This sweet potato, miso and salmon soup with kelp salsa verde is an exquisite choice for a fast and healthy lunch or dinner.
Life before I moved out of Scotland
I made this soup sometime in April, about a month before I moved back to Romania. I had some pacific salmon in the freezer, and because I don’t really like its intense flavour, I was about to throw it away. That was before I decided to make this soup, which helped me waste less food. I used miso because of my utter love for this delicious ingredient, but also because I had perhaps a little too much of it in my fridge. I always liked having a stack of miso ready for my umami cravings. And because I wanted to bring more of the sea to the plate, I decided to improvise and try out a kelp salsa verde, also because I had plenty of it in my cupboard.
Improvising vs. playing it safe
I’ve always liked to improvise in my cooking. As a matter of fact, the first dessert I’ve ever made – when I was about 14, was my personal variant of a tasty Moroccan dessert I had tasted in school during an international cooking day. Back then searching stuff on the internet was unintuitive, plus I would have had to wait for fifteen minutes for the mobile router to turn itself on, making alien like noises.
Of course, experimenting is better than playing it too safe. Especially if you’re not cooking for a crowd, nor in charge of someone’s wedding’s catering… I quite often ended uo making some of my best dishes by improvising utterly and using the ingredients in my fridge as a source of inspiration. I will, however, give you a little secret: because I’m a little risk averse (I mean, who isn’t?), I like to google my food combinations and see if there is anything even remotely similar out there. This gives me a little bit more confidence.
The recipe
This sweet potato, miso and salmon soup with kelp salsa verde is an exquisite choice for a fast and healthy lunch or dinner.
Heat the sesame oil in a large pot. Fry the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and garlic for a minute, stirring constantly.
Add the potatoes and onion together with 3l of water. Put a lid on and bring to boil.
Let the broth boil for 30 minutes, then add the remaining ingredients and boil for an additional 10 minutes.
Puree the soup in a blender or food processor, until you obtain a cream.
To make the kelp salsa verde, add all the ingredients to a blender and blitz a couple of times, until you obtain a paste.
Serve the soup hot, with salsa verde, sesame oil, sesame seeds and lavosh bread (or croutons).
Love, happyholism and nom-nom,
Ioana
