Chufi

Well, I'll add tripe comments later. For now I'll just show you this amazing poule au pot that we cooked: being cut open to reveal the stuffing: on the plate with the cabbage, potatoes and a green sauce of hard boiled egg yolks, oil, parsley and shallots: Now I have to say something about this dish. It's one of those things that when I see it in a cookbook, I would never think of making it. But it turned out so delicious, that it's really teaching me something about being more open minded towards recipes that don't immediately seem very appealing or interesting. "Like tripe?" Abra says. No, not like tripe. But, like, taking a whole chicken and stuffing it and then boiling it. This is something I'll definitely be making again. And I want to make it for Dennis, who is now so far away in Amsterdam, and who would have loved it. The cheeseplate, carefully selected by Lucy, is on the table and I cannot actually smell it from this room, but I know it's there and I want to go and eat some. See you in a bit.

here's another shot of that gorgeous ham that lives in Abra's kitchen: a lot of that ham went into the stuffing for the poule, together with breadcrumbs, egg, parsley, and the chicken giblets. And here's Lucy sewing up the chicken before it went into a huge pot of stock: And here are cabbage wedges and small potatoes, waiting to be added to the pot for the final half hour of cooking time. Meanwhile, I'm sort of dazzled by the multitude of activities, kitchen conversations, little kitchentasks, snippets of getting-to-know-eachother that are going on all at once. I'm a solitary cook and a solitary writer... but not today

the head did, eventually, end up in the bin... It's a veritable blogging beehive here, with the 3 of us fighting over 2 laptops, lots of cameracords, cameras, phonecalls to homefronts about technical stuff, negotiating and discussion of all things Blogging. I'm going to retreat into the kitchen and apply myself to the tart now for a bit. I'll leave you with this picture, taken just an hour ago on our after lunch walk through town:

trotters and tripe have cooked some more and yes, they became more tender. We deboned the pigs feet, reduced the cooking liquid, and put everything together in one of Abra`s beautiful clay pots (made in a town nearby). I have to admit it looks perfectly edible already, and lots of other stuff will go in it later - ham, capers, garlic. I'm not so scared anymore. And yes, now we really have to go to the trainstation!

I don't think of myself as squeamish. Really. I like to buy whole chickens, ducks and rabbits and cut them up myself. I've helped my aunt butcher her bunnies, and I remember watching my father butchering a pig when I was very little, being fascinated and not the least bit disturbed. I don't mind buying quail with their furry heads still on and then whacking them off in my kitchen with one big blow of the knife. I don't mind getting my hands into all sorts of stuff. But really, handling a couple of sticky, slippery pigs feet first thing in the morning, while it's still dark out and the kitchen floor is cold and unwelcoming under your feet, and you've just left your soft and comfortable bed where a cuddly cat kept you company all night, well, yes, that wasn't the most pleasant culinary activity I've ever participated in. I needed to drink a glass of milk before I could actually get to work. But then, I did. Here's what it looked like after 12 hours in a very low oven: The vegetables still crunchy, and the tripe definitely too chewy (we both tasted a small bit). The pigs feet, which, according to Abra, should become meltingly tender, had not reached that stage. We were supposed to bone them, but that was impossible, they resisted too much: Back into the oven with those. And we had breakfast: The headline reads: Why are the wild boar entering the towns? I also had one of the yoghurts (sheep/vanilla). and now we're off to pick up bleudauvergne!

So, bread and butter pudding. Not having actually made this ever before, but trying to earn some points by making a deliciously chocolatey rich and creamy dessert out of leftovers, I looked up some recipes for chocolate bread pudding online and then devised my own. I won't tell you what I did because frankly, it wasn't that much of a success... unbaked on the plate let's no longer talk about it I'm in charge of dessert tomorrow... wish me luck. This is what was happening this afternoon: stock for the Poule au Pot simmering and smelling absolutely heavenly, and some quinces cooking down to a coarse puree, to be used in the dessert tomorrow: Abra says I should not be so negative about the pudding, but hey, this is my post so I can. Oh and it's not all a bed of roses on the blogfront, in case that's what you were thinking. Abra keeps straightening my artistically crooked pictures! What's up with that?? Actually we did get to eat dinner before dessert. And pretty good it was too, even if it looked like an assembly from a weird cruise ship buffet: Romanesco with garlic vinaigrette, leftover duck in red wine with onions and prunes, leftover enchiladas, and a Marcelline from the local market (puff pastry filled with ham and St. Marcellin cheese) The duck was leftover from dinner on Saturday. This is another recipe from Cooking of South West France. It was good Saturday, but it was better today! Here's what it looked like 2 days ago: While we were heating up the leftovers we were also prepping for dinner tomorrow. The tripe and pigs feet dish isn't really that much work, it just takes a really long time to cook. First you put a base of vegetables in the pot: Then you put the tripe and pigs feet on top, and pour over a mixture of wine, saffron and tomatopaste. That sounds easy enough, except there wasn't a bottle of wine in the house suitable for this purpose, so we had to run out to the grocerystore before we could proceed! We then wrapped the whole thing tightly with foil and put it in a low oven where we will now forget about it for the next twelve (12) hours. If that's not Slow Food, I don't know what is. I know we've been talking about wine a lot. We've been drinking, too.

okay, so, that previous post was not actually written by Abra, but by me but I guess you all got that right?

Lunch: delicious paté from the local butcher, roasted beets, some cheese that we don't know the name of, cornichons and olives Abra's lunch was a bit more frugal with lots of broccoli... Here's the yoghurt selection we bought: caramel et sel, violette, maple pecan, rhubarb and sheep's yoghurt with vanilla: I promise you Beppo won't be in every food picture. But then again, he might be. He's just too cute! we tried the caramel et sel and the violette. The caramel was very good but a bit too sweet, and the violet yoghurt was, according to Abra, subtle and a bit weird but still something she would eat again: Abra's been cutting up a chicken and rubbing some pigs feet. I'll see if she's ready to share her experiences with you all.

We just got back from our pigs feet, tripe and freshly killed chicken photoshoot. There are some glamourshots for you to look forward to. But before we get to that (and before we get into pressing questions such as "shall we put the chickenhead into the soup or not?") let me give you an impression of our trip to the hypermarché. Now you have to understand one thing: Dutch supermarkets suck. They are terrible, tiny, awful stores with very limited selections of anything. So anytime I go to a country with large supermarkets I want to visit them like I would visit a museum, just wandering around and feasting my eyes. Today's Carrefour visit did not disappoint. This is just a portion of the buttersection: And then we got to the yoghurt. I love yoghurt. There is no shortage of yoghurt here: Besides yoghurt, we got a bunch of other stuff for tomorrow's dinner. And here I am after my visist, as happy as a Kylie:

Good morning all! Thank you for the warm welcome. Well, I thought I'd never blog again but here I am, drinking coffee while typing away on Abra's computer. As some of you may remember from my trip report about our vacation in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest last year, I met Abra and her husband before. The one thing that was missing from that wonderful visit was lots of time in the kitchen together, cooking and talking about recipes and groceryshopping together. So when Abra decided to pack up and go and live in France for a while, I was booking my plane ticket as soon as possible! We have been cooking together, the giant French hypermarché is waiting for me, and more cooking (involving animal parts that I would never dare to handle all by myself) will start soon. For now I leave you with a little view of the countryside just outside the village, and ofcourse the obligatory pet shot:

eGulleters meet in the strangest of places. So how did it happen that Chufi from Amsterdam and Abra from Seattle find themselves in a charming little winebar in a charming little town in the South West of France, where the bill is scrawled in marker on the zinc counter top? Because, well, can you think of any better place to meet? Chufi to Abra: "So, here we are together in a wine bar in France, just you and me and a Spanish ham. " Abra to Chufi: "Hey, what about my husband? Are you calling him a ham? Ok, yeah, he is a ham, but he's an American ham." Chufi: "Well, I'm kind of nervous that just being in France and cooking with you and going to cool French towns and tasting all the wine in sight will be kind of, well, you know, boring." Abra: "Hey, I know, maybe we should do an eG food blog about your visit." Chufi: "But we've both already done lots of food blogs, would anyone even want to read another one?" Abra: "Hmmm, you might be right. Just to liven things up we could invite bleudauvergne down to cook with us, and by the way that would be a great excuse to make her bring us some of that gorgeous cheese she's always posting pictures of." Chufi: "Maybe we could cook something totally weird that I'd never make at home, like how about some......" Abra: "There's this recipe for a stew of pigs feet and tripe that I've been dying to make." Chufi: "Uh....." Abra "Come on, we'll stay up late drinking tons of wine and then have tripe and pigs feet at 2:00 a.m." Chufi:"Can we drink a lot of wine BEFORE we have to eat the pigs feet?" Abra:"Come on, you'll love it, it's gelatinous." Chufi: "My husband will never believe this!!" Abra: "And there's no way my husband will even eat a bite of it, we'll have to cook a whole separate meal for him. I have a freshly killed chicken in the fridge with its head still on, we could cook him that." Chufi:"Let's be nice to him. What would he really like?" Abra:"Cheese enchiladas and something chocolate!" So that's what we had tonight. For your first meal in France with us, we bring you, ta da, cheese enchiladas, which is actually quite an exotic dish, in France. And mini buchettes de Nöel, just to prove that we really are in France. And to further prove that we're in France, we're going to bed right now, even though most of you are barely waking up. Rest assured that as soon as we get up in the morning we're going to rub those pigs feet. At least one of us is. We'll let you guess which one will be doing the rubbing and which one will be hiding behind her camera. And a trip to a gigantic French supermarket will be necessary, and if they don't throw us out for taking pictures, we'll show you how many different kinds of yogurt will tempt Chufi into buying them. There's a LOT of yogurt in France.

it's been a couple of years since we were there, and non-touristy it most certainly is not, but we liked it anyway - the beer is good and it's in a beautiful building right in the center: Brouwerij Halvemaan. It's where they make the beer Straffe Hendrik. eta: okay I just checked out the website and it looks like I'm hopelessly behind, as usual Straffe Hendrik beer no longer exists and apparently now they make something called Brugse Zot.. so forget my recommendation and maybe go and see for yourself ...

Dutch stamppot (roughly equal amounts of potatoes and vegetables mashed together) is really good with sprouts. Boil equal amounts of sprouts and potatoes seperately until done. Cook the sprouts until well done, not al dente! Put them together in 1 pan, add a large knob of butter, some salt and pepper and (very important) some freshly grated nutmeg, a splash of milk and mash together. Add more milk if necessary (I sometimes add some creme fraiche if I happen to have some). It cools off quickly so keep warm in the oven or on very low heat. Eat with some sort of smoked meat (smoked sausage, fried bacon etc). This also works as a side dish, sprinkled with cheese and breadcrumbs and dotted with butter, put briefly under the grill to brown. If you have leftovers, they taste even better the next day, fried up in lots of butter.

We're watching season 6 part II on dvd now with friends (it hasn't been on tv here yet ), and have Soprano inspired dinners to go with the viewings. (First night - spaghetti with meatballs and Sunday Gravy, second night - chicken cacciatore) We have another evening planned for Christmas so I was wondering what would be a great Soprano inspired Christmas menu? We have some wild rabbit in the freezer. Does anyone remember what Artie did with the rabbit he shot in the backyard, how did he prepare it? For dessert I'm thinking of making Carmela's ricotta pie

I do that all the time, too. I also sometimes search within this thread for my own posts and then think wow that was good I need to make that again Marlene those are some picture perfect dinner rolls!

I thought of this too. When I roast vegetables in the oven, I add a bit of oil. The goal is to get moisture out and intensify the flavor. The same thing with dry frying the mushrooms. But, as soon as you use a little oil and high heat, I guess you would have to call it stir-frying!

I have tried eggplant this way. It works, but you have to cut them into small dice and watch them very closely so they don´t burn. And keep them moving! The mushrooms, they don't seem to burn no matter how high the heat

Thanks shelly59 about your cookies: I´ve never heard of them, and the name sounds German, not Dutch... I googled them and found them here: laeckerli. Apparently a famous cookie from Basel, Switzerland. There´s a recipe here! Hope that helps!

I HATE blind baking too Nina, I´ve been following your adventures on the pie-athon blog, and I have to say I really admire you for taking on such a project. And you still have energy left to do some more baking? That´s amazing! I love that : 1 big looking spoon of butter

Thank you for a great blog. Lovely pet pictures, and wonderful food! And a special thanks for sharing your Thanksgiving with us. I know a blog is hard work and it's even harder when you have to report about festivities! (especially with all that wine )

Well, if we are still analysing the pie, can I just ask one question, please? Is one supposed to cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and then the flour? Because I cut the butter into the dry ingredients, then added the egg (and water), and I was thinking that could have been part of the problem? ← pennylane: if your butter is soft enough, you should be able to just mix everything together. However, because you say you ´cut the butter into the sugar´, I think that was the problem: the butter should be so soft that there´s no question of cutting it! My mom used to melt the butter and then let it cool, but that makes the dough very very sticky indeed so that´s why I stipulated soft butter instead. I hope this helps. It does make one wonder about recipe writing doesn´t it? How soft is soft butter, how sticky is sticky dough?

pennylane: I am honored that Dutch applepie was on your Thanksgiving table! about the dough: Flours can be so different, I'm sorry you had problems, but adding water was a good idea. You have to use VERY soft butter though, or even melted and cooled butter. That makes it easier to get that sticky texture.

I think that was me who recommended that and I was going to recommend it again here Like you say, especially if you have ordinary, white mushrooms, this is a great method to concentrate the flavors. Often I don´t slice them but just put them whole in a very hot skillet, no oil or fat added, and dry-fry until they start to squeak - that sounds means they gave up there moisture and they´re ready!

I made the sour cream pumpkin tart this weekend. I made the pumpkinpuree from a piece of fresh pumpkin, but it did not yield 2 cups, so I decreased the other filling ingredients slightly. Then I was worried that I would not have enough filling (this was before I read in the introduction to the recipe that if you make this recipe as a tart, not pie, that you would have leftover filling ). I had a piece of butternutsquash in the fridge, I cooked it in the microwave and then sliced it very thinly, and scattered the slices on the tartcrust before pouring in the filling. And then ofcourse I had filling leftover, which I baked along with the tart in small custardcups (they made a luxurious breakfast treat this morning ) Anyway.. the tart was delicious. Pumpkin sweets are not very common over here and my guests could not guess what the main ingredient of the tart was! It´s very rich, creamy and subtly spiced. Here´s a slice of the leftovers where you can see the bits of squash (and where you can also see that in fear of overbaking, I slightly underbaked the crust )

Prawncrackers - that butternutsquash soup with chorizo looks divine. I love creamy soups with a garnish of something crispy-spicy on top. tupac - can you share some more info on the cauliflower pancakes ? They look so good. Dinner last night. salad of belgian endive, radicchio and parsley, with hazelnuts, bleu d´auvergne and grilled pears wild boar braised in red wine with sage and chestnuts braised cabbage from Molly Stevens All about Braising we also had potatoes mashed with apples. dessert: sour cream pumpkintart from Dorie Greenspan´s book