Saturday, April 21, 2012

Green Tea and Broccoli Soup

I love how international recipes can be now. This recipe came to me via a French magazine and a Lebanese-American blog! Now it comes to you via an Australian soup blog. It is certainly the modern way to pass a recipe about. I immediately knew that I would have to try this when I saw it on Taste of Beirut a few weeks ago.

This soup was a bit experimental for me, particularly the novel use of green tea as stock. I'm not the biggest tea drinker. I do like green tea at Thai restaurants, but have had trouble replicating that success at home. I have a cupboard full of different brands that I've tried, and then not really liked. I thought it would make a perfect antidote to hot cross buns and Easter chocolates. A nice antioxidant boost to counteract the recent badness somewhat.

I modified the recipe to cook it all in my Thermomix. It's easy to adapt back to stove top if you don't have such expensive toys.




Green Tea and Broccoli Soup

1 large brown onion
2 cloves garlic
20gm olive oil
4 Japanese green tea bags
1 litre (4 cups) boiling water
600gm fresh broccoli (1 large and 1 medium head of broccoli)
1/2 bunch coriander (cilantro)
Sea salt, freshly ground white pepper to taste


Peel onion and garlic. Chop onion into quarters. Place into Thermomix. Chop on Speed 7 for 5 seconds.

Add oil.

Cook onion and garlic at 100 degrees on Speed 1 for 3 minutes.

Steep green tea bags in boiling water for a few minutes. Remove tea bags.

Add lightly chopped broccoli. Chop on Speed 7 for a few seconds.

Add the hot green tea.

Cook for 14 minutes at 100 degrees on Speed 1 or until broccoli is cooked.

Add coriander. Season. Blitz until smooth.

Notes
Coriander is the major flavour- which is a great thing for me, as I really love coriander, and don't love broccoli all that much.

I enjoyed this for a few work lunches, and then had the last of it for dinner with a toasted chicken sandwich. It was tasty.


This post is linked to Weekend Cooking, a fabulous weekly meme at Beth Fish Reads.

6 comments:

  1. Wow! Such an interesting combination of flavors! I love the story of how you came by the recipe. :)

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  2. well, I do agree that the use of tea sounds so interesting. I love coriander and broccoli!

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  3. That is really interesting. I must think about using tea - just won't be able to tell my other half because he reckons he hates tea.

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  4. I too love how easy it is to find new flavor combinations and dishes from around the world. This looks so pretty and fresh. I almost never cook with tea, but I don't know why that is. Like Caite, I love both coriander and broccoli, so I bet I'd love this. I wonder if it'd be good cold with some sour cream or yogurt.

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  5. A tea soup base is definitely new to me, and intriguing. Looks like a nice spring soup. And you're right, it *is* wonderful how recipes are shared around the world via the internet. :).

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