At least in this house we do! 
Especially when made with awesome home-made bread and the last of the awesome tomatoes I got last Friday. Seriously, I LOVE these tomatoes. I’ve said it before, but they actually smell and taste like tomato, something that’s hard to come by these days.
The problem with tomatoes is that they’re actually a summer product. They need a lot of sun to ripen, get red and fragrant and tasty. Nowadays however, people (including myself) want tomatoes all year ’round. So they’re being grown in greenhouses with fake light and in the worst case, sent to ‘riperies’ (I kid you not, they exist) where they’re sent in green, and come out fully red. All thanks to the invention of chemicals that can do that. It’s amazing that we even expect things to taste the same, when they haven’t had the chance to grown on their own, to sit in the sun, to soak up taste from their roots, from the soil. Let nature do what it’s good at.
It seems like ‘man’ needs to and wants to control everything (which isn’t strange to me, being somewhat of a control-freak myself) but aren’t we taking it overboard? That’s what I realized when I got my tomato-tasting-tomatoes. They’re organic and I have no idea where they got them from (some part of the globe that has sun year-round??). Yes, they were insanely expensive, but oh the taste! So worth it!
I wish I actually had the courage to start eating and cooking seasonally. Wouldn’t that be awesome? There are several programs that sell you veggies straight from the farm, you tell them for how many people and you get a package of seasonal vegetables each week. It’s not even that much more expensive than buying your produce at the store. I don’t know if I can do that though. Sometimes I just want lettuce and tomatoes. I like spinach and pumpkin any time of year. I don’t think I’m quite hippie enough to just deal and wait 6 to 8 months before I can have my favorite foods again.
So back to today. Daylight savings in Europe kicked in today, so by the time we woke up it wasn’t really breakfast time anymore. Closer to lunch than brunch to be precise. All the more reason to make a big, nice sandwich. The fresh made bread, juicy tasty tomatoes, organic basil and a medium-ripe farm cheese were seasoned with a little salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.
Sometime it really is that simple. Sometimes you really don’t need to get fancy or creative. Just compose a couple of tasty, high quality items (which is the absolute base of Italian cuisine by the way) and it balances out to a perfect dish . Or sandwich in this case! (Added bonus is L being able to play around taking pictures with natural light. Life is good on a sunday morning/afternoon)
My car is very very blue again. Or that’s what L said after we left the carwash. I hadn’t decided what to make for dinner yet when we drove by the grocery store. I asked L whether we should go in. We both sincerely hate Saturday afternoon shopping, so we decided against it as I quickly figured out what I still had left in the fridge. I knew there were mushrooms that desperately needed to be eaten, some heavy cream that neared it’s best-by date and some biscuit dough mix I’d made a couple weeks ago and saved. The biscuit mix is awesome, it’s like having a box of bisquick on hand without all the additives.
I proposed making a chicken and mushroom pie, with biscuit dough as pie crust. L agreed, so we stopped at AH-to-go (tiny tiny little rail station grocery store that has basics but nothing more) to pick up a chicken breast and a tiny bottle of wine.
The pie was a recipe I’d never made before. Actually, I didn’t even have a recipe, but I figured it’d work and be tasty. so why not. I ended up just making it up as I went along and ended up with a fabulous dish which I’m sure we’ll make many times over! It’s got a perfect blend of flavors, without anything overpowering. And best of all, except for the chicken and mushrooms, you’ll usually have the ingredients anyway!
Chicken and mushroom pie (could serve 4, did serve 2)
- 1 large chicken breast
- 1 box of mushrooms, any kind
- bacon bits (not too many, but enough to give off flavor)
- 1 clove of garlic (it really doesn’t need more, or it’ll overpower the subtle flavors!)
- butter
- all purpose flour
- heavy cream
- white wine
- dried herbs to your taste (I used rosemary, thyme, sage and parsley)
- fresh ground pepper
- biscuit mix (bisquick or home-made)
- milk
- grated cheese (optional)
Fry the bacon bits, add a little olive oil to get them going, if needed. Cube chicken and sprinkle herbs and fresh ground pepper over the cubes liberally. As soon as the bacon is crispy (and has released enough fat to cook chicken in) add the chicken. Cut the mushrooms into quarters and add to the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes and transfer the mixture to a deep pie pan. Don’t worry about leftover bits of herb or bacon and grease!
In the same (now empty) pan melt some butter and press the clove of garlic into the pan. As soon as the butter has melted add flour and stir until it’s completely incorporated. Cook the mixture a couple of minute until it browns a slight bit. This’ll make sure it won’t taste flour-y. Change your wooden spoon for a whisk and pour a liberal amount of heavy cream into the pan – wile whisking ferociously. Whisk until the cream is incorporated and there are no lumps in the sauce. Add white wine and repeat, more cream is an option too, just add liquids until your sauce has a nice thickness. Make sure you do add some wine though, that really adds flavor (and the alcohol will boil out, so don’t worry about serving it to kids…)
Put the mushroom/chicken mixture back in the pan with the sauce and stir so that everything is covered with sauce. In the meantime prepare the biscuit dough. I added grated cheese to the mix and poured milk in and mixed it until it was a little softer than you would for making biscuits, but still thick enough to spread like a crust.
Put the chicken/ mushroom/ sauce mix back into the pie pan, scoop the biscuit mix on top and spread it out evenly. Don’t worry if the dish isn’t fully covered. Bake in a pre-heated oven (just under 200 celsius) until the biscuit crust is nice and brown.
With some seriously busy days at work, I haven’t really found the time to cook these last few days. This resulted in us eating simple stuff. Leftovers, a simple salad with turkey breast and even a microwaved meal. (Eating simple food doesn’t mean it has to look ugly though, as shown in the picture!) I guess after this first week I’ll have to conclude that most of my (more) elaborate and/or creative cooking will have to be done on the weekends. That’s what you get for working full-time in a non-food-related field and going to school in addition to that.
I did manage to incorporate my love for food into school though. As my teacher chose me to be one of 5 ‘lucky’ students who get to give a 5 minute speech on any subject they wanted, I decided to talk about cooking. Ha! The only catch, the whole speech needs to be conducted in Italian. Good thing I love Italian cooking!
It was fun to write though. I wrote down two of my favorite recipes in a grade-school-manner, simplifying everything, because I just don’t know that many words yet, or tenses for that manner. So far we’ve only been taught present tense, and I kid you not, Italian has about 283736493 different tenses you could use to express whether something is happening now, yesterday, last week or 2 centuries ago. You can pretty much express whether it’s still going on, will be going on or is possibly being planned to go on. And all that is clarified by adding a couple different letters to the end of a word. And then there’s the whole adding it or me or you or he to a verb and does it come before or after.
Yes! Confusing! Indeed!!
Fot those of you interested in what I wrote, you can read it under the cut (and please forgive me for anything that’s wrong with the text, tonight is only my 5th lesson!) Oh, and one day soon, those recipes will appear here in English!
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What we doubted would ever happen, eventually did. Spring is finally here! While sitting in the sun it was even warm enough to take my coat off. How do I know this, the unsuspecting reader might ask? Well that’s easy… lunch!
My co-worker S and I needed to prepare for a meeting tomorrow. What did we want and what questions do we have for our potential new supplier? While we knew we had to do that, the sun kept showing itself through the window of our office. The buildings across the street were brightly lit and the city looked happy again. We’d already opened the window to let the spring air in, but that wasn’t enough. We couldn’t possibly be expected to get any work done while the weather was that nice. Or could we?
Despite the fact that I had Sunday’s leftovers with me for lunch, I knew in an instant that we needed to go out for lunch. The great advantage of working in the city again is that going out for lunch is an option again. 
I just walk out of my office and within a block there are at least 6 different sandwich shops or even fancier lunch spots.
Straight across from the general employee entrance of my office there is a bagel shop. Today was the first day (as we saw from our window) they had started service on the terrace again. The sun shone directly onto their terrace and we couldn’t resist anymore. The meeting was moved outside!
So for lunch today I had an everything bagel with pesto, prociutto di parma, mozzarella di buffala, sundried tomatoes and a couple of leaves of rocket! A cappuccino on the side and the sun on my face made this the perfect lunch. And we actually got some work done too!
Or: The tastiest potatoes in the world
During a fairly busy day at the office, where I spent most of my time checkin lay-out on our annual report, I found out someone stole an article I wrote. Oh my. Insane!
I haven’t been active in journalism anymore for about 9 years, but 10 years ago I wrote a lot. Most of the stuff I wrote during my internship at a local Denver magazine (which doesn’t exist anymore, but still has their archives up here) was published on their website as well. I guess that’s where they stole my work from. I guess a call to a Singaporese or Czech publisher is in order. Not today though. By the time I got home, it was too late to call them. Plus I had to get started on dinner.
Being all upset (yet strangely flattered that they chose my work to steal) I almost forgot to buy potatoes. Fortunately the post-it on my tram card reminded me just in time!
L’s co-worker from New York is in Amsterdam for a few weeks. Spending some time at the Amsterdam office. We invited him over for dinner tonight. We had steaks, grilled sweet onions and zucchini, and gratin dauphinoise adapted from Julia Child’s famous ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’. I had no idea what kind of food our guest liked, so I figured this would be a safe choice. I mean, how can you go wrong with creamy-cheesy-potatoes???
Gratin Dauphinoise (recipe adapted from MtAoFC)
- enough potatoes for everyone, peeled
- heavy whipping cream and/or milk
- clove of garlic
- freshly ground black pepper
- pinch of salt
- butter
- (grated) cheese (good quality, not that American stuff that looks and tastes like plastic)
Peel the potatoes. Slice the potatoes into very thin chips (really, about potato chip thickness. The thinner the tastier!) Put them in a bowl of cold water.
Pour enough cream with a little bit of milk to cover all your potato slices (or all milk or all cream, just figure out how rich you like it and decide accordingly) in a flame resistant dish or just a pan. Add crushed garlic, crushed peppercorns and a pinch of salt and heat the cream until it reaches boiling point. Watch your pan! Once it reaches boiling point if you don’t keep stirring and don’t turn the heat way down, it will boil over and foam and make a giant mess!
Once the cream boils, drain the potato slices and add them to the cream. Bring it all back to boiling point and stir a bit. Make sure all the potatoes are covered with cream, it needs to cook in the cream! Once it’s boiling again, stir a little grated cheese in, Add some cheese on top and lay a couple little pieces of butter on top. If you used a pan (because you don’t have a flame proof oven dish you add the cheese while it’s still in the pan, then transfer everything to an oven-safe casserole and add cheese and butter on top there.)
Put the dish into a pre-heated oven, about 200 degrees celsius for about 30 minutes or at least until the potatoes are tender and the cream has soaked up or thickened considerably. If it looks dry, just add a little cream to the casserole. If you’re not eating yet, turn the oven down a bit, keep the dish warm and keep adding a little cream whenever you think it’s going to dry.
Bon Appétit!
And for a funny note, the spell checker provided by the software that makes this blog happen, would like me to change Bon Appétit! to Bon ape tit. Just so you know, my software is slightly perverted!
Networks
