Slinky Shrooms (grilled oyster mushrooms with garlic and vinegar)

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.

Dip Quickly (bagna cauda)

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.

Beans, not thrift (Butter bean dip)

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

Yeah, so that didn’t happen.

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

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

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

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

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

Butter bean dip

Makes about 1,5 cups

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

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

Serve with vegetables or a nice bread to dip.

Labanese Moussaka for Four

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

Yeah. That did not happen to me last night.

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

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

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

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

Lebanese Moussaka

Slightly adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat

Serves 4 (not 7)

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

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

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

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

One Last Round (Apple Fritters)

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

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

So, the round-up:

Christmas Day 1

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

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

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

Christmas Day 2

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

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

Chocolate mint bark

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

New Year’s Eve

Nibbles provided by friends

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

Currant “donuts” (oliebollen) and apple fritters

1 January

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

Oliebollen and apple fritters


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

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

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

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

Apple Fritters, 2008 version

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

Makes 80- 100 fritters

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New Beginning (Salmon pinwheels)

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

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

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

May 2009 bring you many beautiful beginnings and healthy snacks.


Salmon pinwheels

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

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

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

Serve on sliced cucumber, on crackers or by themselves.

Melted cheese and braised leek

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.