This week in the kitchen

Monday/22-Dec-14: Dinner was a halfish verison of Tuscan Broccoli Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese (web), a recipe from Green Giant, using one of their products that I don't think I would buy after looking at the ingredients. Anyhow, I just kind of winged it vaguely using what I had. It wasn't bad.

Made up the soup for the mango ice cream for Thursday's meal.

Tuesday/23-Dec-14: We thought we'd do our shopping a day early to avoid the rush. Ha. We've never seen the parking lot so full. The shop was full but all the aisles were open, so there was little waiting time.

In the afternoon I made apple butter and the macadamia nut cookies for the ice cream sandwiches for our xmas meal. Not the prettiest things ever, but they'll do.

Dinner was Gegrilde Sliptong met Avocado-Citroencrème (web), that's grilled Dover sole with avocado-lime cream. Don't know if it was Dover sole, but it was some kind of sole. Lots of little pieces. Had do grill two batches of them. The sauce was interesting and we used it over broccoli and rice too. Then we split a classic magnum.

After dinner, I churned the mango ice cream, made up the sandwiches (three of them, rather than only two), wrapped them individually, and popped them in the freezer. We had one cookie each leftover. (We had split one earlier.) Actually the cookies were pretty good and easy to make. If I do them again, I'll make them smaller.

Wednesday/24-Dec-14: Off to the butcher to pick up our lamb rack this morning. Isn't it pretty?

Emptied the freezer to make chicken stock, which is in the natural refrigerator outside overnight.

Made Christmas Eve Beet Soup (Barszcz Wigilijny) (TLQuint, p15; cookbooker) for dinner tonight. Didn't make the "dumplings" go-with but used cêpes-filled ravioli instead. Pretty good, easy to make but takes lots of clock time (could be done a day before). Then a salad. Then some store-bought vanilla rice pudding (really good stuff).

Made pasta for tomorrow's dinner.

The tree is up and decorated. It's missing balls I've hung every year since 1969 I think. And it's got the puny European lights instead of the cheerful American ones. Next year we probably won't bother at all. Made me sad.

Thursday/25-Dec-14: Yogurt on overday. I got it mixed but forgot for an hour and a half to start it, so it will be a late night tonight waiting till it's done to put it away.

Boiled up the chicken stock and froze it.

Worked on our xmas dinner most of the day. No big hurry, just getting everything done. By about 7.30p, which isn't too bad for us.

Had lots of ideas this year, but settled on a three-course menu from Dinners42 (cookbooker), a gift book I've never used before. We had a pre-starter with a foie gras-stuffed fig each that we got at the market on Sunday. Oh my, these are good. One is plenty. (I've got four more in the freezer now for another "event"—they come in a six-pack.)

This is the kitchen with most of the prep work almost done. (Pasta exposed for the photo; yogurt jars finishing drying after the dishwasher.) The bone booties are ancient; I've been toting that half-used box around for ages.

Ready to eat ...

All cleaned up and ready to put away, which will happen tomorrow morning.

Friday/26-Dec-14: A lightish dinner tonight, P.F. Chang's China Bistro Garlic Noodles (web; cookbooker). This is all over the web, all with the same poor instructions. Pretty good to eat though. For dessert we had some store-bought panna cottas with mango-passion fruit sauce that was a bit too sweet.

Saturday/27-Dec-14: We had our main meal in the afternoon so we could go to a movie in the early evening.

We had a half recipe of Tuna-Swiss Baked Patties (CL88, p125), which turned out pretty good. I've never been very good at patty things, but these held together pretty well. I put one egg yolk (hard to halve a yolk) in the patties and used the white to hold on the breadcrumbs (panko). Served with steamed asparagus and trio rice. For dessert, I used up some leftover evaporated milk to make Memaw's Pet Milk Pudding (web). Easy and not bad. Seemed a bit thick to me and not as creamy as my mother's recipe (which doesn't invove evaporated milk).

Sunday/28-Dec-14: Dinner was a half recipe of Saucy Chicken Gyros (web), tasty and quite easy to make. It would be fast if you put the chicken on to marinate in the morning or evening before. Didn't make the tapenade, but opened a jar. For dessert, we had more pudding, with mixed berries.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes; #2 VEG/FISH: 5
This month: #3 PASTA: yes; #4 FotW: no; #5 BREAD: no

This week in the kitchen

Monday/28-Jul-14: Yogurt on overday.

Neither of us were particularly hungry this evening, so we finished off the lentil salad from Saturday and called it done.

Tuesday/29-Jul-14: Shopping today.

For as starter we had a fruit and goat's cheese salad for IHCC. Then there were Salmon Steaks with Sorrel Sauce (Saumon à l'Oseille) (BEFCC, p92), using salmon fillets (I don't like the bones around steaks and steaks are harder to find here). A classic, this was good, but nothing special. Served with orzo.

Wednesday/30-Jul-14: Yogurt on overday.

We ate with Patrice and Wim at the marché des producteurs in Massignac this evening. Nothing much happened in our kitchen.

Thursday/32-Jul-14: Today we had lunch out with neighbors before going on a walking tour followed by café gourmand (coffee served with little sweets). Nothing happened in our kitchen.

Friday/1-Aug-14: We had some ripe bananas to use up, so I made up a loaf of Banana Bread (CC1, p553) before dinner. Then with had a melon, ham, and mozzarella salad for IHCC. Then there was Shrimp-Stuffed Mirliton (TLCreole, p102).

Saturday/2-Aug-14: Dinner was Sambal Chicken Skewers (web); I made a half recipe of the sauce, without the brown sugar, and marinated four skinless chicken thighs for the afternoon. Grilled them under the broiler. Yum. As a go-with I smerged a couple of recipes for peanut noodles and topped with some broccoli that I boiled in the pasta water before the pasta. We split a classic magnum for dessert.

Yogurt on overnight.

Sunday/3-Aug-14: Most of the afternoon in the kitchen making dinner for Patrice and Wim. For a main, there was Qodban (Marinated Lamb Kabobs) (TLQuint, p65), really yummy. I didn't do the suet between lamb chunks, thought about using bits of bacon, in the end decided I was too lazy. They were fine without this. As sides there was Salatit Batata (Potato Salad with Caraway) (TLQuint, p101) and Slata Mechouia (Roasted Tomato and Pepper Salad) (TLQuint, p102). (I'm puzzled why these are two Tunisian salads, one salatit and one slata.) I've made both salads before, but the making of them seemed completely new! For dessert, there was Sour Cream Fresh Blueberry Cake (MC). The weather was nice so Ed could barbecue the lamb. It started to sprinkle as we preparing to eat, so we moved under the hexagon.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes; #2 VEG/FISH: 2
This month: #3 PASTA: yes for July, no for August; #4 FotW: yes for July, no for August; #5 BREAD: no for July, no for August

This week in the kitchen

Monday/24-Mar-14: Bumped into a recipe for Tuna Melt during the morning and made that for lunch. Toast your bun, lay on a slice of tomato, top with a nice tuna salad, grate or slice some cheese on top, and plop in the oven till the cheese melts. Not for everyday, but nice.

In the afternoon I made some Zucchini-Lemon Muffins (MC), working on the zucchini backlog in the freezer.

For dinner, I went back to the Time-Life Quintet book. There was Dulma—Zucchini Stuffed with Lamb and Rice (TLQuint, p85) served with Salatit Batata—Potato Salad with Caraway (TLQuint, p101), both from Tunisia. Ground lamb has to be homemade and I had some cooked lamb in the freezer waiting to be used, so I ground that up with the onion, eggs, parsley, mint, and other spices. Made good use of the food processor here, where the 1970-ish instructions had you kneading and beating the filling.

A good filling, and I've got lots leftover. I'll get some brik or filo tomorrow and stuff some samosa-like things for baking. The potatoes were good too.

Then a simple salad, rocket and mâche with a dab of dressing. For afters, there was a dab of ice cream with a muffin.

Tuesday/25-Mar-14: Yogurt on overday.

Shopping today. There were fêves from Spain today; the season has moved northward from Morocco. I resisted, but it was hard. Did get some French strawberries, the first seen I've seen this year, today.

I've added a page with the Nigel Slater schedule for I Heart Cooking Clubs. With the Foods of the World thing going on, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to participate, but I do like him, so will try. I've gotten lazy about making separate posts for meals in the last couple of months, so will have to get back in the groove.

I've also added a page with a list of zucchini recipes I've tried in the last year. I hope this might make meal planning easier when the next garden bounty starts to appear. Might add separate pages for other veggies (eggplant?) if those explode in the garden.

Dinner was Mustard-Coated Salmon (web; cookbooker), along with some steamed broccoli (topped up with a bitter butter with garlic and red pepper flakes) and trio rice. For after there was the last waffle from the freezer topped with ice cream and, yes, strawberries. Good, it all was.

After ten hours, some of the yogurt pots were still runny. Think that it's not heating evenly across the bottom. Broke down and ordered a new one, same brand, newer model.

Wednesday/26-Mar-14: Wrapped the leftover lamb in filo and baked some samosas. Now in the freezer for another meal or snack or two or three.

Dinner was Curried Fried Rice (MW@Home, p226). I used the last of my Thai red curry sauce for the curry sauce; had the amount asked, but could have used more. This is a fried rice with tomatoes and spinach. Pretty good, if a bit off course. We ate more or less the whole recipe, so no dessert needed.

Thursday/27-Mar-14: Dinner was Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin (web). I had about a third of the meat, but used half of the rub; did cut the sugar back even further. Easy and good. Served with smashed sweet potato and some peas for a colorful plate. While we were eating, the ice cream maker made up some Crème Fraîche Ice Cream (MC) for after. Then off to line dancing for me.

Friday/28-Mar-14: Off to Limoges for dinner and a concert this evening. Nothing much happened in the kitchen. Running out of yogurt. Hope the new one comes tomorrow, please Amazon.

Saturday/29-Mar-14: No yogurt maker today. Only one yogurt left. Will buy more starter next week.

For dinner there was Stir-Fried Rice Stick Noodles with Shrimp and Vegetables (p47, TLChina). My shrimp were too big, so I quartered them rather than just halving them. The instructions said to soak the noodles for five minutes in cold water. After more time than that, they weren't very soft at all, so I drained and poured some hot water over them. But for only a few minutes so there were still a bit chewy. Instructions badly presented. Quite quick to make. Tasty, and improved with a bit of sambal.

Sunday/30-Mar-14: A really late start to the day with the time change. We ate lunch about 4pm (lamb-filled samosas from the freezer; they were good), and didn't really feel like a bit dinner. So made a salad similar to the pasta dinner I'd planned, a small can of tuna, some oven-dried tomatoes from the freezer, slivers of Parmesan. Pretty good it was. We split a magnum classic for dessert.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes?; #2 VEG/FISH: 4
This month: #3 PASTA: yes; #4 FotW: yes; #5 BREAD: 1

A Quintet of Cuisines: Brik bil Anchouwa

Tonight was brik night. There are recipes for three different fillings given, anchovies (or tuna, for the faint-of-fish), lamb, and chicken. We've had both chicken and lamb recently, so we opted for the tuna version.

The filling for all versions is easy to assemble and is briefly cooked before using. The fishy version has anchovies or tuna, finely chopped onions and parsley, lots of capers, and freshly ground black pepper. These are mixed then briefly fried. Actually, I expect that, as with a quiche or a crèpe, you could use most anything you've got around needing to be used up to fill a brik.

Having read the instructions for making malsouqua, the sheets of pastry used to make the brik, I figured the store-bought sheets were going to work just fine. Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco were all French colonies at one time, so, even out here in the country, sheets of brick/brique/brik (I've seen all versions in recipes) are available in the cooler next to filo, pâte brisée, pâte feuilletée, and pizza.

In the photo, my hand is under the paper that the sheet rests on. I've peeled the edge of the pastry so you might be able to get an idea of how thin they are.

The store-bought brik sheets are about 12" in diameter. I'd already started heating the oil in the smaller pan asked, when I realized how big they were, so I quickly changed to a bigger pan. After peeling the pastry sheet from its paper, you add the filling, make a dent in that, and top with an egg. A small egg, please, since a big one would swamp the works. Then into a skillet to fry in olive oil.

These are the filled briks frying in what was probably not quite enough oil. The first one, on the left, is a bit messy, since I'd neglected to remove it from its supporting paper before filling, and it tore on the bottom as I tried to get it free. Given that these sheets are at least 2" in diameter bigger than the one's you'd make following the instructions in the book (should you really want to do that), they're probably a bit underfilled. 

Two minutes on each side, then onto the plate for serving. Not so pretty, but very tasty.

This week in the kitchen

Monday/10-Feb-14: Another dinner from TLQuint. For a main we had brik. For a salad there was Slata Mechouia—Roasted-Tomato-and-Pepper Salad (TLQuint, p102), which I liked, but Ed wasn't especially fond of. The bell pepper roasting instructions for last week's salad were better. For dessert, there was more Impossible Pie.

Tuesday/11-Feb-14: In the morning I made some Zucchini and Feta Salad (WorldVeg, p640) to take to a DORSOB get-together.

Defrosted some cooked lamb and smerged two recipes to use up the leftover brick. Sautéed onions, lamb, pine nuts, dried apricots, cinnamon, coriander, and parsley, then stirred in some yogurt; wrapped it all in brick and popped in the over to brown. Not bad, not great. Plus some steamed broccoli. Plus some leftover Zucchini and Feta Salad. We split a magnum classic for dessert.

Wednesday/12-Feb-14: Yogurt on overday. Sometimes it turns off properly sometimes not. Today was a good day.

First dinner from TLS&P today, Merluza a la Gallega—Poached Hake with Potatoes and Tomato Sauce (TLS&P, p21). Used smoked paprika instead of plain. Pretty good, nothing special. A side of steamed haricots verts, which went especially well with the tomato sauce.

Thursday/13-Feb-14: Woke this morning to find that the wind had ripped the tar paper off the roof of the shed. Argh.

Dinner was a half dose of Island Chicken Bites (web), which was easy and pretty tasty. Think it's meant a toothpick food with drinks, but was nice as chunks on the plate; might be good to flatten a kip filet a bit and broil that too. As a go-with there was some Black Beans and Rice (web) and some steamed broccoli. And some mini-magnums for after.

Friday/14-Feb-14: Valentine's day lunch at a very nice restaurant. Nothing happened in the kitchen

Saturday/15-Feb-14 - Sunday/16-Feb14: On our way to Amsterdam; nothing happening in our kitchen. We hope.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes, #2 VEG/FISH: 2
This month: #3 PASTA: no, #4 FotW: yes, #5 BREAD: 0

A Quintet of Cuisines: Banitsa

Banista is a traditional Bulgarian dish, usually made for Christmas or New Year's Eve, when they might contain a little token like the fêve in a French Three Kings' Cake. With filo replacing a hand-made dough, these are actually quite easy to make, with the preparation larged finished while the oven is heating.

Field was served a special, S-shaped banista. More common, judging by the images you find searching, is for the rolls of filled filo to be coiled into a springform pan, the resulting "pie" cut into wedges for serving. I made a half recipe since I had a limited amount of feta and filo, so I thought that wouldn't work for me, although I was probably wrong.

Feta comes in 200g packets, so I was a bit short on this for making a half recipe. Being in a lazy mood, I decided to zap the feta, yogurt, and egg in the food processor rather than crumbling, forcing through a sieve, and beating vigorously with a spoon. Meanwhile I dug out my pastry bag and assembled it with a 1/4" tip (rather than 1/3" as requested) since that's the biggest I have. The food processor was probably a mistake, though, since the filling was more pourable than pipable.

But I proceeded. I laid out each rectangle, buttered, folded, spooned what was probably about two tablespoons along the long edges, rolled, and formed into a figure eight. My half recipe made nine rolls, where eight would have been expected. My packet of filo had ten sheets, so I buttered and folded the last one, sprinkling with a bit of cinnamon-and-sugar mix that needed using up.

Twenty minutes in the oven and they were lovely and crispy. The cinnamon square looks a bit burnt, but wasn't really.

These were a nice accompaniment for soup-for-dinner. They'd also be nice finger food for drinks or on a buffer. We rather liked the rather tidy (for filo) single serving shape.

This week in the kitchen

Monday/3-Feb-14: Dinner was Curried Zucchini Soup from the freezer, made with some of the summer bounty. As an accompaniment, I made banista (TLQuint, p6) a savory filo pastry filled with a feta-yogurt-egg mixture.

Tuesday/4-Feb-14: Had a day out with my drawing group today—shopping, not drawing. In the morning, I cranked up the crockpot and started a half recipe of Chicken and Chickpea Tagine (web), a half recipe with all the spices. Served with couscous and some roasted broccoli tossed with Moroccan spice (homemade for something or other). All pretty good.

Yogurt on overnight. Hoping it shuts off properly.

Wednesday/5-Feb-14: Yogurt was fine. Hope the business with not turning off consistently was a momentary aberration. Shopping today.

Dinner was (sort of) Schol uit de Oven (TLQuint, p35); that's plaice from the oven. There was schol last week, but not this week. I used panga instead, probably slight larger, so I cooked a bit longer. No Gouda; used Parmesan instead. This would probably work with any thin fish fillet. Or any thick fillet if you didn't fold it. Ed didn't like the bacon especially. Served with Dusolier's Perfect Roast Potatoes and some steamed broccoli. For dessert we had some yummy cheesecake I bought at the cheese counter.

Thursday/6-Mon-14: I had lunch out today. (Ed was supposed to come, but stayed home sickly.) For dinner he had two big bowls of Curried Zucchini Soup, and I had one smaller one. I saw from my notes that I added 50% to the curry powder; it's ok as is, but could take a bit more. Soup needed salt, but that's normal for the way I cook.

Friday/7-Feb-14: Dinner was El Labm el M'qali (Morocco)—Lamb with Lemons and Olives (TLQuint, p62), served over couscous. I used store-bought preserved lemons, since I don't have any home-made ones available. Good, but I think I would make thin slices of the lemon quarters rather than leaving them in big chunks. Fairly easy to make, although boning the lamb is a bit time-consuming. For a salad, I made Kiopoolu (Bulgaria)—Eggplant and Pepper Spread (TLQuint, p104), which was a pretty good salady sort of thing.

Saturday/8-Feb-14: Yogurt on overday.

Meant to make pasta for dinner, but did a bunch of "stuff" instead. So it was a half recipe of Fettuccine with Mushrooms and Asparagus (web) with linguine. Used up the end of the Toupargel frozen asparagus, which worked fairly well. Tasty stuff. Then a big salad. Then a dab of ice cream with our hazelnut chocolate squares.

Sunday/9-Feb-14: There's a new version of the old Impossible Pie recipe going around this week, although it looks a bit suspect to me. I can handle more butter and less sugar, especially the sugar part), but no baking powder or salt makes me wonder if it will work. I made one today with the baking powder. Still tasty. Like the reduced sugar.

Dinner was Thai Red Curry (web). Now that I look at the page again, I think it was meant to be served as a mug of soup. Otherwise, I can't imagine how it would served 12. I used only one carrot (instead of two), one zucchini instead of two (but these are bigger than the typical US ones), more green beans, and no baby corn; all this woudl be just short of a whole recipe. Served over rice. We might have had three or stretched to four servings. Easy, good, but nothing special. Kind of an old hippie veggie stir-fry, but with red curry paste and coconut milk. As a side, there was a half dose of Cucumber Salad (Delightful, p51) made with less sugar that asked; good stuff. Then Impossible Pie. We're full.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes #2 VEG/FISH: 4
This month: #3 PASTA: no, #4 FotW: no for SP, #5 BREAD: 0

This week in the kitchen

Monday/27-Jan-14: We went to a movie late this afternoon, then ate dinner in Angoulême. Not much happened in the kitchen today.

Tuesday/28-Jan-14: Went to bed last night thinking I was finally over the new year's crud. Woke up this morning feeling like s***. Sigh. Cancelled today's appointments (a drawing get-together and a candlewicking class).

Tonight's planned dinner was a bit more work than I felt like, so instead I made a half dose of Goat Cheese, Chive, and Chili Pepper Sauce (MarCuc, p167) for spaghetti. And a big salad. And some double chocolate mini Magnums for dessert. Now about ready for an early bedtime.

Wednesday/29-Jan-14: Yogurt on overday. Curious that since I started "cooking" my yogurt for shorter times, the starter is lasting longer. I don't think I've replaced it since last summer, and it's still fine. Doing 8 or 9 hours now, assuming the gadget stays on for the time I set it.

Skipped Pilates, but got myself together for shopping.

Dinner was a double dose of Black Pepper Salmon with Olives and Tomatoes (web). Pretty good, and very easy. Served with orzo and steamed broccoli. Split a magnum classic for after.

Thursday/30-Jan-14: For dinner, I made a full dose of Marsala Chicken Stew (web; cookbooker); we ate half and I froze the rest for another meal. It's funny that I actually collected this recipe twice from Eating Well and only discovered it when I went to enter the new copy into my spreadsheet. They resent recipe, as I notice they do sometimes. They suggested serving with whole-wheat noodles, so I bought some spaghetti, but then ended up using the mushroom-flavored chanterelle-like pasta I keep on hand. Simple and pretty tasty; might do with some veg, maybe peas. Two squares of chocolate and hazelnuts for afters.

Friday/31-Jan-14: Well, it's the last day of the month and I meant to sneak some home-made pasta in here, but lost track of time this afternoon, so ended up with dried tagliatelle instead. Too bad. Dinner was Ruth's Chris New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp (not sure where I collected this, but found the same recipe here). This is really easy and tasty. I sort of made a half recipe, half the shrimp and half the worcestershire sauce, just a dab of the butter (which really helped to bring the sauce together), but all of the rest of the spices. Then a big salad. Then two more squares of chocolate and hazelnuts.

On Facebook a month of so ago, there went around a post about naming the top ten books that have affected your life. I never answered this, but have thought about it a bit. As a child, I loved and read several times the Burgess Bird Book for Children and the Burgess Animal Book for Children, both with illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, whom I would have thought was dead long before these books were first published (1919 and 1920 respectively). I have no idea who gave these to me or when. I've written my name in very young cursive on the flyleaf. On the list of illustrations I checked off most of the birds; I'm not sure if they were ones I'd seen or ones I wanted to see. Hard to believe I hadn't seen an English sparrow, but also hard to believe I didn't want to see a bald eagle. I've started reading the bird book again. Charming children's stories of birds. Now I see you're actually being given lots of information about the lives of these common birds, nesting, feeding,  habitat, migration, identification, etc.

Saturday/1-Feb-14: Yogurt on overday.

We ate out tonight we the Trois Coins group plus spouses. A nice time, but nothing happened in the kitchen.

Sunday/2-Feb-14: Another Time-Life meal, this time rösti from Switzerland (TLQuint, p95). I made a halfish recipe (a short 2# of potatoes probably), which fit nicely in my smaller cast iron skillet. Added the layer of sautéed onions as suggested in the note. If you prepared the potatoes (parboiling, peeling, chilling) the night before, this would be a pretty good weeknight meal. The poached egg was my addition, but went quite well. We split a classic magnum for dessert.

For my Time-Life project, this month we start with Spain & Portugal, and we have two more weeks to cook from TLQuint. I have a few dishes scheduled for this week from TLQuint. I still need to read the Tunisia/Morocco section and I'm sure I'll come up with some things there to cook soon.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes, #2 VEG/FISH: 4
This month: #3 PASTA: no for Jan/no for Feb, #4 FotW: yes for Jan/no for Feb, #5 BREAD: 0 for Jan/0 for Feb

A Quintet of Cuisines: Erwtensoep

This year I'm starting a big kitchen project, to read and cook through the Time-Life Foods of the World series. This set of books, published in late 60s into the early 70s, covers most of the world's major cuisines. For each cuisine covered, there's a hardback book, written by a well-known foodie of the time, plus a spiral-bound recipe book. The series is a bit skewed toward (North) American cooking with eight of the 28 books covering different varieties of American cooking, but it is fairly representative of the expanding American view of food at the time.

I bought the series as it was published and have been toting the set of books around for close to 40 years now and, while I've dipped into a few occasionally, I haven't seriously looked at most of them. So my plan is that starting each month I'll have six weeks to read and cook from one of the books. This isn't a julie and Julia thing where I'm cooking every recipe; I just want to read each book and then make a meal or several recipes from it.

Clearly this is a project that will take some time to complete. To make it more fun, I started a little group on Facebook for people to cook along. If you'd like to join in, go here.

The first book I'm cooking from is A Quintet of Cuisines. This covers the food of Switzerland, the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, and North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco). How's that for a mix? Of course, none of these cuisines are adequately covered; there's just a (very) quick dip into the possibilities.

In December, Ed requested that I make some erwtensoep (the Dutch split pea soup) before too long, so that is my first effort from this book. When I turned to the recipe, I was surprised to see that some time in the past, I had marked the recipe for cutting down by half. No indication that I actually made it, but I've made erwtensoep fairly frequently (it's kind of a a once-a-year thing), so I might have used this recipe at some point.

The soup starts off by boiling green split peas with pig's feet and salt pork for three hours. There were no pig's feet at the shop (I saw them a month ago, but not in the last two weeks) and salt pork I don't know in France, so I used a chunk poitrine fumé, which translates as smoked breast of pork. It looks like a chunk of (American) bacon. I don't suppose the exact cut of meat actually matters too much here, as long as it a part of a pig that wants to be simmered for a long while. (Now that I think of it, I don't recall ever seeing pig's feet in the Netherlands, not in the meat case, or at the butcher's, or in a jar. But maybe it's something I just ignored.) I had a bit of home-made chicken stock left from something else at one point and threw that in too.) Here we are a-simmering. 

When the long simmering is done, you add chopped up veggies, potatoes, leeks, celeriac, and celery leaves and simmer another 30 minutes. My celeriac, cut into 1/4" dice, was still not done at the end of this time. I think it would be better to add this first for 30 minutes, then add the rest of the veg for another 30 minutes.

Now you take out the meat (pig's feet and salt pork, or in my case the chunk of poitrine), remove any skin, gristle, and bones, then chop up the meat and add back to the soup with sliced sausage, summer savory, and black pepper. In this recipe, kielbasa is the recommended sausage, I'm thinking because they gave a recipe for this in the Polish section. In my experience, this is usually a (Dutch) smoked sausage, which for me is a good enough reason to make this soup. A couple of months ago there were some French smoked sausages on sale and we bought three links. One was plenty for my half recipe, but I'm not sure you can have too much sausage. (My French sausage was a bit coarser inside than a rookworst, but still worked quite well.) Simmer this all for a bit and serve.

Well, Ed said, it tastes like the real thing. And it did! I only missed the roggebrood met katenspek to go with it.

I made half of a recipe that says it serves 8-10. We'll have 3-4 servings from that. (One of us ate a huge second bowl; it wasn't me. :-)