Like many of [...]]]>

Frying up some home-made sausages.

I decided I needed to try to make my own sausages. My wonderful, wonderful butcher has some great sausages, but really, I wanted to give it a try. To add my own flavors, make my own combinations. It was  one of those things I felt the need to try at least once.

Add seasoning before grinding, to make it easier to mix all flavors after grinding

Like many of the foods I feel the need to make, this – yet again – proved to be well worth the little bit of extra work.

The sausage casings needs to be washed before use

It doesn’t mean that I stop buy sausages from my butcher. But it does mean that along with the sausages, I might buy some random, cheaper cuts of meat and some pork intestines as well.

Grind the meat at a setting you like. Do you want chunky sausage, or really fine?

Making sausages is fun. It really is. It’s easy too and the finished product is tasty. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Mix and knead the ground meat to make sure all the flavors are well-distributed

Now the pictures you see here and the recipe that follows are a simple pork sausage with some French herbs. But as with most home-made foods, the key is to use your own imagination. To make combinations you think might be tasty. Have fun with it. I sure did!

The sausage stuffer.

There are a few things to take into consideration when making sausages.

You place the entire length of casing over the stuffer, then pull it off as you fill.

First: Make sure that you have a way to get the meat into the casing. A sausage stuffer attachment for a stand mixer is awesome, but any type of funnel should work.

Pull the casing off the stuffer as it's being filled.

Second: Any good butcher makes some of his own sausages. He’ll be able to sell you some casings.

Keep filling the casing into one giant sausage.

Third: Fat equals flavor and moisture. Completely lean sausage will taste terrible, so don’t shy away from fat.

Twist the casing to create individual sausage links.

A bowl of home-made sausage links.

The reason I love Italian cuisine so much might just be the simplicity. The ease in which few but wonderful ingredients are changed into beautiful, flavourful dishes. No need for crazy expensive ingredients, just make sure your veggies are fresh, ripe and delicious and a tomato [...]]]> (pici with breadcrumbs)

The reason I love Italian cuisine so much might just be the simplicity. The ease in which few but wonderful ingredients are changed into beautiful, flavourful dishes. No need for crazy expensive ingredients, just make sure your veggies are fresh, ripe and delicious and a tomato can become a feast.

I went searching for inspiration last week. I love to make my own fresh pasta. Heck, I love to make good quality dried pasta with nice sauces. But I’d fallen into the trap of the “few favorites”. My simple ragu, or even simpler meatless tomato sauce, pesto, my favourite creamy gorgonzola sauce, pasta in brodo.

So I went to Jul’s Kitchen. Browsing her blog I got jealous of the fact that she has all these beautiful ingredients available to her. Still, even though my tomatoes might not be as fresh as hers, her blog is an absolute inspiration to me.

I stumbled upon Jul’s nonna’s recipe for “pici”. A fresh, handrolled eggless pasta. She mentioned that the traditional sauce for pici is ‘Aglione’. It sounded interesting, to say the least – and tasty. A fun new thing to try, something to get me out of my rut.

I googled ‘Aglione sauce’ and the first link I found talked about garlic and breadcrumbs. While tweeting with Jul she let me know that in fact, that wasn’t Aglione sauce. It was “Pici con le Briciole”. Pici with breadcrumbs.

Making the pici dough was easy enough. It really is just flour, water and a pinch of salt. After rolling out the dough, Jul advised me to spread some olive oil over it, cover it with cling film and let it rest for about 2 hours.
Actually shaping the pici after cutting proved to be the hardest challenge. Fortunately they’re not supposed to be perfectly uniform, but still, it took me quite a while. And despite the fact that it’s highly therapeutic, I’m glad that Jul and I decided on a prop-swap during Food Blogger Connect in August. She agreed to bring me a special inverted rolling pin to make my pici from now on.

And this is something I love about the food-blogger-world. When you find – or meet – or stumble upon someone who is passionate about their specialty, they are so happy and willing to help you get into it too. Jul is a self-confessed ‘Fresh Pasta Maniac’, I’ve confided my love of Italian cooking and (fresh) pasta on here many times as well. She can help improve my skills – and get me some highly useful Italian kitchen tool – while I’ll get her into a Dutch cookie tradition.

So that night, after my browsing and tweeting, Laurens and I ate pici con le briciole. I was able to present Laurens with an Italian meal he didn’t even know existed. We both liked it, a lot! Now I can’t wait to try the Pici all’Aglione.

I participate in a recipe exchange once in a while. It’s good. I get to try completely new recipes. Things I’d never thought of making before. The theme for the exchange this time was Mexican food. I love Mexican food. Loved it since I first ate at Rose’s [...]]]> Recipe exchange

I participate in a recipe exchange once in a while. It’s good. I get to try completely new recipes. Things I’d never thought of making before. The theme for the exchange this time was Mexican food. I love Mexican food. Loved it since I first ate at Rose’s Cantina and  loved it even more since the first time I had Mexican food in Colorado. Now Rose’s Cantina still exchanged, but they’ve changed their menu and turned terrible, so while in Amsterdam I have to resort to making my own. A new recipe, therefor, is always welcome!

The recipe I received was Sweet Beginning’s Enchilada Lasagne. It’s cheesy goodness with turkey and taco sauce layered with corn tortillas. I was in for quite the challenge. The recipe called for grated cheddar or mexican mix, for corn tortillas, for low-sodium cottage cheese, ground turkey and taco sauce. Now the only cheddar I can get here is real, English cheddar. The actual good non-plastic cheese. Mexican mix doesn’t exist – we’re in the land of real (farm) cheeses, ‘cheese product’ is not allowed to call itself cheese. Taco sauce and chunky salsa are the same things, low sodium cottage cheese is nonexistent (cottage cheese itself can be hard to find). Now I can grind my own turkey and figure out the rest, but the biggest issue were the corn tortillas.

The only tortillas I can get here are crappy flour tortillas and masa harina is another thing not sold here, so making my own corn tortilla’s was proving to be difficult as well. I wasn’t about to give up on trying this delicious sounding casserole. Fortunately I found Hillbilly Housewife’s cornmeal tortilla recipe. With that on hand I was good to go!

I replaced the canned tomatoes in the recipe with fresh ones to counter the fully salt cottage cheese I did find. I mixed a well melting grated Dutch cheese with some mild English cheddar which I grated myself. I ground the turkey, and I used the chunky salsa instead of the taco sauce. And I made the tortillas.

Besides making the tortillas, which took way too much time to fry them all, the recipe was super easy. It was different from anything I’d made or had in quite some time, but different in a very good way. It was extremely tasty and will definitely make it again. I might wait until I get someone to bring me corn tortillas from the US though!

For as long as I can remember I’ve helped my mother bake. I must’ve been 4 or 5 when I first recall standing on a kitchen stool and mixing butter, sugar eggs and flour to make a cake. The best part of “helping” my mom make cakes, [...]]]>

For as long as I can remember I’ve helped my mother bake. I must’ve been 4 or 5 when I first recall standing on a kitchen stool and mixing butter, sugar eggs and flour to make a cake. The best part of “helping” my mom make cakes, was licking the spoon, and the bowl, after the batter was poured into the pan.

I never had the patience to wait for a cake to be completely cooled. And honestly, I liked her cakes better when they were still slightly warm. Even though my mom told me not to cut the cake before it had cooled, I could hardly ever hold myself back.

I’d guess I was about 8 or 9 when I baked my first cake on my own. Using my mother’s trusted recipe for cake (equal parts flour, sugar and butter and a number of eggs and flavoring) I really didn’t need her help anymore.

My mom’s cake recipe was probably the only recipe I used until I moved out. The only other recipes I knew existed, were my friends’ mothers’ cakes that were made from a boxed mix.

In the years since I’ve moved out from my mother’s house, I’ve experimented with many many more recipes. Some have worked, and some have failed. Most of them have been recipes I found online and altered. Some were written down on envelopes, or scraps of paper. I don’t know the origin of most of my cake recipes, but I know exactly which ones I like, and which ones need some improvements.

The second time I met (and went to visit) Laurens’ parents was quite a while ago, but I still recall the cake I brought. Laurens had failed to inform/ask his parents about us visiting, so he called the evening before we planned to go. His mom was happy about having us over, but told him ‘I don’t even have a cake to serve you’. After the phone call I asked what was up (my understanding of Italian back then was worse than the despicable state it’s in now) and he laughed and mentioned the cake.

I went to rummage in our kitchen to see what ingredients I had available. I proceeded to google ‘chocolate hazelnut cake’ and found a plethora of recipes.

The recipe I chose was easy enough to make and seemed tasty. The next morning, before we left for the in-laws, I baked a cake.

The cake turned out to be wonderful. The ground hazelnuts in combination with the almond extract and chocolate gave it something different. The cake in itself was full in taste and moist. My in-laws were at first confused about me bringing a cake – hey, they hadn’t gotten used to my food obsession back then – but very enthusiastic once they tasted it.

Since that date, I’ve brought them more goodies. They don’t look all that surprised anymore when, instead of flowers, I present them with something I’ve prepared myself.

Recently I remembered that cake. I hadn’t made it since that first time, but I had all the ingredients and a free hour on my hands. The cake was still wonderful.

As always – if you’re certain you know who’s/which recipe I wrote down that fateful day, please let me know so I can credit them appropriately!

Now I realize that making cheesecake a second time isn’t really an accomplishment worth [...]]]> I’ve written about my first ever attempt at making and eating cheesecake. How it was a huge success and I suddenly realized I like cheesecake. Well, I’ve done it again.

Now I realize that making cheesecake a second time isn’t really an accomplishment worth tooting your own horn about, however, I improved my recipe.

I’ve improved it so much, that it would be mean not to share it.

See, my cheesecake is one with chocolate, caramel and nuts. Recently, while browsing through a bunch of other blogs, I read about someone using chocolate chip cookies instead of graham crackers for her crust. It sounded like a grand idea. A grand idea which could however be improved.

How about using chocolate chip cookie dough for the crust. Unbaked cookie cough as a bottom and up the side, filling it with cheesecake batter and baking it to creamy delight.

And then, while I was working on my cheesecake (and running back to the store for some forgotten ingredients – it was quite the weekend for forgotten ingredients) I decided to alter the cheesecake batter as well.

See last time, while the cake was very tasty, it was also the slightest bit tangy. Not unpleasant, but I figured that taking that tang out would make it even creamier and smoother. Turns out that (for a chocolate/nuts/caramel cheesecake) I was right. I think I’ve achieved my ultimate cheesecake batter. I don’t think I will, or should, ever alter it one bit. Until I find more improvements that is!

Because google recipes code and/or this plugin and/or maybe even this latest version of wordpress doesn’t work correctly, I’ll first give you the links to the recipes you need to complete your ingredient list:

• chocolate chip cookie dough
• caramel sauce
• ganache

This recipe is also linked up from Sweet as sugar cookies. Check out the other sweet treats posted there!