Savoy

Kale is a cabbage that is very easily obtained fresh in the Netherlands. In Germany however it is available, but it needs a bit of luck finding it fresh instead of canned or frozen. Sometimes it’s there, mostly not. So when I asked the husband to bring me some kale from the market it wasn’t really a big surprise he brought back a huge savoy.

I do like savoy, used it quite often back in Amsterdam. It was a vegetable my organic box contained every now and then in winter. The problem for me with the savoy is the size, if you purchase a savoy you’ll most likely be eating it for three to four nights in a row. So that is what we’ll be doing this week: A week of savoy

First night: Green Kitchen Table 

Savoy leafs filled with a mixture of mango, canelli beans, avocado, and corn, seasoned with coriander, cumin, cayenne and paprika powder. I blanched the leaves a little bit, not enough though: they stayed a bit too crisp for my liking. It felt a bit rabbity to be honest. My four year old ate the whole thing, the twins didn’t like it. At all.  I could only get them to eat their avocado and some of the beetroot and goats cheese salad I made. Too bad. Maybe giving this one another go when summer is here again and mangos are a bit riper

Second Night: Jamie Oliver

Savoy as a side dish. Stir fried savoy with accompanying one of the best Chickens I ever made. The trick here is to add another kind of cabbage, in our case Brussels sprouts, bacon for the salt and green peas to sweeten it a bit. At the end adding a bit of butter makes it an easy to eat dish, also for the girls, but nothing innovatory here. 

The chicken we had, however, was one to remember. The new thing for me in this recipe was adding fresh herbs by stuffing them between the breast and the skin. Difficulty is carefully tearing the skin loose without damaging it, but once you succeed it really is delicious. I for one will always use this technique roasting chicken from now on.

Third Night: Yvette van Boven

With the leftovers of the savoy we made a colcannon from the Home Made Winter cookbook by Yvette van Boven. Like any other hotchpotch it’s potato mash mixed with 10 minutes cooked, sliced cabbage. What makes this one particularly tasty is adding sliced leek that has been boiled in milk fot a couple of minutes. It’s an easy but tasteful recipe and we accompany it tonight by vegetarian sausages, which actually are not tasty at all. If somebody knows where to get tasty, non-dry veg sausages, please let me know. I have not been successful finding those yet.

 

Risotto with Asparagus

Our favorite asparagus stand is still going strong on the Kollwitzstrasse. As long as they are there, we’ll be eating asparagus. Second time this week. Tonight we had green asparagus with a saffron risotto. 

Here is the (very simple) recipe for about three persons. Put 750 ml vegetable stock on, so it’s hot when you’re going to use it. Bake 1 chopped shallot and 1 chopped green pepper (deseeded) a minute in a tablespoon of butter. When the shallots look glassy, add a wisp of saffron. Add about 200 grams risotto rice and cook for a few until the rice looks a little glassy. Deglaze with 1 dl water with ½ squeezed lemon. If the water is absorbed, add the stock a ladle at a time and stir till the rice has absorbed it before adding another one. Test after about 2/3 of the broth if the risotto is done. I myself add stock until the rice is soft because it really is easier for the little ones to eat - one of the ladies only has six teeth- but I can imagine that you'd rather have it a little more al dente.

When the rice is done, remove it from the heat and add a tablespoon of butter, a teaspoon of honey and 50 grams of grated parmesan cheese. Add pepper and salt if needed: done!

Meanwhile, I cooked a bunch green asparagus in a pan of boiling water for about 10 minutes. Again, I cook them a little longer than I would do for myself; softer is easier for the girls. A few pieces of asparagus on top of the risotto and the rest with olive oil and coarse sea salt on a separate plate.

I must admit that I’ve cheated a little with the girls. They are not as fond as their mum of asparagus. They like it a little more each time, but I added green peas to their risotto so they will both try to learn to like asparagus and had enough veg tonight.

Aubergine and Tomato with Poached Eggs

The dish the girls and I had for lunch today was from one of my Sophie Dahl cook books. In Dutch it’s called Season to Season. I bought this book because of the box of veg I got every week and I didn't always know what to make with all these seasonal veg. Also of course a bit because of her grandpa who has given me so much fun in reading in my younger years. I honestly can’t wait until my girls are big enough to read the books to them.

I have to say it’s a sweet book and I use it as an inspiration, but the recipes are not always quite elaborated and often ‘missing’ something for my taste. Also with this recipe, the combination of the fried aubergine and tomatoes with the poached egg is fantastic and I will definitely keep that in mind, but I will definitely work on the taste of the veg. The original recipe by Sophie can be found here.

About poaching the eggs, I have a great tip from my Yvette van Boven books: make sure you stir the water (with vinegar and salt), so it swirls, before putting the egg in. It was my first time poaching and didn’t fail an egg!

Frittata

Yet another cooking book was added to my challenge. For my 34^th birthday two of my lovely girls gave me a beautiful new cookbook from Sweden with vegetarian recipes: The Green Kitchen. It's written by couple who have a little girl the same age as my oldest and they wrote this book with recipes also suitable for toddlers. Because we only eat meat once or twice a week, this book is a welcome addition. Their recipes are very simple and just a little different. I’m already making frittatas every week, but what I called a frittata is just a lot of baked vegetables with egg poured over it. Mostly results in some kind of scrambled eggs with veg stirred through. Fine for the taste but doesn’t do much for the looks of the food.

 

Thanks to the green kitchen I now know this easy way to make a beautiful frittata and also found out that my girls are ok with eating cabbage, while I thought it would be too hard for them with the little teeth they have.

The trick for a good frittata is to take the veg out of the pan, then pour in the eggs, bake them for a minute and put the veg back in before shoving it all in the oven with a layer of grated cheese on top. This one is with cabbage, potatoes and homemade pesto inside and really thinly sliced green asparagus on top.

Favorite Dish no. 1 – Spaghetti with Oven tomatoes

This really is one of my favorite dishes and I believe I really do make this at least once a week. This has everything to do with the fact that it takes very little time in the kitchen but is very, very tasty. It actually is a recipe my friend Marie made for me about ten years ago and I’ve been making it ever since.  It’s all about the tomatoes, since this is a product Germans are better in producing than the Dutch I especially make it a lot since we’re here.

I’m not a recipe writer and don’t know anything about the proportions, but I’ll try my best to explain. Just take a lot of tomatoes, about twice as much as you would normally use and the smaller ones are really better (about one size up from cherry tomatoes are the best). Cut them up and put them in a baking dish with a lot of olive oil, garlic from the press, balsamic vinegar and fresh thyme. Now the key is that you actually can make any time during the day because it can be in the oven for three hours, for just an hour or even a half. The shorter it stays in the oven the higher you should put the temperature, I always try and put it in the oven at least two hours before I want to eat and then put the temperature around 120C. (when late and I just have half an hour in the oven I put it up to 200C) Just stir it every now and then and adjust the temperature to make it go faster or slow it down. I always taste the juice half an hour before dinner to sometimes add a little honey to sweeten thing up because a lot in this dish depends on the quality of tomatoes. The nice thing in this dish is that it actually dries the tomatoes a bit which makes them sweeter and concentrates the taste of the tomatoes very much. After taking it out of the oven and seasoning with salt and pepper I add a few hand fresh basil leaves.

Serving is done with pasta, my favorite is spaghetti, and cheeses. I always use parmesan and when I have it in the fridge or am well prepared with fresh soft goat cheese on top. Please do try, it really is a very, very good dish. Especially with small children, in my family everybody loves it when I make it.

Easter Eve BBQ

Although the weather wasn't very helpful these last couple of days we decided to have an Easter Eve BBQ, if only because our weekly organic box 'De Krat' was so full off lovely ingredient screaming to invite some guests. Only ingredients we had to add for a 6 person BBQ with salads and bread were some steaks, 1 avocado, pinenuts and some fresh basil and thyme. Alright, and some merquez sausages.

Salad 1: Grilled Veg Salad
Slice 1 Courgette and 1 yellow Pepper, brush the slices with olive oil and grill for a couple of minutes on each side. Mix it up with a chopped peace of Garlic, chopped Basil, a squeeze of Lime juice and some salt and pepper. Put aside. Fry some Pine nuts, cut some Cherry Tomatoes in half. Mix up 1 tbsp Red WineVinegar with 3 tbsp Olive Oil for the vinaigrette. Dress 3 hands full of fresh Spinach with the vinaigrette and put all the other ingredients on top. Finish of with some salt, pepper  and fresh Basil

Salad 2: Sunny Salad
This salad was solely based on the fact De Krat brought me pansies to use in the kitchen, so we had to make them into salad that added a little sunshine to our Easter Eve BBQ. All you need to do for this salad is slice and mix and its ready.
Cut and wash (a) Green Lettuce, slice an Avocado, cut Cherry Tomatoes in half, slice up half a Yellow Pepper. Slice a Leek  into thin rings, put in a bowl and pour some boiling water over, put aside. Make a dressing of 1 tbsp (Fennel) Vinegar, 3 tbsp Olive oil, 1 tsp (Spring) Mustard, 1 tsp  Honey and s+p. Dress the lettuce and put on a plate. Drain the leek and put on top, together with the other ingredients. Finish of with the Pansies, some Fresh Herbs (I used fresh Mint and Perilla) and maybe some Pine Nuts.

For the rest we needed some meat and bread. Where else to get your steaks than from butchery Louman who truly sell the best steaks you can get in Amsterdam. Their Merquez Merquez sausages are also not to sneeze at by the way. Bread of course from De Krat, who brought us some nice Walnut bread from Menno this week. And also got some brown Baguette at the Vlaams Broodhuys.

 

Despite the low temperature it was a very successful Easter Eve BBQ with thanks to De Krat en butchery Louman! 

Hotchpotch with Chinese cabbage

And Hotchpotch time it is! Two times in a row on the menu and again one outside my hotchpotch comfort zone: Chinese cabbage and mushrooms. It actually is made almost the same as yesterday, with 500 gr of potatoes, 15 gr of butter, 50 ml of vegetable stock and a big dash of olive oil. 

Fry ½ chopped shallot in 1 tbsp. of olive oil, add 1 chopped clove of garlic after a minute or 2. Also add 1 tsp. of dried coriander, a pinch of nutmeg and ½ tsp. of cumin, fry for another 2 minutes before adding 1 small Chinese cabbage cut into small strips. Fry for five minutes and put aside.

Fry the other ½ shallot in 10 gr butter, add 250 gr of sliced mushrooms as soon as they soften. Fry for about 5 minutes and season with salt and pepper.

Stir the cabbage through the mash; put the mushrooms on top and maybe some fresh herbs like basil or parsley.

Tagliatelle with Purslane

Cook 200 gr of Tagliatelle. Heat 100 ml of Cooking Cream slowly in a big pan. Add 50 gr of butter, zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon, keep stirring till the butter is completely melted and than turn of the fire. Add the Tagliatelle and 2 hands full of Purslane to the warm cream, stir.

Cover with 2 tbsp. of chopped Parsley and 2 hands full of grated Parmesan and ready! Serve with a small green salad on the side.

Note: The ancient Greeks used purslane for its medicinal effect. It is said to help against inflammations and heartburn.
 

Pasta with mushrooms and green beans

After a very busy day I am craving a big plate of pasta, for which I used leftovers from the fridge combined in cream sauce.

Pasta with greens beans and mushrooms

Meal for 2

150 gr of green beans
2 chopped up shallots
1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. of fresh thyme

250 gr mushrooms, sliced

Juice of ½ a lemon

150 ml cream

150 gr pasta

1 tbsp. capers

Cook the beans in 3 cm of boiling water for about five minutes, set aside. 

Pumpkin soup and a potato salad

We have lots of packing to do for the upcoming move, but I have the rest of the day off and the cabinets need to be emptied so there is plenty opportunity and enough ingredients to cook. It’s a soup and salad again tonight.

Pumpkin Soup with a potato salad 
Lunch or light meal for 2

For the soup:

1 tsp. olive oil

2 shallots, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tbsp. of red curry

1 small pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks

1 liter vegetable stock

3 bay leafs

Savory Pancakes

I do like pancakes a lot, best of all with some good old fashioned Dutch syrup. As a breakfast that is, or lunch, not so much for dinner. With my dinner I definitely need to have my veg, as much as possible. I now have found a perfect recipe to have pancakes as a dinner every once in a while, but also not having to miss out on my veg

Savory Pancakes

Lunch or light meal for 2

For the pancakes (about 6)

100 gr flour

1 egg

200 ml milk

Sunflower oil