Glögger: The Swedish Chef Diaries – Mussel and Cabbage Soup

Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Swedish Chef Diaries – Mussel and Cabbage Soup

My Monday morning routine is now focused on picking up the new weekly flyers to see what is on sale. This was the first week of our new “Swedish-cooking motivation” and I got pretty pumped up when I found mussels advertised on sale for something like $2 a pound. I found the mussel soup recipe on the official Swedish blog (link below) and was ready to do this on Saturday night. It was a pretty easy recipe, mostly mussels, cabbage, white wine and cream – which I grabbed Friday afternoon. When I was at the store, I put in my order for one kilo, and then when I increased it to two, I gained the respect of the fish monger who was impressed with my eye for value.

I started cooking everything as soon as the big guy fell asleep, and told lisa to get ready for a feast. She came in as I had begun to sauté the cabbage, laughed at me and then began to eat it raw. Evidently, while I can pick out shellfish like a viking, I am not so good with my non-nutritious greens. So I had spent 5 minutes sautéing iceberg lettuce….not the best start when it was one of 4 major incredients.

Further “adjusting” the recipe, instead of using cream we used some of the greek yogurt we have been feeding Calvin lately (this substitution worked better to no surprise).

This was a very quick recipe, only taking 15 minutes or so to make, so we were chowing down in no time. The clams (UPDATE - NOT CLAMS, MUSSELS - evidently we aren't used to shellfish yet) were huge (almost too big - couldn't fit on a spoon) and fresh. While the lettuce didn’t make the cut, and it wasn’t very “soup” like, it was a tasty broth that went great with some French bread we brought.

The best part of this was that the “soup” was great as leftovers – the next day I heated it up again and added a little bit of flour to thicken it up. We then put it over some pasta and we were good to go all over again.

Although I think that Lis and I were both pretty much done with it after 4 days of mussels, it is definitely one that I would do again.