Jungle Wednesday

It´s such a treat to be invited to a ´new´ house for the first time. As we parked our bikes, we heard the Louvin Brothers singing through the open window, and as we walked in the door, there was the smell of eggplant frying... and Marcella Hazan´s Essentials was lying open on the page with one of my favorite recipes which I used to make all the time but somehow forgot about.. and a happy dog jumped to greet us, and I spotted a glorious blueberry pie in a corner of the kitchen, and I knew things could not go wrong.

There were salty, spicy, briny clams baked with rosemary, tomatoes, beer and butter, there was a perfect and juicy onion frittata, there were those nostalgically delicious eggplant patties and a crunchy tart Ceasar Salad, and then there was Pie.

The pie.. oh that pie! The filling was just right, soft but not too runny, and it had the most perfect flaky and tender crust. Turns out it was made with this.. I need some.



There was music too, and some You Tube fun, and an Ethiopian dancer, and there was (at least in my case) too much wine, and on the way home there was a Barbra Streisand moment in the Vondelpark that might better stay undocumented.

Thanks guys!

Finally

We´re planning yet another trip to the USA (leaving September 6 for a 3-week trip around the East and South.. woohoo!), and as I do a little bit of research about the food that will wait us there (grits, biscuits, barbecue..) my thoughts also drift to the incredible food we had on our last trip to the US. And as my thoughts drift, my eyes do the same, and spot the little can of Hatch green chiles that I brought back last September. It still stands on the shelf as a nice little souvenir, waiting for the Very Special day that would be Special enough to open it. But on closer examination I find that day has to come soon because the expiration date is actually August 2009...

When we were in New Mexico, I ate as many green chiles as I could, knowing very well that I would probably never taste them again. Burgers with green chiles, green chile sauce, green chile grilled cheese sandwiches, and, on one of the final days of our trip, my friend Rob´s green chile corn chowder. (You can see the recipe here, though it won´t be much help unless you have access to New Mexican green chiles!)



When I saw reasonably fresh and sweet corn at the market last week, I knew that this soup was just the thing to make for my Southwestern themed dinner. And although it doesn´t really look very interesting in the picture, I can assure it was delicious - sweet and creamy with just a hint of warm heat from the chiles. The chiles did not taste as good as the ones I´d had in New Mexico - ofcourse they didn´t, they were canned, and a long way from home - but it was still a great soup.

The rest of the dinner was pretty good too: guacamole and smoked salmon in endive leaves, something sacriligiously called chile masa cobbler (basically a batch of this chili topped with grated cheese, little masa harina cakes and baked) and little chocolate cupcakes with whipped cream and strawberries.




I find, these days, that Southwestern or somewhat authentic Mexican food like chile, pozole, mole and quesadilla´s is perfect for Dutch food-loving friends who think they´ve eaten it all. After making ravioli from scratch for them and elaborate French stews that you cook and degrease and deglaze for days, after baking them bread and churning them ice cream and stuffing them chickens, this is the kind of food them makes them say ´wow, I´ve never tasted anything like this before´. My friend thought the masa topping on the chili was polenta, but when he tasted it he knew it wasn´t, and he loved it. Too bad it´s just a matter of time before all my Dutch friends know about chile and masa.. I guess I´ll have to find a new cuisine to explore then, but for now, I´ll fry them quesadilla´s and make them happy!

My Ma Po Dou Fu

It reads like a do-re-mi song doesn´t it? But what it actually is: an attempt at somewhat authentic Chinese cooking.



I had Ma Po Dou Fo on my mind ever since I browsed Fuchsia Dunlop´s Land of Plenty for my Chinese dinner last weekend. I´ve made it a couple of times before and had it in Chinese restaurants, and I love this dish so much - the warm spicyness of the chili bean paste, the numbing hotness of the Szechuan pepper corns, the crumbly meat and the soft slippery tofu. It so happened that today I had a packet of good, semi-soft tofu in my fridge, and some ground meat. Ma Po Dou Fu time!

(For some background info on this dish I refer you to our friend Wiki - a nice summary of various legends and historical facts).

Reading Fuchsia Dunlops recipe, I realized I had no leeks or spring onions. Also, I wanted to have some vegetables with my dinner, and being to lazy to stirfry some vegetables seperately, I decided to just incorporate them into the dish. Instead of 450 grams of tofu and 175 grams of meat, my version has 300 grams of tofu and 250 grams of meat - simply because that´s what I had. To make up for the lack of leeks I added a shallot and some garlic, to substitute for the greenness of the leeks I added some chopped coriander stalks... and I guess that the final version is now far far away from the ´authentic original´.... but oh boy, was it ever good.





My Ma Po Dou Fu
200 grams Chinese leaf cabbage, stalk parts only, sliced
250 grams ground meat (I used half beef / half pork)
300 grams soft tofu, cut into cubes
1 shallot, sliced
1 fat clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fermented black beans, rinsed and dried and chopped
2 - 3 tablespoons Szechuan chili bean paste
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 good pinch of sugar
300 ml water
a cornstarch slurry made with 3 tablespoons cornflour and 1 tablespoon cold water
Szechuan pepper, toasted and ground, to taste 8I used about 2 teaspoons - but I really love the stuff)
chopped coriander stalks or sliced springonions, to garnish
vegetable oil for frying (this is supposed to be a pretty greasy dish, Dunlops recipe calls for 1/2 cup of peanut oil - I used about a 1/4 cup)

Heat your wok or frying pan and add the oil. When the oil is nice and hot, add the meat, breaking it up with a spatula. When it´s partly browned (but not cooked through) add the shallot and garlic and stri fry for a minute. Add the chili bean paste and stir fry until everything is nice and red. Add the chopped black beans, soy sauce, sugar and the water and simmer the sauce a couple of minutes. Then add the cabbage and when this is almost done, add the tofu. Stir very gently while mixing in the tofu.
Add enough of the cornstarch slurry to slightly thicken the sauce (maybe add a little more water if it looks dry). Sprinkle with coriander or springonions and serve over rice (although I also really really love this over noodles - sort of like a very feisty spaghetti Bolognese).

The Floating Buttermilk Picnic

It's raining cats and dogs so what better way to beat the rainy blues than with some sunny pictures?

We, the lucky ones, got ourselves an invitation for a boat trip in the Amsterdam Canals last Wednesday. Now, to be honest, I'm a bit apprehensive about boat trips. I've been on a few that were less than satisfactory.. sailing around with your butt on a rockhard wooden bench, your feet in an inch of muddy water, eating nothing but potato chips and drinking lukewarm beer, which makes you want to pee, but not a bathroom in sight, and everytime you want to move around the tiny boat you think you'll fall overboard, and when it gets dark it gets cold, ... that's not really my idea of a good time. It's not that I'm that high maintenance (although some people will probably happily argue that I am), it's just that I like a little bit of comfort with my fun.

For this trip, we were lured in by the promise of cocktails and fried chicken, and when I saw the boat I sighed a happy sigh of relief: a sturdy vessel donned with pillows and napkins and wineglasses and an ice bucket and wait, is that a pepper mill I see?

This was going to be good.

See here for some scenic pics. Here's some of the food: fried chicken that Chef was a bit apologetic about, and while we agreed that the skin had lost some of its crispness I still though it was great fried chicken.. especially when drenched with Real Barbecue sauce. Everybody loved the chicken:








By some strange coincedence there was not only buttermilk fried chicken, but also buttermilk biscuits (oh so good with lots of butter and honey) and buttermilk nectarine cake. There were mojito's being expertly mixed with some unorthodox equipment. To add some excitement we were almost run over by a rondvaartboot. And this is what I look like when I think I'm about to bump my head against a bridge:



Fun.

Not half bad

I don´t use a lot of ready made things - in fact, almost none, if you discount sambals, mustards and various condiments. It´s a very rare occasion that you´ll find me cooking with some sort of spice paste or jarred sauce. But recenyly I´ve been quite pleased with the spices pastes from Asian Home Gourmet. I spotted the sachets in the toko one day and immediately noticed the line that said "No added MSG, Preservatives or Artificial Colours". And sure enough, if you read the ingredients list for this Laksa Coconut Curry Noodles paste, it reads like an actual recipe that someone could make in a home kitchen, instead of some concoction that could only be engineered in a factory: galangal, shallots, oil, sugar, salt, shrimp paste, lemon grass, turmeric, dried shrimp. Nothing wrong with that is there?

So despite my usual suspicions about stuff like this, these are really useful to have in the pantry - with some meat, tofu and vegetables you can have a nice dinner on the table in 15 minutes. I know I sound like a AHG commercial.. sorry about that.

My soup looks very different from the one on the package though. It had chicken, Chinese leaf cabbage, a handful of green beans, spring onions, Chinese chives, chicken stock and coconut milk. Flavorwise, it needed nothing more than a splash of fish sauce and a squeeze of lime juice. A perfect balcony dinner.

Where did the words go?

I have no clue.

Tonight I´m supposed to attend the final meeting of my writing class. Judging by the activity on this blog the past couple of weeks, this course hasn´t really done me much good.. there has never been less writing, or less inspired writing.

So hopefully, the end of this course will mark the beginning of a new writing phase? Because I tend to do everything backwards, anyway.

The good news is, that I have been cooking. And while I didn´t cook anything new or adventurous on Saturday, I did spend a couple of hours shopping, chopping, stirring and crimping and stuffing and frying.

And that felt pretty good.




There was a nice rendition of this,
there was a whole plate of very sticky potstickers, Fuchsia Dunlop´s Bang Bang chicken (see here for the recipe) and some simple but perfect gai lan (stirfried with garlic, ginger, soy sauce and a little rice wine). Oh and there was champagne, in the middle of dinner, which is something that should be done more often!

Come back

Dit keer had ik mijn afwezigheid niet eens aangekondigd, maar gebeurde het gewoon.

Het tijdperk van uit eten en uit drinken en rondhangen in cafe's en op terrasjes is nog altijd niet afgelopen, en er wordt bijzonder weinig gekookt in huize Koopmans. En als er gekookt wordt is het snel, simpel, oude vertrouwde happen.

Maar nu: ik ben er weer, denk ik.

Deze week voor het eerst sinds heel lang weer eens voor andere mensen gekookt - een heus etentje met tassen vol boodschappen en een hele middag in de keuken. Ik maakte quesadilla's, chili, en chocolade ijs, en het zag er allemaal net zo uit als de chili, quesadilla's en ijs die ik al zo vaak heb gemaakt en gefotografeerd. Inspiratie voor foto's had ik dus nog even niet.

Voor zaterdag staat er alweer een etentje gepland, waarover ik nog niet al teveel wil verklappen, maar dat fototechnisch zowel als culinair een grotere uitdaging belooft te worden. En hoewel ik van plan ben om niet te vaak meer iets te beloven, kan ik wel de intentie uitspreken dat ik hoop er zondag verslag van te doen.

Tipje van de sluier: er komt een peper aan te pas die geen peper is.

Snapshot van de week

Een zomernamiddag in het Vondelpark.

Warm gras, madeliefjes, een tevreden hondje.

Nieuwe schoenen, blote benen, straks een biertje.

Geluk.

Souvenir

Dennis is going to Berlin for a couple of days, with a friend. When he went to Avignon, I asked for calissons. If he was going to Paris, I would ask for macarons, if he was going to London, I would ask him to bring me back some salt and vinegar crisps, and some cheese from Neil's Yard. If he was going to Brussels I'd ask for chocolate, and so the list goes on.. but what should he bring me from Berlin? Help?

Meatballs for a crowd and Blueberry cake

Not that I was actually feeding a crowd - there were 4 of us for dinner yesterday. But since the store where I was shopping only had organic meat pre-packaged in pounds, and one pound wasn´t enough, I ended up with almost a kilo of meat. Normally I fry and then braise my meatballs in a large frying pan, but no frying pan is big enough to hold the amount of meatballs you get from a kilo of meat.

So I thought of this way to cook and serve them, and they came out so delicious and moist and juicy, that I think this will be a great method even for smaller batches.

This recipe is more about the method than about ingredients: use whatever flavorings you fancy in the meat, but do use the eggs, milk, breadcrumbs and tomato paste. There could be rosemary and lemon zest, or fresh oregano and a bit of grated parmesan in these meatballs. Or go the oriental route and add chili paste and soy sauce, and add some peanut butter instead of the tomato paste!



Baked meatballs
a kilo of ground meat, half beef, half pork
2 eggs
a good handful of dry breadcrumbs
100 ml milk
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
a handful of fresh parsley, chooped
2 tablespoons of fresh thyme, chopped
1 small shallots, finely chopped
a grating of fresh nutmeg
salt, pepper
oil for frying
to finish:
2 tablespoons butter
2 large onions, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic finely minced
1 glass of wine (I used rose but red or white would work just as well)
1 glass of water or light stock

Mix the meat with the first set of ingredients. Form into small patties. By ´patty´ I mean a small, slightly flattened meat ball. At this point, you can set them aside in the fridge for a couple of hours until you are ready to cook them.

Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Heeat a little oil in a frying pan. Get the pan really, really hot. Have a large baking dish ready, preferably one that will take all the meat patties in one layer. Start frying the patties until you have a nice crust on both sides - no need to cook them all the way through, they´ll finish cooking in the oven. Transfer them to the baking dish when they are browned. When all the patties are browned and in the baking dish, add the butter to the frying pan. When it´s melted, add the onions and garlic and fry over medium heat until they are golden brown. Deglaze the pan with wine and water, simmer for a minute, and season with salt and pepper. Then pour this sauce over the meatballs in the baking dish. Nudge the strands of onions a bit so they rest between the meatballs instead of on top of them, or the crust on the patties will go soggy.

Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes - test one meatball to see if it´s cooked through.





The cake we had for dessert was this one, made with blueberries instead of raspberries. Very good, and not bad with a cup of coffee the next day as I´ve just discoverd!

From Dusty, with love

... in the non-food category: I´ve been listening to a lot of Dusty Springfield lately, but today was the first time I looked for clips of her on You Tube. I can´t resist sharing this here - one of my favorite songs sung by one of my favorite voices. Watch it all the way to the end and I´d be impressed if you make it without getting a lump in your throat.




but if you stay
I´ll make you a day
like no day has been
or will be again
we´ll sail on the sun, we´ll ride on the rain
we´ll talk to the trees
and worship the rain
then if you´ll go I´ll understand
leave me just enough love
to hold in my hand
if you go away
if you go away
if you go away

Zeg het met koekjes

Als je van bakken houdt, maar geen zin hebt om elke maand een grotere maat spijkerbroek aan te schaffen (of, om toe te kijken hoe je huisgenoot/man/kinderen langzaam steeds verder uitdijen) dan zit er maar 1 ding op: bakken en uitdelen.

In een vorige baan, waar ik behoorlijk ongelukkig was, had ik 'woensdag bakdag'. Het was grotendeels therapeutisch bakken (weinig dingen zijn zo heilzaam voor de ziel als beslag kloppen, boter losroeren, om nog maar te zwijgen van het effect van de geur van versgebakken cake of koekjes). Het product nam ik dan mee naar mijn werk, om vervolgens toe te kijken hoe mijn niet geliefde collega's het verslonden. Parels voor de zwijnen, dacht ik dan vaak.

Inmiddels werk ik ergens waar ik bepaald niet ongelukkig ben, en waar ik mijn collega's van harte iets lekkers gun. Therapeutisch bakken heb ik niet meer zo nodig, maar wel heb ik vaak zin om een nieuw recept uit te proberen - zonder het bovengenoemde gevaar van die groeiende spijkerbroekcollectie.




Ik ga dus mijn collega's wat vaker verwennen. Met koekjes als deze: de 'salty oatmeal white chocolate cookies' waarvoor ik het recept vond op smitten kitchen, 1 van mijn favoriete recepten blogs. Hier mijn versie, aangepast aan grammen en graden, met een tikje minder suiker zoals altijd wanneer ik een Amerikaans recept gebruik.

Iets over de ingredienten: gebruik geen instant havermout, maar het soort dat minstens een half uur moet koken - dan krijg je koekjes met de juiste beet. En voor de chocola: gebruik de beste die je kunt vinden.
Zout op koekjes strooien lijkt raar, maar het zoute accent is heerlijk bij de zoete en romige chocola. Probeer het!








Witte chocolade havermout koekjes (ca. 30 stuks)

150 gram bloem
3/4 theelepel bakpoeder
1/2 theelepel sodium bicarbonaat
1/4 teaspoon zout
170 gram zachte boter
125 gram suiker
50 gram lichtbruine basterdsuiker
1 groot ei
1/2 theelepel vanille extract
150 gram havermout
175 gram witte chocolade, in stukjes gehakt
fleur de sel of grof zeezout

Verhit de oven voor op 175 C en bekleed een bakplaat met bakpapier.
Meng de bloem met het bakpoeder, bicarbonaat, en het zout.
In een andere kom, roer de boter schuimig met de suikers (kan met een mixer, ik deed het met de hand). Meng het ei erdoor en het vanille extract, dan het bloemmengsel, dan de havermout, dan de chocola. Schep er hoopjes van op de bakplaat (je kunt er ook bolletjes van draaien als perfect ronde koekjes erg belangrijk voor je zijn). Zorg ervoor dat de koekjes genoeg ruimte hebben om uit te lopen. Druk de hoopjes een beetje plat, strooi er klein beetje grof zout over. Bak de koekjes 13-16 minuten, en draai de bakplaten halverwege een keer zodat ze gelijkmatig bruin worden.

Hoe langer je ze bakt, hoe knapperiger ze zullen zijn.

Purple & Green Weekend Dinners

We did have our steak last night and it was wonderful. I made a kohlrabi-stilton gratin to go with it - because I adore the taste of salty, pungent blue cheese with red meat. I found this gorgeous purple kohlrabi at the farmers market yesterday. I can´t say that it tastes very different from the regular kind, but it sure was pretty!



Dinner tonight was a bit more frugal but equally delicious. I had this beautiful, squeaky fresh bunch of parsley, also from the farmers market, and I decided to really showcase it in a dish instead of just using it as an accent or garnish. It turned out to be an excellent soup, very clean and fresh and green-tasting.



I always serve pureed soups topped with something crispy, to make it more interesting to eat. A bowl of pureed soup can get a bit boring because every bite is essentially the same. Croutons work very well for this, as do little cubes of potatoe, fried until crisp, bits of bacon or chorizo, onion rings.. Today I fried some strips of oyster mushroom until they were brown and crisp and piled these on top.

Parsley soup, for 2

75 grams of very fresh and bright parsley, stalks and all, washed thoroughly and coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon of butter
2 fat cloves of garlic, chopped
1 large potato, peeld and cubed
1 tablespoon flour
500 ml light chicken or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons of milk
1 egg yolk
salt, pepper, freshly grated nutmeg
your crispy garnish of choice

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the potato and garlic. Cook over very low heat for 5 minutes or so, making sure that the garlic does not brown. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well. Add the stock, then the parsley. Bring to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer and let the soup cook for about 20 minutes. Test a parsley stalk, it should be tender by now - if not, cook for 5-10 minutes more.

Puree the soup in a blender or with a stick blender. Pour it back into the pan and taste for salt and pepper. Add a tiny grating of fresh nutmeg. Beat the egg yolk in a small bowl with the milk. Add a tablespoon of hot soup to the mixture to temper the egg, then add this egg mixture to the soup. Stir it in to slightly thicken the soup, making sure the soup does not boil anymore - or you´ll end up with bits of scrambled egg in your soup, which doesn´t really matter with regards to flavor, but doesn´t look as nice.

Spoon into bowls and add your garnish.

Nautical Gourmet: Pont 13

One of the many dinners out we had the past couple of weeks was at Pont 13. Within one week, this place had been recommended to me by several people about whose culinary standards I really have no clue, but who all commented that it was such a magical place at such a fantastic location, with such great atmosphere. So on one of the warm and sunny days of the Pentecost weekend, we headed out to the remote spot where this former ferry-transformed-to-restaurant is located. It´s not that remote, really, at least not to us who live in the western part of the city - and I would guess it´s about a 20 minute bikeride from Central Station. But that bikeride leads to what feels like the middle of nowhere: an industrial area with no housing or stores or other restaurants, just huge warehouses and boats.





We were seated outside with a view of the Silodam, ordered one of our favorite wines (a German Gewurztraminer), a plate of oysters to start, and were happy. Even happier when our main courses arrived: everything fresh and vibrant tasting, carefully seasoned, prepared with attention to detail. Dennis had roast poussin with roast vegetables (which were laced with fresh peas), I had the fish of the day which was fried lemon sole with a crushed potato salad and tarragon sauce. And the fries.. these were easily some of the very best fries we´d ever eaten in a restaurant. Served with a tangy mayonaise, crispy on the outside and creamy fluffy on the inside.. oh my. I would go back just for the fries.





Sitting outside is lovely, but indoors it´s pretty cool too - a large room with lots of nautical features, a huge woodburning stove, and a rabbit that lives a quiet life in a large cage that´s guarded by a St. Bernard. And seeing the sun set behind the boats is indeed magical - it makes you forget you´re in Amsterdam, and makes you feel like you´re on vacation. Which is something we all should feel more often. So get yourself to Pont 13 for a nautical mini break with some great food to boot!