Once in a while, when we’re in a hurry, or busy, or working late, I’ll be lazy and prepare a store bought meal. The one I usually have laying around is a bag of frozen pasta/meat/veggie mix with sauce cubes. Sounds appetizing, no? They’re actually not even all that bad, as [...]]]>

Once in a while, when we’re in a hurry, or busy, or working late, I’ll be lazy and prepare a store bought meal. The one I usually have laying around is a bag of frozen pasta/meat/veggie mix with sauce cubes. Sounds appetizing, no? They’re actually not even all that bad, as far as store bought meals go that is.

This is not that.

I had some spinach that needed to be finished, 2 chicken breasts, and some cream that was nearing it’s due date. I had thought to make a salad, but the weather turned on me and I figured I wanted something warm.

Now usually, as regular readers know, I do pasta as a primo, a first course, and have veggies and meat with the second course. A one course pasta meal is a rarity in this house, except for those pre-made dinners.

I just started boiling the pasta, fried some bacon and sauteed the chicken in the bacom grease. I added some mushrooms I still had left. Still figuring I would do two courses, I looked for a pasta sauce and found that I only had a little bit of pesto left. I decided to mix things up a bit. I added some cream to the chicken pan, cracked some pepper in there and then added the spinach to the pan. It hit me. I was making the frozen bagged dinner from scratch.

As the pasta was done, I drained it, mixed it in with the spinach and chicken and served it. It was much much better than the bagged version.

I’m sure I’ll still eat the frozen version once in a while. After all, we’re both busy with work and such and once in a while cooking just doesn’t fit into the schedule, no matter now much I like it. In the mean time I will add this homemade version to my repertoire.

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.

The way the Dutch grill, or barbecue, is by lighting charcoal under a rack and roasting several [...]]]> Dutch people have told me that the way I grill is all wrong. There’s no charcoal in my grill, my food is properly cooked  and has a nice color. So I must be doing something wrong, right?

The way the Dutch grill, or barbecue, is by lighting charcoal under a rack and roasting several kinds of meat over that. The result is burnt meat with a raw interior. You eat outside with sides of salads and bread and sauces, preferably embellished with ants and sand.

Now that the weather is getting nicer, I’m grilling more than I did. It’s just more comfortable to stand outside now. We still eat inside though, from actual china with silverware (no paper and plastic) as around dinnertime it’s starting to get chilly outside. And because we prefer not to eat ants. It’s strange, I know. But that’s just who we are.

Last weekend I decided to finally smoke something on that big fancy grill of mine. I’d bought some hickory chips and found a suitable aluminum bowl. I soaked the chips and placed them in the bowl, directly over the flames of my grill. I placed a lightly seasoned piece of chicken breast on the other side of the grill, so it wouldn’t cook quickly and close up to the smoke. I closed the lid, kept my eye on the temperature once in a while and just let it go.

Since my grill is in essence a grill and not a full-on smoker, it doesn’t render an overly smokey product. Especially since it took a little longer than I had estimated. So about 10 minutes before I wanted to eat dinner, I moved the chicken closer to the fire. Still not on top, but close enough to get some extra heat and seal the deal.

The result was a lightly smoked chicken breast flavored with a hint of mixed seasoning, and a subtle smokey flavor. It was moist and wonderful. No blackened raw product, but tender moist fully cooked white meat with a slightly tanned exterior.

I served the chicken with a nice fresh spring salad. Tomato, red pepper, red onion, lots of cilantro and some pink sea salt and olive oil scooped over some young leaf lettuce.

We ate at a nice set table. Our food wasn’t hazardous to our health, not raw, nor black, and not embellished with ants and sand. We loved the subtle taste of our chicken and the strong and powerful taste of our fresh spring vegetables.

So please, charbecuers of the world, tell me, what exactly did I do wrong?

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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