Chufi

bread & cheese.

Or gorgonzola ice cream! I had that in Barcelona once. Ohh it was so good I can still taste it.

Me too (this is percyn she's talking about). Today I caught myself thinking when I switched on the computer: "Ah, it's weekend, I wanna see a percyn egg-close-up". But Susan, it looks like percyn is getting some egg-close-up-competition!! great photo!

We went out to dinner, to restaurant De Compagnon, a very small restaurant in a little alley just off the Warmoesstraat. Here's what we had: brill with truffle sauce and truffles crisp fried sweetbreads on celeriac mash porcini crusted scallops steak with roasted garlic sauce and wild pigeon with truffle sauce. It was a lovely dinner, full of good, classic flavours. With it we had a Cote Rotie 1997 that made us very happy: And afterwards, a chocolate mousse that ended up looking horrid in the picture.. After that we went to one of my favourite cafe's. If you love beer, and if, like me, you think that tap-beer is superior to beer from a bottle, this is the place to visit: In de Wildeman: this is the display with all the beers they have on tap: So, this is the end to my week of blogging. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! I love my city and I loved showing you some aspects of life here in Amsterdam - and how wonderful it is to be able to live, shop, eat and cook here. Thanks for sharing my life this week! this is me.. this evening after dinner.. blurry but happy which is how I feel right now:

Ah yes, gezellig, the untranslatable Dutch word! Yes, I think that does describe a sort of homely, down to earth style of entertaining (or just having a family dinner at home), that suits me very well. Not always effortless though..

It's not over yet! Unfortunately, my suprprise date tonight (that supposedly was going to last until tomorrow ) is cancelled because it turns out I have to work tomorrow Not cancelled really, just postponed, but because it will now take place outside the bloguniverse it will be of no interest to all of you.. To make up for it we decided to go out tonight anyway. So we'll venture into Amsterdam's red light district this evening, for some drinking and fine dining! Stay tuned!

I had a Bentheimer Schosstropfen with ice, it's a kind of orangeflavored aperitif that we brought from Germany last year. The music was Buddy & Julie Miller, Love snuck up! Can you tell I like American folk & country music??

This is, I think, one of my alltime favorite dishes. It's as simple as it's satisfying. I have made it countless times.. It is also my favorite thing to make on self-catering holidays. The last couple of years I have made it in Spain, France, Ireland and Germany.. no matter where you are, you can always get a can of chickpeas, some tomatoes, a spicy sausage, a couple of potatoes, some onions and eggs. Dinner!

chocolatechip cookies are very popular, as is anything remotely 'american'. Nowadays you can get smoothies, brownies, cookies, bars, pie etc. everywhere.. and I mean that's what they are called, people don't even bother to translate anymore!

Large. A fried egg is what I always make with the stew... I just wanted to overcome another culinary fear and poach my first egg with the whole world watching me!

No they haven't! I always chop up a chocolate bar myself!

well, I had quite the egg-poaching adventure! I thought poached eggs would go very well with my favorite after work-store cupboard standby-comfort food-supper: chickpeas & chorizo. First fry a couple of potatoes in olive oil until golden brown, then remove from the pan: In the same pan, fry onion, garlic and chunks of chorizo. When the onion is golden brown, add tomatoes (I used a mix of canned and fresh), a splash of wine, and some thyme. Simmer until the tomatoes are broken down, then add drained chickpeas and the potatoes: Made a salad of rucola, belgian endive and chopped almonds, with a pumpkinseedoil dressing: Then I could concentrate on the eggs. After carefully studying the EGullet course on poaching eggs, I thought Julia's foolproof method would be the way to go . I parboiled 4 eggs for 15 seconds. Then I poached 2.. for 4 minutes.. they came out quite hard! Also, the white would not at all envelope the yolk as nicely as in the pics in the course. Hmm. The other two eggs were poached for only 2 minutes, they were okay, but still too hard I think. Here's one of each on the plate with the stew: Why do they look so messy? Maybe my eggs weren't fresh enough? Ah well. Dennis said I just need to practice ..

I use Jane Grigson's recipe from her wonderful Vegetable Book. But I found this link, it says the recipe is by Sophie Grigson, who happens to be Jane Grigson's daughter. The recipe looks exactly the same: the grigsons parsnip soup

Breakfast (joghurt with an orange, cut up, mixed into it, and a vitamin shot in a glass). And the lunch I'm taking to work: cheese sandwich, banana, minneola, leftover aubergine fritters, a couple of cherry tomatoes. At work, morning coffee and a chocolate chip cookie generously supplied by one of my co-workers: I'm looking forward to this evening. I bought some reasonably fresh eggs yesterday so tonight wil be.. the Night I Poach My First Egg!!

'saus' means anything, ketchup, peanutsauce, mayo or whatever strange concoction you put on your fries (I don't know much about that because I always have just mayo). You pay extra for that, so you can order as many or as few as you like. I have never managed to make mayo at home that was anything like the one you get at a frite stand. I love homemade mayo, it's just different!

It's on the Voetboogstraat, an alley between Spui and the Heiligeweg. Just check you are at the right one (Vleminckx), one alley further down there is also a frite shop, not half as good!

Thought I'd show you how I make aubergine fritters. First, I roast 2 aubergines in a hot oven for about an hour and they come out like this: Scrape the flesh out of the skins and leave to drain in a sieve. Then mix with: 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh mint or, in summer, basil 1 small onion and 1 large clove of garlic, chopped and sauteed in a bit of olive oil 2 tablespoons of fresh breadcrumbs 2 tablespoons of flour 2 tablespoons of grated pecorino or parmesan salt, pepper In the picture you see this mush on the left. On the right, the ingredients for a simple pasta: crispy fried smoked bacon, chopped celery, chopped carrot & onion, frozen peas. Johnny Cash side by side with a beer.. Frying the fritters in hot oil ( they are very fragile and must be turned carefully) When done, I like to serve them with a slice of mozzarella and then briefly heated in the oven until the cheese melts. It was a nice dinner, not too heavy after this afternoon's extravaganza..

OK get a grip everybody!! There really is more to Amsterdam than fries

guess I'm really getting busted for my calorie intake.. the fries: you have shops where you get the fries and the sauce in a plastic cup with two separated sections. But the 'authentic' ones mostly serve it like this, the downside being that your first 10 fries have a lot of sauce on them, and the last fries have none! It is a lot of sauce. That's why I don't eat this every week... As for the butter: most people here put butter (or fake butter, like margerine or some other (vegetable) spread) on their bread before putting anything else on it. It's a habit! But some people don't do it with things that are either fatty enough on their own, or need no glue to stay on the bread, like jam, nutella, pate or something.

Aah, would those be muisjes or hagelslag, Fritz Brenner? Chufi, do you like them? I do like the chocolate ones, but have a tin of orange/anise flavored ones that I have yet to open. Great blog! ← I do like them but I never buy them. I prefer savoury things on my bread at lunch, and for breakfast I always have some kind of cereal or fruit.. At a previous job, we used to have different kind of sprinkles in the cafetaria, and I would sometimes have a sandwich with butter, peanutbutter and chocolate hagelslag. But I did not think of that as lunch, more like a piece of cake

it's a very ordinary young Gouda cheese. That, on some good wholegrain bread, is one of the few things I can eat every day without ever getting tired of it.

Well, it;s a very gloomy and rainy Wednesday over here, so what better way to beat the blues than with some comfort food? By special request from some EGulleteers, my friend Maarten and me head over to one of the best places to eat fries. According to a test that was recently published, these are not actully THE best. But that best place is a 30 minute bike ride away and on a rainy Wednesday.. you understand. Here is the second or third best, as you can see their English is not perfect.. but the fries are. My friend has a patatje speciaal, with dutch mayo, ketchup and raw onions. I have a slightly smaller portion with Belgian mayo, which I prefer - it is more sour: After that, we need to balance all that fat and carbs with some caffeine and sugar. We go to the Pompadour, a wonderful pastry shop. We have a piece of lemon cake and a mascarpone white chocolate raspberry-thing: Even the little almond cakes that are complimentary with the coffee, are delicious. Now I have to admit I don't do this every week.. but we had fun.. and my friend says to tell you it's all due to his bad influence that my calorie intake today was so skyhigh!

Today's breakfast looks very much like yesterday's pudding.. joghurt, granola, blackcurrant sauce: and here's the recipe for the semolinapudding. The idea to bake the semolina, is from Nigella Lawson, here's my version of her recipe: make a thick semolina porridge by heating together milk & semolina (50 grams of semolina for 500 ml. of milk). Cook for about 5 minutes until thick. Add sugar to taste (I added about 2 tablespoons. vanilla sugar would be very nice). Take 1 egg and separate. Stir the yolk into the porridge and beat the egg white until stiff. Fold the eggwhite into the porridge. Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake at 180 C for about half an hour. Nigella says bake for 45 minutes, maybe then it will souffle a bit more, but I was afraid it would dry out to much (I like my puddings creamy ) Semolinapudding with blackcurrant sauce is an oldfashioned Dutch dessert. I think any other tangy fruit sauce or compote (strawberries? rhubarb?) would go great with this. Cream is optional ofcourse but good..

if it wasn't for eGCI, I would never even have made the sourdough bread and the ravioli! thank you EGullet!

I made erwtensoep in December, and for some reason (maybe because that's how my mom did it) I only make it once every winter. But fortunately, I took pictures! they are here (post # 48 on the page) There are some great classics (erwtensoep for instance) but many of them are very seasonal, like Oliebollen (sweets made at New Years). Other things, like apple pie, braised beef, bean soup can hardly be called uniquely Dutch, even though we make famous versions of it. I do like to make these dished sometimes but to me the most wonderful thing about cooking is the endless possibilities that are out there. I mean really endless! Just when you think you are sort of stuck in a cooking rut, you discover a new ingredient or even an entire new cuisine that keeps your meals interesting for months!