Cucumber and cottage cheese soup

Cooking feeds my curiosity.

The distinguished aromas of the spices, scent of the vegetables intrigues me each time I am planning on cooking something. Offcourse the beautiful pictures, the description starts the process. 

My recent treasure is ‘The Joy of vegetarian cooking’ by Jasleen Dhamija.  Book talks about the selected vegetables in details and then lists down few recipes for each.. Most of the recipes are simple with few ingredients. You could randomly pick choose a recipe and find all the ingredients in your house or in the closest grocery store.

What excites me to try this book are the various combination of spices and vegetables to make simple meals pleasurable.

For today I am trying out her ‘Cucumber and cottage cheese soup’

Cucumber soup? Now what that? Its very simple. Core the cucumber, stuff it with cottage cheese and coriander mixture (it literally has only these 2 ingredients), cook it with lemongrass leaves and voila… ready to serve. Being used to spices tomato and hot and sour soups.. this is a fresh change in taste, method and look. There are absolutely no spices in it except for the flavor of lemon grass and coriander. 

Lemon grass and coriander are together used extensively in Thai cooking but is also combined with ginger and chillies. This soup is influenced traditionally Thai cuisine but stuffed with chicken instead of cottage cheese.  

Recipe: Cucumber and cottage cheese soup

Adapted: The Joy of vegetarian cooking’ by Jasleen Dhamija

Serves 6

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

 3 cucumbers, 8 inch long

200 gm cottage cheese

100 gm green coriander, finely chopped

1 tsp salt

3 leaves of lemon grass

2 tbsp lime juice

Method:

-   Peel cucumber and taste for bitterness. Discard bitter cucumbers. Cut both ends and set aside

-   Hollow out the inside, removing all the seeds and set aside.

-   Take 200 gm cottage cheese, mash it well and mix with 50gm coriander, ½ tsp salt and stuff the cucumbers. I added more to adjust the taste.

-   Close both ends with the pieces set aside, using wooden toothpicks.

-   Put cucumbers flat into a pot and add 7 cups water, lemon grass and remaining salt. Add the remaining cottage cheese stuffing as well as the remaining coriander.

-  Cook covered on slow fire for 10 to 15 minutes. Test with a fork to see if the cucumbers are done. Remove from fire and add lime juice.

-   Take the cucumbers from the pot and remove the ends. Cut the cucumbers into 4 pieces. Put 2 pieces in each bowl and ladle soup on top.  

     This soup should be served hot.

  Have you tried cucumber soup before? What spices do you think will go well with it?