Leek and Potato Soup

Today I made leek and potato soup from Julia Child's cookbook which is extremely simple in both its ingredient list and cooking techniques. The soup consists only of leeks, potatoes, water, salt, and whipping cream, while the recipe only requires that you boil the vegetables until tender, puree them, check seasonings, and add cream just before serving. Despite the simplicity of this soup, it is a treat to eat with that onion and potato flavour, and richness of cream.


I served this soup for dinner with a delicious green salad tossed with cucumber, celery, blueberries, and strawberries, and some oatmeal molasses bread that I made the other day.Why not eat a simple dinner of soup, salad, and bread?

Homemade Sweet and Sour Meatballs

I know that sweet and sour meatballs don't typically get the stamp of being homemade, because usually a person purchases packaged meatballs, chili sauce, and grape jelly all from the grocery store, but  my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs is literally made from scratch. This is because, last year, my sister and mom did some canning and the expiry dates on those jars were coming up fast so they needed to be used. My sister made delicious currant jelly with currants from the currant bushes in our yard, while my mother made an exceptional chili sauce.

Now, you don't have to use a homemade jelly or chili sauce for these, but it is highly recommended because it gives these meatballs a whole other dimension of flavour than the store-bought products. Suffice it to say that the flavour is even more sweet and sour. I do, however, want to turn people on to making their own meatballs at home though, because they aren't really that time-consuming to make and the searing of them in a pan prior to hitting the oven adds some flavourful char on them that will not be achieved with the store-bought variety. Here is my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs:

For the meatballs

2 Ibs ground beef
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
3 tbsp ketchup
4 slices of bread, toasted and crumbled
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
 2 tbsp vegetable oil

For the sauce

1 cup homemade chili sauce
1 cup homemade currant jelly

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a mixing bowl, add beef, milk, egg, ketchup, bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and mix until well combined.
3. To form meatballs, use a 1/4 cup to adequately measure the amount of meat you will use in one meatball. Then roll the meat into a ball with your hands. You should end up with twenty meatballs using this method.
4. Place a frying pan on the stove and heat the vegetable oil over medium heat until it is very hot.
5. In the frying pan, sear the meatballs in batches until they are brown and have a nice char on them.
6. Place meatballs in an oven dish.
7. In a separate bowl, combine the chili sauce and currant jelly.
8. Pour the sauce over top of the meatballs.
9. Place meatballs in the oven for approximately 1 hour until the meat is cooked and the sauce is thickened.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting

With the call of a snow storm here in southern Ontario the other day, I felt like having a treat. My initial attempt was to make a chocolate sponge cake roll with chocolate whipped cream, but after my sponge cake failed I was forced to try something different. The only problem was that I had already made my whipped cream. As such, I made chocolate cupcakes, because I figured the whipped cream would work well as an icing for them.

These cupcakes did not use the baking soda/vinegar trick that the red velvet one's did in a previous post, but somehow they were actually fluffier than the red velvet. I think this was due to the addition of one cup of boiling hot water to a 1/2 cup of cocoa powder that was added into the mixture at the end.

I decided that I like a whipped cream icing even better than a butter-based one or one with a lot of icing sugar, because it's not nearly as sweet and is easier to pipe.