Back and bringing a quick and easy home-made autumn meal

Wow - I've been in hiatus from blogging for almost half a year. Just didn't get round to updating - the less so the more there would have been to post about.

Life has been good and we got around a lot, enjoying good food in lots of different places. :)

To pick up the threads again, though, I'll make a start with a meal I cooked a couple of weeks ago for my sweetie and me.

I cook for myself very regularly, but am yet not used to cooking for others or, indeed, to cook more than one course. So I hardly knew what went into me to make plans for a three course meal - just so many different things that I wanted to make. And, best of all, finding a series of things that sounded easy to make, and really were a pleasant evening's work for my first ever three-course meal. And very yummy they all were, too. :D

For starters, we had potato soup. I love soups, and I'd made this one first a few days before (inspired by having just the kind of sausage that needs to go into it) and was surprised how easy it was.

Potato Soup (makes a starter for two or a small meal for one)

175 grams (approx. ;) ) potatoes - peel and dice
1 onion - peel and dice
1 knob of butter - melt in a pot and stew onions until glassy. Add potatoes, stew for five minutes, adding a little salt.
400 ml veggie broth
100 ml cream
- add, bring to a boil and let simmer with the lid on for 15 - 20 mins.
Puree with a hand-blender, spice to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

The recipe suggested adding diced, fried bacon and oregano. I added a few chives and cut up Mettwurst - a traditional requirement for Rhenish potato soup.

As it was pumpkin and squash season, and I love pumpkins and squashes, we next had squash filled with minced meat, lambs lettuce and bread.

Filled squashes or pumpkins (serves 2)

Originally, the recipe asked for small pettipan squashes, one per person. I couldn't get any pettipans, but I happened to have the lower, conveniently bowl-shaped part of a butternut left and bought a small Hokkaido pumpkin in addition.

Here's how to make the dish:

Cut top off pumpkins and remove the seeds.

1 small Spanish onion (or two normal onions) - peel and dice

200 - 250 grams minced meat, half pork, half beef

2 tbl sp oil - heat and stew onions in it, add minced meat and fry until cooked while stirring, so that it becomes crumbly. Salt and pepper to taste. (Garlic is an option here, too, though I didn't use it.)

2 beef tomatoes - briefly dip into boiling water, then chill; peel and cut into stripes, removing the seeds. Add to the meat. (Leaving some for decoration later.)

1 teasp salt, a little Cayenne pepper - rub the inside of the pumpkins with the spices.

Fill meat into the pumpkins.

Place pumpkins in an oven dish, place leftover tomatoes on top.

2 teasp butter

4 tblspoon parmesan cheese

- sprinkle butter flakes and grated cheese on top

Fill dish with approx. 2 cm water

Bake for about 40 mins at 200°C (until pumpkin seems done).

Dress lambs lettuce with a fine vinegar (whichever you prefer) and olive oil, salt, pepper, dried herbs.

Serve with French or Italian bread.

Dessert was fun to make and surprised me with how good it was. I guess you have to be in Germany to be able to make this, though, but nevertheless, here goes:

Stracciatella-Quark (serves 2)

4 chocolate kisses - remove wafers, squash in a bowl

250 grams quark - mix with squashed kisses

(if available: 1 teasp grated peel of orange - mix with quark. If oranges with edible peel are not available - couldn't get any myself that day - just let the juice of the orange (see below) you fillet drip into the quark and stir again)

1 orange - peel and fillet and serve with the quark

Deeeelicious! :D

I guess this is a rather German meal all through. :D There's ingredients in each course that won't be easily available abroad.

Instead of the Mettwurst in the starter use the bacon the recipe suggests. A soft salami might work, too. Mettwurst is similar to that.

Instead of mixed (half pork, half beef) minced meat, I could imagine you could use any other kind of minced meat just as well.

For the dessert, however, I'm afraid I can't think of replacements. You'll have to visit Germany and try chocolate kisses and quark for yourself. :D

You can see, though, why this is fun and easy to make: you only need one pot per course, plus a couple of bowls, leaving you with hardly any dishes. The dessert can wait in the fridge, and the two first courses have fairly long cooking times during which they hardly need any supervision, giving you time to work on other dishes and clean up. A kitchen not in utter chaos after a three-course meal for two was a really pleasant surprise. :D