Since we wanted to visit Laurens’ parents, who had just [...]]]> Laurens and I both had a 4-day weekend last week. Thursday was a nationally observed holiday in the Netherlands, and I had Friday off. Laurens decided to take Friday off as well, so we could have a nice long weekend together.

Since we wanted to visit Laurens’ parents, who had just returned from Italy, we figured we could finally go to the ‘Drunense Duinen’, a National Park near his parents town. The Drunense Duinen are beautiful. They are natural sand dunes in the middle of dry land. No water in sight. The only big problem in the Drunense Duinen is that nature is doing too well. Trees and bushes that aren’t supposed to grow in dunes have been thriving and a very large part of this amazing dune-land has been overgrown with forests. The preservation societies are actually cutting down trees there, to preserve nature. It’s a strange phenomenon.

I had never been to the Drunense Duinen before. We figured we’d walk around and grab something to eat and drink there, when I realized that I have a beautiful antique style picnic basket that I’d never even used. A picnic it would be.

My requirements for our picnic were simple. The foods needed to be easy enough to make and eat; filling enough to last us during a walk through the dunes and forest; and able to keep well during transportation.

I settled on wraps and sandwiches for our main lunch. Some hummus and bread and small baggies of chips to nibble on as sides, and chocolate-almond cupcakes for dessert. I baked the cupcakes the evening before and had a hard time not eating them before we left.

For the wraps I spread a layer of pesto over an entire tortilla, then added some thick slices of smoked chicken breast. I cut up sun-dried tomatoes and finished off with a good handful of rocket before rolling the tortilla, cutting it in half and placing it in it’s container.

The sandwich I made was a very simple roast beef and blue cheese sandwich. I got some nice, crusty white bread, sliced it in half and spread the bottom half with a thin layer of horseradish. Then thin-sliced roast beef was generously piled up and the sandwich was topped with a good dose of crumbled blue cheese. I cut the sandwich in half (so we could share) and wrapped it in plastic. Salt and pepper, slices of tomato, shredded lettuce and a drizzle of olive oil were packaged separately and added right before eating to prevent the sandwich from getting all soggy during the hour-and-a-half drive to the dunes.

I cut up some leftover bread to go with the hummus and packed everything with some ice packs in my beautiful picnic basket.

Once we got to the Drunense Duinen we quickly spread out our blanket on the sand, in the shade under a tree and enjoyed our picnic. The food held up wonderful during the trip. Everything was super easy to make and tasty to eat. I know lots of people think food tastes better when eaten outdoors, but I can honestly say these wraps and sandwiches would’ve been just as great when eaten at a table.

Just before the first quarter was over my dad stayed at our [...]]]> One of my 11 in ’11 goals was to host dinner once every quarter. So far I’ve managed. They might not have been super fancy parties where people were specifically invited, but still they were nice dinners with someone other than ourselves.

Just before the first quarter was over my dad stayed at our house and even though he had meetings everywhere and was hardly here, he did join us for dinner one night.

I made us spaghetti carbonara as a primo. It was tasty. Seeing my dad enjoy it also made me realize how completely used I’ve gotten to the Italian way of eating. I don’t give people spoons with their risotto or their pasta anymore – at least not without them asking. I had already put down knives, so my dad cut his spaghetti. It made him more comfortable, which is good. However I -as Laurens and all my in-laws do- just roll spaghetti on a fork and slobber everything in. Slurping and slobbering pasta has become normal. While non-Italian kids are taught that eating that way isn’t cool – or even rude, even the fanciest Italians will just roll their long noodles and slurp them in. That just happens when you eat pasta. You dab your mouth with a napkin and all is well and you’re on to the next course. I like that.

The spaghetti was followed by my fennel and chicken recipe. I love that recipe. My dad first taught it was Belgian endive (before he tasted it) and fortunately he voiced that, so I could warn him. Nothing is worse than tasting something completely different than what you expect. Once it was clear what it was the dish was enjoyed along with a nice rocket, tomato and mozzarella salad.

No pictures of the actual dinner were taken, because I didn’t think of it.

Last Sunday my parents-in-law came over to see us. Instead of taking them out to dinner, I decided to cook them a nice dinner. We started out with fresh made pasta with butter and sage. My mom-in-law was excited about the pasta and grew surprised that I’d made the pasta just before while they were in the living room talking to Laurens. The pasta was wonderfully eggy and perfectly al dente. The sage was picked from a pot of herbs I just planted in our yard a week before. (I’m working on that other 11 in ’11 goal, starting my tiny urban garden!)

The second course was a roast. Or roast-e as we jokingly say. According to Laurens every single Italian word needs to end in a vowel. So roast is roaste, and on the subway they tell you that ‘doorse openonthe righte’.
The roast I made was a mix between two recipes in the Silver spoon. The simple roast and the roast with chestnuts without the chestnuts. (In other words, I did keep the mirepoix, wine and rosemary from that recipe, which weren’t in the standard roast-recipe). I added some roasted potatoes with rosemary (from the garden) and sea salt and zucchini. The potatoes were purchased from a local farm, not even a mile from here and tasted so much better than the grocery-store-kind.
We finished off the dinner with espresso’s and cream puffs and the chocolates they had brought us.

We didn’t take pictures of this dinner either. Laurens was upstairs entertaining them and I was far too busy making my pasta and timing everything perfectly to even remotely remember to take pictures.

So I have no pictures to show of either the dinners or my guests. However, yesterday I fed another family their first lunch away from home. The cute bunch pictured in this post, are our new neighbors. They were born last week and went for their first trip yesterday. When I offered them lunch, they decided to stick around for a minute or two. Aren’t they wonderful?

On with the recipes.

The recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara has been posted before.

The pasta with butter and sage consisted of home made pasta, melting butter and letting a couple of leaves of fresh sage cook in the butter. Add a sprinkle of salt, cook your pasta, drain, add to the melted butter with sage, stir and serve. Some fresh grated parmigiana is wonderful over this very simple, yet delectable dish.

[print_this]Simple roast(e) from the oven (serves 4 as a single or 6 with a primo)
recipe adapted from ‘the Silver Spoon’

• 600-700 grams of beef loin
• 1 large onion
• 1 large carrot
• a couple stalks of celery
• butter
• olive oil
• rosemary
• pepper
• salt
• flour
• white wine

Chop the mirepoix (onion, carrot and celery) into small dice, set aside. Depending on how your beef loin is cut, either leave it as is, or tie it up neatly and evenly with some kitchen twine.
In a heavy, oven proof pan melt a notch of butter and add some olive oil. Make sure the bottom of the pan is heavily coated.  Put the heat to medium and add the miropoix and stir occasionally. While the vegetables are cooking, dredge the beef loin in a mixture of some flour, salt, pepper and rosemary (use a mortar and pestle to mix everything). Put the heat to high, add the meat and sear and brown quickly on all sides, while turning it frequently. Add 3 tablespoons of white wine (use a good quality dry wine, one you’d drink as well!) Once the wine has mostly evaporated and the meat has browned a bit, transfer the pan to a pre-heated oven (about 350F) and let it finish cooking to your desired done-ness. Either use a meat thermometer or puncture it with a metal skewer to determine. Red liquid means rare, pink liquid is medium, clear or no liquid is well done.

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[print_this]Fennel and chicken (recipe from the Silver Spoon)

• 1 fennel
• 1 large or 2 small chicken breast halves
• 25 gr butter
• 25 gr flour
• 250 ml milk
• salt
• pepper
• nutmeg

Start by making the besciamella. Melt butter in a small saucepan, add flour, stir and cook for about 2 minutes. Keep stirring to prevent it from sticking to the bottom or burning. Add the milk  while whisking the mixture to prevent lumps. Let it get to a boil while whisking regularly. It will thicken a lot! Add some salt and nutmeg, whisk again and leave it – covered – on very low heat (use a simmer plate if needed) while you prep the rest. Boil the fennel for about 4 to 5 minutes to get it softened up a bit. Cut the fennel into disks of about 1 cm thickness. (The disks may fall apart, that’s okay.) Place on the bottom of a casserole. Cut the chicken into medium sized chunks and place over the chicken. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste over the chicken. Take the besciamella from the stove and pour over the chicken and fennel. Place casserole in a pre-heated oven (about 350F) until the chicken is fully cooked and the top has browned (about 25-30 minutes).

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Please note my latest creation, moussaka stew.

If you like eggplant, cheese, potatoes and ground beef, there’s no going wrong with moussaka. [...]]]> Leftovers and stuff that needs to be eaten or tossed in the fridge often lead to somewhat creative new dishes. Ot at least for me they do.

Please note my latest creation, moussaka stew.

If you like eggplant, cheese, potatoes and ground beef, there’s no going wrong with moussaka. If you still have a big chunk of stew meat, eggplant, a package of passata and some pantry staples, you can make moussaka stew.

Unfortunately I didn’t write up the exact recipe. I never thought it’d turn out this good. It was literally just some stuff that needed to be finished. The approximate recipe is as follows.

 

[print_this]Moussaka stew

• some stew meat
• an eggplant
• a package of passata di pomodoro, tomato sauce
• some potatoes
• garlic and onions if you have them
• some parmigiano, grated
• flour for dredging
• olive oil

In a Dutch oven or other heavy bottomed pan, brown dredged stew meat in some olive oil. Add onion and garlic to cook them a little. Add the passata di pomodori and let this simmer long enough to get the meat cooked and tender. In the mean time cut up the eggplant and place in a colander with a generous amount of salt sprinkled over to pull out the bitter juices. Peel your potatoes and cut up in stew sized chunks. About 30 minutes before dinner time, add the potatoes to the stew (make sure they’re fully covered with sauce, so they can cook, add water or a diluted beef broth if needed.) 10 to 15 minutes later rinse the salt off the eggplant and add the eggplant to the stew. Cook until the eggplant is tender and the sauce has thickened. Sprinkle a generous amount of parmigiano into the sauce, stir well and serve. Yummm, moussaka stew!!!

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P.S. Laurens referred to this stew as spezzatino. It totally reminded him of the spezzatino his mom used to make. A stew with potatoes and peas. He missed the peas, but still liked the dish :-)

Thursday was moving day. At 8am the movers arrived at our old house and after a cup of coffee they started loading [...]]]>
As I’m writing this I sit at my kitchen table, in my new kitchen, with a stew cooking on the stove behind me. It’s wonderful.

Thursday was moving day. At 8am the movers arrived at our old house and after a cup of coffee they started loading our 120 boxes and some loose things and furniture.

Around 2 pm all our boxes were unloaded and we (and the movers) were sitting in our new backyard to rest a bit.

the move went super-smooth. At some point we started helping a tiny bit, but not even that much. IT was mostly us standing on different floors telling them ‘this goes there’.

The first thing I started unpacking, was the kitchen. At the same time L started working on computer and media stuff, so we could sit down and watch tv later that night. I got about half the boxes unpacked that evening and after that I just couldn’t do things anymore. I sat down on the couch, L joined me and we had a drink and watched some tv.

Saturday morning I went on unpacking the kitchen and started giving things more final places. It all worked out. Every cupboard is filled now. There aren’t any empty ones left (even though this kitchen is way bigger than my old kitchen) but that’s okay. Everything is nicely spaced out. No more lifting a stack of bowls and plates to get to that thing you need. Eventually we’re planning on buying a nice, old-fashioned, cabinet, in which we’ll have room for some more stuff. Also, later this week (probably) we’ll put shelves up in the pantry/laundry room we created, which means my stock-supplies move there and suddenly I should have some spare room in the cupboards.

I love love love my new kitchen. It’s just so spacious and nice. There’s room to move around. We can both stand there and walk around without bumping into one another. We don’t have to ask each other to scoot over to make it past the dishwasher. It’s just great.

While I was finishing the kitchen, L finished the bookcases. We have half a wall in our living room filled with bookcases. He even unpacked, sorted and placed the books already. Next Saturday my late grandma’s antique cabinet will arrive and moves into the living room as well and then we’ll be able to completely finish unpacking/decorating that room as well.

Then there’s our bedroom. That still needs a lot of work. We did put the shelves into the walk-in-closet today and I started unpacking the boxes of clothes. However, I just discovered I don’t have enough hangers, so I quit that and started cooking instead.

I love, love, love that I get to cook again. Since the reunion dinner, I hadn’t really done much cooking anymore. At least no chopping and adding tons of different fresh ingredients. With the closing on the house and then packing and moving, we just ordered in or got microwave meals. I made the occasional simple dish, like the chicken adobo, but that didn’t involve that much chopping either. I’ll tell you though, I really missed it!

So tonight, I’m making a stew. It’s fairly simple, but has tons of fresh veggies and a nice chunk of meat (which will be cut up after cooking. And I’ll set the table, with actual place mats and such and we’ll have the first fresh-cooked dinner in our new house.

It’ll be wonderful!

[print_this]New-kitchen stew (recipe feeds 4)

• big chunk of beef (brisket, rib roast or such, about 500 grams)
• 6 tomatoes
• 1 big onion, chopped
• some garlic (to taste), chopped
• 1 red, 1 green and 1 yellow pepper, chopped
• your favorite stew/steak seasoning to taste
• a pinch of salt (pink himalayan preferred)
• 1 bouillon cube (or enough powder to make a quart)
• far to fry in (butter, oil, lard or a combination)
• flour for dredging and thickening
• A good pour of red wine (optional)
• water

Dredge the beef with flour and a bit of the seasoning. Place your fat in a Dutch oven (I use a combo of butter, lard and olive oil for flavor) and let it melt. Place the beef in the pan and brown it on both sides. Add the onion and the garlic. When the onion turns slightly glassy, pour in some wine (optional) and let it simmer for a minute or 2. Then add enough water to mostly cover the beef.

Get the liquid to a slow boil and add the green pepper and 2 of the tomatoes. Add the bouillon cube and let it simmer for close to an hour.

Taste the sauce and add salt to taste (the amount really depends on your seasoning and the amount of liquid you needed to cover your beef, if your seasoning has salt, wait until you serve to check it. You might not even need to add any, I used a salt free seasoning, so I needed a good pinch.)

Add the rest of the tomatoes and yellow and red pepper. Let it simmer for another 30 minutes or so, until the meat is very tender. Remove the meat and cut it into smaller chunks. Add the meat back into the pan.

In a small bowl combine 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour with some more seasoning and a some of the liquid from the pot. Mix well to avoid lumps. Add the flour mix to the stew to thicken it. Cook it for a couple more minutes, so it thickens and serve with some nice crusty bread.

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