Love through the stomach... » Leek

Potato soup (with leeks)

Valerie — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:49:23 +0000

Our grocery store had the strange idea to make a bunch of leeks the same price as 1 single trimmed leek. So I bought a big bunch of them. The result, adding leeks to many dishes.

I already wrote about my Chicken and Leeks and Dumplings. After that dish, I wasn’t through the leeks yet. The cold dreary weather of late, has had me craving potato dishes, so I decided on potato soup. Potato soup with rivels, with leeks.

I ate potato soup for the first time as a pre-teen. My dad had eaten it at my stepmom’s and then proceeded to make it for us, the next time we came over. (My parents were divorced, we spent every other weekend with my dad, and he was married to my stepmom, but he still lived in Europe and she in the US.)
I recall my dad being amazed with this soup. It was so simple, so basic, yet so tasty. We agreed. It was basically thin mashed potatoes loaded with bacon and cheese and scallions and such. It tasted great!

The years had passed and I’d made potato soup once in a while myself. I made alterations to the soup and at some point I just lost control of the original recipe. I didn’t have it anymore, couldn’t find it, didn’t remember it.

I called my stepmom and she promptly gave it to me and added a cookbook to my Christmas Stocking that year. A collection of recipes from people who have a link with adoption. My stepmom added, among other things, the recipe for potato soup.

When I read the book I noticed that my dad had omitted one vital ingredient in the version of the soup he’d given my brother and me some 20 years earlier. He hadn’t made rivels.

Seeing that I like starchy foods anyways, I figured trying to add rivels wouldn’t be a bad thing. I wasn’t entirely sure, as it changed the soup, but hey, live adventurously and give things a try, right?!

The soup made with rivels was wonderful. It added a whole extra layer of flavour and texture to the soup. I’ve never made potato soup without it after that.

The only alterations I’ve made to the recipe in the book (sorry Dixie, sorry grandma Julia) was the order in which you add things and do things. The recipe calls for dropping in rivels and after that mashing your potatoes and trying to avoid mashing rivels. That just really doesn’t work too well. Once the soup gets cloudy (and yummy) there’s no way to distinguish rivels from unmashed potatoes. So I changed the order. First purée, then add rivels. I also add a bouillon cube to the water I boil the potatoes in, instead of using salt. Besides that, the recipe is perfect the way it is.

Having said that. Obviously I alter things, add things, do things. I had a piece of ham (bone in) hanging out in my fridge. I had a bunch of leeks. I figured, why not.

The pictures you see here, are pictures of the newest version of this magical potato soup. I first simmered the piece of ham in a big stockpot to make a sort of ham broth. After removing the ham I proceeded with the regular recipe, only adding in a whole leek, chopped. I cut up the meat on the ham and after puréeing not only the potatoes, but the leeks as well (with an immersion blender, sorry, I’m lazy that way!). Then in addition to the rivels, I added the pieces of ham.

A great adjustment, if I might say so. Leeks and potato just work really well together.

For now however, I will give you the base recipe. The one I found in my stepmom’s cookbook. Enjoy!

Grandma Julia’s potato soup with rivels

4 cups potatoes, diced

salt

pepper

parsley flakes

1/2 onion, diced

1 tbsp butter

2 eggs, beaten slightly

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 cups milk

water

bouillion cube (my personal addition to grandmas recipe)

Place diced potatoes in a large kettle, cover with water and add salt or a bouillion cube to taste. Cook 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Mash them up, add pepper, butter parsley flakes and onion.

Make rivels by beating the eggs, adding 1/2 tsp salt and mixing in the flour and baking powder. Drop into soup by the spoonful. Stir, cover and cook for 10 more minutes. Add 2 cups of milk. Thicken as needed by adding a thickening of 1/2 c of milk mixed with 1 or 2 tbsp of flour.

Chicken and dumplings

Valerie — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:48:47 +0000

The first time I ever made chicken and dumplings, was a total disaster. I mean, complete, utter, insane bad, terrible, icky goo. I’d used a recipe I found online and the explanation was just terrible. At least for someone who’d never made it before. The dumplings just fell apart and became gooey and gluey in the pot, the vegetables were way overcooked and bland. It was a horrific sight.

I called my friend Amber, devastated. Waht did I do wrong? The answer was, obviously, I didn’t ask for her recipe and explanation of the process.

A few years have gone by since that fateful day with the terrible food. I’ve made chicken and dumplings from Ambers recipe many times, with great succes. I added her mom’s chicken and dumpling soup recipe to the repertoire as well with much succes. And this year I finally got to feeling confident enough with the recipe to alter it and make it to an entirely different tasting dish.

Amber’s recipe is very forgiving, I’ve found. Right from the first time I made it, to the first time I made something else, the dumplings have never failed to puff up and be tender and wonderful. The stew-like consistency of the base can be flavored in many ways. And the vegetables you add can go from the standard onion, celery, peas, carrots and potatoes to any vegetable you like, exotic or local.

The only thing I haven’t altered (yet) is the chicken and garlic. And really, why would you necessarily want to change that. Many or most savory dishes just taste better with garlic. It’s true, don’t even try to deny it. And well, chicken and dumplings without chicken would just be silly, right?

The pictures shown here are leek and chicken with dumplings. This worked very well. I just cooked the chicken and sweated the leek (and garlic) in my nice big Le Creuset Dutch Oven. I did add 2 tiny potatoes in little pieces, because I wanted to use them up. I added herbs I like with leek (marjoram, rosemary, thyme). I added a can of cream of chicken soup, which I needed to use up anyways, and right before adding the dumplings, I threw in a bunch of frozen peas. I made my dumplings with garlic oil instead of regular oil, and that added a whole different dimension to the dish.

So we ate chicken and dumplings that night and it tasted completely different from the normal dish. Not beter, not worse, just a different dish from the same basic recipe. I’m thinking a pumpkin version would be wonderful as well, this season. Or maybe a pepper, corn, kidney-bean version, with a Mexican twist.

So hereby I give you Amber’s recipe. Try it, eat it, enjoy it, and alter it where you see fit. It’s the perfect winter food!

Thanks Amber, for your wonderful recipe!

Amber’s chicken and dumplings (recipe feeds 4 with some leftovers)

1/2 stick butter

2 onions, cut up

lots of garlic

1 or 2 chicken breasts (depends on size and your hunger for chicken) cut into smallish pieces

5 or 6 carrots, cut into stew sized chunks

2 small potatoes , cut into stew sized chunks

3 or 4 stalks of celery, cut up

1 bay leaf

Saute everything in butter until the chicken is cooked. Add some water and a bay leaf to cook the potatoes.

1 can cream of something soup

milk

Add the can of soup and add milk until you barely cover everything.

1 to 2 cups of frozen peas (and carrots)

sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley, pepper and salt

Add the frozen peas (And carrots and seasonings (choose whichever ones you like, I like the ones mentioned above. Let everything stew while preparing dumplings.

1.5 cup white flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 scant tsp salt

3/4 cup of milk

3 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, make a dip in the middle and pour milk and oil in. Stir until you have a nice sticky mixture.

Make dumplings using 2 spoons and drop them on top of the stew. Cover the pan tightly and don’t peek for 15 to 20 minutes. (It needs to simmer, really really low! Use a simmer pad if needed to prevent burning). Stir cooked dumplings into stew and serve hot.

Farm fresh veggies

Valerie — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:05:11 +0000

It’s amazing how used we get to unripe, not so fresh vegetables. Especially during the ‘off-season’ vegetables just aren’t that great. And the old-fashioned produce stores seem to have disappeared.

Last summer, in Colorado, I went to a farmer’s market. Everything was fresh and wonderful. It was a Sunday morning and I couldn’t have been happier with the quality of all the foods that were for sale there. Not just the veggies, but also meats, breads, pasta. It was all amazing.

We do have farmer’s markets (or at least something like that) in Amsterdam. However those markets either aren’t in my neighborhood, or are on weekdays. Which is when I’m at the office and unable to go there.

When we moved to our new home, I was researching the area a bit. Since we’re the last urban street and behind us there’s either industry and the airport (a little ways back though!) or farmland. I read about a ‘care farm’ not even 5 minutes away from the house. Now this ‘care farm’ as they call it, is really a produce farm. It’s run by a foundation that helps people with social/emotional or mental difficulties. A team of social workers/farmers guides the people who need some special care while they take care of the produce they grow. Everything they grow is fully certified organic and seasonal. They exchange some of their veggies for meat from a nearby organic farm.

They have a farm store. There they sell the produce they grew and some extra’s. They sell the meat they’d exchanged (which is, like everything, subject to availability). On Saturdays an organic baker brings some bread, which they sell as well. They import a few things they can’t really grow themselves, all organic.

I’d been meaning to check out the farm store. Last Sunday I finally did. And I wasn’t disappointed.

The vegetables were all so fresh and ripe. Even though there isn’t that much in season, they still had a nice selection and everything looked and felt good. Ripe and fresh. L actually mentioned we should eat the veggies quickly, because they were at their prime right when we bought them. I agreed, however, there’s no way I’ll cook up a weeks supply of veggies in one night. They deserve better. And since they’re so fresh, they’ll still be tasty in a couple of days.

I can’t believe it took me so long to finally visit the farm store. Yummmm, fresh veggies! I love it!

Uovo in cocotte ai porri (leek with egg)

Valerie — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:45:35 +0000

After all the work on arranging this site and it’s layout, I wanted something easy to make for dinner. Easy, yet tasty and with ingredients I actually had (yes, the store was closed by the time I was happy with the layout).

Fortunately I still had a leek and eggs!

When I left my previous job, a couple of guys I worked with a lot actually got me a cookbook. The wonderful classic ‘the Silver Spoon’ to be exact. Anyone who’s ever wanted to cook Italian food needs to get him or herself a copy of this magnificent thing.

Italians know the secret of making the tastiest meals out of just a couple ingredients. Uovo in cocotte is one of those things. There are a number of uovo in cocotte (egg in ramekin) dishes in the book, which I haven’t all tried yet. There’s a lot in the book I haven’t tried, It’s a 1200 page cookbook with the shortest possible recipes, never more than a third of a page. So no, I won’t be done with the book for quite some time.

So leek with egg is was. Some emergency frozen pommes duchesse (mashed potato rosettes), a steak on the grill and voila (or pronto) a wonderful, simple but tasty meal!

Uovo in cocotte ai porri (for 2)

1 large leek

fresh garlic to your liking

2 eggs

butter

olive oil

salt, pepper, nutmeg

2 ramekins (or other oven-proof, single serving deep dish)

Combine butter and olive oil in a pan, when the butter has melted, add pressed/crushed garlic. Stir so the garlic doesn’t clunk together. Slice and wash leek, add to pan, stir until everything’s shiny from the oil/butter, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add pepper, salt and a bit of nutmeg. Stir. Add a little bit of water and cover the pan to let the leek simmer.
Once the leek is all nice and soft (and smells wonderful if I may add) divide the leek over the 2 ramekins. Make sure you don’t fill it all the way to the top! Break an egg over each ramekin and pop the ramekins into a hot oven (375 or something, I’m bad at Fahrenheit).

Leave it in the oven for a couple of minutes until the egg white has set, but the yolk is still nice and soft. Serve in the ramekin.