Lovage broth

I'm in Finland and what a sudden food trend I detected here: the use of the herb lovage, also known as the love parsley. The herb has already been used by ancient Greeks and Romans for medicinal purposes and has been a popular herb especially in the southern European cuisine. I have heard the name before, but couldn't have been able to say anything about it.

The other day lovage was mentioned in the local newspaper and today the newest edition of the magazine Kotiliesi came in the post, and there was a lovage soup recipe for the approaching midsummer fest. My mother started talking about her huge lovage bush in the garden, and I wanted to see it. Indeed our light lunch today was presented by that proud bush. I loosely based my recipe on the one in the magazine, but mine became a bit more liquid, so I decided to call it a broth instead of a soup. Add some wheat flour before the water, if you want a thicker soup. The dish turned out to be very tasty and I'm really excited about this herb. The broth tasted very savoury, a little bit like mushrooms and had a slight air of celery around it.

Ingredients

2 onions

3 potatoes

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

1 dl fresh lovage

8 dl water

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 dl cream

Method

Chop the onions finely and peel and cube the potatoes.

Heat rapeseed oil in a saucepan and cook the onions until soft and glaze the potato cubes there for a few minutes.

Then add the roughly chopped lovage into the pot and stir.

Add the water and let simmer for about 30 minutes.

Season with salt and black pepper and then add the cream.

Let the broth simmer for a few minutes more and then puree it.

Serve warm with some rye bread.

I'm sure I will be utilising this intriguing bush in the future as well!

Your VegHog