I am still on my A-Soup-A-Day thing... although we had some days in between that we didn't have soups, because even though I told the girls we will do this for a month, every day when I served them the soup they said: Soup Again?? as if they thought what happened to my mothers imagination?? These kids are spoiled food wise!! I mean they are connoisseurs. I almost NEVER make the same thing, not like when I grew up and the ritme was every week the same thing... no this is not happening in my house!
That can be a good thing but also a bad thing, because when you look back at your own childhood you like to remember that special dish that your mom or grandma would make all the time. This is not happening in my house, so lately I was actually thinking I should at least make 1 dish a bit more often, a dish that the girls really enjoy and when they look back later on their childhood they will say to their friends... my mom made the best so and so.
So I decided that THIS soup will be THE DISH that the girls talk about later as one of their favorites, and this is MY Khao Tom ~ Thai Rice soup.
It is SO yummy! The girls and me can eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which we do if I make it, we eat it all the time till it is gone. Because you get at least 10 servings out of this soup so the 3 of us get at least 3 times this soup and maybe one bowl for Dirk. He likes it too, but he prefers his Dutch style sandwiches for breakfast....
The star of this soup is the broth, without a good delicious broth this soup is boring. I mean it only has rice, some meat, either chicken, or pork or beef meatballs. Then some veggies, different all the time, sometimes carrots, or bok choy, bean sprouts, some green onions, chives, cilantro/coriander and lastly on top some fried onions from the Chinese store. Most of the time we add cooked rice but lately we add rice noodles to the dish instead of the rice and then it becomes more of a Vietnamese Pho instead of the Thai rice soup. But the base is the same.
I either make it as a chicken stock and I boil a whole chicken for 1,5 hours or I do the beef version and I add oxtail and beef bones and simmer that for 4 hours. OKAY... I see you thinking: THAT is TOO much work, but believe me I throw it in the pan in the morning and by the evening we have the most delicious soup. And you just let it simmer on the stove... it is not that you have to be there. I just tell the housekeeper to turn the heat off either at 1,5 hour or 4 hours later! In the meantime I go shopping :-)
I am just kidding, I know you guys don't have a housekeeper and actually I don't use mine for cooking or looking after the kids, that is MY department, but in the meantime I am updating my blog, checking my mails, Facebook, Pinterest while this soup is brewing, bubbling and getting delish!!
You can really taste the love goes that into this soup! And when I give the recipe to my friends and they tell me it doesn't taste the same, I always ask them: 'Did you put some love into it?' And they look at me with this face, what is she talking about, but it is so TRUE cooking with LOVE makes all the difference. I am a true believer!! So next time use this secret ingredient and really tend to your recipe like your baby and it will totally taste different!!...... don't forget to tell me later if it worked :-)
EMAIL me if you like the recipe!
Now onto some other soups I made. Clearly me and the girls like soups with a clear broth the best, those creamy soups that go into the blender... no not our thing, but I am still trying because only clear broths is also getting boring, so we kind of swap. One day this, one day that.
Below is a white bean and zucchini soup. Recipe
here. Nice, but next time I would add more beans to the mix. The girls and me loved the beans, but we wanted more. Really a nice soup, but kind of average, so I am not sure if we would make that again. I told you so we are connoisseurs or food snobs, so ONLY the BEST recipes are keepers and come back once in a while.
Then I adapted a silky cauliflower soup from
Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs. Her recipes don't disappoint. But I changed the recipe quite a bit, since only cauliflower and some add ones was a bit too bland for our taste. So I added dry roasted cumin seeds and then grind, turmeric and some smokey paprika. Taste was good, but the thing that it goes through the blender reminds me of baby food too much, so next time I just don't put it through the blender. I think both the girls and me would enjoy that more!
The wild mushroom crostini I whipped up on the side was actually the best part of this meal! Jasmine, Juliet and me had each 2 slices and loved it!! It was so flavorful.... hmm hmm hmm (again email me if you like the recipe...)
Dirk was on a business trip, so he missed all these soups!
Jennifer H: I am going to try your African Peanut soup and will blog about it later :-)
Ciao bellas and beau's, enjoy your day!
Mireille xx
