Another Great Bread Bowl ... & Cheese

You'll know from past posts how bread bowls hold a special place for Gail and me. Tonight, Gail made homemade wheat bread bowls, and we filled them with soup made with garden potatoes and leeks. Yum.

We also like a little goat cheese in our soup. Since we still have some cheese left from our cheese share, we did a taste test of how various cheeses compared. We typically use grocery store chèvre logs, so this was the cheese to compare against. The other two were the boucheron-like Ada's Pride from Ruggles Hill Creamery and the brie-like Kunik from Nettle Meadow Farm.

Eaten plain, both the Ada's Pride and the Kunik far outshine the chèvre log. I really expected the Ada's Pride to be my favorite in the soup. Surprisingly, the chèvre worked best in this soup. Well, that's why we do these taste tests.

Gail's bread bowls worked particularly well with the soup. She made a half recipe of this whole wheat sourdough bread from about.com. It had a particularly good mouth feel as I scraped the gooey inner walls of the bowl. Gail wishes she had made four loaves with this half recipe, and I agree. Each loaf was too big for one person, but also too big to hold their bowl shapes.

Olympics Day 8: Dutch Hodgepodge

I came home for lunch today and was greeted with the smells of sauteing leeks and sausage. Gail was making me a Dutch leek hodgepodge with sausage. I now see where that word comes from. This is a bunch of sauteed ingredients mixed into mashed potatoes, a true hodgepodge. The picture makes the dish look like something you would get in a high school cafeteria, but the flavors worked extremely well. What a delicious and simple dish.

Dutch Leek Hodgepodge with Sausage
Ingredient per serving

½ c warm mashed potatoes
½ T olive oil
½ c sliced leeks
½ c chopped red pepper
3 oz cooked wurst sausage
1 oz grated cheese

1. If necessary, prepare mashed potatoes. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in heavy skillet over med heat. While oil heats, halve leeks lengthwise; spread leaves; clean thoroughly under cold tap water; slice into thick rings.
3. Remove seeds from red peppers; chop into bite-sized pieces.
4. Saute leek and pepper pieces until tender, about 5 min.
5. While vegetables sauté, slice sausage into bite-sized pieces.
6. Mix leeks, peppers, and half of sausage into mashed potatoes.
7. Grease oven dish; transfer mixture in; arrange remaining sausage over top; sprinkle with cheese.
8. Bake 20 min.