A Dutch Classic

It has been raining all weekend. As most parents with small children will experience, I too am extremely prone to all kinds of colds. So when it starts raining, and the children come home with a only a tiny bit of a cold, I immediately start sneezing.

Time for some soup! I know, I should have been making chicken stock... It just is the best when you are having a cold, but this Vegetable Soup with Meatballs is sooo comforting and warming on rainy days.
It takes a while to make, but most of the time is waiting time, so can be spent with (in my case) the children.
In these rainy weekends we spent a lot of time in our big 'living kitchen', working on childrens art projects such as making a house out of cardboard boxes, painting, cutting and pasting images from magazines etcetera.

I find it comforting to hear the delicate bubbling sounds of the soup in process next to the tapping sound of the rain on the roof and the windows. Not too mention smelling the soup, which already warms me without even tasting it.
Probably it is in my genes, as my mother and also my grandmother would allways make their own broths as well. I must have passed the 'love of this soup' genes to my children, because both my children love this soup and are even eating the veggies in it!

Vegetable Soup with Meatballs
A Dutch Classic

Ingredients for 1 pan of soup:
Broth:
2 marrowbones (1 with and 1 without meat),or more if you like.
1 very small tin of tomatoconcentrate
1 celery
2 big carrots
2 onions
1 leek, green parts
1 hand of parsley

Finishing the soup:
1 leek, white parts
1 spring onion
250g of mushroom
250g of minced meat
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 egg
Breadcrumbs
Vermicelli
Parsely

Put on the oven-grill on highest temperature. Spread a spoon of tomatoconcentrate on the marrowbones and roast them for about 10 minutes in the oven. Put the bones in a pan and fill with cold water. Put it on the stove at a low heat. Chop the celery, 2 onions (washed, but unpeeled), the green part of the leek and 2 1/2 carrot in big chunks and roast for a few minutes in the oven as well, after which you toss them in the pan. Also add some parsely, peppercorns, and of course whatever vegetables/herbs you furthermore like to put in.

Leave it on the low heat for a few hours, preferably the whole day. Strain the soup into another pan, squeezing out as much fluids as you can from the vegetables. Throw away the vegetables from which the soup was maked, but save the meat.
If you want to save the broth for later you could reduce it now untill you only have about a quarter left, cool it and freeze it in small portions ready to use whenever you need a broth as a basis for soups or sauces.

If you are ready to make the soup, you'll go on by pulling the meat in small pieces and add it to the strained soup. Season with salt & pepper.

Finely chop an onion and the clove of garlic and put in a bowl together with the minced meat, egg, breadcrumbs salt & pepper. Make a lot of small balls from the meatmixture.
Finely chop the white of the leek, the remaing 1/2 carrot and the spring onion. Roughly chop the mushrooms.

Add mushrooms, meatballs and vermicelli to the soup and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the vegetables 2-3 more minutes.
Taste and season some more if you like. Put in bowls and dress up with a little fresh parsley if you like.

Score: 5 out of 5, but only if you take enough time to let it simmer!
Tip: Make a large pan full of the broth, reduce half of it and freeze it in small portions (icecubebags are perfect) use the other half to make the soup. You can throw in just about any vegetable you like a few minutes before serving. A mix with small pieces of cauliflower, leek and carrots is a popular choice in the Netherlands. And don't forget the meatballs, without these it wouldn't be a Dutch Classic!
Time: to make it perfect, you'll need at least one day.
Amount of work vs waiting: Low.
About 30 minutes to start it up if you roast your meat and veggies, which I would recommend. But you could also make a lazy version by just putting all ingredients in the pan, fill it up with water and be ready to let it simmer within 5 minutes.
Finishing the soup will take about 30 minutes, making the meatballs and chopping the veggies.
Ideal for: Simple family dinner, Autumn, Winter

Quiche

Making quiches always brings back good memories to me. When we were dating I often planned a biking or walking picnic trip into nature. Usually I would bake a savoury quiche, make a small salad, pack a bottle of good wine and we were of for the day. Enjoying the nice weather, beautiful nature, a nice meal and of course each other.

With small children and fully booked agenda's this belongs to the past, and only the sweet memories stay with us. But nothing to be sad about, there is room to make plenty more sweet memories that do or do not involve quiches! Having a family picnic isn't as lazy, and we usually go to a park nowadays where we meet up with friends instead of making trips into the woods, but they are just as memorable as the old days. 

Talking with friends while watching the children all play together, drinking a good glass of wine and enjoying the same old quiche... Life evolves, but with some sun on your face, good company, a nice glass of wine and good food, it still treats us very well!

Ingredients for 1 quiche:

Basics:

1/2 package of puff pastry. (You can make it yourself, but I like the one we have in the freezer here, and it is so much easier...)
A spoon of butter

250g creme fraiche, mascarpone, double cream or something comparable
1 or 2 eggs
200g grated cheese
garlic
Salt (a little) & pepper

Other ingredients:
Basically you can variate all you want with the other ingredients inside. See some suggestions below.

Heat the oven at 210 degrees Celsius. (410 degrees Fahrenheit)
Defrost the puff pastry. Whisk the eggs and put most of it through the creme fraiche (or whatever alternative you use) in a large bowl, save some whisked egg for later. Finely slice or press the garlic and add to the mixture, add a little salt, some pepper and the cheese.

Spread the butter on the baking mould. Cover the mould with the pastry, letting it hang slightly over the edges.
Put in the other ingredients of your quiche and cover with your cheesy/creamy mixture. Fold the edges in. I sometimes (as in the picture above) like to make a roof of puff pastry, adding a bit more pastry to close up the pie. But you can also choose to bake it without a roof. Spread the little bit of whisked egg over the pastry roof or edges and put in the heated oven for about 40-45 minutes. Let it cool for a picnic or serve hot for a simple family style dinner.

A few of my favourite quiches:

My Basic quiche, super simple but preferred by my husband:
Bacon, leek and mushrooms (I bake the mushrooms with salt &pepper before I put it in, but put the leek and bacon in raw, they cook inside the quiche)
You can keep it in the fridge overnight and eat again the following day. It is also nice when eaten cold, and is also nice without the mushrooms.

Sweet onion & goatcheese quiche
Shallots, goatcheese, honey, thyme. Gently bake the shallots for 15-20 minutes. Add the thyme to the cheesemixture. Devide the shallots and half of the goatcheese over the pastry, add the cheesmixture put the rest of the goatcheese on top and sprinkle some honey over it.
Serve hot or cold, you can keep it overnight in the fridge.

Chicken- Tauge quiche
Chicken, mushrooms, tauge, more garlic. Cut the chicken into pieces and shortly bake them with some salt and pepper. Bake the mushroom with salt and pepper in another pan, add the finely sliced garlic for another minute and put all of it together with the chicken and tauge on the pastry. Add the cheese mixture, put a pastryroof on this one and serve it immediately when it comes out of the oven. The tauge gives a nice fresh bite to this quiche, but when you leave it to cool down and or reheat it, I don't like it any more. So no picnicfood...

I can think of a thousand other nice quiches to make, ingredients that you can add to the quiches above, but I suggest you start experimenting for yourself!

Score: 4 out of 5
Tip: nice for picknick's. Quiches are also very good partyfood, especially a lot of small (different) ones in bright cupcake forms. They are easy to make and everybody just loves them.

Time: 1 hour (15-20 minutes work, 40-45minutes oven-time)
Amount of work vs waiting: low
Degree of difficulty: easy-moderate
Ideal for: Picnic, simple family dinner, party

PS, curious what I put in this one? It was my husbands favourite with bacon, leek and mushroom, but I also added a few baked onions.

Green Chicken

Ok, I will admit... It doesn't instantly sound appealing, and the picture isn't that great either, but it is one of our favorite 'homemade' recipes! It is something my husband 'invented' one day and it has immediately won over the harts (and stomachs) of our children. This was back in the days that our oldest didn't eat much more than sweet sandwiches and fruits, and we were seriously worried about his protein (and vitamin) intake. So we were delighted he started to eat some meat. Nowadays we are lucky if he let's us eat some of the chicken...

So back to the not very appealing picture of the chicken, I have a presentation for my job to work on, so after some (but not enough..) research on the internet I bought a programm (picmonkey) to make some alterations and watermarks in my pictures. I started practicing on these watermarks and texts in my food pictures. Wow! It is funny to see how a rather dull picture can become something special with a bit of text in it. You can see for yourself here! Ok, the green may be a little too much shouting, but it's my first try. Give me a few posts before you judge it, and let me (a total digital moron) be proud of it.

So, would I recommend Picmonkey to you for upgrading your pictures? Only if you have a device with a flashplayer... Yep, I didn't do enough research (luckily it wasn't that expensive), and I do think that Picmonkey should have warned about needing adobe flash player before it sold me a subscription, but it doesn't work on Ipad/Iphone (yet). Basicly it doesn't work on the devices I take my pictures with and from where I work most of the time... So now I have to, very efficiently..., transfer my picures to the laptop first, add the watermark and texts, and transfer them back. But hey, I love what it does to my pictures and I haven't even tried all of the options yet. So I'll be working from my laptop more often, and I might have to start working on getting this website more professional now that my pics start to look so profi..?

Back to the chicken!
Green Chicken
Personal recipe

Ingredients for 4p:
1 whole chicken, preferably organic
4 (or more) hands full of basil leaves
4 cloves of garlic
60ml olive oil
1/2 lemon
400g of small potatoes
250g of mushrooms
6-10 scallions
250g of cherry tomatoes
Salt & pepper

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees celcius. (356 F)
Grind the basil leaves with 1 clove of garlic and some salt & pepper in a mortar, add half of the oil. Make a space under as much of the skin of the chicken as possible and rub the basil mixture in this space. Also rub some salt & pepper in the belly. Cut the lemon in peaces and put together with some tomatoes, scallions and garlic gloves in the belly of the chicken.
Put the chicken in a casserole and pour the rest of the oil on top and put it in the oven.

Boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes. Add the potatoes, rest of the garlic, scallion, tomatoes and the mushroom in the casserole after 20-30 minutes and leave in the oven for another 30 minutes. Enjoy your chicken, and don't forget to save the bones and juices...

Score: 5 out of 5, but I must admit I'm a little prejudiced, so maybe you should try for yourself...
Tip: You can add all sorts of other vegetables (and herbs for that matter). usually we eat 2 times from one chicken, next day I make a salad or pasta with the 'spared' meat. After you finish, usually I put the bones and remaining fluids and veggies in a pan full of cold water, add some leek, carrots and celery and simmer for a few hours. Take out the solid parts with a strainer, season with salt & pepper and you'll have a very nice homemade broth.
Time: 75 minutes
Amount of work vs waiting: Low, about 20 minute work, and rest is oventime.
Degree of difficulty: Easy
Ideal for: Children's favorite, simple family dinner