And it’s spring!!! Flowers are in bloom, trees too. Almost exactly to the day 2 years ago flowers and trees were in bloom as well. And I went to ‘de Keukenhof’ with my friends A,A and MG. It’s not a place I usually go to. It’s too overcrowded with tourists and such, but the flowers sure were festive!
I love spring, I think it’s my favorite season. It’s starting to get warm, colors are returning to the world, and the food is getting better and better each day. Fresh vegetables, red, ripe tomatoes, yummm!!!
I just came back from an -insanely busy- grocery store. Everybody and their dog apparently needed groceries, which makes sense with a 3 or 4 day weekend coming up. Especially with the stores being closed Sunday and Monday. When going into the store, all I knew I was planning on making this weekend, was tiramisu. Besides that and tonight’s dinner, I hadn’t figured out anything. Fortunately the grocery store was still fully stocked and gave me tons of inspiration!
- The first green asparagus were for sale again!
- They had big juicy rib-eyes (they never have those anymore…)
- With spring onions, good quality english mild cheddar and bacon bits, a quiche will be awesome.
- haricot verts! (delicate green beans, yummm)
- No need for fancy rolls when you can make bagels yourself.
- Cheese platters, paté, dry sausage and crackers make wonderful afternoon snacks.
- It’s spring again so salads must be eaten!
I got enough for the next week, or so I think. I can’t wait to show you the end results. I guess I should go and clean my kitchen now so I can cook up a storm!
(And to enjoy yourselves, here’s a picture of A,A,MG and I in de Keukenhof, having a picnic.)
While reading through a couple of newspapers I ran into a seemingly wonderful cake recipe. I could’ve just copied it and taken it home, but what the heck, I have this site now, and saving recipes on here is far more fun than copying them, right.
This cake seems like one that”ll be a major hit in our home, if only because it’s made with coffee. I’m too young to remember, wasn’t even born yet, but before packaged dried sauces were readily available and cooks were still inventive, the standard way to make a dark colored sauce or gravy, was apparently by adding coffee. It reiterates the fact that all the conveniences of modern day have made us not only lazy, but much less daring and creative as well.
Fortunately coffee is still present in desert recipes. I offered to bring tiramisu to dinner on the 2nd day of easter (one of the few things I like about the way we do holidays in Holland is that there might not be many, but they often have double days; the first and second day of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) but I might have to change my plans and bring this cake!
Coffee and almond crumb cake (translated to Dutch and then back to English from Gordon Ramseys recipe, no idea how much it’s changed from the original version.)
- 60 grams of flour
- 40 grams of lightbrown sugar
- 40 grams of cold butter, in pieces
First make the crumb-layer; mix the flour and lightbrown sugar in a bowl and cut the butter through until it resembles course breadcrumbs. Set it aside
- 170 grams of butter
- 170 grams of fine sugar
- 3 large eggs, slightly beaten
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 100 grams ground almonds
- 4 tbsp cold espresso (or very strong coffee)
- 100 grams selfrising flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- powdered sugar, to sprinkle over finished cake
Mix the butter and sugar in a large bowl until it’s light and airy, beat the eggs through the mix, bit by bit, until they’re fully absorbed. Mix in the almond extract. Using a spatula mix in the almonds, followed by half of the espresso. Sift the selfrising flour and baking powder and mix it through the batter. Mix in the other half of the espresso last.
Butter a springform pan, or spray it with non-stick spray (butter flavored, so it doesn’t leave a different taste). If you want to, you can cover the bottom and/or sides with bakers parchment, but I rarely ever do that, a non-stick springform with butter or spray never leaves my cakes sticking to the pan, but that might just be me.
Pour your batter into the pan and even it out, pour/sprinkle the crumb layer you’ve set aside on top. Bake in a pre-heated oven (150 degrees celsius) for 50 to 60 minutes. (Check doneness by sticking a toothpick in. If it comes out clean or with just dry crumbs on there, the cake is done.)
Take the cake out of the oven, out of the springform and let it cool on a rack. (Cooling it in the pan will work fine, but take longer.) Once cool cover the top with powdered sugar and serve. I bet it’d be good with plain whipped cream or vanilla ice cream if you’d want to be fancy, but equally yummy just on it’s own!
I’ll report here when I’ve made it, and include pictures!
One of the most hated dishes I can remember from childhood was probably brussel sprouts. I didn’t know any other kid who did like them. And just the sprouts still aren’t one of my favorite vegetables. However in Dutch ‘stamppot’, I do like them.
Stamppot is a traditional Dutch dish. It’s basically any vegetable mashed with potatoes. Nowadays most people add extra tastes to the dish, by adding milk and or butter to mash it a little smoother, and bacon bits, onion, garlic, cheese or whatever seems tasty to add an extra dimension.
I hadn’t tried brussel-sprouts-stampot before Christmas eve dinner last year. We went to a fabulous dinner at our friends’ (which has been L’s tradition for years and I joined in for the first time last Christmas eve.) One of the dishes served was a brussel sprouts stamppot with ginger. It was awesome! Soon after I figured I’d try it myself too. I didn’t have any fresh ginger at that time, so I figured I’d try something different. I added garlic, onions and bacon bits and mashed it with butter and milk. We both really really liked it. Today I made it with a thin, bone-in pork-chop.
Brussel sprouts “stamppot” (mash)
- enough potatoes and cleaned sprouts for the amount of people eating
- bacon bits (uncooked, lean, but still with a little fat on there)
- garlic and onion, chopped
- pepper
- salt
- milk
- butter
Peel the potatoes, cook the potatoes and sprouts (together for less dishes) in a large pot of salted water. Fry the bacon bits with onion and garlic. Once the fat has melted off a little add some butter and keep it on low heat. (If I add meatballs or pork chops to dinner, I’ll actually cook those in that pan too.)
Once the potatoes and the sprouts are soft, drain them and mash them with a little milk, the bacon, garlic, onion and the grease from the other pan and season to taste with a little fresh ground pepper. Enjoy!
So after the crappy crappy basil butter picture I posted yesterday, L took today’s picture again! Yay! Today’s dinner was Tuscan sausages, pommes duchesse and fried fennel. Now usually I make fennel baked, in a casserole, but I figured I’d change it up a little today. (That and I didn’t have all the ingredients for the casserole.)
So I figured I’d make the fried fennel from the Silver Spoon.
Fried fennel (recipe for 2)
- 1 fennel
- 1 egg (you don’t need the whole egg, 1 is enough for up to 4 fennels)
- 10 grams of parmesan
- 10 grams of butter
- salt
- pepper
Boil the fennel for 45 minutes in salted water. Slice the fennel into thin disks and dry them. Beat the egg with a little salt. Put the parmesan in a shallow dish. Take the fennel slices through the egg, then dip it in the parmesan. Melt the butter in a non-stick pan. Fry the fennel on both sides until they’re brown and serve them warm.
So I didn’t completely follow the recipe. First off, I didn’t use butter, but olive oil (didn’t pay attention I guess). Second, the whole slicing the fennel into nice disks is all good and fine in theory, but fennel is a bunch of leaves close together. Once they’ve been boiled, there’s only 2 slices that stay together and the rest falls apart. Third, I used old Dutch cheese (old Amsterdam) instead of parmesan.
Using olive oil instead of butter will alter the taste a little, but I like olive oil. Also I didn’t use that much, as I don’t like it when it gets too greasy. I might try it with butter some other time though and will tell you what happened.
I didn’t let the fact that the disks fell apart stop me. Why wouldn’t strips of fried, cheesy fennel taste any less than disks? And Old Amsterdam is a very very nice cheese. Again, I might try following the original recipe some time and will post the results. I’m sure it will taste a little different, but I bet this was just as tasty!
All in all, despite the alterations, the dish was awesome. I’ll surely make it again in one way or another!
With a whole bunch of basil left I decided to read through the index of the Silver Spoon. They have an index by recipe title, as well as an index by ingredient. The same dish might come up 6 times that way, but it’s really helpful when you have an ingredient and need ideas. By looking through the basil section I found a dozen recipes that called for 6 or 8 leaves, but with the whole bunch in the fridge, 
that didn’t help much. Then finally I found basil butter. So simple, yet so wonderful. Why would you NOT want to have a tub of that in the fridge? Right?
It took mere minutes to make (and smell up my whole kitchen wonderfully) and will last me quite some time. The Silver Spoon advises to use it on fish or other seafood. since I don’t eat seafood I guess it’ll just have to be wonderful on steaks, grilled chicken or maybe just a base for a cheese sandwich. Or with some plain pasta. Oh, the options!
Basil butter (recipe adapted from the Silver Spoon)
- a big bunch of basil
- about 150 grams of unsalted real butter
- Some lemon juice
- salt and pepper
In a ‘bain-marie’ or other heatproof dish, melt your butter over simmering water. If you start with cold water and don’t turn the gas on too high, you can use the time that it’s melting to prepare the basil. Remove the stems from the basil and rip the leaves in pieces. The smaller the better, I’d guess, mine were still relatively big though.
Once the butter has melted, move the bowl from the pan to the counter and mix in the ripped-up basil, some lemon juice (sifted if you’ve squeezed it fresh) some salt and pepper. The basil will start to wilt a little from the heat. Keep stirring, mixing it, making sure everything’s wilting and covered in melted butter. Transfer to a smaller fridge/freezer safe dish and use it for whatever you’d like to use basil and butter on!
Now the original recipe called for 100 grams of butter and I already upped that, but I still had the feeling that would leave me with butter-covered-basil instead of basil butter, so I melted some more butter (another 25 grams or so) in the microwave and poured that in the bowl. This turned it into just the butter-to-basil ratio I liked. I poured/ladeled it into two deep little dishes and let it cool a bit. Covered with plastic one moved to the fridge, one to the freezer. Can’t wait to try it on something!!!
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