Lemon bars

Adapted from David Lebovitz

Minimalistic desert, in terms of presentation, taste as well as the work which is required to make them.

Lemon bar is a wonderful sweet treat for lazy cooks who want to impress guests but don’t like to stand in the kitchen baking for half of the day. I love these lemon bars because they have such a condensated, strong taste that you need to eat just a tiny piece to fulfill your dessert craving. Extremely lemony-tasting, sweet and refreshing the same time – they make a perfect finish after a heavy dinner.

I like my lemon bars very flat, so I use rather big baking dish (25x20cm). When I made them once in a smaller baking dish, the crust was too heavy and the topping to thick for my taste. You need to find the balance which suits your taste best.

Jerusalem Artichoke Salad

What is it?

It is not an artichoke and certainly it doesn’t come from Jerusalem. It is a species of sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus) native to North America. It can be also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambur. It is cultivated for its tuber, which is used as a root vegetable. The knobby sunchoke tubers look similar to ginger roots, with light brown skin which may be tinged with yellow, red, or purple depending on the soil they are grown in. Prime season - from October to April, and they are best dug after a light frost. So go ahead and try them, the time is now!

Beet Root Chips

Adapted from Tofu for Two

As a mom of 2,5 years old I really care about proper nutrition of my child. My toddler, however, constantly refuses to eat vegetables. No luck in smuggling greens into his diet so far. Oh, well, he is untroubled to eat my carrot cake or chocolate-beetroot cake (he is even begging for second portions of these), but let’s face it: this is not exactly the nutrition I am willing to give him on daily basis. After many unsuccessful approaches of veg-smuggling, finally a big success came unexpected - in the form of a beet root chip!

Yes, these chips make a lovely, alternative snack, easy to make and surprisingly tasty. Baking the beets in the oven instead of deep-frying makes them much healthier; they tend to shrink a lot, that’s why it’s a good idea to choose the biggest beets you have. To save energy and preserve nutrients I bake them long in low temperature, but you can try to do it faster in higher temperatures.

Divine carrot & cardamom soup

Adapted from La Tartine Gourmande

I make this soup on regular basis in the winter season, when it gets cold and dark. It’s the perfect comfort food. Lively colors of chopped vegetables (purple and orange) elevate my spirits instantly. Even my 2 year old son, who is normally very fussy with soups, eats this one with a great satisfaction. It is so easy to prepare and also inexpensive that it is almost too nice to be true. No need for a stock is another big advantage of this recipe. When I cook soups which require stock and I don’t have any, I feel pretty bad using some instant thing (even though I use a good one).

But let’s start from the beginning: I was literally digging out some carrots with my bare hands, just a few weeks ago, when I was visiting some friends in Dyssekilde - en ecovillage in North Sjaelland. It is a lovely little oases inhabited by around 200 people who share their passion for healthy lifestyle, ecology and close to nature living in general. Place itself is really hip with its colorful folks and cool eco-architecture.

Anyway, so there I was, in the open field, in the end of November, pulling carrots from the cold soil, in a freezing and windy afternoon. This down to earth gardening experience inspired me to include carrots little bit more in my cooking this season.

Yes! The carrot season is also now! Not only in the spring, when supermarkets starts to sell appealing long and skinny new carrots with their green tops on. The truth is that locally grown carrots are in season from spring to late fall, when they are the freshest and most flavorful.

We don’t think about it a lot, as they are available throughout the year in every supermarket. It is just a carrot after all, not a sophisticated and pricey early asparagus, not even a modest pumpkin which everybody is so devoted to every autumn. Unpretentious carrot is a veg left alone with no special enthusiasm or celebration. 

Here, in the recipe below, is my gratitude: the quintessence of the carrot brought to you in a form of an old good carrot soup, with a modern spicy twist. Honestly, this soup, you are about to cook, tastes heavenly. It gives you much more oral pleasure than you expect from this vegetable ;)