Current cravings

• Cranberry green tea
• Rice cakes spread with soft goat's cheese
• Salted crisps with garlic-yogurt dip

Food from Far

Pizza, Sheraton Addis hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Precious resources (corn bread)

Months ago, I bought a box of corn meal. I was at a health food store and a container of it caught my eye. I’d never seen it for sale in the NL before, so I picked up a box even though I was not sure what I was going to do with it. (The same thing happened with a bag of marked-down quinoa flour six months ago. Sticker fever, baby. It’s still sitting in my baking drawer. Any ideas about what one does with quinoa flour?)

A funny thing happened after the purchase. I came across quite a few recipes calling for corn meal, but I never wanted to try them. What if I really liked one of them, wanted to make it again and again but then the store stopped carrying corn meal, depriving me of the chance to make this food I’d fallen for? That just wouldn’t do, so the box sat there, waiting for me to get over my abandonment issues and bake something already.

Then a recipe for the bread you see up there came along, and I baked it and it was wonderful. So, naturally, the left-over corn meal went back into the cupboard, with me ever more convinced it would be a bad idea to run out of this splendid resource.

I suspect it would still be sitting there had Luisa Weiss at Wednesday Chef not posted about polenta cake. In the post, Luisa casually mentions that polenta is just a fancy word for corn meal. Jigga what? This precious stuff that’s been giving me tremors from its sheer potential awesomeness….The yellow grains that have been languishing in my cupboard since I bought a huge bag for Christmas (’07… )… They’re… The. Same. Thing?

Man, a bit of knowledge can come in handy sometimes!

Joyously relieved of corn-meal-purchasing angst, I baked firecracker corn bread again. And again. And here’s my advice to you: buy a bag of polenta and do the same thing. This is seriously good stuff. Moist, with a light crumb that still gives you something to chew on, studded with corn and encased in a buttery crust that packs the perfect amount of heat, no one should do without. Especially not since it is such a great way to get rid of left-over corn meal. Erm, I mean polenta.

Beans, not thrift (Butter bean dip)

There was this plan. A Food for Five plan, I seem to remember dubbing it. There were rules about not spending too much money on food. Being budget conscious, pinching pennies and using all my left-overs. Good stuff to teach me thrift and save me Euros.

Yeah, so that didn’t happen.

I’ve been cranky lately. Wanting to bite people’s heads off for doing perfectly normal things like pulling on their coat before getting off the train (missing my face by an inch, but still) or clearing their throat (though, really, if you have to cough, do it and don’t sit there sounding like a mad porcupine before – surprise surprise – spreading the germ love anyway).

I blame the lack of light. Leaving the house in the dark, working all day in an artificially lit office and then making your way home in the dark again cannot be healthy for a person.

Also, these below-zero temperatures are seriously pissing me off. Every morning before I get on my bike, I pull on arm warmers, a thick, heavy coat, wrap my throat in a scarf and hide my hands in a pair of gloves. Then I scrape the ice off my saddle, cover it with a seat cover to prevent icy left-overs from soaking my trousers, install lights and fight three frost-bitten locks. It takes for-ever. I miss miss miss the days when I slipped on a jacket, bounced downstairs in flip-flops, had no troubles opening my locks and was good to go in seconds. Okay, so maybe “bouncing” is not an accurate description of my early-morning movements any time of the year, but still.

Being cheap about my food in these dark, cold times is not going to happen. It is ticking me off. Plus, it is causing blog-block, which I loathe. So here’s my towel- I am throwing it in.

Luckily, it is not just the desire to be thrifty that keeps me from handing over my entire income to food vendors. I also have a money-saving lazy streak. Yesterday, for instance, I couldn’t be bothered cycling to the supermarket when time for dinner came. Instead, I pulled a few cans from the pantry and combined them with bits and pieces floating around my kitchen. Was I glad I did. Not only did I save on groceries, I stumbled upon the first legume preparation I want to make again and again because it is so good (and not just because it is good for me). Served over a spicy tomato sauce with a fried egg on top, it was a great Sunday supper. I imagine it would be even better served as a dip, with some finely chopped cilantro as a garnish and crunchy vegetables to dunk in it. In fact, it is so good that I am putting it on the Legume Love List. That’s right: one down, nine to go.

Butter bean dip

Makes about 1,5 cups

1 can of butter beans, drained and rinsed
4 tbsp of a mild yogurt
2 small cloves of garlic, pressed
large pinch of crushed chili flakes

Place the beans in a food processor and add the yogurt. Pulse until it is a coarse puree, then add the garlic and the crushed chili flakes. Process until it has the consistency you like in a dip. I like mine smooth, but chunks may be good too. Taste, and add more yogurt, garlic, chili flakes or salt as needed.

Serve with vegetables or a nice bread to dip.

Pretty it ain't

Hi.

Please stand back while I kick in an open door.

Our enjoyment of food is tied to our perception of that food.

If I ask my man whether he wants a cheese cracker, the response is likely to be no, possibly with a frown thrown in for good measure. If I offer him the exact same biscuit but call it a Tuc cracker, I’m fighting him for the last one before I know it.

He’s not the only one who’s at it. According to the papers yesterday, cod caught in the wild tastes better than its farmed cousins. That is, as long as the test panel knows the fish roamed the seas before ending up on a plate. If the provenance of the fish is unknown, both types get the same tastiness-score.

And then there’s the example of a perfectly good piece of steak that has been died bright blue. Taste-testers enjoy eating it significantly less than when they’re served a steak within the usual color range. Even when told the hue comes from an innocent food dye, the meat doesn’t taste right to them.

Is it any wonder, then, that eating this thing was not an unequivocal pleasure?


This is the kliswortel (burdock) my bag’o’vegetables brought last week. Sure, after I peeled it, boiled it and sautéed it with lots of garlic it looked a bit better:

Still, it was nothing more than okay. Yes, it had to do with the flavor- which was vaguely artichoke-like, but mostly bland. It was definitely to do with the texture- stringy and a bit tough. But after I clapped eyes on its intimidating, bulky sandiness, I don’t think it would ever have been love. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.

Now let me just close that door before it gets drafty.

Sunday Apple Pie

What do you do on a rainy Sunday, when going outside is about as attractive as filling in the tax forms?

Why, you bake apple pie, of course. And that's just what I did yesterday (tax forms aren't due until April 1 anyway).

I started with Martha Stewart's pate brisee for the crust (but using my hands instead of a food processor, because my limited cupboard space will not stretch to holding big machines) and a pink cake pan.

Then I blind-baked it with chickpeas...


... filled the (dramatically shrunken) crust with grated apple filling...


And thirty-three minutes later (and a great cinnamon scent for my house) later, I had apple pie.

Not the best (or prettiest) apple pie ever, but mighty tasty as dessert after Deb's wonderful, luscious mushroom bourguignon.

Grated Apple Pie

Adapted from Marie Claire De Ultieme Keuken by Michele Cranston

Makes 1 pie

1 pie crust (try this one, it looks good), pre-baked
2 large, slightly tart apples, grated coarsely
juice and zest from half a juicy lemon
1 tsp of cinnamon
pinch of grated all spice
100 gr of butter
115 gr of sugar (vanilla sugar is good)
2 eggs

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Melt the butter with the sugar in a thick-bottomed pan, until the sugar has dissolved and the caramel is a light golden color. Leave to cool for a few minutes. Meanwhile, mix the apple with the lemon juice and zest, cinnamon and allspice. Add the caramel to the apple and mix thoroughly. Add the eggs and mix.

Pour the apple mix in the pre-baked crust and bake for thirty minutes or until filling has almost completely set. Leave to cool to room temperature before serving.

Sushi tricks

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Undoubtedly great advice. No guts, no glory, when the going gets tough and all that good stuff. However, when I am sitting on my comfy couch, with my comfy slippers and a comfy cup of tea, I don’t necessarily feel it should apply to me. I am fine here in my comfort zone, thankyouverymuch.

Mostly, I’ve come to accept this. I don’t jack in my job the minute it starts boring me, I don’t pack up my belongings to live in a different country at the hint of an opportunity and I suspect I will never wrestle ice bears on the North Pole. Nor do I really want to. However, I also don’t want to wake up one day and realize life has passed me by like a warm-weather cruise. You know, uneventful and calm with perhaps one buffet too many. So every now and then I go out there and do something that makes me uncomfortable.

Which is how I ended up in a sushi workshop this afternoon with six alcohol units in my stomach, all consumed in the preceding hour. Decidedly uncomfortable to be sure, but not actually what I’d come to experience. What I came for was a college reunion. Now, I normally avoid reunions. With every passing year, I feel my life is getting (even) better and I have no particular desire to revisit years past. Especially not those first college years, when I was shy and a bit dorky and trying so, so hard to be a little cooler. What tempted me to go to this reunion (aside from knowing one of my best friends was going too) was the feeling it was about time for a bit of bravery on my part. I was hoping for a few chats, an awkward hug or two and an early night with the virtuous feeling that I’d done something unnerving and come out unscathed.

What I got were a few chats, an awkward hug or two and a jolly good sushi workshop from a guy who lived in my dorm my first year. My college likes to pride itself on selecting “high potentials” for its student body, with brains and multiple talents. And while their selection process isn’t perfect (I ended up there somehow) they got it right with this guy. He holds an advanced degree from an impressive university, has one of those jobs I could never do because I don’t even understand their description and he knew about sushi. Not in a “I lived in Japan and will now proceed to laugh at you for thinking you can begin to grasp sushi if you have never visited Tsujiki Fish Market”-way, but more of a “how come this is the third sushi workshop I’ve been to over the past year and no one has told me this useful stuff before?”-way.

Here, I’ll share some of it with you, so you can save yourself the trouble of going to a scary university reunion to learn. After all, isn’t that couch looking mighty good?

Stuff I learned about sushi today:

• When you pop a nigiri sushi in your mouth, the rice is supposed to sit on your tongue, as a flavor enhancer for when you bite through the fish on top.
• An undemanding way to make pretty sushi is to gather a ball of rice in a piece of plastic, add some wasabi and a piece of fish, then scrunch the plastic tightly around the combo, much like you’re wrapping a bonbon. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, unwrap: a beautiful rice’n’fish ball.
• Rolling maki is a lot easier if you lift the bottom bit of your riced nori-sheet up and over the filling before you press and roll.
• Inside-out rolls aren't all that hard to make. Start by pressing rice on a sheet of nori, sprinkling it with sesame seeds, covering it with a piece of plastic and flipping it. Then you add some fillings and do the lift and tuck maneuver (see previous) with the plastic still on top. Press down on the filling while you pull away the plastic and continue rolling. When you reach the end of you roll, pull away the last of the plastic and presto: futo-maki.
• Dipping your knife in water before cutting sushi makes the cutting a lot easier.
• You are not supposed to mix wasabi with soy sauce to make a dipping sauce. Wasabi goes on the sushi, not in the dip.
• Except in mine, it does. Because I’m a rebel.
  

Pictures by Manon on her phone. She rocks.

Etiquette for Acquaintances

What is the etiquette for running into people you know, but have nothing to say to?

This evening, I was at DuizendenBoekenInTranen, waiting to pay for my stack of books at severly reduced prices. (Yes, sticker fever. But also: thousands of new, exciting pages of words for a few tens. Can’t argue with that.) I thought I recognized the girl behind one of the registers, but couldn’t place her. So I stared a bit, and a bit more, but couldn’t catch her eye. And then it dawned on me: this was a friend of a friend, one I’ve met at the occasional birthday party but know next to nothing about. I know she doesn’t eat red M&M’s and that she is fluent in Spanish. That’s pretty much where it ends.

So, naturally, I also looked away as if I just happened to have a million things to look at other than her. And then I left, without either of us ever acknowledging we’d seen the other. Clean, painless, neat.

I grabbed a “vegetarian Greek toasty” (pita bread with pickled cabbage, cucumber and gloriously garlicky tzatziki) for dinner and all was well with the world. Then, getting off the train in Amsterdam, I heard my name. I looked around, and had another “who are you? come on, you look familiar, who are you?”- moment. Only this time I was a lot quicker to catch on and instantly wished I had pretended I hadn’t heard my name. Looking at me expectantly was a guy I shared a house with in university. Even back then, we had very little in common aside from our address. Now it is ten (TEN! can’t believe it) years later, and you can probably imagine how much we had to talk about.

Still, we stood there for minute after agonizing minute, talking about work and train journeys and Amsterdam. The whole painful episode finally ended when I didn’t hear him right, thought he said “so I’ll see you Saturday”, practically yelled “see you Saturday!” back and made a bee-line for it. (Yes, I am in fact seeing him again this weekend. What are the odds of running into someone you’ve seen twice in ten years, only to discover that you’ll both be at the same event days later? Someone, somewhere is amusing herself greatly by embarrassing me.)

So I wonder, should this guy have been a bit smoother, pretending not to see me so we could pass unnoticed and unscathed? Or were the M&M- girl and I impossibly rude and should we have sucked it up and greeted each other like the adults we are?

All of which is an incredibly long-winded way to say that I didn’t cook dinner tonight, so I don’t have a recipe for you. What I do have is some good advice. Next time you’re in Utrecht and want a quick, cheap dinner without reverting to burgers or noodles, visit El Greco. Tucked away at a corner of the Ganzenmarkt (behind the town hall), it looks like any other snack-and-go hole in the wall, but they have seriously good pita with meat or vegetables. Slathered in creamy tzatziki, these sandwiches will put a smile on your face without putting a dent in your wallet. And they do fries too, if you are into that kind of thing.

But run into any old acquaintances afterwards, and you run the risk of living on in someone’s memory as “Mr(s) Stinky Garlic Breath”.

Quick Braised Red Cabbage

Slices of bread that live in a freezer too long dry out, get funny white blotches and taste like, well, like they’ve been left in the freezer too long. I can attest to this because I ate two such slices this morning. Spread with cottage cheese that did nothing to conceal their flavor.

After my freeze dried breakfast I spent the morning running from meeting to meeting. All the coffee I had time for was a machine cappuccino I left so long it got cold and a sachet of instant cappuccino I didn’t stir properly, so had lumps in it.

Lunch was three measly bites from a portion of roasted rutabaga with cucumber and yogurt-caraway dressing. No great loss, because that sounds a lot better than it tasted. I’m guessing I didn’t quite get the roasting right, because the outside of the rutabaga cubes was leathery while the inside was starchy and mushy. Even if I hadn’t had to run to my next meeting, I wouldn’t have eaten much more.

I arrived a few minutes late for that meeting and grabbed the first seat I could, miles away from the coffee pot. I was too embarrassed about being late to ask people to move cup, saucer and coffee pot my way, thereby missing my chance at a half-decent cup of coffee. Naturally. Yet another meeting, some frantic e-mailing while chomping on a piece of stale apple cake and a rain-soaked trip home later, I didn’t have high hopes for dinner. Judging by the rest of the day, my red cabbage experiment was bound to be a disappointment. In fact, I was so sure it would be a disaster that I bought a bag of crisps as a back-up dinner.

This was the first time I tried red cabbage, ever. My parents both loathe it and it never occurred to me to make it when I started taking care of my food myself. So even if this had been a delicacy-filled day, I would have been a little apprehensive. But I was and would have been wrong, because the quick red cabbage I made was delicious. With apple, orange zest and brown sugar, it was a little like having dessert for dinner. But in a good way. The cabbage was soft but with a bite, it had tang from vinegar and was infused with a pleasant orange flavor. Paired with some bread and cheese, it was the perfect supper to end a not-so-perfect day.

The recipe for the cabbage came from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. Again. I know, I know, and I am sorry. But it was just so good. I’ll tell you what I did, to make it a little less like plagiarism, but credit is fairly and squarely due to Sarah Raven.

Quick Braised Red Cabbage

Adapted in practice, but copied in spirit from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook

Serves 1 (easily multiplied)

1tbsp butter
splash of olive oil
1 small onion, diced small
½ small red cabbage, sliced thinly
zest from half a small orange
1 fairly sour apple, peeled and cut into large chunks
50 ml red wine vinegar (or more as necessary)
½ tbsp soft brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter and the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan until the butter has melted. Add the onion and cook until soft (but not browned). Add the cabbage and toss so all cabbage has a slippery butter-oil film. Add the vinegar, the apple, orange zest and brown sugar. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 45 min- 1 hour, until the cabbage is a deep, vibrant magenta and is mostly soft with a little bite. Check regularly if the cabbage isn’t sticking to pan. If it needs more liquid, add vinegar or water. Adjust sweet-sour balance by adding more vinegar or sugar as necessary. Season with salt and pepper and serve hot.

Rutabaga Risotto

There is a sandy, dark brown thick… stick… in my bag’o’vegetables. It is about the height of a wine bottle and the width of my fist. Frankly, it is grotesque and I am intimidated by it. The recipe card says it is a “kliswortel”, which means about as much to me as its English name “burdock”. Nothing. A quick Google of the term yielded a handful of pictures of dainty-looking sticks that would not stand a chance if they got into a fight with my one. And very few recipes. Right, well, I’ll deal with that later in the week.

Tonight I tackled a different kind of previously unknown (to me) vegetable my bag’o’vegetables brought: rutabaga, aka swede (koolraap in Dutch). Intimidating in its own way, with chunks of mud clinging to purplish-orange skin and gnarly hairy roots sticking out. When cut in half, though, it is a pretty, deep yellow color. Perfect to bring color to a grey day. Cut into thin matchsticks, it became the basis of a rutabaga risotto with Asian-style flavorings: ginger, coriander seeds, garlic. Quite tasty, if I do say so myself. Let’s hope I get as lucky when I tackle the kliswortel monstrosity.

Rutabaga risotto

Serves 1 (can easily be multiplied)

1 tbsp of vegetable oil
Pinch of ground chiliflakes
Large pinch of ground coriander seeds
Small knob of ginger, finely grated (about ¼ tsp)
Half a small rutabaga, cut into thin matchsticks
1 clove of garlic, chopped finely (but not pressed)
½ tbsp of butter
1 small onion, diced
50 gr risotto rice
½ liter of chicken broth
1 tsp of lemon juice

Melt the butter in a small pan with a thick bottom. Add the onion and cook until translucent, but don’t let it brown. Add the rice, stir and cook for a minute or so, until rice is also translucent. Add about 200ml of broth and bring to a gentle boil. Cover the pan and simmer for 12 minutes, or until soft. Test for softness after twelve minutes, and take of the heat, but let stand in the covered pan for five minutes.

Meanwhile, put the oil in a skillet, add chiliflakes and coriander and heat. When hot, add the ginger and cook for a few seconds. Keep the heat high and add the rutabaga. Stir-fry for six minutes or so, until the rutabaga starts to soften and has brown spots where it has touched the pan. When the rutabaga is quite flexible, add about 100 ml of broth to the pan. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add another 100 ml and cook rutabaga until mostly tender but still a little crisp. By now, most of the second batch of broth will have evaporated.

When rutabaga and rice are both cooked, add most of the vegetable to the rice and mix thoroughly. Transfer to a (heated) plate and top with the reserved rutabaga. Sprinkle with the lemon juice. Serve hot.

Food for Five: Day 1

Frugality does not come easily to me. I am Dutch enough to cheerily say no to expensive items most of the time, even if they are Very Pretty. I am helpless, however, when it comes to passing up a bargain. If it has a sticker on it with “half price” or “reduced” or (best of all) “special offer”, more often than not I am halfway down the register before I realize I don’t actually know what something costs. Or what its full price would be. It’s sticker-frenzy, and I am a sucker for it.

Also, I don’t like to think about money when I am buying food or cook books. These are life’s essentials, not to be skimped on. I suppose paying 2 Euro for a cucumber, or 10 for a piece of cheese, or multiples of that for grass-fed, organic meat from formerly happy animals isn’t exactly economical, but it’s food. You have to eat, no?

All of which would be fine and dandy if I were swimming in it. But I’m not. So perhaps, in these expensive times, it is time for a spot of re-programming. Therefore, I hereby declare February “Food for Five” month. This whole month, I will try to stay within a five Euro a day food budget, while still eating healthily and, hopefully, deliciously. To keep myself on track, I will report back to you on my food expenditure regularly. Feel free to help me along by sharing your best cheap recipes. I look forward to trying them.

A few rules for this month:

• I will have a five Euro food budget per day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.
• If I have guests over, I can spend an additional five Euro per person per event.
• I will not spend extra when my man comes over for dinner. Nor will I deduct anything from my budget when he shops and cooks. Hopefully, those two will cancel each other out.
• I can use whatever I already have in the house without assigning a monetary value to it. (I thought of doing a list of everything edible already in my possession, but decided that would be boring. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.)
• If I buy something, I will declare the whole amount, even if I only use a pinch and have enough left over to last me a life time. It’s not as if I can spend the rest of my life paying for that sachet of saffron, after all.
• I will buy free range eggs and meat, and sustainable fish. Because I can choose and the animal can’t. No whining about the costs.
• Some of my fruit and vegetables will be organic, some won’t. Because that’s how I roll. Any citrus I use for zesting will be organic, though. The thought of feeding people pesticides and wax residues does not appeal.
• I will eat normally. No surviving on peanut butter sandwiches for a month for the sake of a challenge.

And just in case you’re wondering: it is a complete coincidence that I am taking on this challenge during the shortest month of the year. Really.