Chufi

last week, I made a baked custard for a dinner party. It turned into a sort a sweet egg scramble.. so bad that I had to make another dessert at the last minute. I put both desserts on the table and they both got eaten. Okey before you think my friends have real bad taste, this was at the end of the night where we all had had a lot to drink and sweet egg scramble did not seem so bad anymore Tonight, another dinner party and I made another baked custard. It`s not as bad as last week, but perfect, it is not. I trust my guests will laugh about it, with me, and eat the pear compote and madeleines I made as well, and try the custard. I can`t really think of a dinner party I´d be giving where these things would be an actual problem. If I was catering, and making money with my baked custard, maybe. But for my friends, no. They eat what I give them, and if I experiment with one thing, I´ll make sure there are always a couple of foolproof things on the table as well so they won't go hungry!

I'm craving pizza now! Some great looking ones here! and I have no flour in the house, otherwise I would start some dough and let it rise overnight and have pizza tomorrow... Ann_T how wonderful to see you again on the Dinner thread! Dinner a couple of days ago: stamppot (potatoes mashed with vegetables), a very untraditional one made with sweet potatoes and some panfried garlicky cabbage. Topped with caramellized onions and served with smoked sausage. We were surprised how good this was, which is why I only took a picture when we were already halfway through dinner Tonight we had some gorgeous beans.. Rancho Gordo´s Black Nightfall. I got them as a Christmas present from a very kind eGulleter! I added some garlick, tomatoes and chipotles towards the end of the cooking. Tooped with a bit of lime juice, crumbled fresh cheese and coriander. Served with butternut squash roasted with cumin, corander seeds and allspice, and skillet cornbread with spring onions and goatscheese.

According to their website, 12 amps. And say hello to my lil' Cadco -- always looking for an opportunity to show it off! ← I must add my joyous love of the Cadco OV-350. I recently got rid of my hulking Duke full size convection oven. I now have two of the OV-350 model as my only ovens. What a joy to cook with! I couldn't imagine going back to a consumer oven. ← ok I'm getting more confused now.. does it say UNOX on this oven? cause that's one of the brands of professional ovens I've been looking at. Also.. what do you mean by consumer oven? Would that be the opposite of what I've been calling an professional oven?

Thanks, all, for the input. The Cuisinart brick oven looks cute but tiny! What I´m looking for is a regular sized oven - ie what would be considered regular sized here in the Netherlands. The size you would find as part of a whole stove, underneath your gas cooker. I´m sorry if I did not make myself very clear, English gets more difficult when technical terms are required The professional oven is expensive and I think I have to consider if getting some kind of regular oven, and having it built into the kitchen, would not work out cheaper than the professional one. The regular ones I've seen are all 3.00 kW. Is the difference between 2.6 and 3.0 kW of any importance?

I just tasted a bowl of Chufi's erwtensoep, made by Chufi, and all I can say is: this is the recipe (think of the Castigliani brothers in Mulholland Drive)...this is the recipe. The big difference between this and every other bowl of snert I've had (and I've had, say...10 different versions) is the abundance of shredded pork, an absolutely key addition. Grreat. ← aww, thanks mark! the key, the secret, is the long and slow simmering.. I think this one was on the stove for about 5 hours.. which makes the meat fall apart completely. It's just one of those things that can absolutely not be rushed!

just when you think you've read it all, something like this comes along. Am going to try this soon! I can taste it just thinking about it! I love eGullet!

I have been braising! I made the braised celery with crunchy bread crumb topping recently. I used only paremsan for the topping and cause that's a bit dryer than gruyere, I driozzled a little olive oil over the top before the final baking. It was really good. I also made the braised shallots, they were FANTASTIC. We had them with pan fried pork medaillons: after frying the pork in butter, I deglazed the pan with some red wine and then added the braised shallots to the pan to warm through. My only quibble is that 3/4 pounds is really not enough for 4 people, just because they're so good! Next time I will make at least double the recipe. you can just see them behind the pork.

Diana, it's been a great week! oh and thanks to checking in here daily, combined with the fact that the movie Nine to Five was on tv here this week, I've now had Dolly Parton singing in my head for days (which is okay, since I actually, dare I say it, like Dolly Parton Like others have mentioned, I'm impressed with the way you and your husband have dealt with the differences in taste!

We're moving to a new apartment in 2 months. My new kitchen will have a dishwasher (I'm 38 and have NEVER had a dishwasher ), a gorgeous view from the 7th floor overlooking 2 canals, stainless steel worktops which is new to me and not something I would have chosen but I'm okay with it. There's a good gas hob but the only oven is what's called a "combi-microwave" over here: basically a microwave that also has an oven function. It's tiny, built into the kitchen and ofcourse, not sufficient for my baking needs! So I need to get an extra oven, but not a whole stove because the cooker is already there. Most ovens you can buy at kitchen stores are either freestanding with gasrange on top, or made to be built into the kitchen. I don't want either of those options. What I want is a freestanding oven that I can put on a small table or shelf, because I'm really fond of having my oven at eye-level. It turns out there are ovens like that, but they're made for the professional market. They look very basic and plain, which is fine by me. Right now I'm looking at this model: this one second one from the top. It's a fan oven but you can turn the fan off, and it also has a grill. It says this oven is for use in cafetarias, and gasstations but with the temp ranging from 100 to 300 C, I see no reason why this could not be used in a home kitchen. What do you think? Does anyone have any experience with a professional oven for home use?

I see Jane Grigsons books, which I love, and 2 of my alltime favorite cookbooks: Anna Thomas' Vegetarian Epicure, and Margaret Costa's Four Seasons!

Wonderful! what a feast. I think you did really well with the vegetarian options... and thanks for showing the 'things that did not go quite right' as well.. that's what makes reports like this all the more interesting.. oh and you can send me some of that goosefat you have leftover can one ever have too much goosefat...

happy birthday... looking forward to the report!

See also this parsley thread.. maybe they should be merged? I've been making a lot of parsley salads lately. I pick the leaves from the stems, wash and dry them and add them to some other salad stuff, but with a ratio of parsley:other stuff about 2:1

that sounds fantastic. Was the pomegranate fresh, juice, or syrup-molasses?

well, yeah, what he said!

I'll bet there's some beetroot in the Horseradish soup with Horseradish, too btw I LOVE that little dish that you served the cheese cream in.

If I take something like that to work, it's gone by 9am. My stepdaughter always complains we have nothing 'nice' to eat in the house... no cookies, chips, snacks etc. It's because having those around makes me nervous. having something good to eat in my deskdrawer, makes me nervous. I can't stop thinking about it until I eat it. I could NEVER eat just a handful of chips for lunch.. so I only buy a large bag every two weeks and then we eat it all in 10 minutes. I've always wondered about this, and now I guess I know what it means - it's my old brain that's making me nervous: ← very enlightening.

I combined 2 recipes: the one in Nigella Lawsons How to be a Domestic Goddess, and the one in Lynne Rosetto Kaspars wonderful book about the cooking of Emilia Romagna, The Splendid Table . The Nigella recipe can be found here: click and my adapted version here on my Dutch blog (in Dutch...) the almonds are not marcona almonds, just regular ones. ← Chufi, I checked out you blog for the cake. Is there any way that you could translate the recipe into English? The cake looks so beautiful, as all you dishes do. Thanks, Pups ← Pups, it's basically Nigella's recipe as linked to above, with the addition of: 3 tablespoons of cocoapowder added to the flour spices: a pinch of nutmeg, ground cloves and a tiny pinch of pepper nuts and fruits: 75 grams chopped walnuts And I used 150 grams of almonds instead of her 200 And I added 150 grams candied fruits (orangepeel, candied pineapple and candied papaya was what I used) next time I'd use more chocolate (both cocoa and chopped) instead of the apricotjam glaze in Nigella's recipe, I brushed the decorated cake with warmed honey mixed with some hot water Hope this helps!

we were having mole (with guinea fowl )yesterday and I was thinking, that venison mole would be a very good thing. I have some mole left in the freezer and I think I will try this soon.. have to empty the freezer before we move anyway!

This will be an interesting, and very appropriately timed blog... I hope to be inspired as I started my healthy eating plan today, trying to get rid of the 8 or so pounds I piled on since November.. I do know a couple of really svelte foodlovers. It does really seem to be different for everybody.. one of the issues about weight management that baffles me most is how some people can eat all they want and stay thin, and others have to watch every calorie!

Zee, if you want to start a blog, just do it! Not until you're actually doing it will you know if this is something you like and are able to keep up. Just start a blog, put the blog in your sigline, and post on eGullet... I get a lot of traffic to my blog through my eGullet signature, all though for most people, only one post (the one my signature links to) will be of interest, because it's the only post in English - the rest is in Dutch! But, I often click on the link in someones signature when I read interesting posts by that person.

I combined 2 recipes: the one in Nigella Lawsons How to be a Domestic Goddess, and the one in Lynne Rosetto Kaspars wonderful book about the cooking of Emilia Romagna, The Splendid Table . The Nigella recipe can be found here: click and my adapted version here on my Dutch blog (in Dutch...) the almonds are not marcona almonds, just regular ones.

hummingbirdkiss... thank you for sharing that with us.. I can really see how cooking something like that, can be part of a healing process. All that chopping, frying, simmering, and it must make the house smell wonderfull too!

gfron, that pistachio tuile is gorgeous. I LOVE pistachios! here are a couple of things I've been making recently. Certosino, Bolognese Christmas cake: and cappuccino cupcakes (coffee sponge with white chocolate frosting, recipe from Nigella Lawsons How to be a Domestic Goddess)

Had a lovely lunch at Gartine today, a little lunch/tearoom in the city center (it's in a little alley off Kalverstraat). They have delicious sandwiches, cakes, salads and some hot dishes like soup, quiche etc. Lovely decor and great service, friendly but restrained if that makes any sense. They have their own vegetable garden outside Amsterdam and in spring and summer most of their fresh produce comes from that garden, ofcourse in the middle of winter, not so much (although the jams etc they serve are homemade from their own fruits). It's tiny and always busy, so reservations are recommended although we did see a couple of walkins who got a table anyway. Some of their ingredients are Slow Food foods (a special kind of sausage, farmers cheese etc). I had a sandwich with a special kind of Dutch bacon (katenspek) and a picallili cream sauce, my friend had a sandwich with farmers brie, pruneaux d'Agen and walnuts. They're open for breakfast too and I have to say, chocolate brioche with lemoncurd sounds very good....