However, they weren’t fall-of-the-bone-tender. They [...]]]> We’d bought cooked (oven roasted I think), marinated spare ribs from our local butcher a couple of times. They were great, very flavorful, which is why we kept buying them once in a while. Just reheating them in the oven was enough to have nicely flavored ribs on the table.

However, they weren’t fall-of-the-bone-tender. They were always the same, adapted -flavor wise- to the general public’s taste. Tasty, but not extraordinary. Nothing extra special.

Another problem, if you want to call it that, was that the membranes weren’t removed from the bottom of the ribs. I knew that I could do better myself. Adapt them to what I like in a rib. What we like.

After smoking the chicken breast, I figured I could use that same method to smoke ribs. Sure, It wouldn’t be extremely smokey. It wouldn’t be the ultra slow barbecueing which I love in the US. But I figured it would give it some extra flavor. I still had an ‘award winning’ rib-rub I’d bought at the Savory Spice Shop in Colorado the summer before. So all I needed was a rack of not yet marinated, uncooked ribs.  Fortunately the butcher had some in the back that he hadn’t prepped yet, so I was good to go.

I really love that butcher. It’s really close to our house and they have everything I want, or can get it. I have their phone number and I can call in orders if needed. When they’re in, they actually give me a call so I won’t have to go to their store in vain. The girls who work there on Saturdays, which is the day I  usually go there, are all lovely. They recognize me and have fun with me. They joke and are friendly. They are amused by the fact that I ask for things to be a little different. Like the uncooked ribs. They hardly ever sell those. So if I have a reader who lives in the west part of Amsterdam and likes good cuts of meat, please go by the Keurslager at Ecuplein. They’re awesome.

Back to the ribs though. I started out prepping them to be cooked. This means removing the membrane and applying a rub. I don’t have pictures or a video of how that works, because Laurens was at work when I did this and I really needed both hands for this. It’s fairly easy though, once you know how it works. You just take a dull knife (butter or dinner knife or so), which you wiggle under the membrane on the bottom side of the rib. You then take a piece of kitchen towel to hold the little piece of membrane you’ve wiggle loose and while you hold the ribs with one hand, you pull the membrane off with the other hand. If the membrane breaks or splits, just start over with the piece that’s still attached to the ribs.

Removing the membrane is the key to true tasty, tender ribs. The membrane will be touch after cooking, and it won’t let flavors from your seasonings into your meat. So don’t skip the membrane-removal. Promise me you won’t!

Once the membrane is removed, apply your favorite rub generously over the front and the back of the ribs, then smoosh them in a bit. Especially with the membrane removed, you can stretch ribs out quite a bit. This’ll shorten cooking time, but will make the ribs tough and a little drier. Not tastier. So smoosh them together. Set the ribs aside while you prep your grill.

Start by grabbing some nice wood chips. I like hickory, personally, but I bet mesquite would be nice too, or apple wood. Break the wood chips into small pieces. Big pieces take a long time to start smoking, so make sure you have a lot of little pieces. Once they start smoking, larger pieces will start to work as well, but make sure you have some small chips as well. Soak the chips for 10 to 20 minutes.

Once the chips are soaked, drain them and place them in a shallow aluminum bowl. Small chips go on the bottom. Place the bowl of chips over the flames, under the rack of your grill. Then turn on the burner(s) under the bowl. Close the hood of your grill and let the temperature get to about 110C or 225F. At least not too much hotter. You want the heat to be enough to get the chips smoking and the pork cooked, but you want it to go slow!

Once the grill reaches the right temperature (and the chips have started smoking a little) you place your ribs on the other side of the grill. As far away from direct heat as you can. Again, smoosh them together a bit.

Let the ribs cook like this for about 40-45 minutes, then turn them over and wait another 45 minutes. Then flip again and move them a little closer to the heat, so they might get the tiniest hint of a crispy outer layer. After about 10 minutes you turn them again. If you have really thick ribs you might want to repeat this 3 or 4 times, with normal sized ribs they should be done after those 10 minutes or (almost) direct heat on both sides.

They’ll be delicious. They’ll have a subtle smokey flavor, they’re tender enough to tear them apart. We shared a rack, and honestly, from a nutritional perspective that’s more than enough. But we could’ve easily eaten a whole rack a person. That’s how good they are!

If you want the ribs a little ‘saucier’, you could put a barbecue sauce/glaze over them for the last 20 minutes of cooking (just brush it on each side alternately and turn after 5 minutes, so 2 glazes per side). It’s what I did with the ribs in these pictures. Honestly, I don’t think they need that (I’ve made them with and without the glaze).

Also featured in this dinner was roasted garlic. That garlic with some nice crusty whole wheat bread was perfect to accompany the ribs. A how-to on the garlic will be posted soon!

I’ve been sick this last week. While I was trying to deep clean my marble kitchen floor out of the blue I suddenly got this terrible throat ache. Literally while I was cleaning. A day later the violent coughing and fever started. I sincerely despise these late-season flues.

Being sick means [...]]]>

I’ve been sick this last week. While I was trying to deep clean my marble kitchen floor out of the blue I suddenly got this terrible throat ache. Literally while I was cleaning. A day later the violent coughing and fever started. I sincerely despise these late-season flues.

Being sick means I don’t really want that much food. And whatever I eat needs to be easy. No hours in the kitchen as all I really want to do is lay on the couch and be miserable.

So this week has been filled with easy-peasy dishes. I’d simply put some steaks and peppers on my stovetop grill, or made some easy chicken soup. And I made this potato salad. Quick, super easy, and even my flu-ridden tastebuds recognized that this was tasty.

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My favorite risotto has to be the yellow one, Risotto alla Milanese, but then again, that is [...]]]> Risotto. I love the stuff. Creamy, lovely, perfectly al dente rice flavored with parmigiano cheese and whatever else you like. Not too heavy, not too many big ingredients – in texture as well as taste.

My favorite risotto has to be the yellow one, Risotto alla Milanese, but then again, that is the classic risotto if ever there was one.

Coming home one day, after work, it was hot and I hadn’t bothered stopping by the grocery store. I had to just make dinner with what was in my cupboards. The arborio rice was screaming at me. Loud I might add.

I thought about it for a second and decided that the pepper I’d picked from my plant the other day would have to go in. I also had red onions. Red onions and red chili pepper as an additive, red risotto.

The risotto was tasty, very tasty. A little on the sharp side (that chili was hotter than I thought it’d be after cooking it in olive oil for a couple of minutes) but still creamy and full of flavor. I used a beef stock from a cube, some dried Italian herbs, I grated some fresh parmigiano and added a little notch of butter before serving. Yummm!

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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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