[azureus]

Abra, on Nov 28 2005, 04:08 PM, said:

And yes, aebleskiver can have apples in the center, or jam, or be eaten just plain.  The pans are available online - just Googling I see that you can get one here.  They say not to use them on a flat top electric stove, by which I assume they mean a glass or ceramic top.  That's what I have, and although I haven't made any aebleskiver for a long time, and maybe not on this stove, I've never thought that it would be a problem.  Does anyone know what the issue would be?

I think the concern is that the heavy cast iron would scratch the top of the stove. The abelskivvers should turn out just fine.

April

[Kevin72]

Thanks for the help, azureus. Sorry for the confusion then.

[Chufi]

Abra, on Nov 28 2005, 02:08 PM, said:

I make that apple and potato dish too, in its German incarnation, where it's called Himmel und Erde, Heaven and Earth. 

It's called that ("Hemel en aarde") in some areas of the Netherlands as well.
What kind of apples do you use for it?

[Pan]

Klary, what are the names of the 2- and 3-year-old cheeses?

[Chufi]

Pan, on Nov 29 2005, 01:36 AM, said:

Klary, what are the names of the 2- and 3-year-old cheeses?

Both are Gouda cheeses. (they don't have to be made in Gouda, to be called Gouda).
This is the most common cheese over here. Flavor differences come from the style (factory cheese or made on the farm from unpasteurized milk) and age: the difference between a 4 week old cheese and a 3 year old, is ofcourse immense!

[Abra]

I use Granny Smith apples, which I don't think are good for much else. They're large, green, hard, and tart. When I learned to make the dish I was told that you need a really tart apple, and they sure are. It's sad, but we don't get very many varieties of apple here.

I'm really getting into your speculaas spice mix. The other night I made some little pumpkin and marzipan tarts, using it instead of the usual pumpkin pie spices. It's such a good mixture.

[fifi]

I just want to report, I am currently making your "Butter Braised Beef" for lack of a better term. I am absolutely following your directions and the aroma is amazing. I was able to get a really nice chuck (beef shoulder) steak at the market that looks pretty much like what you cooked.

Yes, it was very hard to not mess with the seasoning but I refrained. Two bay leaves and two cloves. The smell is amazing. I will probably eat this tomorrow and I see some mashed potatoes in my future.

Many thanks for a unique recipe. (Uh . . . And can you put that one in RecipeGullet? )

(Why am I thinking that there is a cook book somewhere in here? I certainly never found anything like this when I went on my search over the course of several years.)

[Chufi]

we're going north again.. to Friesland, to make one of the specialties of that province: Sukerbole, Suikerbrood, Sugarbread.

Somewhere between a cake and a bread, this is a lovely loaf with crunchy-soft bits of sugar melting in a sweet white bread dough, very faintly spiced with cinnamon. To be authentic you should use soft sugarchips ( I think these are known abroad as pearlsugar), I could not find them anywhere in the regular stores, and ended up buying a large bag from a local bakery. You could substitute crushed lumps of sugar, only make sure that the lumps aren't crushed to a powder because you want texture and crunch in your finished loaf.


ingredients:

500 grams of flour
2 sachets dried yeast
200 ml. lukewarm milk
3 tablespoons syrup from the gingerjar
50 grams of sugar
75 grams melted butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
a grating of nutmeg
pinch of saffron

filling:
1 tablespoon cinnamon
150 grams sugarchips

Lots of butter and coarse sugar for your tin.

Loaf tin: this recipe is for a 2.5 liter bread tin. I don't have one so I used a 2 liter cake tin for most of the dough, and baked the extra dough in a small round cake tin.


Mix the flour and yeast. Add the rest of the ingredients except the sugarchips and cinnamon. Mix to a dough. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, then set it in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour.




Mix the sugarchips with the cinnamon.

Very thickly grease your tin with butter, and sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Punch down the dough a bit and start incorperating the cinnamon-sugarchips into the dough. Now the important thing is to not mix this too much. You want the finished loaf the have sugarlumps distributed unevenly through it, and you want ripples of cinnamon.




Press the dough into a large rectangle, about the length of your loaf tin. Roll it up. Now push back the protruding bits of sugar into the dough.



Place the roll of dough into the tin, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for another 20 minutes or so.
In the meantime preheat the oven to 200 C / 390 F.
Sprinkle the loaf with a bit more coarse sugar and bake for about 25-30 minutes.


take it out of the tin the minute it comes out of the oven and leave to cool on a rack. Very good as it is, even better with a thicvk smear of butter. And as you can imagine, this make the very best breadpudding...



edited to add: here's one I bought in Harlingen, Friesland, earlier this year when I was on a weekend trip there. I think I came pretty close!!

This post has been edited by Chufi: 02 December 2005 - 02:11 PM

[Megan Blocker]

Oh, my - that looks delicious! It's like the uber-cinnamon-sugar toast.

This post has been edited by Megan Blocker: 02 December 2005 - 12:21 PM

[hazardnc]

Chufi,

We brought back three Dutch cheeses and I would love some help with getting more info on them if possible.

I am going off my sales receipt, so the names might be abbreviated. Here are the names:

Nrd. Holland Extra Oud

Boeren Olde Remeker 2 Jaar

Petit Doruvael

I believe the first cheese is what De Kaaskamer gave us to sample at the shop that was similar to Reypenaer. It is a wonderful aged cheese that was a bit les salty than the Reypenaer.

Bedankt
Tracy

edited for typos

This post has been edited by hazardnc: 02 December 2005 - 12:29 PM

[ScorchedPalate]

The pearl sugar we get here is in much smaller chunks. I wonder if that would work...

[Chufi]

hazardnc, on Dec 2 2005, 12:28 PM, said:

Nrd. Holland Extra Oud

Boeren Olde Remeker 2 Jaar

Petit Doruvael

Hi Tracy,

Noord Holland is a province (stretching all the way north of Amsterdam to the North Sea). Without a more specific name, this could be from anywhere in this province. Noord Holland is famous for its cheeses because it has so many meadows for the cows to graze.. Extra oud means that it's at least 1 year old, but hard to say how old! Could be much older..

Boeren Olde Remeker: Remeker is made on a farm in the province Gelderland. They use only the milk from Jersey cows and their products are organic and made on the farm, where the well-being of the animals has the highest priority. Olde Remeker has to be at least 18 months old. (All info from their website German and Dutch only, but you can look at it to see cute cows )

Petit Doruvael: I had never heard of that! here's the website of the farm that makes it. They are the only farm in the Netherlands allowed to make a red-rinded cheese (apparently there are very strict sanitation / health regulations for making red-rinded cheese). Sounds like an interesting cheese, maybe I should go and get me some!

Hope this helps!

[Chufi]

ScorchedPalate, on Dec 2 2005, 12:31 PM, said:

The pearl sugar we get here is in much smaller chunks. I wonder if that would work...

yes, I think it would. I even think it would be better than the "crushing the sugarcubes" trick, because it is the texture of the little clumps of sugar that is the most important, not the size.

This post has been edited by Chufi: 02 December 2005 - 12:51 PM

[Chufi]

fifi, on Dec 1 2005, 07:20 PM, said:

I just want to report, I am currently making your "Butter Braised Beef" for lack of a better term. I am absolutely following your directions and the aroma is amazing. I was able to get a really nice chuck (beef shoulder) steak at the market that looks pretty much like what you cooked.

Yes, it was very hard to not mess with the seasoning but I refrained. Two bay leaves and two cloves. The smell is amazing. I will probably eat this tomorrow and I see some mashed potatoes in my future.

Many thanks for a unique recipe. (Uh . . . And can you put that one in RecipeGullet? )

(Why am I thinking that there is a cook book somewhere in here? I certainly never found anything like this when I went on my search over the course of several years.)

Fifi,
thank you, again, for your kind words.
To think that your home in Houston has the wonderful smell of Dutch draadjesvlees wafting through it.. that's a lovely thought
And I've put the recipe in RG, with better instructions than in this thread I think Here

as for the cookbooks. I have been thinking about that. There are some good books on Dutch regional cooking, but only in Dutch. I think that the books meant for the international market tend to be more of the touristy kind. You know, with lots of talk about cheese and stroopwafels and fries (now, not that there's anything wrong with those ), but good simple home cooking is probably thought of as not flashy or interesting enough.

Whereas I thought, that exactly these types of dishes would be interesting to EGulleters.
Looks like I was right.

And yes, I'd love to do a book on Dutch cooking. Bring on the contract! (and a translator, please)

This post has been edited by Chufi: 02 December 2005 - 01:16 PM

[Abra]

Beautiful! I have the Swedish parlsocker (imagine the umlaut over the a), which I think is what Anita probably has too, so I'll try it with that, maybe for Christmas morning breakfast.

150 gms of sugarchips appears twice in the filling ingredient list - it's just one batch or 150 grams, right? Did you steep the saffron in the warm milk?

[Chufi]

Abra, on Dec 2 2005, 02:08 PM, said:

150 gms of sugarchips appears twice in the filling ingredient list - it's just one batch or 150 grams, right?

Right. Fixed it, thanks
I'll put this in RG tomorrow.

Abra, on Dec 2 2005, 02:08 PM, said:

Did you steep the saffron in the warm milk?

no, but now that you mention it, I probably should have....

[azureus]

Hi Klary,

I got out the dried capucijners that I grew in my garden over the summer and prepared them for dinner tonight. The cooked peas had a nice texture and flavor, especially with the bacon added. I forgot the fried onions, though.

This is a photo of the dried peas:


The pea pods on these peas are quite striking. They're bright purple.

Here is the finished dish (ready for the Dinner II thread, but very tasty):


Thanks again for exposing us to Dutch cooking!

April

edited to remove an extra word

This post has been edited by azureus: 02 December 2005 - 06:44 PM

[petite tête de chou]

Hi April, Great photo! What else is on that plate of tasty-looking goodness?

[daniellewiley]

Chufi, on Dec 2 2005, 02:05 PM, said:

edited to add: here's one I bought in Harlingen, Friesland, earlier this year when I was on a weekend trip there. I think I came pretty close!!

I think yours looks better!!!

I'm giving my daughter's teachers various homemade loaves for Christmas - I think I'll try to find some pearl sugar and give this one a try!!!

[azureus]

petite tête de chou, on Dec 2 2005, 09:13 PM, said:

Hi April,  Great photo! What else is on that plate of tasty-looking goodness?

Thanks! I snuck in some non-dutch dishes. To the left is a pork chop with applesauce from the "Italy Today" cookbook. To the right is a gratin based on the "Pumpkin Gratin Provencal" recipe that I found here on eGullet. I replaced half the pumpkin with beets.

Maybe I've started Dutch Fusion cooking?

April

[kaneel]

Hey everyone

I finally decided it was time for me to post.
I have been following this thread since it got started.
This is such an amazing site!!
Chufi you brought back so many memories , i am from suriname so we grew up with some of the food you have cooked so far.
I absolutely love spekulaas but never attempted to make it home
My mom and brother who live in holland bring some of the goodies i can't find here

[kaneel]

Hey everyone,

I finally decided it was time for me to post.
I have been following this thread since it got started.
This is such an amazing site!!
Chufi you brought back so many memories , i am from suriname so we grew up with some of the food you have cooked so far.
I absolutely love spekulaas but never attempted to make it home
My mom and brother who live in holland bring some of the goodies i can't find here
Gevulde koeken zo lekker, oh and what i would do for a piece of komijnse kaas.
All that said ....in the future i would defenitely like to start a thread with some food from my country
Keep the recipes coming chufi.................

[Pan]

kaneel, on Dec 2 2005, 11:59 PM, said:

[...]All that said ....in the future i would defenitely like to start a thread with some food from my country[...]

Please do! I'd be very interested to see what a country whose people have such diverse origins produces.

[Chufi]

azureus, on Dec 2 2005, 08:32 PM, said:

Maybe I've started Dutch Fusion cooking?

April

April, the dried peas look beautiful, and the cooked peas look delicious!!
Dutch fusion cooking at its best!

[Chufi]

kaneel, on Dec 2 2005, 09:59 PM, said:

I finally decided it was time for me to post.
I have been following this thread since it got started.
This is such an amazing site!!
Chufi you brought back so many memories , i am from suriname so we grew up with some of the food you have cooked so far.
I absolutely love spekulaas but never attempted to make it home
My mom and brother who live in holland bring some of the goodies i can't find here
Gevulde koeken zo lekker, oh and what i would do for a piece of komijnse kaas.
All that said ....in the future i would defenitely like to start a thread with some food from my country
Keep the recipes coming chufi.................

Hi Kaneel! (lovely screenname!)
I'm glad you joined us... and yes it would be wonderful if you could start a thread about Surinamese cooking.. I know absolutely nothing about Surinam cuisine.. and I don't think it has been covered very much on EGullet.. so you could really enlighten us!

[miladyinsanity]

Chufi, do you think Chinese rock sugar--crushed somewhat--would work in place of the sugar chips?

I've never seen pearl sugar here, much less the sugar chips.

Your pictures are just gorgeous. I can't wait to try out some of your recipes!

[Chufi]

miladyinsanity, on Dec 3 2005, 10:49 AM, said:

Chufi, do you think Chinese rock sugar--crushed somewhat--would work in place of the sugar chips?

I've never seen pearl sugar here, much less the sugar chips.

Your pictures are just gorgeous. I can't wait to try out some of your recipes!

Hi miladyinsanity..
I am not familiar with Chinese rock sugar, but I think it may be similar to Dutch rock sugar. This is a very hard sugar.. we use it in tea and coffee, where it melts slowly. It looks like this, there is also a white variety. This is not suitable for the sugarbread.
If the pieces of Chinese rock sugar are too hard to easily bite into, then it's not suitable for this recipe. You need lumps of sugar that melt into the dough while the loaf is baking, so that in the endresult you have semi-soft, crunchy bits of sugar.
So in that case, i would advise to use regular sugarlumps/cubes and crush them, making sure that they are not crushed to a powder.

[fifi]

Chufi, on Dec 2 2005, 01:58 PM, said:

. . . . .
Fifi,
thank you, again, for your kind words.
To think that your home in Houston has the wonderful smell of Dutch draadjesvlees wafting through it.. that's a lovely thought 

I get the same sort of feeling when I get a PM from someone who tried one of my recipes. It is sort of like watching one of your kids get a diploma or something.

That beef recipe is so good that if I ever get my hands on something as exotic as Wagyu beef shoulder, that is how I will cook it. I just had leftovers for lunch, dunking some good bread in the butter, and it was sublime.

[Chufi]

fifi, on Dec 3 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

That beef recipe is so good that if I ever get my hands on something as exotic as Wagyu beef shoulder, that is how I will cook it. I just had leftovers for lunch, dunking some good bread in the butter, and it was sublime.

I have been thinking alot about all the rave reviews this recipe is getting. You know, this was a dish I grew up on.. literally.. I think I mentioned this before, but my mom cooked this every other week, a big pan of it, and then we would eat it for days. So I really had countless plates of this in my youth.. and when I left home, it took me maybe 10 years to make it for myself.. for me it symbolized the totally bland, adventureless cooking of my mom, the meat-and potatoes-and boiled vegetable- dinners that kept rotating week after week and never changed.

So you see why this thread means so much to me. It is about showing others the food that I am proud of, but I have not been feeling that pride for very long. It's still sort of new to me and that's why all your kind words and encouragement are so valuable.

The past weeks have been very enlightening and educational for me. I found a whole new approach to cooking thanks to this project. More respect for single, good ingredients, and more dedication to doing the simple things really right... instead of prettying up something mediocre with lots of spices, garlic and flavorings.
I am exaggerating here, because ofcourse, in the kitchen like everywhere else, there is a time and place for everything. And after a couple of nights of traditional Dutch cooking I do find myself craving chillies, tomatosauce and ginger.

To me, it's about respect for your food, and learning to listen to what the ingredients demand to make the best of them. Going back to the basics has helped me a lot in this respect.

I won't be posting much for a while - I am scheduled to have surgery this Monday, nothing too serious, but I am not sure when I will be up and about and cooking again.
I just want to let you all know that I am not abandoning this thread, and so that you know why I am not posting or answering questions.
I will be back when I can, with more Delights from my Dutch Kitchen! Thanks for reading along everybody!

[Anna N]

Chufi, on Dec 3 2005, 04:33 PM, said:

I won't be posting much for a while - I am scheduled to have surgery this Monday, nothing too serious, but I am not sure when I will be up and about and cooking again.
I just want to let you all know that I am not abandoning this thread, and so that you know why I am not posting or answering questions.
I will be back when I can, with more Delights from my Dutch Kitchen! Thanks for reading along everybody!

I am sure we all wish you the very best and a speedy recovery. You will certainly be in my thoughts and prayers.

Edited for sloppy finger work.

This post has been edited by Anna N: 03 December 2005 - 02:50 PM