Ricotta and spinach soup - Zuppa di ricotta e spinaci

Yesterday I went to visit my friends who have a holiday home in the countryside. It's a small wooden house, like a cabin, with a fireplace and it's surrounded by ponds and trees and lots of beautiful wildflowers. It's very idyllic, you have the feeling that you're completely away from everything and it's hard to imagine that you can find places like this still in Flanders.

There's a vegetable garden and yesterday we had artichokes from the garden - delicious.

My friends brought ricotta and 'warmoes', an oldfashioned vegetable similar to spinach but not as soft. I offered to make a soup with this.

Serves 6

300 g ricotta
600 g spinach, torn in pieces
1 big onion, peeled and chopped
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
vegetable stock
ground pecorino or parmesan
olive oil

Fry the onion on low heat for a few min until golden. Add ricotta and fry it while stirring for 15 min, until it also gets coloured.
Add pepper and salt, tomatoes and spinach. Add 1,5 l boiling water with a bit of vegetable stock.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for 15 min.
Serve very hot with extra olive oil and ground cheese.

Note: I tend to add a small dried red pepper (peperoncino) to spice it up a little.
You can use the spinach stalks; I cut them off but I add them with the torn leaves.

This is the soup with the view:

We also had some home made elderflower juice, made from the flowers in the garden. I photographed it in a small herb patch:

and on a seat made from a tree that was cut off.

Truly nice getting away like this for a city gal like me!