My Amsterdam Kitchen

The Move

2010-01-03T14:40:00.002+01:00

Posts too few, pictures too ugly. And, frankly, a name I never really warmed up to. My blog needed a new spring in its step, so it has moved house. Come visit at shoeboxcooking.wordpress.com for regular posts, better pictures and a better name. Hope to see you there!

Sauerkraut with a twist (sauerkraut "pizza" with onions and two cheeses)

2009-11-19T22:12:00.003+01:00

When life hands you sauerkraut, you make pizza.

No?

I did. My bag’o’vegetables brought a container of organic sauerkraut, and I didn’t want a hot dog to go with it. (Unusual, certainly, but there you have it.) Since my dislike of them has not abated yet, potatoes were out as an accompaniment, and cooking soup seemed like too much work. But luckily, there is always pizza.

Following the lead from this recipe, I fried an onion in olive oil and added a nice pinch of caraway seeds. When the onions had softened, I added a few handfuls of the sauerkraut and warmed the mixture thoroughly. Then I let it cool to lukewarm before stirring in about half a cup of grated cheese (30+ mature Gouda, for those interested).

I did not have a pizza crust on hand, but the droopy left-over flour tortillas in my drawer were crying out for oven heat and quick consumption. Perfect. Onto the tortillas the cheesy, oniony sauerkraut mixture went. Because I am of the more-is-more school when it comes to cheese, I topped it with a dusting of parmesan before sliding the “pizza” into a hot oven for about ten minutes.

What came out was tangy, slightly chewy, slightly crispy and somehow quite luscious. Like a pizza, but without the risk of tomato stains for my white shirt. Not bad, eh, for sauerkraut on a crust.

Warmth in My Belly (eggplant and mozzarella)

2009-11-14T23:05:00.015+01:00

My house smells of red wine, garlic, tomatoes and cheese. It is a comforting smell, that helps fight the chills brought on by the sound of howling wind and rain lashing against the windows. When deciding what to cook, I was leaving through Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook and came across a recipe for eggplant with mozzarella. Grilled eggplant, lots of cheese and tomato sauce. Sounded perfect for a blustery day. And it was- hearty, creamy and bursting with warming flavors. Wanna give it a go?

Start by slicing two eggplants and two balls of buffalo mozzarella, and grating a pile of Parmesan.

Brush the eggplant slices with oil and grill them. Combine a can of tomatoes with a glug of oil, two cloves of garlic and a few shakes of dried thyme into a sauce. If you happen to have red wine standing around, add some as well. Simmer the sauce until it starts to thicken.

Put a layer of grilled eggplant slices in an oven-proof dish, and scatter with a handful of parmesan.

Add a third of the tomato sauce, and top with half the slices of mozzarella.

Repeat the process until you have used all the ingredients, and make sure to end with a layer of tomato sauce and grated Parmesan.

Cook for about 20 minutes. Eggplant with mozzarella!

Little People and Sweet Things

2009-11-11T22:05:00.003+01:00

During my run tonight, a surprising number of kids was milling about in the dark. There were groups of them, and they weren’t quietly rushing home either. There was giggling, there were games of tag. And then my musings about how kids’ bed times must be changing were interrupted by the little tykes singing. Singing, with paper lanterns dangling from their arms.

And it dawned on me: it is St Maarten today. A day for kids to carry flammable paper lights and demand candy from strangers in the night. As an adult you are supposed to be prepared for being of those strangers and have plenty of sugary treats on hand. I, of course, have no regular dealings with little people, was oblivious to St Maarten up until that point and was woefully unprepared for pushing sweets. So I did the mature thing and snuck past the kids on tiptoe, willing them not to notice me.

It worked, I sprinted up the four flights of stairs to my house and had just closed my front door with a relieved sigh when the bell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and unannounced visits rarely happen to me. I gingerly picked up the intercom receiver and heard tiny voices screeching about cows with tails and girls in skirts. Crap! Oh, how I wished I had some of the goodies up there to share.

But, alas, that gorgeous collection of sweet things was made weeks before by Manon and me to celebrate her 30th birthday. It was good indeed, and there were plenty of left-overs, but they were nothing but a memory now. Which is where my shoe box apartment showed its useful side- being on the top floor, there is no way for small ones to peep inside and mock me for not opening the door. So I quietly put the receiver down, closed the curtains more tightly and thanked Amsterdam’s crazy house prices for making sure I could not buy anything closer to the ground floor.

Honestly, I don’t know how excited the kids would have been about the stuff in the picture. I would definitely grin a very happy grin if offered any of those treats and might have let out a little squeal of delight when I saw them all together. But kids? I am guessing there just aren’t enough snazzy wrappers or brighter-than-life colorings to keep m happy. If, however, you are over the age of ten and are looking for a sweet spot in your day, I urge you to make something you see here. It was all seriously good.

From the simply chic apple tart to the surprising orange brownies and from the luscious cheese cake to the snappy ginger cookies, you can’t really go wrong. If you will allow me a small suggestion, though, I think you should start with the scones. They are easy-easy and surprisingly wonderful. Tender and crumbly, with a faintly sweet crumb, they are a great vehicle for lots of cream and raspberry jam.

All recipes are on this website (in Dutch only).

Ginger snaps

Cranberry cheesecake

Scones

Nutty orange brownies

Apple tart

White chocolate muffins with raspberries

One Last Summer Night

2009-10-06T22:16:00.000+02:00

So there’s the rain. And the no-daylight-when-I-leave the house. There’s definitely wind, and the falling leaves are set to follow soon. Yup: easing into fall has become dealing with fall before I blinked twice.

Well, I suppose a person blinks more than twice in three weeks, so I must have. But if I did, I was too busy moving in my man, putting in overtime at work and planning a trip to Istanbul to notice. Which isn’t too bad, if you think about it, because it means I can post the picture above with impunity. In my world, tomatoes are deep red because summer is still around. I can pair them with buffalo mozzarella, basil and olive oil and take them outside to call them dinner. Which I don’t, because I would freeze. But I could, believe you me.

More later this week, and with an actual recipe. Just let me catch up on my sleep first.

Easing into Fall (baked tomatoes)

2009-09-14T21:33:00.004+02:00

Psst. Want to hear a secret?

I’ll have to whisper, because I don’t want summer to find out.

I am looking forward to autumn.

See, not something we want summer to know about. She might stomp off in a huff, leaving behind grey skies and falling leaves. And what would that mean for us? It would mean it is time to eat mushroom pasta, and spiced apple desserts and warming soups. Okay, that's not bad. Not bad at all. However, it is not quite time. Not quite, but almost. Hot chocolate, pumpkin pie and hazelnut cookies have started to appear in my dreams. Soon, very soon.

But first, there are the season’s last tomatoes to bake. Molly Wizenberg explained how, and I cannot imagine a better transition into a cooler season.

Basic basil pesto

2009-08-31T21:55:00.008+02:00

Many things can keep a person from making pesto. Well, maybe nothing can keep you from making pesto. Maybe you are the Queen of Basil, whip up a batch every day and cannot fathom what life would be like if you never saw another pine put again. More power to you, but you are nothing like me. Many things can keep me from making pesto. In fact, many things have kept me from making pesto at some point. A sample:

Reaching for the basil in the supermarket, then recoiling in horror when I noted it was 1,39 Euro per packet of two small branches.
Reading that pesto really does taste better if you use a pestle and mortar instead of a food processor. I love my pestle and mortar, but the idea of grinding piles of basil leaves to a fine pulp intimidates me.
The inability to find decent parmesan in any of my neighborhood stores or markets. Salty, plasticky Grana Padano is the best I can do. And don’t even get me started on pecorino.
A warning about mysteriously horrendous pine nuts that might mascarade as perfectly fine nuts and then leave an all-consuming bitter taste that lasts for days. Days!

But this weekend, I got brave. The basil plants on my balcony were groaning under the weight of their leaves, the pine nuts at my supermarket looked particularly innocent and the Grana in the fridge wasn’t all that bad. So I reached for the pestle. But then I stopped. Did one use garlic in pesto, or not? I didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure. A better cook probably would have made an educated guess. Me? I went online and found recipes for anything from rucola pesto with walnuts to spicy Asian-inspired pesto to pesto-light with tomatoes instead of oil. Unfortunately, not one recipe for straight-up basil pesto crossed my cyberpath. Well, there was one recipe, but it listed six cloves of garlic to two handfuls of basil. Surely if regular pesto had that much garlic I would remember?

I was about to take the leap and just leave the garlic out (I am such a daredevil!), when I remembered I own the Silver Spoon. Years of Italian kitchen wisdom, neatly complied into a shiny white tome. *makes dramatic hand gesture* “How could-uh I foget-uh?” *spoken in a bad Italian accent*

For a second I was afraid that something as basic as pesto hadn’t merited a recipe in this bible of Italian cuisine**, but then I turned to page 68 and there it was. Calling for basil, pine nuts, two kinds of cheese and plenty of oil, but not a smidge of garlic. A ha! A ha-aha-a. My kitchen instincts had been right! And the best part? It told me to whizz the basil in a food processor.

When the Silver Spoon speaks, I obey.

Pesto on SmittenKitchen hacked caprese

Basic basil pesto

You would think the internet has no dearth of basic pesto recipes, but you would be wrong. This is based on instructions from the Silver Spoon, but I have adapted it to reflect what I did.

Two big handfuls of basil leaves, washed and dried thoroughly
About 2 tbsp pine nuts
Pile of freshly grated parmesan
Pile of Pecorino Romano (I used only fake parmesan, and it was fine)
Enough olive oil to make a luscious sauce

Put the basil leaves in the bowl of a small food processor, add the pine nuts and run the processor until the basil is shredded. Add the cheese, process again. Transfer contents of the processor to a bowl (although you could do the next part in the machine if it has a feeding tube) and stir in a little oil. Keep adding oil in small doses until the sauce has reached the consistency you want. Taste, and add more cheese if you like. Serve.

**Which is what I’ve been told the Silver Spoon is. As someone who doesn’t know whether pesto has garlic, I do not claim any authority on the verity of this praise. It certainly is fatter than many a bible I have seen.

Back again

2009-08-24T22:15:00.010+02:00

It has taken me a few days to get readjusted, but here I am, comfortable again with the flat earth around me and the number of people walking it. It feels good to be back, but those mountains? Wow. And the UCB kept me safe, even when a leisurely stroll up a mountain turned into a mud-bathed scramble down when a sudden downpour hit.

Also, the food was pretty much what I had hoped for. Gloriously crusty baguettes, stinky cheese and tomatoes that put a smile on my face. There were meals out, and meals at our tent, and copious amounts of lukewarm coffee. In short, a perfect break. Want a bit more detail? Here you go, a list of most memorable food moments, in no particular order.

Most memorable lunch
After we spent a hot hour and a half climbing Montsegur mountain to see a crumbling fortress, and about the same time coming down again (what can I say? uphill tires me, downhill scares me), we were ready for a large icy drink and crepes. So we sat on a terrace and waited for someone to take our order. And waited some more. And some more.

When the man went to enquire about sustenance, we were directed up a flight of steep stairs, into the stuffy darkness. And we found this:

There were three large dining room tables, a lumpy comfy chair and impressive amounts of ugly art work. Also, there was a communal bowl of cold rice with vinegar and hard-boiled eggs, undercooked omelet with dried mushrooms, greasy fried potatoes. Ooh, and a jug of passable red wine. After we had a bite, took some pictures and eavesdropped on the English tourists who had also been lured upstairs, we were charged 11 Euro per person for the pleasure. That guileless old woman directing us upstairs? Possibly not so guileless.

Most charming shop
Our first official stop on our trip down (after a short night at a camp ground somewhere north of Paris while in transit), we managed to select a camping almost exclusively filled with people from the NL. Run by Dutchies. Aah, the joys of coming from the most travel-crazy country in Europe. But they did have two pet pigs, a private well and this “shop”, selling home-grown vegetables and unpasteurized apple juice:

You could wander in any time of day or night, make your selection, note it in the shop’s account book and wander out again. No need to find cash, just grab your vitamins and go. Needless to say, we stayed an extra night.

Best meal out

Honestly, we didn’t spend that much time in restaurants. We were too busy tiring ourselves with gulping fresh mountain air to plan elaborate meals out. But when another rainy night threatened near the col du Tourmalet, we decided we could use a treat and found a place to eat in the nearest village. The local hotel-restaurant in St Marie de Campan served us a crudite platter with tangy beetroot cubes, grated carrots and salad leaves with a delicious vinaigrette and sweet melon. Then they brought us grilled chops of locally reared lambs with fresh herb butter and crispy thin fries. To finish, there was a mellow local cheese for me and peach soup with apricot ice cream for the man. Gorgeously simple fare to put a smile in our bellies.

Most extreme cooking
I might have let out a scornful little snort when my man pulled a party tent (one of those things that is basically just a roof, to prevent parties from being a wash-out when showers hit) from the trunk. We weren’t going to use something that uncool, obviously. But then rain threatened and we had fresh chorizo to cook. My ego stepped aside and my man built a party tent.

So there we were, smug under our canopy, cooking sausage and discussing how smart the man was for bringing the hideous structure. Unfortunately, that’s when the Pyrenees roared and a huge thunder storm erupted. Complete with unexpected strong gusts of wind and litres of rain. Per minute. The tent stopped helping shortly thereafter. But if you think I would let something as inconsequential as a bit of water come between me and real Spanish chorizo, you have clearly never met me. So I cooked. And then we ate- in the car, wearing rain coats.

Most smile-inducing food discovery

This truck, at 1490 m altitude. There was a beret- wearing Frenchman inside, selling raw milk cheeses from farms in the immediate vicinity. ‘Nuf said.

Away Again

2009-07-31T11:19:00.004+02:00

I'm off to give the U.C.B. a good airing on a French (or Spanish) mountain. In my last-minute, oops-I-forgot-to-put-this-in-the-car bag:

- Cooked garlicky lamb pieces and tabouleh
- Roasted tomatoes
- Chocolate chip lemon muffins
- Two fat Lonely Planet Guides
- Two extra pairs of shoes
- Camera
- Seven things with cords to charge other things
- A Microplane grater

See you after August 17!

Current Cravings

2009-07-23T15:04:00.007+02:00

1. Anchovies

2. Green pea soup with mint

3. Watermelon

Look At Me

2009-07-20T21:45:00.003+02:00

Or rather, look at my blog. Isn't it pretty, with the new banner? Three cheers for the Dad, who made it happen on his spiffy new iMac. Here's the Header-Master himself:

Tanx lots!

Fingers Crossed (herring salad)

2009-07-19T00:08:00.005+02:00

I had quite a good weekend planned. There was going to be dinner with friend L., who lives on a barge with a cool waterside terrace. There was going to be a jaunt in the park with two other friends, H. and R., both of whom I haven’t seen for far too long. There was going to be the purchase of funky hiking boots, F.H.B..

Alas.

First, dinner got cancelled. L’s sister is pregnant and her waters broke, so L. took a trip back home to become an aunt. An AUNT. V. exciting, but the baby isn’t due for another five weeks, so they are hoping it will stick around in the womb for a bit longer. Good thing I have enough time to keep my fingers crossed, what with not having dinner plans and all.

Then H. sent a text message to say we cannot get together because she has to stay indoors for seven days. Someone she spent time with came down with the New Flu and even though she feels fine, she won’t get the all-clear until it has been seven days since their last contact. That means seeing as few people as possible and hoping she hasn’t caught it. More fingercrossing to do for me.

Perhaps I should have paid attention to the signs and leave the boot buying for another day. But no, into town I went. After careful deliberation and much fitting, these were the shoes I picked:

Yup, they’re Ugly. No amount of superstition is going to make these babies a treat to look at. Luckily, they are also Comfortable. So that’s U.C.B. (ugly comfy boots), rather than F.H.B. And that’s okay. I picked them, I am responsible for buying them and I won’t ask for a miraculous shoe make-over. I have one other tiny additional request to fate, though. Will you please allow the U.C.B. to keep me safe when hiking in the Pyrenees two weeks from now?

And that’s enough with the finger-crossing and magic thinking. Time to count my blessings. Sure, I’ve seen two dates disappear into thin air, but at least I am not the one in the hospital, hoping her nephew or niece will stay inside for a little longer. Nor am I cut off from the world, keeping my germs to myself. No, I got to put on my U.C.B. and buy the ingredients for the salad you see up there. It’s got herring, it’s got beets. It has apples, and shallot and eggs and gherkins. It has a creamy dressing and it made me very happy to be right where I was.
Yes, it was quite a good weekend after all.

Herring salad with beets

Serves 1

1 ½ herrings (salty, not sour)
1 beetroot, approximately 150 gr
½ apple, not too sweet
2 gherkins
2 small, hard boiled eggs, yolks removed
1 shallot
1 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp thick, creamy yogurt
½ tsp grated horseradish, optional

Chop the beetroot, the apple, the eggs and the gherkins into roughly evenly sized pieces. Finely mince the shallot and combine with the ingredients you just chopped. Mix the mayonnaise with the yogurt and add the horseradish, if using. Add the dressing to the beetroot mixture.

Cut the herring into small bite-sized pieces. Gently fold into the other ingredients. Serve with thick slices of toasted bread.

Traditionally, this kind of salad would have a few boiled potatoes. I don’t like them, so I left them out, but don’t let that stop you from adding them if you are so inclined.

Me Man, Me Cook Good Food (recipes for my man)

2009-07-16T22:50:00.003+02:00

When it comes to food, my man and I don’t see eye to eye. We both like to eat it, but that is about the extent of the common ground. He will happily gobble up sauce from packets, large chunks of undercooked bell pepper and potatoes dipped in ketchup. I think hot water mixed with powder does not equal food, like my peppers roasted until soft and loathe potatoes. He thinks butter is the root of all evil and the addition of fruit makes most savory dishes better. I believe that salty and sweet are best kept separate and that more butter is better. Perhaps most fundamentally, I feel flavor is the most important thing about food, while he considers it nothing more than a pleasant side-effect of nutrition.

Which would all be fine and dandy if we didn’t share a good few meals per week, and try to do roughly equal amounts of food preparation. (One man-prepared meal to four Laura-prepared meals is an equal division, no?) And while he doesn’t mind eating my food (as long as I go easy on the vinegar), I… am not as kind. Confronted with a pile of raw vegetable chunks floating in grey matter, I have been known to get grumpy. Or even call his cooking unpleasant. Hardly gracious behavior, but there you have it.

And I do feel bad about it, which is why I thought of a solution: I make a list of easy-to-prep foods I like and he chooses from the list when it is his turn to create a meal. I will even go as far as to list only meals that could be considered healthy, to be made with ingredients available at the supermarket. It is genius, I say, and it starts tonight.

First up, three fast pasta dishes. The sauce should be done in approximately the time it takes to boil water for the pasta and there is hardly any chopping involved. If they do get a test drive and look good, I will add pictures.

Pasta with roasted bell pepper sauce

1 jar roasted red peppers
125 ml sour cream or full fat Greek yogurt
2 eggs, optional, as a garnish and source of protein
1 organic smoked chicken breast, optional, as a garnish and source of protein
Enough pasta for two

Start boiling water for the pasta. (Use a large pot so the pasta has room to dance around- it helps with even cooking.) If using the eggs, start boiling water to cook them.

Fish the peppers from the jar and put them in the food mill attachment that comes with the immersion blender. Blitz them for thirty seconds or so and add the sour cream or yogurt (no need to measure the amount- two or three large spoonfuls should do it.) Blitz again until the peppers and dairy form a sauce.

Add the pasta when the water has reached a firm boil and cook for the amount of time the package tells you to. If we’re having eggs, put them in their pan too (after pricking their round ends to let air escape) and boil for seven minutes. Put the pepper sauce in a different small pan and heat gently.

When the eggs are done, run cold water over them and peel them. Chop finely. Alternatively, chop the chicken breast into smallish pieces. (Don’t use both eggs and chicken- it is overkill.)

When the pasta is done, drain and mix with the warm sauce. Divide over two plates and top with eggs or chicken. Serve.

Pasta with artichoke “cream” and pine nuts

1 jar of marinated artichoke hearts (find them near the jars of dried tomatoes, but the cheap supermarket near the station doesn’t have them)
10 pitted green olives
small clove of garlic, peeled
three large spoonfuls of full fat Greek yogurt
3 tbsp pine nuts
enough pasta for two
bag of salad leaves
oil and vinegar to dress leaves

Start boiling water for the pasta. Pasta loves a big pot!

Put the artichokes (minus their oil) in the small food chopper, add the olives and the garlic. Blitz for a minute or so and add the yogurt. Blitz again until thoroughly mixed. It will be a bit chunky, that’s okay.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and boil for the time the package indicates. Toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet until light brown. This should take no more than a few minutes. Take them out of the pan when they’re done, because the residual heat in the pan might burn them.

When the pasta is done, drain and leave to cool a little. Dress the salad leaves to taste. Add the artichoke mixture to the pasta, divide over two plates and sprinkle with the pine nuts. Serve, with the salad on the side.

Pasta with tuna-leek-sauce

Adapted from an idea by Jeroen

1 can of tuna (please get the Fishes albacore tuna, in the cardboard package)
2 medium leeks
glug of olive oil
125 ml crème fraiche
1 tbsp of capers, optional
enough pasta for two

Start boiling a large pot of water for the pasta.

Cut the leeks in half along their length and rinse thoroughly. Slice the white and light green parts into thin slices (thin really is better than thick here). Heat the oil in a deep skillet and add the leek. Cook over medium heat until tender.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until done. When there are about five minutes of cooking time left, add the tuna to the leeks, break up and heat gently. Then add the crème fraiche and capers (if using), mix thoroughly and heat gently for one or two more minutes. Turn the heat down low to keep the sauce warm.

Drain the pasta and divide over two plates. Top with the sauce. Serve.

Rainy Summer, Happy Soup (Pea soup with mint and yogurt)

2009-07-14T22:42:00.005+02:00

When I left the house this morning, it was pouring. I covered myself with a bright yellow cape, pulled the hood tightly around my face and draped the fabric over my bike before taking off. On the way to the station, people kept throwing smiles my way. Frankly, I was surprised at their good cheer in such crap weather. That is, until I got a good look at myself in a shop window and noticed I looked like a large yellow egg. With a hat and wheels. Yeah, maybe there were fewer naturally cheery souls around that morning than I thought.

Oh well. This weather does have its upsides. It is, in my mom’s words, “growthly weather”. Meaning that plants love the muggy wetness and bouts of sunshine and are falling over themselves to get bigger. Sometimes literally:

The purple basil has toppled over

And that means lots of herby loveliness to cook with. Generous handfuls of oregano in my Greek salad, piles of green and purple basil for raw tomato sauce and plenty of mint for fresh pea soup.

The craving for this soup was inspired by Nigella Lawson, as is so often true for me. In Forever Summer she talks about a cold pea soup with mint, calling it a “lovely, fresh and soothing emulsion”. Makes you hungry, doesn’t it? Going whole hog with the recipe seemed like too much of an effort for a quick after-work bowlful, especially the bit where you have to wait for the soup to be thoroughly cold. Not happening when I am on the prowl for a snack to stop my stomach from growling. I am happy to report, though, that the soup is mighty tasty even in my adapted version.

Almost as happy as the people who saw a giant yellow egg hurtling past them this morning.

Pea soup with mint and yogurt

Serves 2

250 gr of peas (fresh or frozen)
1 shallot, finely minced
glug of olive oil
500 ml water
generous pinch of salt
1 handful of fresh mint leaves
2 large scoops creamy yogurt

Heat the olive oil in a medium sauce pan, and add the shallot when hot. Spin the pieces around in the pan a couple of times, until they have softened a bit. Add the peas, mix with the shallot pieces and add the water. Cover the pan and bring the water to a gentle boil. Cook for about 20-25 minutes or until peas are soft. Leave to cool slightly, then add mint leaves and blitz with an immersion blender until smooth. Taste, add salt, blitz again and repeat until it has enough salt.

Transfer to two bowls and cool to as least tepid before adding a scoop of yogurt to each bowl. Serve. (This tastes even better cold, so do chill before eating if you have the patience.)

Bits of Egg (Scrambled Eggs)

2009-07-07T21:38:00.003+02:00

You cannot cook an egg by putting it in the coals of a barbecue. Or maybe you can, but leaving it for too long will result in an impressive explosion. This I discovered when a friend got experimental and another friend was doused with hot bits of egg, several just missing her eye. Good times at the camp ground.

When you properly cook an egg, however, you can end up with this lovely goodness:

I am guessing you don’t need a recipe to scramble some eggs. But a neat trick always comes in handy, no? My trick for a luscious scramble is to mix the eggs with water. Quite un-obviously this makes them creamier than even full-fat milk. After that, I cook them gently in a thick-bottomed skillet and turn of the gas when they are still fairly moist. A few seconds in the hot pan off the fire, and presto: lovely bits of egg.

Also, a good trick is to not cook them on the barbecue. I’m just sayin’.

Month of Mayhem

2009-06-28T21:36:00.003+02:00

It has been a bit of a month. My inbox has gone from restrained taunting to loud chastising. “Your inbox has reached its size limit.” And when I ignore it, it gets seriously nasty, blocking me from doing anything until I delete at least half of the messages clogging its insides. It’s not just the inbox either: every To Do list I keep has spontaneously multiplying pages, my left and right knees take turns protesting any exercise more strenuous than climbing the stairs to my house and the state of that house... Well, let’s not go there. Do you know that show where two formidable ladies deep clean someone’s place and then bullock them about what a pissy job they had been doing of keeping it respectable? I don’t want them to know about me.

Also, my man nearly died. Or that’s what I thought, anyway, when I had him on the phone from Indonesia, gasping that he was sick, that he didn’t know where he was and that someone was going to help him. Naturally, images of him in a remote hospital full of shamanic healers performing blood-letting ceremonies flashed before my eyes and it was all I could do not to jump on the next plane to Jakarta. The only thing stopping me was that he wasn’t likely to be anywhere near Jakarta and Indonesia is a large country if you are trying to find someone in an unknown hospital in an unknown location. Mercifully, I learned quite quickly that the healers weren’t as much shamanic as fully qualified in Western medicine and treatments in a high-tech decompression chamber were the rituals of their choice. Still, I had a good few uneasy days until he was back in the NL and I could see for myself that he was alive and well.

But now my man is home safe, the academic year is drawing to a close (meaning there is serious one-on-one time on the horizon for my inbox and me while the professors take a break and stop creating work for me for two months or so) and I even vacuumed my floor this morning. It is high time I dust off the keyboard, too, and share some recipes with you. Which I will, starting Tuesday. Come visit me then?

Sunny Day Pasta (Pasta with asparagus, feta, onion, lemon)

2009-05-24T21:36:00.003+02:00

This is for days when you come home with a pink nose from the sun. For when you’ve been riding your bike, or lounging around on a terrace. It is for days with ice-cream cones and chats with friends. For the end of a warm afternoon reading the papers or a juicy book. It is for days like today.

Asparagus, feta, lemon and onion pasta

Serves 1

200 gr slim green asparagus
1 large red onion
25 gr feta
zest of half a lemon
1 tbsp lemon juice
large handful basil leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
a short pasta shape, enough for one person

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.

Peel the onion and slice it into slim wedges. Crumble the feta.

Heat the oil until warm. Add the onions and lower the heat. Cook until soft.

Wash the asparagus and snap off the woody ends of the stems. Slice each stalk in 3 cm lengths. Separate the tips and the other pieces.

Add the pasta to the water when it boils and set the timer for three minutes less than you would to fully cook the pasta. When the timer sounds, add the asparagus pieces, but not the tips. Set the timer for two minutes and add the tips when it sounds. Boil for one more minute and drain the pan. (If the simultaneous timing makes you nervous or you are not sure your asparagus are slim enough to be done in three minutes, cook the asparagus separately until they are tender but still firm.)

Leave the pasta and asparagues to cool for a minute or two. Add the softened onions, the feta and the lemon zest and juice. Mix thoroughly. Chop the basil into fine ribbons and add them too. Serve.

Regaining Control (Fresh Tomato Risotto)

2009-05-19T22:09:00.006+02:00

My e-mail inbox is taunting me. Every day I go into the office determined to empty it. Answer the messages that need answering, toss the rest. Sometimes I get as far as dwindling down the unanswered pile to 20 messages or so, and the overall mess to under 100. Then I leave for an hour and *bam* - the screen is filled with bold-face e-mails jostling for my attention.

“Neh-neh-neh-neh-neh, you can’t get rid of us. Neh-neh-neh-neh-neeeeeeh.”

Okay, the noise is in my head, but the bizarrely quick procreation of these buggers surely isn’t. So the battle resumes. If I’m lucky, I leave the office with as many messages in my inbox as when I came in. And while it is nice to be needed, it is also a tad intimidating to see my inbox spiral out of control.

After a day of battle, I want something to remedy the madness. Calm, simple food that takes little effort and does exactly what it is supposed to do. No jeering from my pans or oven, no inexplicable multiplication. I have found that risotto is a perfect answer to these demands. I skip the stirring and just boil the rice with the amount of broth the package tells me to. The rice plumps up from the liquid, but in a desirable rather than an uncontrollable way. Twenty minutes later, I have a pot full of soft, luscious food that only needs some flavorings to make a great meal.

Tonight I mixed in a quick fresh tomato sauce with lots of garlic for a clean, upbeat taste. I added slices of olive for punch and topped it with a fried egg for kicks. The latter wasn’t such a great idea: the yolk added a good extra creaminess, but the white didn’t bring anything. No matter, though. There are so many other toppings that would complement the base. Slices of fresh mozzarella, chunks of creamy gorgonzola or shards of salty parmesan. White fish fillet, finely chopped anchovies or squid rings. Crispy bacon bits, smoked chicken or beef strips…

Yeah.

‘Cause I need more endless lists.

Fresh tomato risotto

Serves 1

75 gr risotto rice
1 shallot, finely diced
olive oil
250 ml hot chicken broth
200 gr cherry tomatoes (regular tomatoes work too)
2 cloves garlic, minced
toppings to taste

Heat a glug of olive oil in a thick-bottomed sauce pan. Add the shallots when the oil is warm, and cook until they are translucent. Add the rice, stir until all rice has a film of oil and cook until most of the grains are translucent. Add 180 ml of broth, lower the heat and cover the pan. Simmer for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, halve the cherry tomatoes or chop the tomatoes in roughly evenly sized pieces. Heat a second glug of olive oil in a second small pan and add the garlic. Cook for a few seconds until it loses its rawness. Add the chopped tomatoes and heat gently. Simmer until the rice is done and the tomatoes have mostly disintegrated into a chunky sauce.

Taste the rice after ten minutes. The rice probably isn’t done yet- add more broth to prevent it from drying out and sticking to the pan and cook until the rice is tender (it usually takes about 20 min for me). Add the tomato sauce and mix thoroughly (you can remove the tomato skins if you like, but I never bother). Cover the pan and leave to stand for five minutes or so. Mix in toppings, if using. Turn out onto a warmed plate and top with more additions, if you like. Serve hot.

To Market: Dappermarkt

2009-05-16T17:59:00.001+02:00

One of the best things about my house is the food shopping in its vicinity. There are Middle-Eastern supermarkets with gorgeous, cheap produce, there are bakeries with turn-over so high bread gets sold straight from the oven, there are three different fish mongers, and a small but well-assorted eco-store. And there is the market, where I bought the bounty you see up there.

When I bought my house, I spent about a year looking for a place in the right neighborhood, in the right building and for the right price. It had to be close to the city center, with neighbors who weren’t as cookie cutter similar to each other as in my old neighborhood, and the building couldn’t be built after 1930. I looked, and I looked and I looked. And looked some more, before I admitted something had to give, because it just wasn’t happening. Three months later, I bought a shoe-box sized apartment in one of the ugliest 1980’s buildings on the street, right next to the railroad tracks.

I think of it as an excellent deal in disguise. I don’t have to look at my ugly building when I am home and its 1986 vintage means the walls run perpendicular and the plumbing and electricity work faultlessly. The tracks mean I have no buildings opposite me, so light floods my shoe box. What’s more, the house may be small but it has a large(-ish) balcony facing west, so I can sit outside in the evening quite a few months of the year.

And there’s the food shopping, of course. The market around the corner isn’t just any market: it has been voted best market in the Netherlands for two years out of the past three. (Nope, I don’t know who voted. But hey, someone thought it was the best.) There are a few too many stalls selling cheap socks, discount shampoo or ugly synthetic clothing for my liking, but to each their own. And there’s plenty for me too: There are excellent produce guys, one specializing I potatoes and onions alone- oh, how his displays makes me wish I liked spuds. There is fresh fish, and chicken and popcorn. There is a guy baking caramel waffles and boiling fresh corn on the cob. One of my favorites is the Moroccan-owned olive stall, where the salty globes wink at you in a dizzying array of sizes and colors. And there’s a “Farmer Piet” stand, that puts a big grin on my face by selling large hunks of luscious cheese.

Oh, and your sells get wrapped up in these:

Gotta love the market.

Food from Far

2009-05-14T21:36:00.002+02:00

Basket with peppers, Xian, China

Broccoli with Benefits (broccoli salad with bacon and raisins)

2009-05-12T22:23:00.003+02:00

My man is hiding behind the curtains. More accurately, he is blocked from my view by the curtains because he is outside. Not just hiding behind the curtains, but sitting on the other side of double pane glass, shivering behind a stack of papers. He was working and “Samantha Who” on the television was bothering him. So he settled on the balcony in seven-degree cold.

I offered to switch off the TV, but he has bouts of chivalry over odd things. Christina Applegate with no memory turns out to be one of them. Good thing then, that I made us broccoli salad tonight. I am sure his immune system appreciated the help from the brassica goodness.

While it is a lovely bonus, being healthy is not enough for a salad to make it onto my dinner rotation. Especially not if it has broccoli. Luckily for my man’s immune system, I have a friend who knows how to make nearly anything palatable. And while her tricks usually include lashings of butter, big globs of mayonnaise or generous amounts of cheese, the one she uses for broccoli is more friendly on the arteries. It has a modest helping of bacon bits and some raisins and makes broccoli taste seriously good. Okay, so it also has lots of mayonnaise, but you can replace most of that with yogurt without comprising the taste.

Tonight, I combined my friend’s tricks with a SmittenKitchen idea of using tangy dressing with onions on raw broccoli. And the mix worked, if I do say so myself. You get salty, you get sweet, you get tangy and you get crunchy, all while munching through an impressive dose of vitamins and minerals.

Bring on the seven degrees. On my man, that is.

Broccoli Salad

Serves 2

500 gr broccoli, florets and stem
100 gr bacon bits
handful of plump raisins
1/3 cup mild yogurt
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp onion, finely chopped

Wash the broccoli and peel the stem. Slice the broccoli as finely as you can (using a knife, a mandoline or food processor).

Fry the bacon bits until they are mostly crispy, but with a soft bite.

Combine the yogurt with the mayonnaise and the onion. Season with salt and pepper to taste (keep in mind the saltiness of the bacon).

Put the broccoli in a bowl with the fried bacon bits, the raisins and the dressing. Toss gently until thoroughly combined.

Strawberry Love

2009-05-11T21:56:00.007+02:00

Things I love about strawberries

· They smell of summer. Just one whiff, and I am in my sun lounger, shaded by a large parasol, sipping a cold drink. In my mind. Because strawberries are not teletransporters.
· They form the base for the quickest, most elegant dessert I know: washed, hulled, quartered strawberries macerated in sugar and balsamic vinegar.
· They make a lusciously refreshing lunch, spread over fresh white bread covered in real butter.
· They look downright festive in a glass of sparkling wine.
· They’re here!

What do you love?

P.S. For the parents:

No three-star chef

2009-05-08T22:30:00.003+02:00

Tonight I joined this list of healthy goodness into dinner:

Fava beans
Fennel
Bacon bits
Lemon juice
Extra-virgin olive oil
Wild Alaska salmon

Made it look like this:

And then got this reaction from my man:

“Uhm… so, this is really healthy, right?” After which he ate the fish, pushed the rest of the food aside and filled himself up with butter-slathered bread. What's worse, he had a point.

Right. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go have a rather large piece of chocolate.

Slinky Shrooms (grilled oyster mushrooms with garlic and vinegar)

2009-05-07T22:07:00.007+02:00

Grace is not my middle name. My movements have no flow or ease to them. I have stumbled over more doorsteps than I care to remember, I am intimately familiar with numerous sidewalks from slamming into them face first and once I ended up with my right leg stuck inside a Cuban sewage pipe. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I nearly launched myself into a pile a of bricks this evening. And I wasn’t, but it still came as a bit of a blow to the ego that the only thing between me and a bloody face was the sand that slowed my frantic stumble.

When I got home, I needed graceful food to even the balance. The gazpacho I was planning to have was bumped off the menu. It was chunky and destined to leave big red blotches on my white shirt. Instead, I decided on setas a la plancha. Setas a la plancha. Doesn’t that sound supremely graceful? And its English translation, “grilled oyster mushrooms”, is almost as charming.

What first attracted me to this recipe weeks ago is the technique used to cook the mushrooms. You toss them in seasoned oil and then fry them at high heat on one side only. I was intrigued. Would they taste differently if only one side got direct heat? But it took this long to make them because the recipe also intimidated me. It calls for expensive, high-quality sherry vinegar to dress the mushrooms after frying. My most expensive vinegar cost a few Euro’s in a French supermarket and it is fake balsamic vinegar. Probably not what they mean by “good quality Spanish vinegar”. When I got home this evening, I didn’t care anymore. I wanted a touch of elegance and if it had to come from a humble place, then so be it.

Good call. The mushrooms are easy to prepare, and ready in under fifteen minutes. They look elegant and taste great, even with the lowly French vinegar. A bit smoky from the high heat, intense from the garlic, lively from the vinegar and smooth with the olive oil. I am not planning on making a routine out of semi-embarrassing myself in front of my neighbors, but if I get a plate of these every time I do, I might learn to appreciate my lack of grace more.

Setas a la Plancha, Humbly

Adapted from Moro London, Sam and Sam Clark, via Het Parool

Serves 4

500 gr oyster mushrooms
salt and pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
2-4 tsp vinegar (sherry or red wine vinegar)
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped just before use
½ tsp dried oregano

Cut any thick stems from the mushrooms. Tear them in half if they have grown into a tube shape so most of the spore sides can touch the pan later. Mix three tbsp of oil with salt and pepper to taste and toss the mushrooms gently with the mixture.

Heat a thick-bottomed skillet until very hot. Add a single layer of mushrooms, spore side down. Softly press down the mushrooms and cook until the bottom is nicely browned. Transfer to a bowl and cook the rest of the mushrooms in the same way. When all the mushrooms have been fried, mix them with the rest of the oil, the vinegar, the garlic and the oregano. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Amsterdam Food

2009-05-06T21:23:00.003+02:00

Sign advertising coconut cake.

I think my local baker's is looking forward to the summer.

Waffles to Celebrate (yogurt waffles)

2009-05-05T12:38:00.007+02:00

Put your hands up in the air. Higher. Higher. All the way over your head.

Slap a big smile smile on your face.

Excellent. Now wave those hands from side to side. Put some swing in it.

You know what, why don’t you add a little butt-motion? Shake it, baby. Shake, shake, shake, shake it!

And you’re doing a happy dance. Yay. I love it.

If yesterday was a day for being still and remembering, today is a day for celebrating, for feeling down to our toes that we are alive. Alive! ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Festive days need festive breakfasts, methinks. Sure, a slice of bread with peanut butter is nutritious and will fill you up. But will it put a smile on your face? Like one of these would?

I had this beauty a few weeks ago to celebrate the start of the long Easter weekend. It was crispy on the outside, airy on the inside and perfectly sweet. Covered in powdered sugar and whipped cream, it was the waffle of my dreams.

Another one was called for to start today off right. Unfortunately, I live about 100 km away from waffle perfection, and while I will do silly things for food, traveling an hour and a half for a waffle is not one of them. Which is where my favorite food blog comes in: SmittenKitchen. Deb always seems to have the perfect recipe for whatever I want to eat, and today was no exception. Well, except for one thing, but she was honest about it. My dream waffle was crunchy and she told me this waffle was going to be ever-so-subtly crisped. Still, subtly crisped and fresh from my waffle iron seemed mighty good to me.

So, out came the yoghurt, the flour, the sugar, the butter, the… wow, one needs a lot of things to make waffles. Look at this shot, of my counter top right before I added the batter components together.

That’s a lot of dishes. Luckily, the end result was worth it.

Deb was right: the outsides were gently crisped and the insides were soft. Topped with a glug of maple syrup, every bite made my taste buds smile.

Now give that butt one more shake, to celebrate the yogurt waffle.

Asparagus to remember (asparagus with soft onions)

2009-05-04T22:34:00.005+02:00

Today is the fourth of May. A day to honor those we have lost in war. Today we realise we are lucky to be where we are and that it isn’t self-evident, that it has taken hard work and pain to get here. Hopefully, that message sinks in and we do something with it.

Big words, but I don’t know where to let them take me. I am not brave, I don’t fight and, well, I don’t have a clue. Heck, I couldn’t even think of something appropriate to cook for today. What do you eat when you are supposed to be still and thoughtful, sobered by what has gone before? I thought of eating dry bread accompanied by a glass of water, but then I laughed at myself. I tried to think of black foods to eat, but felt that pasta with squid in its own ink would be dramatic rather than sober. And then my current affection for asparagus stirred and I decided the tall white stems would be dinner.

Asparagus are not the obvious solemn food. They happily whisper of spring and new beginnings. They sing “enjoy me now, we’re precious”. Around for a short time only, you cannot afford to dither or they will be gone before you get around to them. And maybe that is what this day is about, for the moment. About being here, today, and realising just how precious that is.

Asparagus with Soft Onions

Serves one, easily multiplied

1 small bunch of white asparagus, about 300 gr
1 large onion, sliced into thick half moons
2 tbsp olive oil + 1 tbsp for serving
1 egg

Thoroughly peel the asparagus, taking care to remove the stringy outer skin from the whole length of the stem, starting from just below the bulbous tip. Cook until tender but still firm (in a pan of water, over steam or in the microwave, with just enough water to cover the stems; start checking for doneness after ten minutes whatever method you use).

In the mean time, boil the egg to your liking. I like the yolk to be just a little runny and the white to be cooked through, so I boil a medium egg for about six minutes after I drop it in rapidly boiling water. Also heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil in a heavy skillet and add the onions. Fry them until they are soft and light brown.

When the asparagus are done, put them in a shallow bowl or arrange them on a plate. Sprinkle with a tbsp of olive oil and toss them gently to give them a glossy sheen. Finely dice the egg. Spread over the top of the asparagus, and sprinkle with salt. Layer the fried onions on top. Enjoy hot or warm.

Dip Quickly (bagna cauda)

2009-05-03T21:12:00.002+02:00

Dip, dip, dipdipdip. Dipdipdipdipdip.

You will have to dip quickly to keep this slippery stuff on your vegetables. A mixture of oil, anchovies, garlic and butter is bound to slide right off your dipping vessel. But if you’re quick enough, it will slide right into your mouth and it will be so worth it.

Much more than the sum of its parts, this mixture of pungent ingredients becomes silky and luxurious when heated, a wonderful dip for vegetables. Through some sort of secret process, or perhaps magic, it transforms Belgian endive into a sweeter version of itself and gives grilled zucchini a lush loveliness you would never suspect it can possess. I imagine it would be lovely with lightly steamed broccoli as well, and in combination with green asparagus… my salivary glands start working overtime at the mere thought.

Happy quick dipping!

Bagna Cauda

This is not an exact recipe- with something this intense, you will want to adjust proportions to your own liking. I will give the amounts I used for a dinner for one, though, to give you an idea of where to start.

Serves one, easily multiplied

Based on Nigella Bites

4 tbsp olive oil
6 anchovies packed in oil, drained
2 cloves of garlic, minced
knob of cold butter, about 2 tbsp

Gently heat the olive oil in a small saucepan. There should be enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. If not, add more. Add the garlic and the anchovies and continue heating gently, stirring regularly until the anchovies have “dissolved” in the hot oil. Then remove the pan from the heat and add the cold butter. Whisk until the butter is fully incorporated and the mixture has thickened slightly. Taste, and add more butter if you like, then whisk again.

Serve with leaves of Belgian endive, strips of grilled zucchini or other vegetables with a bite. Keep warm if possible and dip quickly.

Homey Cookies (oatmeal raisin cookies)

2009-04-20T22:12:00.004+02:00

I am a sucker for advertising. Sell me a bottle of water for 15 cents and I think it is reasonable. Slap a nice label on a snazzily designed bottle of the same water and I will happily pay ten times that price and walk away thinking I got a good deal. I suppose it is the same mechanism (albeit in the opposite direction) that gives me sticker fever.

Another branch off that same tree is the warm, fuzzy, back-to-childhood feeling I get about certain foods, even if they’re relative newcomers in my life. It doesn’t matter that turkey never featured on our Christmas dinner table growing up; I have seen so many American tv Christmas dinners, read references to Christmas turkey and heard about big bird Christmas adventures so often they feel like my heritage, too. I want a good old-fashioned trussed turkey for Christmas, even if it is the first time!

The same thing has happened between me and oatmeal-raisin cookies. I don’t remember ever eating one as a kid. I remember fantastic homemade butter cookies with a whole hazelnut on top. I remember fresh apple pie and, boy, do I remember individual sponge cakes with fluorescent pink frosting. But oatmeal-raisin cookies? Nope. Still, I have come to a point where I firmly associate these cookies with home, coziness and long afternoons running through flowery fields. I grew up in a house where the closest field of flowers was… not somewhere I ever got to. No matter, the feeling is there and sometimes I like to milk it for all it is worth.

Which is why I baked oatmeal-raisin cookies when I wanted to make a friend feel welcome this weekend. And to give the cookies that extra-homey touch, I added a good pinch of cinnamon. They were crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and very cozy indeed. The recipe comes from Cooking With Friends; I halved it, substituted vanilla sugar for the granulated sugar, omitted the vanilla extract and dialed down the amount of salt and raisins. The original can be found here, among other places, my version is below.

Oh, and for the drink pairing to make this my second koek en zopie entry? What else than a glass of cold milk? Another thing I didn’t do in my childhood (we had tea with our cookies), but that seems so right now: milk and cookies.

Oatmeal-raisin cookies

Based on Cooking with Friends

Makes about 15

90 gr butter, softened
80 gr firmly packed light brown sugar
65 gr vanilla sugar (not the synthetic stuff from small packets)
1 small egg
85 gr rolled oats
80 gr plain flour
scant 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
scant 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
large pinch of cinnamon
handful raisins

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until well combined.
In a separate bowl, combine oats, flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Mix into butter mixture until just combined. Stir in raisins.

Form the dough into small golf ball-sized orbs and flatten onto a baking sheet covered with a silicone mat. Leave quite a bit of room between the disks to allow for spreading.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then continue cooling on a rack.

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onion

2009-04-19T22:06:00.006+02:00

In a perfect world, every Sunday morning would start with a clean house and a few racks of cookies cooling on the counter. The smell of baked goods wafting through the rooms, mixed with a whiff of lemony cleaning fluid every now and again. I would potter around, reading the papers, sitting in the sun. Then, after I finished the papers and had plenty of time to take a refreshing shower, one or more friends would come over to share the cookies with me.

In the real world, I spent this whole Sunday morning running around my apartment like a madwoman, clearing away weeks’ worth of stuff strewn about, sloshing blue chemicals around the toilet bowl and bumping into things with the vacuum cleaner. The sun was shining, but I had no time to do something as frivolous as sit down, because there were counter tops to clean and a floor to scrub. By studiously ignoring yesterday’s unread papers, I managed to get the place presentable, and even bake some cookies, before a friend and her little girl were due. Like every good guest, she was a little late, so I dragged myself out onto the balcony for a breather.

Forty minutes later, I was getting worried. I had applied the mascara I didn’t think I’d have time for, read three chapters in a truly fluffy (but oh so entertaining) book and even changed my outfit. Still, my friend had yet to arrive. So I checked my planner and discovered I needn’t have risked slipping a disk to get the floor ready in time, because we had agreed to meet an hour later than I thought. Right.

Well, I had a clean house and a plate of cookies (plus an excellent time with the two beautiful women who came to visit). It was just half a day later, and in more haste, than in a perfect world. Although, if I’m honest, the cookies and cleanliness probably felt even better for the hard work I’d put into them. Also, it made for a great excuse later in the day, when it was time for dinner, I wanted something delicious, but did not feel like braising the red cabbage I’d bought. It just seemed like too much hassle.

As you might know by now, this is perfectly normal Sunday evening behavior around these here parts. Only this time, I had an excuse so I felt completely justified ringing the pizza guy to bring me a warm pie. Except, I didn’t feel like having pizza. Unusual, but given the suspected number of calories in the feta-egg pizza I have been enjoying, I welcomed the feeling. This did mean, however, that I had no plan for dinner. That is, until I looked at my provisions and added up a can of tomatoes, an onion, a chunk of butter and a few handfuls of dried pasta into the pasta with tomato sauce Molly wrote about over at Orangette a few years ago.

The sauce is ridiculously easy to make. You put a few tablespoons of butter, a peeled and halved onion and a can of tomatoes in a pan, heat the lot and let it simmer for 45 minutes. It is even easier than calling for a pizza, and quicker too, if you are in my part of town. But that’s not the best bit. The best bit is the incredible flavor you get for so little effort. The sauce is rich, earthy and sexy. If that’s possible. It is comforting and uplifting at the same time and makes for a mighty fine ending to a good Sunday.

Amsterdam Food

2009-04-14T22:11:00.003+02:00

Pigeons having a snack put out by one of my neighbors

Testing the Waters (Quinoa with chicken and avocado)

2009-04-13T22:21:00.004+02:00

Hi, I’m back. Did you miss me?

So it’s been a while, and I thought it might be a good idea to ease us both back in gently. Although I really cannot judge your state of mind, so I should be honest and tell you that I need a bit of kiddie-splash-pool time before diving in the deep end again.

Cooking has been slow in my kitchen recently. Meals have been easy and baking has been non-existent. However, there is good news because from sheer laziness this lovely salad-like dish was born. It is tasty, quick and even moderately healthy. Let me share with you, for when you’re in need of a bit of kiddie-splash-pool time.

Quinoa with chicken and avocado

Serves 1, easily multiplied

2 cups of quinoa, cooked (about 1 cup of uncooked quinoa)
1 avocado
1 small smoked chicken breast
1 handful of cherry tomatoes, halved (optional)
¼ cup yogurt (preferably Greek style or another thick kind)
handful of basil leaves, crushed finely (or use a squeeze of basil paste from a tube if you’re feeling extra lazy)
1 small clove of garlic, minced

Mix the yogurt with the basil and garlic. Cut the chicken into small pieces and the avocado into largish chunks. Mix the quinoa with the flavored yogurt and then gently fold in the chicken, the avocado and the tomatoes if you’re using them. Stick in a spoon and eat.

Spring Has Sprung (carrot salad)

2009-03-31T21:56:00.005+02:00

I work at a university, so I expect to hear some stuff in the workplace that does not normally feature during an office day. I don’t bat an eyelash when I overhear a bragging session about copious amounts of alcohol consumed on a Tuesday night. Teary conversations about how, exactly, “that bastard dumped me” don’t register on my radar anymore. And complaints of “I haven’t been able to do laundry in three weeks” just make me giggle. But today, I was faced with a case of Too Much Information, Entirely.

The local student paper does a piece every week called Cute Couple. Two people are interviewed about their relationship and things they like about each other. You get useless, but entertaining, information like “I love her blue eyes” and “he makes great omelettes”. Apparently, someone thought this was boring and decided to spice things up. This week, they added the question “what’s your favourite sexual position?”.

They answered. For all their colleagues/ fellow students to read.

Seriously.

Much more pleasingly, spring was also announced by students today. When I stepped out of the building during lunch break, there they were. Spread all over the grass, soaking up the rays. Feeble rays, admittedly, but a sure sign of spring nonetheless. Finally. And what better way to celebrate the onset of spring than with a salad? So I give you: carrot salad.

Like all grated carrot salads, this is easy going. You grate a few carrots (just two large carrots gave me the bowl you see above) and mix them with a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. Toss in a good sprinkling of poppy seeds and a handful of raisins. Et voila: carrot salad. No exact directions necessary, but please don’t skip the poppy seeds. They give the mixture that festive crunch perfect for celebrating spring.

Amsterdam Food

2009-03-24T23:01:00.004+01:00

From the side:

And from the front:

Kaaskamer van Amsterdam (Amsterdam's Cheese Room), Runstraat, Negen Straatjes (Nine Streets, Jordaan neighborhood)

Microwave bacon

2009-03-23T23:07:00.005+01:00

A girl on the bus this afternoon, quite loudly while the rest of her conversation with friends had been hushed: “Well, obviously she is a lesbian.” And obviously the rest of the bus chose that exact moment to pause its conversations. The now-bright-red girl: “Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.”

Ah, the joys of putting your foot in it publicly. I sympathize- I am about to talk about something considered shocking by quite a few people. Well, my man anyway, but I am inclined to think he is not alone. What is this shocking thing, you ask? Why, it is love for bacon. Crispy bacon, to be exact.

I’ve tried being a vegetarian a few times, but failed each time. I do not eat that much meat, but cannot stand the idea of never eating certain meaty treats again. One of my strongest ties to the carnivorous world is streaky bacon, cooked for so long that the fat crackles between my teeth when I bite into it. I like it on sandwiches, in salads and pastas and love it on its own. There is one drawback, though. (Well, two if you count the high saturated fat count, but sometimes it is worth it for a mouthful of salty perfection.) The smell of cooking bacon, no matter how delicious when you are anxiously awaiting your first bite, is far less compelling when it lingers in your house two days later. And linger it does.

Fortunately, there is a quick and easy way to cook bacon that does away with the problem. Would you like to know the secret? Go on, you know you do.

Here, I’ll tell you: a microwave oven and some baking parchment. You put the bacon on a sheet of baking parchment (I’ve put mine in a special “crisping pan” in the picture, but you don’t need to- it is handy to keep melted fat from getting everywhere, though), put it in the microwave and blast it for a few minutes at high power. Check for doneness and keep cooking in spurts of one or two minutes until the bacon is done to your liking. It takes about seven minutes in my oven to reach a perfect, crispy golden brown. Quicker than frying it in a pan, and far less chance of charring it to oblivion.

You’re welcome. Just let me know next time you need me to share a foolproof, hot and salty trick with you.

Chocolate Cloud Cake

2009-03-22T18:29:00.005+01:00

The first thing my brother said when he stepped into my house for dinner the other week was “Hey, a collapsed cake”. The very first- no “hello, how are ya”, no “good to see you”, just the observation. He’s such a charmer, that one.

It’s not really his fault: Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Cloud Cake is an attention grabber. Fresh out of the oven it looks like a regular chocolate cake. It is a bit cracked on top, but nothing out of the ordinary. As time passes, however, the crack spreads and deepens, eventually taking with it the entire top of the cake as it sinks several centimeters. The outer edge of the cake is left standing, so what you end up with is a bowl made out of chocolate cake.

A lesser person might have been disappointed if they had created a cake that sinks, every single time. Not Nigella. Instead, she filled it with softly whipped cream and called it a chocolate cloud cake. Genius, I say.

I am sure you will agree with me she’s a genius after you make this. The cake has an intense chocolate flavor but isn’t dense or heavy like many of its siblings. The whipped cream topping (spiked with a bit of yogurt in my version in a feeble nod to my arterial health) is a perfect complement, saving you from chocolate overdose so you can keep eating. Because you will want to keep eating- it is that good.

As if that weren’t enough, this cake is astoundingly easy to make too. The only possibly intimidating step, the whipping of egg whites (or is it just me who lives in fear of non-stiffening whites?) is made foolproof by the admonition to whip them until they hold their shape but are not stiff. Ha! Whipped whites that don’t require that test where you hold a bowl of eggy peaks over your head to test their stiffness. Or are you not supposed to take that seriously?

Left-overs of this beauty keep pretty well in the fridge. They lose their ethereal lightness, but gain a pleasant fudginess. Probably not a great dessert for a dinner party, but excellent as a tea-time treat or breakfast. (Not that I eat chocolate cake for breakfast, of course. I am just guessing. Or not…)

Chocolate cloud cake

Adapted slightly from Nigella Bites, Nigella Lawson

Serves 8-10

250 gr dark chocolate
125 gr unsalted butter, softened and cut into cubes
6 eggs: 2 whole, 4 separated
175 gr caster sugar
23 cm springform cake tin
250 ml whipped cream
150 ml Greek yogurt

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment (I use re-usable silicone baking paper).

Melt the chocolate in the microwave (start with two minutes at 600 W, stir, leave to stand for a bit, stir again and see if it needs another microwave blast). Mix in the butter until melted.

Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75 gr of the caster sugar, then gently add the chocolate mixture.

In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add the 100 gr of sugar and whisk until the whites hold their shape but are not too stiff.

Mix a dollop of egg whites into the chocolate, and then fold in the rest of the whites. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35–40 minutes or until the cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly. Cool the cake in its tin on a wire rack.

When you are ready to eat, place the cake on a cake stand or plate for serving while it is still in its tin and carefully remove the tin. Mix the whipped cream with the yogurt and whip some more until the mixture is firm.

Fill the crater of the cake with the yogurty whipped cream, gently swirling your spoon or spatula to create alluring waves

A sign?

2009-03-17T22:07:00.003+01:00

Meet the sausage sandwich I had for lunch some time last week. Me eating smoked sausage is a true sign of winter. It happens once in a blue moon, and only if it is really cold. So it isn't a particularly good sign that I had this in the second week of March.

A far better sign: today I caught a whiff of strawberry- it was probably perfume, but my oh my, did it transport me to summer. Could this be a sign of warm weather to come? Please?

Food from Far

2009-03-13T11:13:00.001+01:00

Injera, Habesha restaurant, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Burgers Rule (chicken burgers)

2009-03-09T22:34:00.004+01:00

People around me seem to think burgers are unhealthy. Something you eat when you’re on the road and the only food options for miles around is a drive-thru, but not something you would choose to serve at home. I say they are wrong: burgers rule. With bread for carbohydrates, meat for protein and onions for vegetables (what? they are vegetables- and you could even add tomatoes, pickles, lettuce for extra health) they are a complete meal. They’re easy to make and even easier to eat (who doesn’t love a portable meal?).

Plus, and this is the big seller in my book, you can do all sorts of tasty variations and surprise yourself with how well your kitchen experiments can work. Who wants finicky pasta sauces that taste funny with the smallest odd ingredient, risottos you can ruin by getting the stock just a little wrong or, worst of all, expensive cuts of meat that end up resembling leather if you aren’t careful? Far better to fry up some ground meat, add a bit of sauce, clothe it in a roll and call it dinner. Try it tonight, with these tasty chicken burgers.

Chicken burgers

Serves 2

300 gr boneless, skinless chicken thighs
juice from half a small lemon
1 shallot, peeled and quartered
large handful of cilantro leaves
glug of oil
4 rolls (crispy or soft, your call)
½ cup yogurt
1 small clove of garlic, minced
zest from half a lemon
garnishes (ripe tomatoes would be good here, but use whatever strikes your fancy)

Start by mixing the yogurt with the garlic and the lemon zest. Leave the mixture in a cool place while you’re making the burgers.

Cut the chicken thighs in large chunks and place in the bowl of a food processor. Add the shallot and cilantro and pulse the processor until you have a relatively fine chicken-onion-cilantro mixture. Add the lemon juice and stir well. Form the mixture into four patties with wet hands.

Heat the oil in a non-stick skillet and fry the burgers until done- about four minutes on each side should do it, but check carefully because eating raw chicken is not a good idea.

Put the cooked patties in the rolls, add the garlic sauce and garnishes and eat.

Deadline Soup (split pea soup with frankfurters)

2009-03-06T22:39:00.005+01:00

Deadlines are my friend. Without them, it is all too easy to potter around, doing bits and pieces but not getting all that much result. Which is another reason why it is so wonderful that winter finally finally finally seems to be packing its bags. (Oh winter, you’ve forgotten to stash a few bits and pieces in your luggage. There are a few grey clouds here. A slew of rain there. And, please, could you clear out those icy temperatures? Thank you very much.) Just this week I got my act together for two winter deadlines:

Ice skating before the ice rink closes for the season. Yes, you read that right. Frozen water, and I went on it with thin metal blades strapped to my feet. I’m not fickle. I’m flexible (although you wouldn’t say so if you saw me on said ice).

I’ll be honest. That wasn’t actually a deadline I was planning to meet. When I invited my cousin for a skating lesson with my man and me, I was picturing the two of them on the ice, and me sitting on the side line. Wrapped in a warm coat, feet snug in Ugg boots. Alas. My man was more than happy to sign on as an ice skating teacher, but only if I went out on the ice with them. And if I agreed to a trial run with just the two of us. Cue me on the ice last Sunday, doing a good impression of Pinocchio before he turns into a real boy.

The second deadline I met went down more smoothly, I dare say. I made a pot of the quintessential winter soup: green peas with sausage. Split pea soup has always intimidated me a bit. It seems like everyone has an opinion on it- it should be thin, or so thick that you can stand a spoon in it. It should have bacon, smoked sausages or even whole pork legs. Plus, have you ever seen a bowl? Not the most attractive thing in the world, is it?

But a recipe by Nigella Lawson made me see the error of my fears. There is a picture in Feast of the most delicious looking yellow mud (her word, not mine), with chunks of sausage. Just looking at it made me feel warmer and I couldn’t wait to make Yellow Split Pea Soup with Frankfurters. Unfortunately, the store only had green split peas and it turned into regular old green sludge. Tasty green sludge, though, so I’m not complaining.

If you hurry, I think you can just squeeze out a pot, too, before spring arrives. Or if we’re really unlucky, you’ll have time for seventeen batches. But I hear winter is packing its bags, so we’re good. I hope.

The exact recipe is on Nigella’s website and I’ll tell you what I did below.

Nigella Lawson’ Yellow Split Pea Soup with Frankfurters

Serves 6-8

1 onion
1 carrot
1 clove garlic
1 stick of celery
2–3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 twiggles of mace
500 gr split peas
1.25–1.5 litres chicken stock
2 bay leaves
approx. 8 frankfurters

Peel the onion, carrot and garlic and cut the onion and carrot into rough chunks. Pulse them in a mini food chopper until finely chopped.

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven. When warm, add the chopped vegetables from the processor and cook for 5–10 minutes, until soft but not brown.

Add the split peas and stir till they’re mixed with the vegetables and all have a glossy layer. Put the mace in a tea egg and hang it in the pot. Pour over 1.25 litres of stock and add the bay leaves, then bring to the boil. Cover, turn down the heat and cook for about an hour until everything is tender, adding more stock as needed.

Chop the frankfurters into thick slices and add them to the soup when it is fully cooked. Warm through for a couple of minutes and serve hot.

Really Useful Cake (Yogurt Cake)

2009-03-04T21:34:00.003+01:00

I’ve been wondering: Are there other people out there who eat maple syrup straight from a spoon? Who get overly excited when a recipe mentions maple syrup? And who might even –gasp- like its flavor better than chocolate? Those people should bake this cake by Clotilde at ChocolateandZucchini, cut a thick slice and eat it drenched in maple syrup.

That’s what I did last weekend, and thinking about it still puts a smile on my face. I used Greek-style yogurt (a staple in my fridge) and had to bake the cake for quite a bit longer than the recipe, but other than that? It was perfect. (Well, one thing. There was a slightly funny smell, which I associate with recipes that have a lot of baking soda in otherwise mildly flavored baked goods. Does this happen to anyone else?) It is gently sweet, not greasy at all and the crumb has a pleasant density you can sink your teeth into. Add a glug of maple syrup and you have the perfect tea-time treat.

Even if you’re not into maple syrup, this is a good cake to have up your sleeve. It will go down well with the butter fearing crowd, for instance. Not a smidge of the yellow stuff in sight. And it has yogurt. Now, what is more healthy than yogurt? Perhaps best not to tell them about the oil, though.

Also, I bet this cake would be fantastic slathered in whipped cream and sprinkled with M&M’s. And if you need even more encouragement than all this (really? maple syrup, healthy, whipped cream… none of these do it for you?), there’s one more thing: this is fantastically easy to make. So hop to it, you have a cake to make.

Easy Like Sunday Dinner (Lemon Artichoke Pasta)

2009-03-02T22:44:00.003+01:00

Sunday nights pose a food challenge in my house. When I do not have people coming over for dinner, I find it difficult to get my act together on Saturday and buy ingredients for two dinners. Since shops don’t open on Sundays around these parts, an end-of-weekend challenge tends to result.

There used to be a good Turkish take-out place around the corner to solve the quandary. Unfortunately, it turned into a run of the mill shoarma place with little going for it aside from its industrial strength garlic sauce. There is pizza delivery, of course, but the places in my area can’t quite cope with the Sunday night rush hour and a pie can take hours to arrive. Literally. The last three times we dialed for tomatoes’n’topping on dough it took 2½, 1½ and one hour, respectively. Progress, I suppose, but not what you want for a relaxed meal to end the weekend.

Often, the only viable solution is to piece together a meal from whatever is floating around the kitchen and pantry. That always includes garlic and onions, and usually canned tomatoes, pasta and yogurt. A good base for quite a few meals, I am beginning to find out. Last week, there was the garlicky bean dip and this week lemony pasta with artichokes saved the Sunday.

The sauce for the pasta is loosely based on carbonara sauce, with garlic instead of pancetta and with lemon zest added for brightness. Oh, and a touch of cream, because that makes anything taste better (although it is not really necessary here, so don’t let a lack of left-over cream stop you from making this pasta). The artichoke topping combines the earthy flavor of artichokes with lemon juice for some zing and caramelized onions for sweetness. Tossed together with a pile of pasta, they taste luxurious but not heavy. Plus, this dish seems like it was a lot more trouble than it really is. Beats a a pizza that takes 2½ hours, no?

Lemon artichoke pasta

Serves 3

1 400 gr bag frozen artichoke bottoms, thawed*
1 large onion, peeled and sliced into thin half moons
1 tbsp olive oil
zest and juice from half a small lemon
½ tsp sugar, optional
2 eggs
2 tbsp cream, optional
about 50 gr freshly grated parmesan
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced into six pieces
knob of butter
300 gr dried pasta

Heat the oil in a wide skillet that will fit all artichoke bottoms in a single layer later. When the oil is hot, add the onion and turn the heat down to medium. Cook, flipping onions occasionally, until onions are soft and have a golden color. Add the lemon juice and about ½ cup of water (there should be a thin layer of water in the whole pan), stir and taste. Add the sugar if you want it a bit sweeter (a little goes a long way). Add the artichoke bottoms in a single layer, with the stem end of the artichoke nestling in the watery onion mixture. Cover the pan and cook for about seven minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pan of salted water to a boil.

Mix the eggs with the cheese and the pepper, and the cream if using.

Add the pasta to the water when it boils and boil until al dente. Uncover the pan with the artichokes when the artichokes are tender but still firm. Continue to heat over low heat until pasta is done. When the pasta has about three minutes to go, place the butter and garlic pieces in a small sauce pan and melt over low heat; simmer until needed.

When the pasta is done, take about ½ cup of the cooking water from the pan and drain the pasta. Put the pasta back in its hot pan and add the melted butter but not the garlic pieces. Then add the cheesy egg mixture and the lemon zest and stir quickly and thoroughly, until each piece of pasta is covered in a saucy layer. Divide the pasta over plates and add artichokes (cut them into pieces first for ease of eating while watching a movie on the couch, but keep them whole for a prettier look). Serve hot.

* Buy frozen artichoke bottoms at a Middle-Eastern supermarket, or subtitute with any other sauteed vegetable that takes your fancy. Don't use canned artichoke hearts, though. They have a harsh acidity that will overpower the fragrant lemon zest.

Current cravings

2009-02-28T12:50:00.002+01:00

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

Food from Far

2009-02-25T22:09:00.003+01:00

Pizza, Sheraton Addis hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Precious resources (corn bread)

2009-02-24T22:35:00.004+01:00

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)

2009-02-23T21:24:00.001+01:00

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

2009-02-12T22:29:00.008+01:00

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

2009-02-09T21:06:00.009+01:00

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

2009-02-08T00:01:00.006+01:00

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

2009-02-05T22:19:00.005+01:00

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

2009-02-03T22:27:00.004+01:00

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

2009-02-02T22:17:00.002+01:00

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

2009-02-01T20:35:00.002+01:00

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.

January Round-Up

2009-01-31T16:41:00.002+01:00

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

2009-01-29T22:59:00.002+01:00

Skewered vegetables, Shanghai, China

Bread for Battle (Potato Bread)

2009-01-28T21:31:00.005+01:00

*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

2009-01-26T21:38:00.006+01:00

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

2009-01-25T22:22:00.003+01:00

Mezze spread, Alexandria, Egypt

Koek en zopie (Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Spiced Coffee)

2009-01-24T22:18:00.007+01:00

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

2009-01-23T23:15:00.002+01:00

Vegetable stall, Beijing, China

Yowza (Boiled Kale with Garlicky Bread and Fried Egg)

2009-01-22T22:37:00.005+01:00

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

2009-01-20T22:37:00.004+01:00

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.
When I bake a cake, it often ends up flat and hard. This doesn’t stop me from trying.
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.
Eating 100% sheep’s milk feta gives me a funny, tingly feeling in my mouth.
I believe in talking to my food. Sometimes I wave at it when it is in the oven.
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.
Cheese fondue is one of my favorite foods.
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.
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.
I adore eating scallops, but I have never yet cooked them myself.

Obamenu (Everything Salad)

2009-01-20T21:20:00.007+01:00

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)

2009-01-19T21:25:00.008+01:00

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)

2009-01-18T21:51:00.008+01:00

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

2009-01-17T12:34:00.001+01:00

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

Food from Far

2009-01-16T23:32:00.003+01:00

Desert tea, Farafra, Western Desert, Egypt

Food from Far

2009-01-15T18:03:00.003+01:00

Bags of baguettes, Dakar, Senegal

My Almost First Potatoes

2009-01-14T23:10:00.003+01:00

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

2009-01-13T22:49:00.002+01:00

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

2009-01-12T22:33:00.003+01:00

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

2009-01-11T13:11:00.005+01:00

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

2009-01-10T23:32:00.004+01:00

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?

2009-01-09T21:06:00.006+01:00

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

2009-01-08T21:36:00.005+01:00

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

2009-01-07T22:01:00.005+01:00

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

2009-01-06T23:30:00.002+01:00

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

2009-01-05T22:04:00.000+01:00

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)

2009-01-04T18:19:00.001+01:00

"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)

2009-01-03T21:03:00.000+01:00

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)

2009-01-02T22:28:00.000+01:00

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)

2009-01-01T22:37:00.000+01:00

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.

Melted cheese and braised leek

2008-12-21T21:29:00.001+01:00

There’s a pine tree in the corner of my living room, shiny with silver baubles. My ceiling has a string of orange lights hanging from it. There’s something on the television called “A Christmas Carol”. Why, it must be Christmas.

The reason I am sure that it is, indeed, Christmas-time (you never know, the gaudy decorations could be a style-statement and the tv-programme a re-run gone haywire) is that my dinner consisted of an oven-baked Vacherin Mont d’Or cheese with garlic.

The first time I had oven-baked Vacherin I was about sixteen or seventeen. I had a Saturday job in a cheese store and every week after the store closed, we would stay on and try one of the goodies we sold. One night, as a thank-you for working our butts off in the Christmas mayhem, we got a special treat: warm Vacherin Mont d’Or with garlic and kirsch. It was love at first sight. In fact, I might have shot dirty looks at colleagues who took more than two bites. It was creamy, pungent, warming and I was sad when we finished it. (Also, a little relieved; weekend-before-Christmas shopping in a posh cheese store gets ugly. Have you ever seen anyone with a Rolex quarrel for a full five minutes over a supposed over-charging of five cents? I have. After a day like that, bed-time is mighty appealing.)

I haven’t often had Vacherin since. Somehow, I never think of it until Wham comes on the radio. But then the craving starts to build and by 22 or 23 December it is time. I might have skipped a year since that first year, but I doubt it. Tonight, I paired it with a few slices of sourdough bread and Molly’s tarragon leeks and my Christmas holidays officially started. Here’s to hoping yours will be as soft, smelly and delightful.

Oven-baked Vacherin Mont d'Or

Serves 4 as a snack, 2 as dinner

1 small, whole Vacherin Mont d'Or (about 450 gr)
1 clove of garlic, minced
a splash of kirsch (optional)

Leave cheese in wooden container and place in a baking dish (to catch any spills that may occur.)Prick top all over with fork, to break up the rind. Spread minced garlic over the top and press into soft cheese with fork. Sprinkle with kirsch, if using. Place in oven at about 200C. Bake for approximately ten minutes or until cheese bubbles and smells incredibly good.

Serve immediately with slices of sturdy, crusty bread.

Current cravings

2008-12-09T21:58:00.001+01:00

Sleepy time tea with milk and honey (thanks go to DaMomma for inspiring that craving, although the cause is not- I repeat NOT- the same)

Margherita pizza slices from the pizza place across the road from my office

Butter-fried onions

Apple cake: Weird but Wonderful

2008-12-08T23:10:00.001+01:00

Note to self: even a weird recipe can yield something mighty tasty. I wanted to bake for a birthday party and was planning on making chocolate cupcakes. However, I’d forgotten to buy chocolate (or, to be more precise, I’d eaten the chocolate I’d bought for baking and didn’t buy new- details, schmetails) and it was so cold outside that a trip to the store was not an option. So I collected the bakeables I did have and figured out I had just about enough for Sarah Raven’s Kentish Apple Cake. (Yes, another Sarah Raven recipe. I tried to stay away, but the siren-call was too strong.)

Sure, the recipe looked a bit weird, what with not creaming the butter and adding the fruit before the eggs. And sure, it did end up giving me a sore arm because the final product is more like sticky clay than like cake batter. But who cares when you end up with a cake that is crispy on the outside, moist on the inside and studded with bits of apple and raisin? I think it almost made the merrymakers forget all about the leather-like meat I served them as a main course, weird recipe or no.

Kentish Apple Cake

Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Kitchen Cookbook

Serves 8-10

225 gr unsalted butter (cold), plus a little for the tin
350 gr self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
110 gr of sultanas or raisins, soaked for an hour or two in water or fruit juice
175 gr caster sugar
75 gr toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped or halved (optional)
450 gr cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped roughly
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease or line a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin.

Sift flour into large bowl, add cinnamon and salt and mix. Cube butter and add to flour. Use cold fingers to crumble butter and mix with flour until it looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the sultanas, sugar and nuts. Add apple and lemon zest and mix. Lightly beat the eggs and stir them in.

Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for about an hour or until firm to the touch. Let cool before removing from tin.

Winter breakfast quinoa

2008-11-23T18:48:00.001+01:00

This morning I took my egg timer for a run. I’ve been on a ten-week scheme to learn to run for twenty minutes- for about seven or eight months now. Last week, I decided enough was enough and that the scheme will be finished by the end of the year. This means I have to go running about every other day or so. Normally, I time the intervals on my phone’s stopwatch. Yesterday I forgot my phone at my man’s house, though, so I was faced with a choice: skip my run or find something else to measure time.

The obvious choice, you might think, would be to strap on my watch and call it a timepiece. And it would be, except for the fact that my watch has been sitting in the windowsill for months with a broken strap. (Yup, I have an unfortunate tendency to let small tasks take forever. Moving on.) A search of my box-of-useful and my cupboard-of-miscellaneous did not yield a stopwatch or other such device. I’d almost given up getting any timed exercise when I wandered through my kitchen and the egg timer caught my eye. Aha! Not only would I be able to time my run, there would be sounds to tell me when to stop. You know, because I have a tendency to keep running and not heed time. (And by “keep running and not heed time” I mean obsessively checking my timer every twenty seconds or so, pouting when time obviously slows down just to spite me.)

So I took my egg timer for a run. Around the block and into the park we went, beeping and huffing and puffing along nicely. I was feeling quite pleased with myself, hiding the timer up my sleeve, only surreptitiously pulling it out when it made noise. To the casual onlooker, I might have looked like a real (if red-faced and panting) runner. And then I ran into these folks, just as I had the timer out, shooting it pleading looks to slow down so I didn’t have to start my last stretch of jogging. Right. Okay. Maybe they thought it was a mini-dumbbell?

Anyway. To take this story back into the realm of the culinary, I could liken the color of my face at the end of my run to red cabbage, or maybe an anemic egg plant. But that would be lame, so I won’t. Instead, I will share with you the recipe for my post-exercise breakfast: warm quinoa with cinnamon, maple syrup and apple (based on this recipe Heidi at 101cookbooks.com brought us). Another fitting use for my egg timer, if I do say so myself.

Warm breakfast quinoa
Adapted from 101cookbooks.com

Serves 1

¼ cup of quinoa
¼ cup of milk
¼ cup of water
dash of cinnamon
1 apple, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tbsp of maply syrup (or more to taste)

Combine quinoa, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes (stick around, because the mixture is prone to bubbling up and you might need to remove it from the heat briefly to prevent spills) or until most of the liquid has been absorbed and quinoa is cooked through. Add more water if liquid is absorbed before quinoa fully cooks. Remove from heat and let stand for a couple of minutes.

Stir in cinnamon and maply syrup to taste. Put apple in a bowl and pour quinoa over the top. Serve warm.

Nutty cauliflower soup

2008-11-19T21:21:00.001+01:00

Ouch.

I’ve burned my tongue.

I worked late this evening and had to go for a run when I got home. You know those nights when it feels like your shoulders are glued to your ears? It was one of those, and nothing but exercise would do. When I got back I was Hungry (and also Sweaty). Luckily, I’d planned to make cauliflower soup. From start to finish it took about thirty minutes to make and I even had time to hop in the shower while the white florets were boiling away. Still, with onions, garlic and two kinds of paprika it smelled so good that there was no time to wait for the soup to drop to somewhere closer to body temperature before I took a bite.

And that’s where you get hurt.

But it’s okay. Smoky, slightly spicy and with a nutty flavor to enhance the cauliflower’s natural earthiness, this soup was worth it. It is based on a recipe from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, which includes almonds and bay leaves. I’ve always thought cauliflower has a bit of a non-descript flavor so I replaced the subtle bay leaves with two kinds of paprika for more oomph. Swapping the almonds for hazelnuts was born out of necessity (no almonds in the kitchen, no intention to leave the house again before I was fed), but worked well. Paired with a few buttered crackers, this soup was just what the doctor ordered after a long day.

Nutty cauliflower soup
Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook

Serves 2

1 smallish head of cauliflower, broken into large florets
1 tbsp of butter
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp spicy paprika
30 gr roasted hazelnuts, ground fine
½ litre of chicken stock, or more

Melt the butter in a soup pot. Cook the onion in butter until soft. Add garlic, both kinds of paprika and hazelnuts. Stir. Add stock so that cauliflower is completely covered. Simmer for about fifteen minutes or until cauliflower is tender. Use stick blender to liquidize soup. Serve warm (but don’t burn your tongue).

Food Plans, November 17

2008-11-17T21:36:00.001+01:00

This week’s bag’o’vegetables contains kohlrabi, alfalfa, pears for poaching, bok choi and a cauliflower. Left over from last week is a bag of mushrooms and 2kg of apples. Somehow, quite unintendedly, a bag of curly kale also made its way into my shopping basket when I was at the store buying butter and chocolate for brownies. Nothing to do with my crush on Molly’s boiled kale, I promise. (And by "nothing", I mean "everything", of course.)

Anyway, lots of fruit and vegetables to get through this week, so I need a plan. Here goes:

Monday: Stir-fried bok choi with peanut dressing, brownies for Pieter
Tuesday: Pasta with Sarah Raven’s Really Rich Tomato Sauce, topped with garlicky mushrooms
Wednesday: Cauliflower soup with nuts and smoked paprika, Deb’s apple muffins for a departing secretary
Thursday: Boiled curly kale with bread and a fried egg, poached pears with cinnamon and star anise
Friday: Dinner at a friend’s house

Let this be a good week.

Orange-Carrot Almost-Perfect Sunday Morning Remedy

2008-11-10T22:10:00.001+01:00

Yesterday morning I woke up, stumbled out of bed, looked at myself in the mirror and screamed a little. It was not pretty: pasty skin, mascara in unlikely places and hair sticking out at funny angles. Saturday night was great. Sunday morning? Not so much.

My gut reaction to the Sunday morning mirror scare is to hide under the covers and ignore the rest of the world. Which is not a bad idea in theory, but in practice my head starts to hurt if I stay horizontal too long. Also, it doesn’t solve the problem. Inevitably my growling stomach forces me back into the real world after a while. By then, I am usually so hungry I have no problem devouring a day’s worth of calories in snacks deciding “what to have for breakfast”.

Obviously, my natural reactions need suppressing and I am always on the look-out for effective Sunday morning blah-reducers. Deb’s German oven pancakes are good. Fresh bread with good cheese isn’t half bad. But my favorite one so far? Orange-carrot juice. Ever since I had my first taste, it is what I crave when my body needs a bit of help. It tastes bright enough to put the spring back in my step, yet mellow enough not to offend. It is sweet but not too and with every sip I can feel the vitamin C fighting whatever toxins the previous night threw at me.

Not unimportantly, making orange-carrot juice is something I can handle on a fragile morning. Rinsing and chopping up a few organic carrots, skinning an orange or two: that I can do. Add a juicer and a bit of arm-action and -bzzzzz- greatness. The only thing standing between this drink and Sunday morning perfection? Someone in my apartment grateful enough to share that he will clean the juicer. And the sticky counter. And the juice-stained floor. Yeah, no Saturday night has been that great yet.

Bag'o'vegetables

2008-11-03T21:35:00.001+01:00

There is a pile of wild spinach sitting on my counter, nestled against a pile of red onions and thick carrots. In the corner are three pears and a package of bean sprouts. Just looking at the abundance makes me feel fit- maybe its vegetable healthiness is transferable through sight?

The produce came to me through a scheme students at my university run. You order one week, pay them a small sum and the next week you get a bag’o’vegetables, full of organically grown vitamins and fibre. And flavor, lovely flavor. I dig the scheme, and not just because I get a surprise selection every week. Or because they give me a recipe for each kind of plant I get- although that is much appreciated. No, it is because I find out about vegetables I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Have you seen scorzonera, for instance? Not a pretty-looking root even on a good day. I had never yet been able to work up the courage to buy a bag of the gnarly, dark brown sticks. And there it was in my bag’o’vegetables last week and I had to do something with it. (Other than tossing it, which would have been wrong-wrong-wrong.)

Out came Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (which, by the way, is one of the loveliest books about food I have met to date) and a recipe for scorzonera in garlic butter. Raven has you simmer the peeled scorzonera until they are soft, bathe them in a butter with gently fried garlic and finish with a big handful of chopped parsley. What you end up with is a subtle sunchoke flavor, enlivened by garlic and enriched with butter. (I substituted a few chili flakes for the parsley, mainly because I didn’t have any parsley. The replacement added a warmth I would have been sad to miss.) A simple, wintry dish for a simple, stormy Monday- what more could you ask for from a bag?

The planning for this week’s discoveries has begun. I am thinking:

Soba noodles with bean sprouts and peanut dressing
Orange/carrot juice
Chocolate-dipped pears
Garlicky spinach with quinoa and a fried egg
Onion tart with goat’s cheese

But that’s just the start…

Scorzonera in garlic butter
adapted from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook

Six scorzonera sticks
Splash of red wine vinegar
Knob of butter
A pinch of ground chili flakes
Sea salt to taste

Peel the scorzonera and place them in a bowl of water with red wine vinegar. Bring water to a gentle boil and simmer scorzonera until tender. Drain.

Melt a knob of butter. Crush a clove of garlic and fry gently in the melted butter. Mix in ground chili flakes. Add scorzonera to butter mixture and mix. Sprinkle with sea salt.

Serve hot.

Herbs in a bag

2008-10-23T21:00:00.001+02:00

During the first real conversation my man and I had, I asked him what he would cook a new girlfriend. He answered "lamb joint with garlic" and the first seeds of a crush were sown.

We got together five months later and have been together for two years now. He has cooked me maybe ten meals in that time, each and every one of them based on sauce from a jar. Broccoli in sauce, chicken in sauce, pasta in sauce, but not a roast in sight. I figured he'd just been trying to impress me and wasn't actually much of a cook. No big deal, since I am always happy to do the cooking. In fact, I thought it was sweet he'd tried to woo me even then and gave him credit for saying precisely the right thing. Nothing like a man who can read your mind.

Still, yesterday's discovery came as a bit of a shock: my man owns herbs and spices. A whole bag of them. I was in his kitchen, brushing my teeth, when a plastic bag caught my eye. I had a little snoop, as you do. There, in that innocent-looking bag, they were: oregano, tyme, paprika and quite a few more. Plus things like bread crumbs, flour and semolina. A whole world of culinary activity that I had never known about!

Guess what is going to change around these here parts? I'm already dreaming of lamb roasts with garlic and home-made semolina pudding. In the mean time, I'll share one of his sauce-in a jar specialties with you; because it is actually quite tasty.

My man's chicken-cherry-curry

2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
a little oil for frying
1 clove of garlic, minced
small jar of mild curry sauce
chili paste to taste
½ cup of crème fraiche
1 tbsp of capers
ready-made croissant dough
¼ cup of grated cheese

Preheat oven to 220C. Fry the chicken in the oil until just done. Add garlic and fry until it starts to smell nice and garlic doesn't look raw anymore. Add a small dab of chili paste (you can add more later if you like). Mix well, add curry sauce and crème fraiche. Mix again, add cherries and capers and give a final good stir.

Take a baking dish that will comfortably hold all chicken-curry mixture and line the bottom and sides with the croissant dough, sealing any gaps as you go. Make sure you leave enough dough to cover the top of the dish. Put the chicken mixture in the dish. (Yes, the dough will be soggy if you add the sauce while it is still raw, but in a pillowy, dumpling-like way that is not unpleasant. Also, my man doesn't do pre-baking.) Cover the chicken mixture with the remaining dough and cut a few slits so steam can escape. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until dough is golden and has puffed up.

Serve hot, with a side of plain ice-berg lettuce, if you're my man.

Current cravings

2008-10-16T21:50:00.001+02:00

Lately I've been craving:

- Coffee mixed with hot chocolate
- Tuc cheese crackers
- Apple crisp

Leaves on my plate

2008-10-14T22:15:00.001+02:00

Oh yeah, fall has started. I've had the heating on for the first time this year, leaving the house without an umbrella means grave danger for my Uggs and my potted fig looks like its leaves have been dipped in caramel. I'm okay with this. Anything that gives me an excuse to brew hot chocolate and wear my hooded sweater is good in my books. I am not, however, happy to say goodbye to summer.

Who is, when we have to say goodbye to tomatoes, melon and asparagus. And berries, gorgeous berries. So I bought a box of raspberries the other week, challenging summer to stick around for just a little longer. Yeah, bad idea. "Sour" does not do them justice. Yesterday's idea was better: marry fall and summer into a salad.

Summer brought young salad leaves to the altar, and a sprinkling of parsley. Fall came bearing mushrooms and a sturdy piece of beef. With a few extras (oil, vinegar, parmesan, pine nuts and butter) the match was sealed deliciously. A perfect bridge between two seasons. Now, if I could only find a way to shield my Uggs from the autumn rains as effectively.

Autumn salad

piece of steak
2 handfuls oyster mushrooms, torn into big pieces
1 bag of salad leaves
small handful of parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp butter
splash of olive oil, plus more for dressing
vinegar for dressing
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed under the blade of a heavy knife
2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
3 tbsp parmesan, finely grated

Mix oil and vinegar to make a mellow dressing. Put in garlic and leave to marinate while you prepare salad.

Heat butter and oil in skillet, add steak when the mixture is hot. Fry quickly on both sides to give a dark crust, then lower heat to finish cooking to the degree of doneness you like. Take the steak out of the pan, cover to keep warm. Fry mushrooms in the same pan, mixing them throroughly with the lovely juices in the pan. Take the garlic from the dressing and add it to the pan; continue to fry until mushrooms are soft.

Dress salad leaves with dressing, sprinkle with parmesan and mix thoroughly. Scatter over pine nuts. Salt steak and slice into thick strips. Arrange mushrooms on salad leaves, top with steak slices and serve.

Ugg

2008-08-29T13:47:00.000+02:00

There's a new love in my life: a pair of chocolate brown Ugg boots. They're soft and warm and wonderful. And beautiful. The old love in my love doesn't agree. This is what happened after I brought my Uggs home last night:

Old love, aka J: “What's that on your feet?"
L: “Uggs!”
J: “No? Seriously?”
L: “Yes, really.”
J: ”Oh. I'll have a proper look later, when I am wearing my glasses.”

This morning:
J: “Hey, there are snow boots in the living room.”
L: “No, those are my Uggs. Aren't they pretty?”
J: “Uhm… I can't really tell. I'm not wearing my glasses.” (Disappears into shower.)

Later this morning:
L: “Look, these are my new Uggs.” (Leg in the air, meaningful glances over at the coffee table where old love's glasses are perched.)
J: (Puts glasses on.) *silence* “Nice.”
L: “You don't like them, do you? You're a guy. Guys don't like them.”
J: *silence*

Cooking for the heart

2008-04-24T21:38:00.002+02:00

I've had a few days off work (sort of), so I can be found in my kitchen even more regularly than normal. On Tuesday, I cooked and baked for the two women who raised me (not by themselves, my dad, for one, was intimately involved- but I wouldn't be me without them). There were stuffed portobello mushrooms and grilled asparagus for my mother after a day of hard work. And there were lemon sables for my great-aunt, who is in a home while she recovers from hip replacement surgery. Vegetables and cookies to show I care- food from the heart.

Today, it was just me and dinner wasn't so much from the heart as for the heart. I got " Cooking for a Healthy Heart" from the library when my ever-tightening pants told me it was time to Stop. Eating. The. Wrong. Thing. Right now. It's got quite a few lovely recipes (in spite of a tendency to consider vegetable spread an acceptable ingredient)- in fact, the caponata I described earlier as the first thing I cooked my man is from this book. Today, a recipe for salmon with lentils and dill caught my eye.

I've had a box of lentils sitting in my pantry since we got back from a holiday in France last year, stumped as to what to do with them. (Also, a little scared I wouldn't like them. They are Puy lentils, that everyone always loves and I don't like legumes in general. These were like a last-ditch attempt to teach myself to like this good-for-you food group. My experiment a few weeks ago to do the same with home-soaked chickpeas ended in a pan of inedible, black soup. But, uhm..., that might have had something to with the use of black pantyhose to make a bouquet garni. Nigella said nothing about using colorless pantyhose...) This recipe was my keep-my-fingers-crossed attempt at making something delicious from pulses.

And, boy, was I relieved. Even though the lentils had a bit of that mealy-ness I dislike so much, this dish was a keeper. Lentils brightened by a herby dressing, pieces of sweet roasted pepper and juicy salmon all mixed with a good dose of dill and spring onions. Tasty, healthy, lovely.

Lentils with salmon and dill
Adapted from " Cooking for a Healthy Heart" by Jacqui Lynas

125gr filleted salmon
1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
50 gr of Puy lentils
handful of dill, finely chopped
2 spring onions, finely chopped (reserve a little to use as garnish)
lemon juice for sprinkling

dressing
small clove of garlic, peeled
handful basil leaves
handful dill
1 tsp mustard
1 pickled Turkish green pepper
juice of half a lemon
small glug of olive oil

Boil lentils according to package instructions (mine said to start with cold water, bring to a boil and cook for 25 minutes- but they were a bit mushy and could have used a little less time in the pot). In the mean time, make dressing by pounding all ingredients except oil together with mortar and pestle. When ingredients have turned to a bright green paste, add enough olive oil to make thick dressing.

Poach salmon until almost-done (please don't overcook). Drain lentils when done and immediately mix with dressing, bell pepper, dill and spring onions. Leave to stand for a while to allow lentils to soak up flavors. Add salmon, toss. Serve with a little extra spring onion on top.

Serves one

Grilled asparagus
Adapted from "Het Basiskookboek" published by Albert Heijn

Bunch of green asparagus
Olive oil
Lime juice
Nice, crunchy salt for sprinkling

Wash asparagus and break off bottom 2cm or so (no need to peel). Pat dry and sprinkle with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Toss asparagus to coat with the oil.

Heat a grilling pan to hot, put asparagus in pan. Turning them occassionally to brown on all sides, cook asparagus for eight minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork.

Mix a good glug of olive oil with lime juice to taste to make a dipping sauce for asparagus. Sprinkle asparagus with a little salt and serve with dip on the side.

And it's six weeks later

2008-04-13T21:51:00.001+02:00

Oi. How come it took me six weeks to get back here?

Well, there were some good reasons (interviewing for, negotiating about and accepting a new job; planning a weekend to London, a possible fortnight in Paris - not happening- and a three-week holiday to Vietnam) and some not-so-good ones (learning how to use my new camera so I can post pics here- but why did that stop the words?- and a dodgy internet connection- mostly because I am STILL freeloading off my neighbors' wifi). But now I'm back. Some random stuff to get you -me...- up to date:

Had nice all-you-can-eat Japanese food at Rotterdam's Sumo (sorry, link in Dutch only) yesterday with some colleagues. Not spectacular, but fresh and the company was great.

Had lovely sushi at Sushi (again, Dutch only) in Amsterdam a few weeks early. Am having dreams about eating more Japanese food, so I am guessing my near future will see plenty more sticky rice, raw fish and teriyaki sauce.

Baked Alice Water's soda bread today (recipe found via Oswego Tea) and Smitten Kitchen's wholewheat apple muffins. Mmmmm to the latter- I want to wrap myself in their moist, cinnamon-y, apple-y goodness. I didn't even care (much) that they flattened themselves into cake-disks because I don't own a muffin pan. But what's up with the bread? I was prepared for it to be dense, but what's with the faintly fishy smell? It was okay drenched in basil oil, covered in tomato slices and heaped with cottage cheese, but definitely not a winner by itself.

Am currently obsessed with anchovies (no, they went nowhere near my soda bread before it started smelling funny- I promise), fried onions and salted rice crackers. My blood vessels are probably not loving my food obsessions as much as I am...

Also, have only two more weeks left at my old job. Must bake something delicious as a goodbye. What a lovely excuse to bake muffins, brownies and cakes left, right and centre. Must practice!

Dinner challenge

2008-02-22T12:41:00.001+01:00

The challenge: Shop for and cook a tasty, healthy dish that is filling but easy to digest in 60 minutes or less. Oh, and get home in that time too, cuz you’re still at work when the challenge presents itself.

The strategy: Check epicurious, hope for an attractive and quick noodle dish- with vegetables, please, but without ingredients that will mean a visit to more than two stores (luckily, work is in the middle of Amsterdam’s tiny China town and there’s a well-assorted Chinese grocer just around the corner).

The intermediate result: A recipe for Chinese chicken noodle soup with green onions, all necessary ingredients and arrival at home within 40 minutes.

The next stage: Slice chicken, mix marinade, put chicken in marinade (almost tipping the bowl of soy sauce-sesame oil- Shaoxing wine goodness into the sink in the process, but preventing mishap by lightening quick reflexes- or, you know, sheer luck). Kiss man when he gets in.

Panic, because man is home, but food is not ready. Relax when man trots of to do some repair work on his bicycle.

Slice cabbage, ignoring suspicious black spots on leaves (probably some sort of secret Chinese remedy for health). Slice scallions (are green onions the same as scallions? I assumed). Crush garlic, peel ginger, fall in love all over again with microplane grater when it reduces ginger to a pulp with the teeniest bit of effort). Mix garlic and ginger with yummy stuff.

Help man look for important bicycle part. Fail to locate it. Tell him to go look in the tool shed, four floors down, mostly to get him out of your hair.

Read recipe again, discover you’ve put too much sesame oil in marinade. Shrug shoulders and add more of it to pan to fry scallions and cabbage. Add stock, chop cilantro while waiting for stock to come to a boil. Add chicken. Attempt to take noodles out of package in neat bundles, dump them all over counter instead. Gather up noodles, add to pan. Stir.

Sigh a little sigh of happy relief- it is 65 minutes after the start of the challenge and soup is ready.

Hear man come in. Tell him “perfect timing!”. Scowl at man when he says ever-so-slightly pungent mixture in pan “smells”. Forgive him when he kisses neck.

The result: Lovely, warming, tingle-inducing soup, slurped up companionably with man (who eats three bowls, in spite of smell.)

The recipe is here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106192
My modifications: Far less tahini (I think I have superstrength tahini, because I always use way less than recipes tell me to and I still get quite a pronounced flavor), a little less chili-garlic paste (the man's a wuss), less ginger (didn't feel like peeling more), Shaoxing rice wine instead of sherry, unseasoned rice vinegar (that's what I had).

Ah, yes. Soup, you’ve gotten to me. Big time.

Obsessed much?

2008-02-21T21:31:00.001+01:00

And a few more, just for the record:

1. Blue cheese, lovely blue cheese
2. Sunflower seeds
3. Sundried tomatoes (I know, I know, so five minutes ago... what can I say? sometimes a girl needs a bit of retro)

Food love

2008-02-16T21:47:00.001+01:00

I love food. Love, love, love it. As in, I want to run away to Tahiti with it and live happily ever after on our own private beach. Or in a shack at the end of the world. Or, you know, eat it. And I do, quite a bit of it. I'm not picky- as long as it isn't potato, I'll give it a try. (Yeah, yeah, I know. It's weird not to like potato. That's a story for another day.) I try not to play favourites- no good ticking off good ol' broccoli by systematically choosing chocolate over it. I might need it some day. You know, for health.

But infatuations are liable to strike at any moment. When they do, one particular food (or a set of foods- I'm a bit of a player that way) becomes the favourite, at least for a while. I've learned that the most efficient way to overcome these obsessions is to give in. Try to show as much sense as possible and go for it. It's a hard task, but I have to save my sanity, right?

Wanna now what my current obsessions are?

Crunchy white bread rolls with melted goat's cheese and some kind of herb (had dinner the past two days with bread'n'cheese and home-made cilantro pesto... mmmm... mmmm)
Cote d'Or chocolate with crushed hazelnut (yup, you guessed it... dessert...)
Nacho chips with jalapeno pepper slices and melted cheese.

And I feel a new one coming on. My stove-top espresso pot (usually reserved for the benefit of my coffee-obsessed brother or boyfriend) has been looking mighty attractive. I am having a latte as soon as I get me some milk. Or three.

Cilantro pesto

Leaves from a biggish bunch of cilantro

Small clove of garlic

Toasted pine nuts, about 1,5 tablespoons

Splash of lemon juice

Pinch of salt

Enough olive oil to make a thick sauce

Whizz together first five ingredients in a small food processor. Add olive oil in little portions at a time, blending to incorporate after each portion. Taste and add lemon juice and/or salt to taste.

(I used a mini food-chopper, powered by my immersion blender, to make this. It was a bit difficult to get the texture I wanted, so I'm trying grinding it in a mortar and pestle next time. Might be easier to control the thickness if I'm blending by hand.)

Sour 'n sweet

2008-02-13T21:16:00.001+01:00

The scene: me, my new man and a full pan of good-for-you caponata. The first time I'm cooking him something and I'm prepared. No last-minute searing of meat, no souffle to collapse at the moment supreme, not even pasta to be boiled to al dente perfection. Just a pan full of eggplant, capers, garlic, good stuff. Some bread on the side and an awesome dessert. Nothing can go wrong. Unless, you know, someone added way -WAY- too much vinegar to the pan of vegetable mush... Chemistry's not my thing, but I'm sure the pH value of my romantic caponata was well below 7. Or above 7. You know, whichever is the sour bit of the pH universe.

Lovely.

It's a good thing I had dessert ready, or I might not have someone to build me shelves. Or re-wire my electrical system. Or buy me turtle-magnets to clip to my oven. (Can't for the life of me remember what dessert was. Could it have been... me...? Ooooh, behave.) You would think I'd have learned to go easy on the acid, but not a week later I went and added garlic vinaigrette to a batch of mangetouts. As in, oil with vinegar. Vinegar. And I like my vinaigrette on the refreshing side. Let's just say my man's salivary ducts were well clean by the end of the week.

And still I haven't learned. Tonight I cooked my little brother dinner. Chicken tagine with mangetouts on the side. And out came the vinaigrette again. Not a winner this time around either, although he did heroically crunch his way through quite a few of them before insisting he was " full" and pushing the green buggers aside. Followed by an enthusiastic dive into the bread basket to reach for more bread to mop up the tagine juices.

Well, at least the tagine was a hit. A recipe from Claudia Roden's Arabesque (only I have the Dutch version and it's called "A thousand-and-one flavours"- doesn't nearly evoke the same sense of mystery, does it?), it tasted exotic but familiar, refreshing but comforting and oh-so-summery. A pinch of saffron, some powdered ginger and a healthy dose of onion and garlic bubbled away together to form a fragrant bath for the legs and thighs of a formerly-happy (though now dead) chicken. Two chopped up preserved mini-lemons, a generous handful of parsley and cilantro and some wrinkly, aromatic olives rounded out the sauce to something lovely, lovely, lovely for us to spoon up with the chicken and dunk our Moroccan-style bread in. The only thing I forgot to add to the sauce? Lemon juice... The kitchen gods must have been smiling down on me to prevent another pH-mishap.

June at Bread, Water, Salt, Oil has the recipe: http://bread-water-salt-oil.blogspot.com/2006/06/tagine-of-chicken-with-preserved.html

(Incidentally, my man is hurtling himself down a mountain somewhere in France this week, the week of V-day. Scared I will do a re-run of the first meal I cooked him? He had better bring me back some good stuff, or I might just be tempted...)