Recipes!!

[heisskaffee]

Here is a post for recipes, which I just make up!  Surprisingly, most turn out ok.   Recipes are in the comments...so that I don't go over my character limit in the post.

Keep in mind, I am from the school of  "Cooking by the Seat of Your Pants," so a lot of these have arbitrary measurements like "a pinch," "add a few," "half as much milk as water," and so forth.  This is trial and error, and frankly, part of the fun.  You have been warned.

Comments

Ham Soup

[tallwhite.livejournal.com]

This one requires two things that you will have to make beforehand: pork stock, and ham. Ham should be easy enough to pick up at the market, though the stock may not be. What I do is save the stock that pork roast cooks in, and use that. The stock from two roasts is usually enough to make more or less five cups of soup, and I will probably post it later when Mom's up and I can ask her specifics.

You need:
A pot
About 3 cups of pork stock
2-3 medium sized potatoes
1 carrot or 6-8 baby carrots
About 2 sticks of celery
About 3/4 of a medium sized onion, more or less
A slice of cooked ham, about 3/4 inch in width, roughly the circumference of a CD
3-4 cloves garlic
About a handful of mushrooms, cleaned
A little pepper and salt

1. Put the ham stock in your pot, over medium heat, letting it melt. If there's coagulated blood in it, you want to leave that out, cause it never dissolves. Add about a cup and a half of water to help the broth out.
2. Either finely chop the garlic, or simply crush it, if you don't like eating chunks of garlic. I do, so I leave it in. This is for flavour.
3. Roughly chop the celery, onion and carrots. Congrats, you just made a mirepoix! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix_%28cuisine%29) Set it aside.
4. Peel and chop the potatoes (or alternately, wash and chop, if you like skins) into cubes. Add them to the mirepoix and put it all in the broth when it starts to steam. Boil this for a bit, until they just start to soften.
5. Chop your ham into cubes. Throw them into the broth with the vegetables. Let this cook until the potatoes are soft.
6. Dice mushrooms and throw them in the pot. They'll shrink a bit. Let that cook a couple minutes. If you like thicker, stew-like soup, add a thickener at this stage. This is also when you'd fish out the garlic, if you're, you know. Like that.

Serve with heavy bread, salt & pepper, and a light, fruity beer, like a lambic.