Two Dutch Soup Recipes

Once again, chilly temperatures have put me in a soup-making mood. I searched through Grandma VandenBergh's old Dutch cookbook and found two recipes to try out:

Cauliflower Soup   (Bloemkoolsoep)

1 L. water (about 1 qt.), in which cauliflower has been cooked, with pieces of cauliflower in it
40 gr. (1/4 cup) whole wheat flour
40 gr. (2 tablespoons) butter or margarine
1 egg, beaten

- Use the water in which the cauliflower has been cooked, leaving a few chunks of cauliflower in it.
- Bring the water to a boil.
- In the meantime, heat while stirring the butter with the flour to form a smooth paste ("een gladde massa" in Dutch)
- Stir the boiling water and cauliflower into the butter and flour paste and let simmer for 10 minutes.
- Beat the egg in a soup tureen and carefully stir the soup into this mixture.
- Garnish with croutons or serve with whole wheat toast.

My first experiment with this recipe entailed using an unusual variety of purple cauliflower that I came across in a local farmers' market:

Purple cauliflower

This soup turned out with a pleasant shade of pink, but somehow it didn't seem very appealing to me!

Purple cauliflower soup

But ordinary while cauliflower worked out just fine:

Cauliflower Soup

Leek Soup (Preisoep)

The ingredients and preparation of this soup are quite similar, except for the leeks, of course:

Chopped leeks

1 L. (about 1 qt.) water
7 1/2 gr. salt (1 1/2 teaspoons; I used only 1 teaspoon)
4 large or 6 small leeks
35 gr. (about 1/4 cup) flour
40 gr. (2 tablespoons) butter or margarine
2 teaspoons Arome Maggi or soy sauce
1 egg, beaten

- Chop the leeks into one-inch or half-inch pieces and cook in the salted water.
- In the meantime, melt the butter and stir in the flour, forming a paste.
- Slowly pour the liquid with the leeks into the flour and butter mixture, stirring to prevent lumps from forming.
- Let the soup simmer for about 10 more minutes until cooked through.
- In a soup tureen, beat the egg with the soy sauce.
- Stir in the liquid mixture and serve with croutons or toasted bread.

I altered the recipe a bit to add chunks of potato, to make it a bit more substantial. If you add a few bacon crumbles and consume it with whole wheat or rye toast, you'll have a whole meal:

Potato and leek soup

Eet smakelijk! Enjoy your meal.