January Round-Up

Hours spent blogging: 34
Number of new recipes/tricks on the blog: 14
Number of new presidents for the US: 1
Favorite new recipe: Lemon-cumin cookies
Favorite golden oldie: Boiled kale with garlicky bread
Number of posts missed: 2 (once, I forgot, once, I was lazy)
Most embarrassing food moment: When people left my table hungry... ARGH
Best discovery: Adding red wine to stewed pears turns them red
Legume dishes tried: 1 (this is not enough- must step up the legume-love efforts)
Resolution for February: I will post more recipes

Food from Far

Skewered vegetables, Shanghai, China

Bread for Battle (Potato Bread)

*slurp slurp*
*slurp slurp sluuuuurp*
ha-tchoo
*slurp slurp*

Such were the sounds that emanated from my couch most of this afternoon. I am so refined, I know. In my defence, I am battling what feels suspiciously like an attack from the flu virus that is causing an epidemic in the NL. Slurping hot tea helps. I hope.

Working from under a blanket in my own living room also contributed to the cause, I dare say. No colleagues to strengthen the virus army with foot soldiers of their own, no icy cold wind to walk through. And I baked bread on my lunch break. Silky flour slipping through my fingers, mixing with lukewarm water and potatoes into a sticky dough to squidge through closed fists, a bowl of yeasty-smelling elastic softness to pound at. If that isn’t therapy, I don’t know what is.

The bread in question is Nigella Lawson’s potato bread. Ridiculously, for someone who doesn’t eat them, there was almost a pound of potatoes sitting in my vegetable basket and I needed to do something about them. My man is leaving soon to go and hurtle himself down mountains, depriving me of a handy potato receptacle. I suspect my neighbors would slam the door if I showed up out of the blue to feed them gratin. I could supply them to the pigeons on my balcony, but I want those to leave, not bring over all their buddies for a feast. So I was in a bit of a quandary, slurping my tea, battling viruses and thinking about how to get rid of a pound of potatoes. I considered a potato gun, but when you’re home alone, there’s no one to shoot. Also, I am over ten years old.

Luckily, then I remembered a recipe for potato-bread in How To Be a Domestic Goddess. It is a basic white bread, with potatoes added. You don’t taste them, you just get a great bread. It is substantial, “gives you something to chew on”, as Nigella puts it, but not in that way that makes you tired because there is so much hard work to do before you can swallow.

There are no complicated ingredients, and I suspect the bread will happily go with many flavors. Before baking, I sprinkled it with some flavored salt my parents brought me from Berlin, with additions like cardamom, caraway seeds and cilantro. Worked great. Then I added a thick layer of chevre and thyme to some slices and broiled them. Worked even better. I ate them in bed, propped up against some pillows, alternating bites with more slurps of cranberry green tea. Wonderfully soothing and uplifting.

Virus army, watch out. I have bread, cheese and tea, and am not afraid to use them.

Nigella Lawson's Potato Bread

From How To Be a Domestic Goddess, slightly adapted

Makes one loaf

300g cold or warm boiled potatoes

700-800g white flour

1tbsp salt

7g instant yeast, or 15g fresh yeast

1tbsp Greek yogurt

300ml lukewarm potato water

1 tsp of olive oil

Mash the potatoes in a bowl, and add 600g of the flour together with the salt and the yeast. Mix, then add the yogurt and then the water slowly. When it starts to look like dough, tip it out onto a floured surface, begin kneading and add more flour as you need it. You may need to kneaded for longer than with a regular bread. When you have a compact, elastic dough, form it into a ball, slick with a little olive oil on all sides and put it back in the bowl. Cover with cling film and leave in a cold place over night, or in a warm place for an hour or so.

When the dough has doubled in volume, punch it down, knead it for a minute, form it into a loaf and sit it on a baking sheet. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and leave to proof for thirty more minutes or so, until the volume has doubled again. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220c. Slide the dough into the hot oven and bake for 20 minutes. Turn the temperature down to 190c and bake for another 10 minutes or until it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

Things I Learned This Weekend

If you bake brownies for too long, they are unexciting. Even if they consist of melted chocolate, sugar, butter and just a smidgen of flour.

Cheesecakes that look so pretty they deserve a tiara can taste like cardboard.

Sometimes, you bake cookies with half a tablespoon of freshly grated ginger and a tablespoon of ground ginger and they still taste bland.

When you have two wonderful women over for tea, it doesn’t matter if your brownies are over-baked, your cheesecakes are dry and your cookies are non-descript.

Although trying a new cheese puff recipe that yields crisp, airy puffs with gooey bits of cheese in them never hurts.

Cheese puffs make excellent carriers for big scoops of basil-garlic mayonnaise.

When you bite a carrot hard enough, it sounds like you are losing a molar. Or your marbles.

Using a carrot as the nose on a face that has brownies as hair and jaw, cherry tomatoes for a smile and kiwi for eyes looks giggle-inspiring.

Ikea gravad lax works as well as a treat with tea as it does as an appetizer.

After you’ve eaten more things than your doctor probably thinks you should, a glass of wine and some crackers with pate still slip down easily.

Food from Far

Mezze spread, Alexandria, Egypt

Koek en zopie (Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Spiced Coffee)

There is this thing we do in the NL, where talk about "koek en zopie" a lot when temperatures drop below zero. It probably doesn't look like it, but is pronounced close to "cook and so pee". Which pronunciation, although you lose all meaning, accurately conveys the slight yuck-factor the words have for me. Saying them sends a shiver down my spine, and not a good kind.

Still, the koek en zopie rhetoric fascinates me. Few people seem to know exactly what it means. (Well, "koek" is easy enough; it means cookie or cake. But "zopie"? My hunch stops at something warm and liquid with a high alcohol content.) We associate it with warming our hands around a mug of hot chocolate, but then we buy split pea soup at a koek en zopie stall without batting an eyelash. Best of all, you can happily spend an hour discussing what koek en zopie is, get no nearer to the answer and come away with a legitimate craving for thick, sweet, hot drinks topped with great dollops of whipped cream.

There is a strong bond between koek en zopie and ice skating outside (as opposed to on an indoor rink), but we hardly get to do that anymore. Since I refuse to get out onto something as slippery as ice (ICE, people) with just thin metal blades strapped to my feet, the lack of cold over the past winters doesn't concern me. What does concern me, however, is that we might not keep the koek en zopie talk going for much longer. Even though that would relieve me of a shivery spine, it would also make me sad. So, for the internets and for generations to come, I will start my own koek en zopie tradition. Over the coming months, when I bake a cookie, I will dream up a hot drink to go with it. And when I come across a great hot drink, I will come up with a cookie to accompany it. And then I will write about the combo, and call it "Koek en Zopie". Voila, koek en zopie for the cyber-age.

First up: Jess Thomson’s Cinnamon-Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I brought these into the office this Friday (sans coconut; I am not a fan) and they inspired quite a few comments. Of the “are you vegetarian?” type, because apparently that is what millet makes people think. But more, far more, of the “oh my, these are great” type. And they are.

These are wintery cookies, with a chewy bite, crunch from the millet, a cinnamon scent and big chunks of chocolate. They have enough character to stand up to an assertive drink, so for my first koek en zopie pairing, I would like to suggest you eat them with a small cup of strong coffee, scented with a few freshly ground cardamom seeds and a pinch of ground ginger. Spicy koek en zopie to warm you through and through.

Food from Far

Vegetable stall, Beijing, China

Yowza (Boiled Kale with Garlicky Bread and Fried Egg)

Yowza.

I love that word. It expresses so clearly what it means to convey: Yowza, this is not good, but I am dealing with it. Yowza, I won’t complain, but I do want to share that this is unpleasant. It is shocked surprise coupled to a sense of humor about the ridiculousness of the situation.

So, yowza. I got soaked down to my socks on my way home.

Today was the kind of day that inspires dreams of moving to warmer climes, or days spent in front of the heating wearing woolly socks. Overcast, grey, wet and cold. It was dark before five PM. Warm, soft kale on garlicky bread with a fried egg (or two) is the only sensible choice for dinner on days like these. Sure, cheese fondue would be lovely too, but that would not help my immune system fight the flu bugs my colleagues insist on sharing with me so liberally with every coughing fit. Plus, there is something immensely comforting about a pot of greens bubbling away on the stove for half an hour.

For dessert, there was creamy, pungent Saint Marcellin cheese. And some delectable cookies that I will tell you about later. (Aaaah, the tease! Sorry ‘bout that.)

The recipe for the kale is on Molly’s incredible weblog, but I have made it so many times now that I feel it should be here as well. I’ll tell you what I did tonight, but please read Molly’s recipe for the original version.

Boiled kale with garlicky bread and a fried egg

Serves 1

1 200 gr bag of pre-cut kale
2 glugs of olive oil
1 onion, in small dice
1 clove of garlic, sliced in half, one half left intact, one half pressed
good pinch of ground chili flakes
half a chicken stock cube
2 pre-baked crusty rolls
2 eggs
pinch of coarse sea salt

Heat a glug of olive oil in a Dutch oven on medium heat. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent. Add the pressed garlic and cook until you can smell the garlic. Add the kale and chili flakes, mix with the onion and garlic and heat until the kale has wilted.

Meanwhile, bring half a liter of water to a boil and dissolve the chicken stock cube in it. Add to the kale when it has fully wilted. Cover the pan with a lid and cook over low heat for half an hour or so.

Slice the pre-baked rolls in half and bake them cut-side down at the temperature and for the time specified on their package. When they are crisp and golden, remove from the oven and leave to cool a bit. Then take the halved garlic clove and lightly rub over the cut sides.

Taste the kale after half an hour to see If it is soft. If not, cook until it is. When the kale is done, remove the pan from the heat and keep it covered. Heat a glug of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat and break the eggs into the pan. cook until the white is set but the yolks are still liquid.

Scoop the kale out of the pan, draining it from most of the liquid as you go. Put it on a plate and lay the fried eggs on top. Serve the kale with the bread. Alternate bites of bread covered with kale with bites of kale with a piece of fried egg.

Ten Food Facts About Me

1. I want my house to be a place where people show up at any hour because they know they are welcome and they will get something tasty to eat.
2. When I bake a cake, it often ends up flat and hard. This doesn’t stop me from trying.
3. I love roasted and salted sunflower seeds, but I don’t buy them a lot because it is only too easy to polish off a whole bag in one sitting.
4. Eating 100% sheep’s milk feta gives me a funny, tingly feeling in my mouth.
5. I believe in talking to my food. Sometimes I wave at it when it is in the oven.
6. On 31 December (27 months after we started dating), my man cooked me (and four others) the leg of lamb he talked about the first time we had a real conversation.
7. Cheese fondue is one of my favorite foods.
8. My lunch often consists of peanut butter sandwiches these days, but I want to be the kind of person who packs salads and left-over soup to bring to work.
9. Cheese croissants, rolled by my parents from a Danerole can and fresh from the oven, were one of my favorite breakfasts as a child. I never get the same taste when I make them myself.
10. I adore eating scallops, but I have never yet cooked them myself.

Obamenu (Everything Salad)

When I walked into the central hall at Utrecht Central Station today around 6 pm (noon in Washington DC) I thought “oh no”. Even more people than normal were standing around, focusedly staring at something. Usually, this can mean only one thing: there are major delays and everyone is waiting for news to appear on the large information screens.

But today isn’t a usual day. Today the United States have a new president. Everyone was watching the inauguration on a larger-than-life TV screen.

Finally, finally, finally the world might get a chance to recover from eight years of bad decisions, worse policies and plain crazy actions. It was about time. To celebrate, I had a US-inspired meal tonight. Wanna hear my Obamenu? Here, I’ll tell you:

• Burger King Chili-Cheese Nuggets
• Everything-salad with a side of corn chips and a glass of iced tea
• Chocolate

For me, the everything-bagel is the quintessential American food. Sure, you have burgers and hotdogs and popcorn and coke, and all of them bring associations with the USA. But none of them capture my idea of “America” as well as the everything-bagel. The belief that more is more, bigger is better, and conventions are meant to be flouted. Want a bagel with just sesame seeds? Pah. With poppy seeds or onion flakes or caraway seeds? Why stop there? Much better to have them all. And on a bread that was brought to the country by a religious minority. As a play on the theme, I created an everything-salad. There were walnuts, crispy bacon, chopped hard-boiled eggs, creamy yoghurt-mustard dressing and chives. Oh, and salad leaves, of course. Nice. Very nice.

The cheese nuggets, on the other hand, were a mistake. There was a cheese-like substance, there were green bits and there was a faint trace of heat. Other than that: nothing. No flavor, no crunch. Blah. Luckily, the chocolate was a winner. Originally meaning to bake chocolate chip cookies, I changed my mind when I realized I was going to be home alone tonight and might very well finish the entire batch. By myself. Even a new US-president isn’t worth that many calories, so I stuck with just a few pieces of Green and Blacks organic Maya Gold. Yum. Or, if you will: Oba-mmmmmmmmmm.

Golden Cookies for a Blue Day (Lemon Cumin Cookies)

It is the third week of January and the third week of new year’s resolutions. A time, I suspect, when people take a deep breath, pat themselves on the shoulder for saint-style behavior and soldier on with good intentions for a few more weeks before they give into temptation. So when I brought cookies into work today, I was expecting to take most of them straight back home again.

Not so.

Turns out that, when you take ten women, a nine AM meeting and a box of Sarah Raven’s lemon cumin cookies, you are swiftly left with a box of just crumbs. Lemon-scented, chewy-crispy, delicious crumbs. And ten happy women, with more crumbs scattered on their shirts.

I should have seen this coming. I tasted a cookie last night and had to talk to myself sternly not to eat them all. (Okay, I’ll be honest. I had to put them in an airtight container and store them out of sight.) This in spite of the fact that I had just eaten a full meal and had dessert waiting for me. These cookies are addictive.

They also make a great antidote to what the papers are calling “Blue Monday”. Apparently, today is the day when everyone slips into a funk: the weather is vile, the next holiday seems light-years away and our resolutions have taken a nosedive. No wonder we went for the cookies, if the alternative was daylong gloom. We could have fared much worse too, than applying these cookies as a balm to our battered souls. They smell of summer and have a faintly exotic taste to evoke images of holidays in warmer places. Add to that a happy golden color and a satisfying crunch and you have a fine sweet indeed.

So, for those looking for a fantastic cookie or for those wanting a spot of edible escapism: your quest is over. For anyone else: won’t you invite me to your tropical island?

Lemon Cumin Cookies

From Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook

Makes about 30

300 gr caster sugar

125 gr butter, softened

2 egg yolks

Finely grated zest of 2 lemons, and 4 tbsp of lemon juice

2 tsp ground cumin

300 gr plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg yolks, lemon zest and juice and cumin. Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda, then fold in the butter mixture to form a soft dough.

Place the dough on a piece of greaseproof paper and roll into a cylinder about 5 cm in diameter, twisting the ends of the paper together and being careful not to wrap any of the greaseproof paper into the dough. Place dough in the freezer for 1,5-2 hours until it is hard.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Line a baking sheet with a piece of greaseproof paper. Unwrap the dough and cut into 5 mm slices. Place these on the bakingsheet, leaving a very generous space between them to allow for spreading.

Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes or until just firm to the touch. Slide them onto a wire rack and then leave to cool.

In Praise of Leaves (Quick Caramelized Belgian Endive)

It is time. Time to give credit where credit is due: Belgian endive is a superhero vegetable. Granted, it does not fly around in a tight blue outfit saving lives, but think of all the things it does do. It serves as the basis of salads, feeling equally at home with fruity partners (apple, tangerine, banana) and intensely cheesy ones (blue cheese, mature Gouda). It is a useful carrier for snacks at parties. It turns into a seductively silky tangle when braised. And dressed in a sweet little dress, it is the perfect complement to many a meaty main dish.

It is only fitting, then, that we call Belgian endive “white praise” in Dutch. I suppose you could nitpick and tell me that, technically, the “praise” isn’t so much praise as a shortened form of “leaves”. But why would you?

And to convince you that this is indeed a praise-worthy vegetable, I will give you the recipe for my quick’n’dirty caramelized Belgian endive. The day will come, I am sure, when I will spend an hour or two braising the white leaves into tenderness, basting them with sweet cooking liquid regularly to get a perfect caramel coating, as I once saw a friend’s man do. Until then, this recipe is a quicker (if less sophisticated) way to enjoy some sweet along with the delicate bitter and gentle crunch of the endive. And isn’t that what superheroes are about? Bringing sweet to the bitter, and in record time.


Quick caramelized Belgian endive

Serves 2

4 spears Belgian endive
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Balsamic-style vinegar
1 tsp sugar
3 tbsp Parmesan, finely grated

Remove any ugly leaves from the endive spears. Rinse them and dry thoroughly. Halve vertically and remove hard bottom bits. Slice halves into thin strips, still cutting vertically so you and up with long, thin strips rather than half moons.

Heat a skillet until hot, add the oil and swirl it around the pan. Add the endive and leave for a minute or so, until brown spots form on the bits of the vegetable touching the pan. Turn over the strips and lower the heat to medium. Cook endive until it starts to soften. Meanwhile, heat your broiler.

Sprinkle the vinegar over the endive and toss to coat. Sprinkle over the sugar and leave for a few minutes until it “melts” into the vinegar-coated vegetable.

Tranfer Belgian endive to an oven-proof dish. Dust with the Parmesan and broil for five minutes, or until cheese has melted and turned crispy.

Serve hot.

Current Cravings

• Jalapeno-cheese poppers
• Stroopwafels (like Starbucks caramel waffles, but better)
• Bagel with warm chevre and walnuts

Food from Far

Desert tea, Farafra, Western Desert, Egypt

Food from Far

Bags of baguettes, Dakar, Senegal

My Almost First Potatoes

Potatoes are a staple in Dutch meals. When we talk about dinner, images of meat, veg and potatoes pop into our heads. Even if these days we are more likely to serve pasta and sauce or a quick stirfry for dinner. It is with some embarrassment, therefore, that I am here to tell you that I don’t know how to cook potatoes. Not altogether surprising, perhaps, given that I don’t eat the buggers, but still a little embarrassing.

I am happy to announce, though, that I took steps today to remedy the situation. I boiled my first potatoes. Well, not strictly speaking my first potatoes, but my first potatoes that were not meant to be mashed into bread dough. For obvious reasons I don’t know if they tasted good (all potatoes taste like a mealy mess-up to me), but my brother and his girlfriend approved. I am a proud woman.

Just for the record, my method: I peeled my mini-potatoes, washed them and put them in a pan with enough water to cover them about half-way. Added a pinch of salt and brought the water to a boil. Ten I let them boil for ten minutes, pricked them to test tenderness and presto: My Almost First Potatoes.

Super-Juicy Chicken

Roasted chicken is the quintessential in-law food, methinks. It is what you make when you have people over you want to impress, and there is no room for failure. Because heaven knows you don’t want to serve the parents of your chosen one tough beef, chewy pork or overcooked fish. Or you might want to, but then good sense kicks in.

I made chicken for my man’s parents when they came over for dinner for the first time. Bought a free-range one, rubbed it with olive oil and roasted it with a lemon in its belly. Simple and, after a bit of rescue-work by my dad (a white bottom on the chicken but a good broiling took care of that), delicious. I would even consider the rescue work a plus: nothing like kitchen mishap to keep conversation flowing.

The problem with a perfectly roasted chicken, however, is that it might be remembered. Which is fine, great even, but making people the same thing for dinner on two successive occasions takes away some of wow-factor. So, a twist on the original is always useful- a chicken make-over, if you will. And even though a perfectly roasted chicken certainly isn’t a “Before” to spit at, Nigella Lawson’s Super-Juicy Chicken is a worthy “After”.

The recipe is easy: you mix buttermilk with garlic, soy sauce and mustard and soak the chicken in the mixture for eight hours in a cool (but not cold) place. Then you pat it dry, coat it with a bit of melted butter and olive oil and bake it in a hot oven. What you get is seriously juicy chicken and seriously impressed guests. So go on, give your mother-in-law a ring. You know she’ll appreciate the invite.

Super-Juicy Chicken

From Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat (text adapted)

1 l buttermilk
10 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp soy sauce
16 meaty pieces of chicken
3 tbsp butter, melted
3 tbsp olive oil

Mix the buttermilk with the garlic, mustard and soy sauce. Dunk in the chicken pieces and turn them over a few times so they are covered in the marinade on all sides. Divide the chicken over two large plastic bags, add half of the marinade to each and place them in a cool cupboard for eight hours (longer if you put them in the fridge because the cold will slow the flavoring process).

Preheat oven to 210 C. Remove the chicken from the marinade and pat dry with kitchen towels. Place the pieces on two baking sheets (greased or covered with a baking mat), skin-side up. Mix the butter and the olive oil, add some salt and pepper and brush the chicken with the mixture. Bake pieces until done (Nigella suggests 30-40 minutes for legs and 20-25 minutes for breast meat).

Labanese Moussaka for Four

There is this thing that happens when you have people over for dinner. You plan a meal and then make a few dishes extra, to make sure there is enough. And then you add one more because it goes so well with the others. Maybe one more, just in case, and then you’re done. Next, you’re eating left-overs for the rest of the week.

Yeah. That did not happen to me last night.

One of my guests did not show up, and still I don’t think everyone had enough to eat. The shock, the horror, the sheer panic. I wanted to hide in the bathroom until they had all gone home- hungry. Instead, I baked emergency cookies and thought brave thoughts of helping people stick to their resolutions. That did little to help things, though (obviously, I burned most of the cookies- “hiya Murphy”) and I cringe when I think of everyone politely leaving each other the last few bits of eggplant.

How did it happen? I made Nigella Lawson’s Lebanese Moussaka, which I thought she said serves eight. Turns out she doesn’t tell you how many it serves (not in my Dutch translation anyway), but several transcriptions of the recipe on the internet say it serves four. ARGH. I served seven people a dish meant for four. No wonder they were politely taking mini-servings: they were getting about half they were meant to. I’d also roasted quite a bit of chicken, and had bread and (not enough…!) salad, but I fear some empty stomach grumbling went on later that night.

The last straw I cling to is that there was quite a sufficient amount of food but that people just couldn’t get enough. It is indeed tasty, this thing Nigella has you do with eggplant and chickpeas. You soften onions and garlic, you add pomegranate molasses and tomatoes, stir in cinnamon and all-spice. It makes for a bewitching taste of the Middle East, or what I think that might be. Still, whether it is good enough to keep people coming back for more even when full? The jury’s still out. Why don’t you give it a try? I promise you won’t be sorry.

As long as you don’t try to feed more than four people.

Lebanese Moussaka

Slightly adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat

Serves 4 (not 7)

appr. 500gr eggplant
olive oil
1 to 2 onions, peeled and sliced thinly
10-12 small cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into strips
150 g chickpeas, cooked
1 1/2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
500g canned tomatoes
1 1/2 teasons salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
200 ml water
Generous handful of cilantro, roughly chopped

Wash the eggplant, slice off the stems and cube the rest of the flesh- the sides of the cubes should roughly measure a centimeter. Heat some olive oil in a pan and brown the eggplant in batches until nicely golden in color. Keep the prepared eggplant in a separate dish.

Sweat the onion and garlic in some olive oil, until soft and translucent. Add the chickpeas, stir, then add the pomegranate molasses. Return the eggplant to the pan. Quarter the tomatoes and remove seeds. Add tomatoes to the pan and stir in salt, cinnamon, allspice and pepper. Add the water and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover pan and simmer for 45 minutes, or until eggplant is very tender.

Can be served warm or cold., sprinkled with the cilantro (Nigella suggests replacing the cilantro with mint or parsley, if you like).

Dinner for Eight

It is 1 pm and so far today I have:

• Pressed ten cloves of garlic to a pulp
• Mixed them into a marinade with buttermilk, soy sauce and mustard
• Hacked away at a pile of chicken legs + thighs to separate them- there was raw chicken on the wall at some point
• Used the marinade to cover the chicken- and also my counter top because the plastic bag I was using had a hole I failed to notice
• Made a trip to Ikea
• When done shopping at Ikea, I almost killed someone
• Yup
• Dropped two containers on his head from a floor above
• Luckily, he had a sturdy skull and just rubbed his head a bit before going merrily on his way

I think I should not tempt fate and give you any recipes today. Odds are I’ll mess up the directions and make an attempt on your life too. Instead, I’ll just tell you what seven guests and I are having for dinner tonight (while sitting on my new Ikea foldable chairs). Then next week, I will share some of the recipes with you.

David Lebovitz’ cheese puffs and green olives with garlic

Nigella Lawson’s Lebanese moussaka (ingredients pictured above)

Nigella Lawson’s super-juicy chicken

Moroccan-style bread

Salad with pomegranate and walnuts

Nigella Lawson’s poached dried apricots with crème fraiche

Hope you have a garlicky Sunday too!

Food Club January

Six women, three babies (two in-utero, one newly born), lots of tea: my cooking club did high tea this afternoon. Well, we say cooking club, but what we spend most time doing when we get together is eat. Perhaps we should call ourselves Food Club and be done with it. Anyway, that’s all semantics, while you’re really here for the food. So, without further ado, the menu:

Cookies with white and blue sprinkles
Scones with clotted cream and berry jam
Puff pastry with tomato/leek/bacon or cheese/onion filling
Sandwiches with goat’s cheese/sun dried tomatoes/ walnuts/honey and wraps with smoked chicken/avocado and lettuce
New York style cheese cake
White chocolate oatmeal cookies and chocolate-peppermint bark

Tea and conversation both flowed liberally and before I knew it, it was six-thirty and I felt one-bite-too-full with delicious food. In other words: a pretty darn good Saturday afternoon. And, even though there was no cooking when we were together, I did learn a great new trick from Hanneke: making "clotted cream".

Clotted cream is not something that you can buy easily here. And if you do come across it, it is priced as though it could be a girl's best friend. This is all quite unfortunate, as scones and clotted cream make such a lovely pairing. It turns out, though, that you can create something remarkably similar from ingredients for sale at every supermarket. It is a little less delicately sweet, but the texture and consistency come seriously close. What you do is mix three tablespoons of sour cream (full fat, please) with one tub of mascarpone (250 gr) and presto: clotted cream a la Hanneke. If you can then get her to bake her buttermilk scones for you, and her mom to cook up a batch of jam, you're in for a serious treat.

How do you yolk?

Conversation between my boss and me in the cafeteria at work:

Me: ‘Wow, that yolk looks underdone.”
Him (forking the entire yolk into his mouth): “Mmmm. I like it that way.”
Me: …
Him: “Plus, this way at least we keep the salmonella. My immune system needs the training.”

Actually, I like a runny yolk as much as the next girl (it is the jiggly white around it that made me queasy). I’ve often thought we need to be less afraid of raw eggs and trust our immune systems a bit more. You know, as long as we’re not underage, pregnant or elderly. If we don’t, we miss out on one of the nicest things in life: oozy yolk imparting creamy goodness everywhere it goes. To bread, to salads and, my personal favorite, to meat balls in tomato sauce. And you? How do you like your yolk?

P.S.: Nope, you're not looking at a mutant egg with five yolks. They're the left-over yolks from my New Year's Eve pavlova.

Blue Cheese Dressing

Today I don’t have a recipe, or a story. Today is a “neat trick’ kind of day. This is for the times when you crave cheese but can’t quite justify eating just cheese and bread. It is a way to get lots of cheese flavor, but also some vitamins and fiber.

Blue cheese and a sturdy kind of vegetable form the basis of this trick. Mash up a smallish chunk of blue cheese (fourme d’ambert and bleu d’auvergne work great, but any crumbly, intensely flavored blue will work; don’t try gorgonzola, though- it is too creamy) with a bit of olive oil until soft. Then add lemon juice (or a mild vinegar of your choice) to make it more liquid and to add some sour to the flavor balance.

Chop a sturdy vegetable of your choice into small bits. Belgian endive and white cabbage are great for this, but I am guessing any non-leafy vegetable will work. Now here comes the trick: Don’t add the cheese to the vegetables and try to get it evenly distributed that way. You will give yourself a tennis elbow and a strong desire to be done with it and stuff your face with the left-over cheese. Instead, mix a bit of the chopped vegetable into the cheese mash and mix until all pieces are coated. Mix in a bit more until coated. Maybe mix in one more handful and then toss the cheesy vegetables in with the non-dressed vegetable. Mix, mix, mix. Add some nuts if you are feeling fancy, and eat.

Not a great recipe, but a good trick to know.

Vietnamese Cabbage Salad

Let me introduce you to a salad that will keep you on your toes, in the best way possible. It has crisp shredded cabbage complemented by chilies, fish sauce, marinated onions and mint. Strong flavors, that could clash horribly, but don’t. Instead, you get a bowl from which every bite is a surprise. Will I get the heat from the chilies? The pungency of the onions? Or the cool relief of the mint? And always, there is the cool crunch of the cabbage to take the edge off.


This is Nigella Lawson’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Mint, and after yesterday’s failed attempt, today came the re-try for making it. Actually, it was my fourth time and I knew I would not be disappointed. I was right: this is one tasty salad.

Truth be told, I made a chicken-less version today, so I could trick my man into eating the left-over chicken nuggets instead. It was lovely all the same, complemented by just a few crackers (okay, and some cheese for dessert). I hope you didn’t think I partook in the nugget fest? No sirree, I like my chicken recognizable. Plus, when you have lovely salad, who needs greasy snacks?

Vietnamese Cabbage Salad With Mint

Adapted slightly from Vietnamese Chicken Salad in Nigella Bites, Nigella Lawson

Serves 2

1 chilipepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 fat clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp of sugar
2 tsp of rice vinegar
1 tbsp of lime juice
1 ½ tbsp Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce
½ medium onion, sliced as thinly as possible
black pepper to taste
⅓ white cabbage, shaved finely
1 medium carrot, grated
handful of mint leaves, finely shredded right before adding to salad

Mix chilipepper, garlic, sugar, vinegar, the lime the fish sauce and onion, add a pinch of black pepper. Leave mixture for half an hour. Then add mixture to cabbage, carrot and mint and toss carefully, until all vegetables are coated with a film of dressing. Adjust seasoning to taste.

True Comfort Food

Today, I discovered the true meaning of the phrase comfort food. I came home from work late after slogging away all day but getting nowhere. My head hurt, I had more groceries than I could carry and my nose was running from the cold. Just to ice the cake, my bag strap squeaked with every step I took. I was, in short, tired and fed up. But at least I was home, in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, my keys were in Utrecht.

I cursed. Frantically searched my bag again. Cursed some more. Unpacked my bag completely. Considered voodooing the empty bag. Got a grip and dialed my brother (he lives just around the corner and has a spare set of my keys).

“I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message after the tone…”. Crap.

Called my man, who has the second spare set. “Hey beautiful. Are you still in Amsterdam?” “Nope.” CRAP.

Considered going to my parents’ house for the third, and final, set of spare keys, but decided against it. They live an hour and a half away, and I just didn’t feel up to it. Then I almost decided to head back to work to recover the missing keys, but realized the office was likely to close before I could get there.

Defeated, I took one last, wistful, look at the cabbage I’d bought to make Nigella’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad, and recognized there was only one thing for it.

“Hey little brother, it’s me again. If you get this message, please come get me from the pub at the corner.”

Ten minutes later, I was at a table for one, with a flickering candle and a bowl of onion soup. And never before did I feel quite as clearly, right down into my bones, what “comfort food” means. Forget mending broken hearts, softening the blow of rejection or cushioning a fall from grace. Comfort food is food that makes you feel at home, even when you can’t get home.

(My brother did come pick me up, two hours and a pot full of cheese fondue later. He is my hero. Heroes are the people who take you home and open the door for you.)

Amsterdam food

So you've landed in My Amsterdam Kitchen, but I have yet to show you a single picture of (food in) Amsterdam. Let me remedy that:

This is a stall selling Surinamese products at the Albert Cuyp Market. They've got fresh blood sausage, they've got spicy sweet and sour grapes and they've got neon-colored pickles. Right there, you have just one of many reasons why I love living in Amsterdam.

Promise to self: before the year is over, I will have tried at least one product from this stall, or one like it. Stay tuned for updates.

Red Wine Secret (Stewed Pears)

"I’ve got the key
I’ve got the secret
I’ve got the key
Yeah"*

I have a sneaking suspicion not many people have this issue, but something has been plaguing me. For the past couple of years I’ve tried to figure out how to get my stewed pears an appealing shade of red. My stewed pears tend to end up an off-putting brownish purple. Even though they usually taste fine, the experience just isn’t the same when you have to close your eyes to dare take a bite. (Also, sticking a fork in your upper lip for lack of looking at it hurts. Not that that ever happened to me.)

But no more khaki pears for me, because I’ve got the key (I’ve got the secret, ahahaaahahaaha). And, as these things go, it has been staring me in the face this entire time. I tried adding cranberry juice for color. I tried adding blackberry juice. But somehow, I never looked at someone’s wine stained lips and thought “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if my pears were that shade?”. Stupidly, because that is exactly the way to get them a gorgeous crimson: adding red wine. Thanks to my man’s mom, I now know. Yet again, emptying a bottle of burgundy has proven to be the answer.

Be sure to use stewing pears for this recipe and not regular pears: they would turn into mush if you cooked them this long. And mush is not attractive, not even wine-soaked mush.

*The Key the Secret, Urban Cookie Collective

Stewed pears

2 or 3 pears per person
Red wine (amount depending on how many pears you’re cooking; aim for a cooking liquid that is about 1/3 wine and 2/3 water)
1 cinnamon stick per 10 pears or so
100 gr of sugar per 10 pears or so

Peel pears and remove the star shaped brown "crown" at the bottom with the tip of a sharp knife, but leave the stalks attached. Place peeled pears in a saucepan with enough of a water/wine mixture to cover them. Add sugar and cinnamon sticks and bring to a boil. Lower heat as much as possible (you want a slight simmer, not a full-on boil) and stew pears for about an hour, or until tender. The pears can be stewed for much longer; they will become softer and more intensely red as time goes by. (My man’s mom stews them for at least six hours.)

Serve warm or cold, with a wintery main course, as a starter with some crumbled blue cheese and walnuts, as dessert with ice cream… The options are endless.

Learning to Love the Legume, part 1 (Lentil Salad)

As you may recall, I am not fond of legumes. As in, I won’t eat them. Unless someone has cooked them for me and even then it is usually because I don’t want them to think I am rude and stop inviting me. This, however, is a sorry state of affairs. I am a grown woman and should really be able to embrace such an elementary food group. If whole continents survive on little else than rice and beans, then surely I can learn to like, even love, some of them?

With that in mind, I have set myself a challenge. By the end of this year, I must have a list of ten different recipes with legumes that I love. Not just like, love. As in: if these were human, I would consider moving in with them. Or write them a love song. In fact, it would be perfect if I found a bean-recipe that inspired me to write a love song. Because the world needs more songs about beans. Won't someone get on that?

As a first step on my way to meeting the challenge, I made a lentil salad, based on the lentil dish I describe here. And while it isn’t love, I liked it enough to save the leftovers and eat them the next day. Not a bad start, eh?

Lentil Salad with Cilantro and Grilled Peppers

Serves 2 as a side, 1 as a main

½ cup of Puy lentils
2 roasted red peppers from a jar, in strips (or freshly roasted)
crumbled feta to taste, optional

For dressing:

1 bunch of cilantro, leaves only
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp of tasty olive oil
pinch of salt
1 tsp of vinegar, if you are using freshly roasted peppers or peppers from a jar that don’t have vinegar

Put lentils in a saucepan, cover with water (lentils should have plenty of water to dance around in) and bring to a boil. Boil for about 20 minutes, or until tender.

While the lentils are cooking, make the dressing. Put cilantro leaves in a mortar and add a pinch of salt (this makes grinding them easier). Grind with a pestle until all the leaves have been reduced to a pulp. This shouldn’t take long; a minute or two should do it. Add garlic and pound that to a pulp too. Add vinegar (if using) and olive oil and stir to mix.

When the lentils are tender, drain them and immediately pour over the cilantro mixture. Mix thoroughly and leave to cool to room temperature. When cool, add strips of roasted pepper and toss gently. Serve with feta crumbled on top, if you like.

One Last Round (Apple Fritters)

I slept until 9.30 today, I spent about four hours reading a book and then another two cleaning up party debris. This all means that my Christmas break isn’t over yet* and it is perfectly acceptable for me to write about food I had over the holidays. I hope. Because that is exactly what I am going to do. If you hang on till the end, there’s a recipe for tasty apple fritters in it for you.

*It also means I’ve just told you party mess hangs around my house for days on end. Yeah. I am quick like that.

So, the round-up:

Christmas Day 1

Egg nog (quite tasty- might try my hand at making this next year)

Fried quail with raspberry sauce
Duck breast with apple-potato mash, salad and Molly’s braised Belgian endive
Stuffed miniature pineapples with nutty ice cream, mango and pineapple

Edible gift: Brown butter brown sugar cookies (burned and inedible)

Christmas Day 2

Spiced rice-beef meatballs and mini chicken b’stilla
Chicken salad, mackerel roll-ups, chili-cheese cookies and feta filo-fingers

Smoked salmon parcels stuffed with shrimp and avocado
Turkey (brined a la Nigella), green beans with caramelized pecans, cranberry sauce, mushroom sauce, potato gratin
Chocolate-raspberry pavlova

Chocolate mint bark

Edible gifts: easy chocolate fudge (without nuts), vanilla hot chocolate mix

New Year’s Eve

Nibbles provided by friends

Pate with cranberry sauce
Slow-roasted leg of lamb with garlic and ratatouille, meat balls in tomato sauce, Caesar’s salad, grilled zucchini with mint oil and pine nuts, lentil salad, baked roseval potato slices, bread and herb butter
Chocolate-raspberry pavlova and apple crisp

Currant “donuts” (oliebollen) and apple fritters

1 January

Fish platters with potato salad (North Sea shrimp, smoked eel, pickled mussels, anchovies)
“Deviled” eggs (sour cream and sour cream/ smoked salmon)
Smoked salmon pinwheels
Raw herring with minced onions
Bread

Oliebollen and apple fritters


Oliebollen and apple fritters are a New Year’s must-eat. It’s probably something to do with ringing in the new year with rich, sweet things. (And a suspected 300 calories per bite) But for me it is not about that: it is about memories. Ever since I can remember, my father and, when he was old enough, my brother would go to my paternal grandparents’ house on 31 December and come back with big bowls of oliebollen. My mom and I would then take a batch of the freshly baked oliebollen to my maternal grandparents’ house and get a big platter of apple fritters in return.

The oliebollen were never a favorite of mine. They are quite tasty hot and crispy, straight from the sizzling oil. When they’ve sat around for a couple of hours, though, they become a bit soft and their inner blandness comes out. Nothing a good shake of powdered sugar can’t hide, but nothing fantastic, either. Apple fritters are a different story. They are good just out of the pan, but even better when they have had a bit of time to relax. You get a nice, soft layer of batter and a tangy-sweet bite of apple inside. Lovely.

In my mind, the apple fritters are inextricably linked to my mom’s dad, who used to make them for us. It is impossible to bite into one and not remember the way I felt on our 31 December drive to my grandparents’ house. I would be excited- my favorite meal of the year was only hours away. I would feel like a provider, entrusted with important task of bringing home the sweets (yes, I was just riding shotgun to my mom, but how is that relevant?). And, if I am completely honest, I would be a little anxious too. Would we get enough fritters to last us through the night? We always did.

My grandfather died a few years ago and now I am in charge of making the apple fritters. I make them because it would not be New Year’s Eve without them. But more than that, I make them as a tribute. To my grandfather, who gave me so many wonderful 31st of Decembers.

Apple Fritters, 2008 version

This year’s apple fritter recipe was adapted from this website. I liked the cinnamon taste, but the milk based batter gives them a cakey consistency I am not crazy about. Next year, I am going back to beer as my liquid of choice.

Makes 80- 100 fritters

¾ cup of castor sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
20 tart apples
600 gr self-raising flour
600 ml of milk
4 eggs
¼ cup of vanilla sugar
pinch of salt
oil for frying
powdered sugar for sprinkling

Mix the castor sugar with the cinnamon. Peel apples, core them and slice into four or five slices per apple. Layer the apples in a bowl, sprinkling a good amount of the sugar-cinnamon mixture between each layer. Leave for a few hours to macerate.

When you are ready for frying, heat the oil to 180 degrees Celsius in a deep fat fryer. Mix the self-raising flour with the milk, beating out as many lumps as you can (but don’t worry if a few remain). Mix in the vanilla sugar and the salt, and then the eggs.

Set up your work station: Put the bowl with the apples, the bowl with your batter and plenty of paper towels next to your fryer. Grab a fork and dip the apple rings into the batter and then put them in the oil. You can fry more than one slice at a time, but make sure the temperature of your oil doesn’t drop too much. If it does, wait for it to heat back up before putting in more apple slices.

After two or three minutes, the apple slices will have golden brown bottoms. Flip them and give them another three minutes until golden all over. Line a plate with paper towels and transfer your apple fritters to the plate when they are done. Repeat until all apple slices have been used, building a nice stack of apple fritters with paper towels between the layers to absorb excess oil.

Fritters can be served hot or cold, and are best sprinkled with powdered sugar before eating. They keep for at least a day at room temperature, probably two.

A New Beginning (Salmon pinwheels)

I love this time of year. I am fond of beginnings of any type- starting a fresh notebook, getting on a plane for a trip, turning the page for a new week in my diary. Even mornings are good (although I am iffy about the getting out of bed part). Starting a new year, therefore, is about as good as it gets. A chance to be different, be better, and feel cleansed of the bad of the year before.

Also, there are lots of left-overs from all the festiveness that has gone before.

A new year cannot really start without great food. I’ve always thought new year’s resolutions about diets are really meant to start on 4 or 5 January. Why start something shiny and new with feeling hungry and depriving yourself? There are far better ways to celebrate the new. Eating apple fritters (recipe to follow soon) and salmon-cream cheese pin wheels, for instance. Both have become somewhat of a New Year's tradition in my family, and one I would be sad to miss. Even though this might not be the best time of the year for snack recipes (there’s all those left-overs to get through and perhaps the healthy eating should resume after more than a week of over-indulgence), these are so lovely, easy to prepare and good for parties that it would be a shame not to share. Plus, they have salmon. And salmon is good for you, right? Right, then.

May 2009 bring you many beautiful beginnings and healthy snacks.


Salmon pinwheels

smoked salmon
cream cheese (the sturdy kind, not the soft, spreadable-straight-from-the-container type)
chopped fresh dill
lemon juice

(No measurements because all smoked salmon is not sliced equally. I would say about 150 gr of cream cheese for about 100 gr of fish would be a nice ratio to aim for.)

Mash cream cheese to soften and mix with chopped fresh dill and lemon juice to taste. You want the cream cheese to taste bright and refreshing, to balance the salty fattiness of the fish. Spread slices of the salmon with the cream cheese mixture and roll up to form logs. Wrap in foil and refrigerate until firm. Cut logs into slices; these are your pin wheels.

Serve on sliced cucumber, on crackers or by themselves.