Thursday, March 15, 2012

Going Dutch

My partner Paul is half-Dutch. His mom lived in the Netherlands when she met his Air Force officer dad. Paul even went to a Dutch high school, but they moved to Tennessee in his senior year. His mom still speaks with a slight accent. And she curses in Dutch. When we visit his parents, she often makes the food she cooked back in Holland, and it's never vegan-friendly (although she will pull me out some veggies before adding meat juice).

When I saw a few Dutch recipes in The Healthy Voyager's Global Kitchen, I knew I wanted to make those as soon as possible. One is this Mouthwatering Waterzooi, a Dutch chicken soup:

"Zooien" means "to boil" in Dutch, and this soup is traditionally made by boiling chicken or fish with potatoes, leeks, and carrots. The broth is thickened with cream and an egg yolk. Sounds totally un-vegan, right?

Well, leave it to Carolyn Scott-Hamilton to make it vegan. The chicken is replaced with Gardein cutlets, and I used MimiCream for the vegan heavy cream. The egg yolk is replaced with a flax egg. And of course, the potatoes, leeks, and carrots are still there. It was amazing served with potato-rosemary bread and a side salad.

Paul's verdict? He's not vegan, but he tried the soup. He said it was good although he didn't recall eating waterzooi back in the Netherlands.

Oh, and my soup was one chicken cutlet short. I sat the four cutlets on a plate on the counter, and when I went to put them in the pot, one was mysteriously missing. It wasn't hard to find the culprit though. Just a few feet away was my kitty Polaris, guiltily licking his lips. He ate an entire Gardein cutlet! Little bastard.

For my local readers, tune in to Fox-13 at 9 a.m. on Friday morning to watch me cook Creole Steamed Sausages from my cookbook on Good Morning Memphis! Hopefully, I can find the segment online afterward and I'll link back to it in my next post.

And don't forget to enter my Skinny Bitch: Book of Vegan Swaps contest.

6 comments:

foodfeud said...

Haha! That's one expensive cat you have there. The soup sounds interesting; I might make it just because the name sounds so funny. I bought a cookbook in Afrikaans for a dollar a while ago, just because trying to pronounce the words cracked me up. I wonder if I could veganize any of those recipes...

Babette said...

I once convinced a cat of mine to eat a tofurkey deli slice — she thought it was turkey—, but I have never been able to fool a cat again with fake meat.

I have one cat who could almost kill for a piece of nori seaweed, and another once who likes to like our plates to catch the last bits of maple syrup, Earth Balance, etc. (basically, you can't leave your plates unattended at my place, unless that doesn't gross you out).

I would have been pissed at them if they ate a Gardein cutlet!

Barb@ThatWasVegan said...

That soup sounds really good! I'm not sure if I've ever eaten anything Dutch before...

xvavaveganx said...

That soup looks really warming and comforting! I bet it was absolutely delicious! Your kitty may have stolen some Gardein but at least he has good taste! :) I also love his name :)

Yvonne said...

I'm dutch, living in the Netherlands. Waterzooi is actually a Belgian dish - not dutch. I visit your blog every day and I was curious what you would be cooking as a dutch meal. But seeing you cooked something belgian is also nice.

Unknown said...

Waterzooi is indeed a Belgian dish. In fact it's the specialty from my hometown (Gent) and it's actually called 'Gentse waterzooi'. So I was a bit disappointed with the book for this big mistake. But meanwhile I tried some recipes from it, and I'm becoming a fan.