yunnermeier
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Posts posted by yunnermeier
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Hey, great -- a new voice! Welcome, and I'm all ready for the trip.
Sounds like you need to educate your hubby. This will require a lot of time and even more patience.
I have a couple of questions:
--Are your travels on your own time, or are these trips part of your duties as an au pair? Or both?
--What is that thing with the circular door in the kitchen next to the oven?
Heya! I enjoyed your blog:)
i) I don't usually travel (I'd only gone to Italy this year before this.. this week is action-packed)but I'd planned my weekend in Budapest in advance (before I knew I was doing this blog) and then 3 weeks ago, my best friend said she could come and visit me so we decided to go to Paris! Anyway, my host family were really nice about it and said I only have to work today and tomorrow and they'll ship Sebastiaan off to his grandparents on Tuesday night so that I can enjoy my week with my best friend (she goes home Thursday morning I think) .
The average au pair receives 2 weeks paid vacation a year but I get something like 5 (partly because my host family is generous and also because I work more hours than most au pairs).
ii) The circular door next to the oven is the steamer! I think it's very cool but not as useful as a microwave . We use it to steam vegetables, make baby food ,warm leftovers and to sterialised baby bottles.
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People often laugh at Dutch cuisine (huhuhu what cuisine?!) but I must say that I do like the potatoes + meat combination. Stampot (mashed potatos, bacon bits, a giant sausage and farmer's cabbage is the usual ingredients but there's quite a variety) is one of my favourite foods but I find what the Dutch term 'lunch' a very disappointing affair.
Lunch is almost always bread. Bread (usually sliced dark bread) , cheese and some kind of cured meat. Or bread and one of those spreads (chicken and pesto or omelette etc) you get from the supermarket. Sometimes if I'm really lucky I get french toast or cream-filled buns but I must say that that doesn't happen often. Today we had toasties and for a special treat, I asked Maartje to get us something sweet because bread bores me senseless (my best friend who's living here only eats this boring bread + thinly sliced ham + cheese with plenty of ketchup) . She got us kersenflap ( cherry pastries?) from the bakery across the street (I love the pink cherry flavoured granulated sugar on top).
Fellow Dutch bloggers, please don't be mad if I poke fun at Dutch food or Dutch eating habits! I really do like Holland very much!
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Though it sounds like eating out is not really your thing, I'm interested to know if there are any Malaysian restaurants in Weesp that you're aware of (I'm assuming no, because here in Amsterdam there are only two that I know of)....I'd love to know what a Malaysian person thought of the Dutch-Indonesian-Malaysian-Surinamese-Indian-Chinese hybrid food that is such a staple of restaurant/takeout eating here.
There are no Malaysian restaurants in Weesp but I did remember seeing one in Amsterdam last week called "Wau". My best friend and I were thinking of trying it out but we couldn't bear to part with 14 euro for a bowl of laksa when back home it costs less than 1 euro . Mind you, we would be quite happy to pay 45 euro for steak but somehow paying 14e for laksa is just WRONG.
I despise Indonesian-Chinese restaurants here and I especially hate babi panggang. I noticed that 'Chinese' food here is a lot more 'starchy' than back home. Nam Kee is probably the most genuine Chinese food I've tasted here and cheap as well. What I cannot fathom is how people order just one dish and eat it all themselves (just babi panggang and rice for instance!) when back home, my dad would order at least 7 dishes when the 4 of us went out (2 veg, 1 pork,1 chicken, 1 squid, 1 fish and 1 tofu) . I also noticed that Chinese food is usually served with nasi (fried rice) or bami (fried noodles). Again, which I think is WRONG WRONG WRONG! That's just me I suppose! I did however, really like the oysters from Nam Kee
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As you know, I am an au pair. I take care of a baby (he's 1 year old now) 4 days a week plus do light household chores. As you can imagine, life is a whole lot different from what I was used to back home but while it's something I wouldn't do again, I definitely do not regret going on this programme.
Sebastiaan (taken in the summer)
The house I lived in used to be a butcher shop from the late 1600s until August last year (when my host family bought over).
This is the kitchen just before it was demolished:
Kitchen (sorry about the mess, didn't have time to clean up)
The Dutch (of which I only know 3;) ) generally don't consider breakfast important. My host mum usually has muesli or cereal with plain yoghurt and my host dad gets coffee (and maybe something at work?). My boyfriend doesn't have breakfast but he does grab a sandwich or something at 10.00 or 11.00. When I first arrived, I'd eat sandwiches as soon as I woke up as that's what my mum used to prepare for me before college but I stoppped after a while because I thought my host family was giving me weird looks (OMG she's such a greedy pig!
) . Now, breakfast is usually instant noodles (my host family buys that for me), yoghurt, cookies or whatever is interesting. Today it was leftover mooncake. OK I'm off !
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Thank you, mizducky, for helping me with the pictures:)
Paris
I couldn't help but cheat by posting yesterday's pictures because
Paris was gorgeous! Truth be told , we didn't eat at any good
restaurant because I'm an au pair on a tiny budget and when we DID go
to a nice-looking cafe for lunch, we always end up ordering the wrong
thing (ie we pointed at some fancy-sounding French dish , only to get
boiled sausages on a bed of shoestring fries).
This chocolaterie is within walking distance to the Eiffle Tower. I
forgot to write the name down but I think it was Jacques something (
fat help ,that!)
I thought the bottled flavoured waters and liquors were beautiful. I
ended up only buying chocolat chestnut jam (preserve).
In the Netherlands, steak tartare is well..steak tartare, usually
grilled or fried but when I got this from the waitress, I asked her if
it was supposed to 'be like this' (I'm a country mouse). I must say
that it was very very good though! The herbs and the beef were very
fresh , even my friend who doesn't like raw meat, thought it was
delicious. Sorry about the bad picture, we were quite tipsy by then
Random pictures:
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Good morning! I guess no one guessed it was me
I just arrived from Paris and am now back home in Weesp (I have to work 
) . Let's get the introductions aside:
I'm Mei, 21 and am an au pair in the Netherlands. I am Malaysian (Baba& Nyonya from Melaka) but took a break from college to be an au pair here for one year. Of course being Malaysian automatically means I love food. So much so that I never lasted more than 7 hours on a diet in my entire life.
I never cooked simply because Mum did the cooking and the kitchen back home wasn't a erhm.. condusive enviroment but I really like the kitchen my host family has so I recently started baking and will be trying out some dishes this week (let's see if they turn out ok...).
Back home, my friends and I ate out a lot because we were probably better off than the average Malaysian teen (only because we worked and studied and they preferred to focus on academics!) but here , I eat home almost everyday. Not counting McDonalds and Chinese, I've probably only had dinner out 4-5 times! Oh , now I date a man who only ever eats things he's familiar with (like ham and cheese sandwich or babi panggang at a Chinese restaurant) which can be very very difficult
So there you go! Here's where you can watch me fail or succeed with my cooking experiments! We'll also drive to Oberhausen (or maybe Dortmund or Keulen, my boyfriend and I haven't really decided) on Thursday or Friday and then it's off to Budapest at 7pm on Saturday!
After this: Pictures of Paris (I just came back this morning)!
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Mostly we don't serve cake as a dessert. It's kaffeeklatsch time when cakes are on the table. We had some elderly women from our hometown in Czech at ours and we offered some spezial Bohemian cakes which are made following my mother's recipes.
Poppy seed cake with crumble topping
served with whipped cream
Apple cake with abricot glace and lemon-sugar frosting
The cake was still to warm when adding the frosting. During cool down time the frosting cracks. But don't affect the taste. You'll see the inner part because one edge removed.
A marbeled "Gugelhupf" with nougat and powdered sugar sprinkling
Two or three edges already served
We call it "Buchteln" (sorry no Englisch explanation found) filled with homemade plum jam (in Czech = powidl)
One cracked to show the filling
We had great fun eating the cakes and drinking coffee and tea.
legourmet, is it possible for you to tell us the recipe for the Gugelhupf? it looks so good! i have a thing for nougat! thanks !
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hey chufi! is it possible to make the appeltaart with jonagold apples?
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for a treat, my boyfriend and i would like to try one of the 3 3-star michelin restaurants in the netherlands. which one would you recommend? we'd prefer de librije ,simply because it's closer to arnhem (where we live) but the website is only in dutch (the english option doesn't work) which somehow puts me off!
which one would you recommend in terms of food? because we're only 23 and 21 , we'd like to spend just 140 euro per person for the meal (either lunch or dinner). thanks!
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Boy , am I an expert in this or what... Funny what you learn while waiting for your mum to pick the best apples at the local night market.
It definitely wasn't 'humane'. First, he hit the frogs'head with a huge stone boulder-thing. It's quite disgusting because you can actually see blood coming out from the frog's nose. Then he'd chop the heads off, skin and chop into halves or quaters. A plate of maybe 5 frogs would cost about RM8 (US$2.00) and their dismembered bodyparts still fidget! Really fresh
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In Malaysia, we don't haggle when buying vegetables or meat unless of course if you're buying plenty , in which case they give you a discount. When you're buying fake handbags or anything else on the other hand... haggle haggle haggle (sometimes you can even get an 80% discount!)
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I'm also 'travelling'via your blog, Michelle! I definitely wouldn't be able to go Israel ever (my passport says "valid everywhere except israel" )
so it's very nice to read (and see pictures) about it here. -
I am absolutely disgusted . I eat sushi and sashimi all the time. I also eat taliapia (cooked thankfully). Of course I knew parasites and worms are quite normal but I just hate the thought of visible worms into my mouth. Someone earlier said swordfish worms look like smooth caterpillars.. 'nuf said. Ugh!
No more fish.
p/s: I also read somewhere that if you pour cola on pork, worms will appear?
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Or what about the Australian Outback Steak House in Bangsar Village? I haven't been there but have heard good stories about it.
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Wow, that all looks amazing, Bryan!
I wish my parents and boyfriend were more interested in food. My parents are but they'll only ever eat Malaysian food and Malaysianised western food.
My boyfriend (Dutch)... is a disgustingly habitual creature who eats spaghetti but only spaghetti meat sauce from a Knorr packet and Dutch food (ie meat and potatos).
I'd love to try some good restaurants here in the Netherlands *sigh*
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Chihiran:
I ended up making a bastardised wagashi.
The dough was really sticky ,probably because I didn't leave it on the pan long enough, so after 8 small mochi (had to use a spoon), I threw the rest of the dough away.
I wanted something quick and fast so I made chocolate mochi with frozen nutella ,dusted with cocoa. It tasted OK but I decided that truffles would probably be better..as in the mochi didn't taste great because it was chocolate (sort of like..if you want to eat chocolate, eat real chocolate instead of mochi +chocolate..sorry i'm crap at explaining).
But I'm definitely going to try shiratama dango
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I'm definitely going to try this one!
One question: If I use strawberries, do I have to strained the seeds out?
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I love uni; I've never had bad ones , I suppose (only ever ate them in Japan). They tasted like eggs!
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I made muffins today and completely bastardised the recipe but I'm happy with it. They're chocolate muffins but I filled them with pink marshmallows (which floated and exploded and turned a sordid red/pink which I quite like) and white chocolate chunks
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Thanks for all your help!
In the end, I bought him a Jamie Oliver ...herb slicer? Or whatever it's called.. It's this..I don't even know hw to explain it but it came with a board with a hollowed, rounded centre and some dried chilli.
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Wow,Ling! Your Red Velvet Cake looks GORGEOUS! I want to eat it off the screen!
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The last piece of strawberry cake , an ice cream from the local ice cream store and one whole tube of mints!
sorry about the crap picture, it was taken with my lousy mobile phone camera
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Taken with my mobile phone camera
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I bastardised Patrick S' favourite recipe(more out of necessity than anything else!).
i) I couldn't find frozen strawberries and weren't sure if the strawberries were flavourful enough so I bought a packet of Coolbest fresh strawberry orange juice (very very fresh-strawberrylike taste). I added 80-100mls of this into the puree (which I had to mash by hand because I couldn't find the food processor blade). I didn't add lemon juice into the puree because I figured the orange in the juice would do!
ii) I'd already gone to the supermarket twice (forgot the jello the first time) so when I realised I only had half the amount of creme fraiche needed, I was too lazy to go again.
iii) I couldn't find cake flour (Dutch supermarkets have very limited range of everything) so I used self-raising flour.
iv) I also couldn't find baking soda so I substituted it with baking powder (1 t-spoon as I figured the flour would have some in it too).
v) Only used 4-5 grinds (from the salt grinder) of salt because someone told me to use a lot less salt when using baking powder.
Result:
A very dense cake like Patrick described and very flavourful. I wanted to take pictures but my boyfriend borrowed my camera. I took some with my mobile phone but I don't have a cable for that either;)
So there you are, the very first cake I EVER made from scratch (made Betty Crocker mixes twice before!) and Patrick's recipe got that honour:P
Edited to add: I thought the flavour was too intense for my liking and have decided that I would prefer a chiffon sort of cake next time.
eG Foodblog : yunnermeier - Hungry in Holland,Oberhausen & Budapes
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
I love Dutch pastries too but I am slowly getting used to them. When I first arrived, I was in a state of gleeful shock. The pastries looked great, tasted great and was so cheap! I remember buying gevulde boterkoek once a week (at one stage, it was one entire boterkoek a day) and 100 grams of chocolate (it was something like 3 euros/100gram and in Malaysia, chocolate was 6-10 euro per 100 grams) . I ate A LOT (and subsequently put on 5 kg) , not just pastries but also patat ( fries),frikandellen (sausage) and vla (custard-ish dessert)
Hi Aunty Tepee! Nola , my friend is staying with me now mah so she brought a box over. No rendang, ketupat or ayam masak merah for me this year! I'd give anything for nasi lemak with sambal ikan bilis or better yet, nasi kandar (or asam laksa, ipoh sar hor fun, chicken rice, everything really)! Kesian