Sunday 8 August 2010

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Healthy Cream of Spinach Soup/Creme af Spinat Suppe/西式菠菜汤[xī shì bō cài tāng]


Adapted from Danish recipe http://www.freshchoice.dk/

Serves 2-4

Preparation and Cook Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:
- 300g fresh baby spinach leaves
- 200g or 1 rice bowl of frozen shrimps deshelled type (this is used to replace chicken stock called for in many recipes for soup)
- 300ml low-fat fresh milk
- 1-2 cloves garlic chopped
- 1-2 onions chopped
- 1 TBS cooking oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 100ml white wine (optional, substitute with water if you don’t want to use white wine)
- 30ml fromage frais 0.1% fat or cremefraiche 18% fat (optional, I usually do without this)

Directions:
1. Wash, rinse and blend baby spinach with some milk.

2. Fry garlic until golden, add onions under slightly reduced heat (no. 8 on my stove) and sauté until golden.

3. Add frozen prawns and white wine and bring to a boil for a minute until the alcohol evaporates. Blend soup with a hand stick blender and add the rest of the milk and simmer under moderate heat (no. 7 on my stove).

4. Add spinach mixture and cook for 1 min.

5. Add fromage frais and simmer under low heat for another 1 minute.

6. Season with salt and pepper and serve with bread.

Tips:
1. If you wish to have thicker soup, you can add 1 TBS of ground oatmeal mixed with a little of water and then add it to the soup before you add the fromage frais. Then mix well.

2. If you wish, you can also add in 1-2 slices of cheese, stir and let it melt into the soup.

3. You can also fry ½ pot of fresh basil leaves and use it as garnish or just using fresh basil as garnish.

4. You can also serve with some cooked organic wholewheat pasta. Joshua likes it a lot.

Nutritional Value:
Spinach has a high nutritional value and is extremely rich in antioxidants, especially when fresh, steamed, or quickly boiled. It is a rich source of vitamin A (and especially high in lutein), vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, folate, betaine, iron, vitamin B2, calcium, potassium, vitamin B6, folic acid, copper, protein, phosphorus, zinc, niacin, selenium and omega-3 fatty acids. Recently, opioid peptides called rubiscolins have also been found in spinach. It is a source of folic acid (Vitamin B9), and this vitamin was first purified from spinach.

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Additional Information:
Many recipes calls for chicken stock. Store-bought chicken stock is basically MSG in disguise. Home-made chicken stock is too time-consuming to make. Whenever a recipe calls for chicken stock, I have found an innovative way to substitute it. I will cook some frozen prawns and blend it in a blender. It tastes really good, sweeter and more savoury than chicken stock. Try it!

The ingredients of this dish cost approx. 25 DKK or 6 SGD, thanks to the super high cost of living in Denmark!

I realise that it is very important to use a good cheese. I use ordinary slice cheese, and it turned out rubbery in texture. I found this Kerrygold Dubliner organic cheddar cheese from Føtex Supermaket that really enhances the taste of the soup:
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinach

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