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Renée’s Chicken Enchilada Soup

Introduction Hello everybody! The following recipe was submitted to inthevendee.com by Renee Schouten-Janssen and we can’t wait to try it! In starting this recipe corner and writing down my recipes the most difficult task is to figure out “how much of that do I use?” …. I love that Renée is just such a cook too! Truth is, for recipes such as this it’s okay to have a starting point and adjust to your taste as you go along. Let’s head to Renée’s kitchen for her delicious soup!Ingredients and preparation – Enchilada Soep met Kip For 4- 6 people Chicken thighs 2 cans of peeled tomatoes 1 or 2 chopped onions Chopped garlic 2 TBSP flour Chili flakes Cumin powder Coriander powder Can of corn Red kidney beans and/ or black beans canned 3 liters chicken stock MethodPrep Remove the skin from the chicken thighs. Fry the chicken skin in …

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Carnitas

Tender deliciousness the whole family will love! I’m not sure in how deeply Europeans are familiar with Mexican food. What I mean is, homecooked, not from a pre-packaged, processed starter-kit you can find at the grocery store. Having spent a lot of time in Mexico, and having had a lot of Mexican immigrants touch my life at one point or another, and having eaten anywhere from Mexican ‘hole in the wall’ takeaways, to Mexican restaurants where live-Mariachi bands perform Johnny Cash at your table, to Mexican cuisine restaurants with a star chef at the helm… both my husband and I are quite unanimous that Mexican food is the best food in the world. It’s possibly also the most time-consuming to make from scratch. Since living in France and learning to make it myself, I’ve also come to the conclusion that appreciating the food and loving the people you’re cooking for …

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Butternut pumpkin soup

The sweetness of autumn I do love autumn, don’t you? When the leaves on the trees have turned their darkest green and there is a little sensation of coolness on the morning breeze and the air smells just a little more earthy you know it’s time. Time to run a hand over a woolen jumper, time for boots, time for a cozy fire. Time for different pops of color for different flavors in the kitchen. Time to fall in love with a new season! Let’s head to my kitchen for the king of color … Butternut Pumpkin or Butternut Squash soup!Ingredients and preparation – Butternut Pumpkin Soup For 4- 8 people (I cook leftovers or prep a next batch for the freezer) 1 large butternut – cubed (set half aside) 1 large onions – roughly chopped (frozen also works) 3 cloves of garlic (or as you wish) – minced 4 …

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Carbonara-Alfredo fusion… with a French twist!

Of legend, World War II & Hollywood In order to tell you how I came up with this dish, I have a confession to make. I can count the number of times I’ve eaten ‘Fettuccini Alfredo’ (a staple on many Italian-American restaurant menus) on one hand, and truly enjoyed it maybe twice. The same is true for Carbonara. The best Carbonara I’ve ever had was in Nantes, on a balmy Friday night outside on a terrace, and the only reason I know it was the best is because that night I had a taste from my husband’s plate. He loves Carbonara. I seldom order it. I’ve never seen him order Fettucini Alfredo. But we do love cream sauces. So, when he asked me one day to make Carbonara, I came up with this recipe quite on a whim. I won’t lie. It is scrumptious. One might say sinful. Writing up …

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Surprises from the garden: lettuce soup

I love a good salad. A big one. My mother calls it rabbit food these days though when I was a child there was always so much of it in our vegetable garden that we shared it with the neighbourhood throughout the season, and I remember plenty of it on my plate too. I love lettuce! Fresh. Crisp yet buttery soft. Green. But until recently I had no idea you could also cook with it. That is, endive is a lettuce I cook with all the time as well as serve stuffed for a fancy apero. But plain, green lettuce? I didn’t know! So, today is the day. This morning I deemed it time to pick the lettuce we had growing in planters in our concrete garden and for the first time ever, I’ll be turning it into lettuce soup. Dear friends who make this all the time kindly shared …

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Chicken Chili with Mogettes

Whilst I’m a very selective fan of the slow cooker, there are some meals that just demand to be prepared that way. This chicken chili is definitely one of them, but I would never cook a lovely Texas Chili Con Carne or Spaghetti sauce in a slow cooker. They demand a thickness that this chicken chili doesn’t really need. So, as the fall/winter season knocks on the kitchen door, this is definitely an easy favorite in our family. The original recipe is not mine, but I have adapted it e.g. to include our Vendéen mogettes, and I have also devised a vegetarian version which I’ll share at a later date. Note: I made this while on holiday, and shopping for ingredients locally, I was lucky to find canned black beans – otherwise I would have made dry black beans first and then rinsed them. The mogettes I had with me …

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Vegetarian Butternut Pie – an autumn delight!

Last year in fall or winter, Sky News announced the upcoming UK budget revelation with an infomercial where the main character was a pie… a wintry pie that looked delicious and easy enough to try to make. The infomercial showed the pie being made from scratch, and even without an actual recipe, I thought well, come on, you can figure this out. So, here it is, probably not exact and really it doesn’t matter. Because this pie is delicious, and it’s vegetarian. That makes it pretty much perfect for me. The question was, would my husband -the carnivore- like it too?Ingredients – Vegetarian Butternut Pie 1 butternut squash peeled and sliced into 1 cm portions or in fingers 1 red paprika (bell pepper), washed, seeds removed, cut into chunks 1 medium sized carrot peeled, then washed, and shopped into strips 1 courgette, peeled and shopped into strips Optional: spinach, washed, …

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Regional Cuisine with Mogettes

Recently it was suggested to my mother-in-law that she go through a radical life change to address some health issues: to stop eating things that have a face. Or is derived from them. The diagnosis came right before my parents-in-law would visit us in the Vendée, and so the challenge to find meals a diabetic with heart issues could eat, was on. As a part-time vegetarian myself, I knew it would not be an easy feat in this area. But we found the local white kidney bean, called mogette in French, would serve the purpose of a fiber -and protein rich diet well. Even in restaurants, the ham that is typically served as part of this local delicacy, is traditionally prepared on the side. At the end of August 2018, we attended la fête de l’agriculture de Vendée in La Chataigneraie. Wonderfully, the in-season crops had been grown in an on-site demonstration. About the …

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The BEST French Onion Soup

A long time ago, when I tried my first spoon-full of French Onion Soup in an American restaurant, I nearly spit it out. To say it was a salt-bomb, drowning in cheese, would not be an exaggeration. Turning the cultural tables, my American friend Kelley ordered the dish in Paris when we were visiting a few years ago, and after her first spoon-full she threw her spoon down exclaiming “I don’t know what this is but it’s not French Onion Soup!” Because she’s used to the salty American version, it was not at all what she’d expected. It would be interesting to know why and how the recipe changed so dramatically from one continent to the other over the course of history and migration. You’ll have gleaned, however, that real French onion soup is my own personal preference. So, today I’d like to invite you to my kitchen for a …