a delicious and pungent kick is the topping. Quick-cooked green beans are tossed in a spicy chermoula made from pickled jalapeños, herbs, oil, lemon and a dash of maple syrup and it works so well with the mild and creamy soup. We also add avocado, yogurt and a generous drizzle of hemp seeds on top which takes it up another notch. Sometimes when a recipe image looks too good, I find myself thinking “but it probably isn’t that good in real life”. This is.

One great thing with this method is that our kids eat this soup with just a drizzle of yogurt instead of the spicy beans, while we (for once) get it exactly as spicy as we want it. Everyone’s happy!

The inspiration for this soup actually came from a toast. One of our favorite Stockholm cafes, Pom & Flora, serve an avocado toast with pickled jalapeno chermoula, cream cheese and hemp seeds. That toast has such a lovely combination of sweet, creamy and spicy tones, and this soup picks up much of the same flavors. A visit to one of their cafes is mandatory if you are visiting Stockholm!

Spinach & Potato Soup with Spicy Chermoula Beans
Serves 4

This soup is spectacular paired with the beans, but if you decide to serve it without you can add some chili flakes to the recipe to make it a little more pungent.

1 tbsp cold-pressed coconut oil or olive oil
2 small leeks, rinsed and finely chopped2 cloves garlic
1-2 tbsp fresh ginger
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
600 g potatoes, peeled4 cups/1 liter vegetable stock (or 4 cups / 1 liter water + 1 tbsp dried vegetable stock powder)
1 large bunch / 150 g large-leaf fresh spinach, rinsed and thick stems discarded
sea salt, to taste

Serve with1 avocado, sliced
yogurt or coconut yogurt
Jalapeño Chermoula Beans (recipe below)
hemp seeds
drizzle of olive oil

Heat oil in a large sauce pan on medium heat. Rinse and finely chop the leeks, peel and crush the garlic and grate the ginger. Add them to the saucepan along with the thyme and let sauté for a few minutes until soft and smells fragrant. Peel the potatoes, cut them into quarters and add them to the saucepan along with vegetable stock. Let cook for 10-15 minutes and then add spinach. Stir to let the spinach wilt down into the soup and let simmer for just a few minutes. Use a hand blender to mix the soup smooth. Add salt, taste and adjust the flavours.

Serve the soup topped with a quartered and sliced avocado, a dollop of yogurt, jalapeno chermoula beans (see recipe below), a scattering of hemp seeds and a drizzle of olive oil.

Jalapeño Chermoula Beans
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 large bunch fresh parsley
1/2 lemon, juice
10-12 slices pickled jalapeños (or 1 whole)
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbsp maple syrup
4 tbsp cold-pressed olive oil
sea salt
1 large handful / 200 g green string beans

Toast cumin seeds in a dry skillet on low-medium heat for a few minutes. Add them to a mortar (or food processor) along with the other ingredients (except the beans). Use the pestle to mash everything into coarse dressing (or pulse a few times if using a food processor). Taste and adjust the flavors. Bring water to a boil in a large sauce pan. Trim off the ends off the beans and cut them in half. Add the beans to the water and let them cook for no more than two minutes. Strain the water and add the chermoula to the sauce pan. Toss until all the beans are dressed with the sauce.