Chufi

Slavink Slavink is a 'covenience meat', very popular for quick family meals. You can buy them ready made at butchers and supermarkets, but because I like to know what goes into my meat, I make my own. It's basically ground meat (half beef, half pork) wrapped in smoked bacon. The name is a mystery... 'sla' means salad (but also lettuce, the salad leaves), 'vink' means finch (the bird). A variation, where the ground meat is wrapped in a thin slice of veal or beef, is called blinde vink, 'blind finch'. I googled a bit but have not been able to find the answer about the origin of this thing! Anyway, I made them yesterday, hadn't made them in a very long time, and I had forgotten how delicious the homemade version can be. Makes 6 (I only made 4, and used the rest of the seasoned ground meat for something else) 400 gram ground meat, half beef, half pork, (or half veal / half pork) 1 egg 2 tablespoons of dry, unflavored breadcrumbs freshly grated nutmeg salt, pepper 12 long thin slices of smoked bacon 100 grams butter Mix the meat with egg, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Mix well until you have a uniform paste. Shape the mix into 6 short stubby sausages, make sure they don't have pointed ends. Wrap each sausage in the bacon. Heat the butter in a frying pan (with lid) large enough to accommodate the vinken. When the butterfoam starts to subside, put in your meat and brown thoroughly, all over, over moderate heat. As with the butter braised beef, or any Dutch classic meat preparation, the flavor of the finished dish largely depends on the browning process. Use good buter, lots of it, and brown slowly. When the sausages are brown all over, add a bit of water (about 50-100 ml) and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen the browned bits. Cover the pan (lid ajar so the steam can escape and not too much condensation drips down on your meat) and cook over low heat for about 15 minutes. On the plate with parsley mash and braised cabbage. Serve the gravy on the side in a small bowl for people to help themselves.

I'm seriously rice-cooking-impaired and I always make my sticky rice in the microwave. It comes out perfect every time and it's so easy!

amapola thank you SO much for chiming in here when I'm too lazy to do my hopjesresearch I'd love to see some of your food, there are a couple of good 'pictureposting tutorials' in the Technical Support forum! My husband, who stopped drinking coffee years ago, loved the vla. I added a bit of Tia Maria to it and that definitely gave it a flavor boost. Recommended

Shiewie, thanks so much, that's exactly what I was looking for. Very interesting! I also found this gorgeous cake, made by Tepee, while searching eGullet for info on this pastry: amapola, I read that page on Wiki, yes all signs are telling me that this cake is indeed a Dutch 'legacy'. Looked through an Indonesian cookbook today in a bookstore, by Lonny Gerungan who is I think some Dutch authority on Indonesian food. He put Lapis Legit in his chapter about Java, the curious thing is, that though his cake has the seperately baked layers, there are no spices in it. I think I need to make one now instead of talk about it

Today I made hopjesvla for the first time, inspired by the recent talk about vla. Amapola, yes, we need your input here! because while my vla came out delicious (so delicious in fact, that I just had a huge bowl for lunch ), it did not seem quite right. Here's what I did: caramelized 50 grams of sugar. I had 400 ml. milk, I used some of that to make a paste with 25 grams of cornstarch. Added the rest of the cold milk to the caramelized sugar in the pan (the sugar immediately seized up, but melted down again while I stirred the mxture over low heat). Stirred 1 eggyolk into the cornstarchmixture. Added warm milk/sugar mix to cornstarch/egg mix. Put everything back in the pan, brought to the boil and cooked very briefly until thickened. Stirred in 4 tablespoons of very strong coffee. Put pan in icewater and stir every now and then, until cool. The color is much lighter than the commercial variety. Maybe I did nog caramelize my sugar enough? Also, I feel the coffee/caramel flavor could be more pronounced. looking forward to your recipe amapola!

Congratulations mizducky! That is some achievement. I'm looking forward to this week and seeing your food, the restaurant-type and the home-cooked. I'd also love to hear more about your going 'pro' - a process I'm going through myself, so I need all the advice I can get

I put the recipe in RecipeGullet here There's no gnger in this recipe, but i see no reason why you couldn't add it, rhubarb and ginger, mmmm

well, even though there haven't been many replies, I'll add another question. The Duch adapted spices for use in sweet dishes (speculaas, spicecake etc.) I browsed the Kueh thread but, did not see any other Indonesian sweets with spices. Are there Indonesian sweets with spices? Also found this: baumkuchen in a trip report from Adam Balic. The link in his post is to a website which explains the origins of Baumkuchen, but I can't find any reference there to spekkoek.

Rhubarbcake This is adapted from Barbara Mahers wonderful book Cakes. I usually make small cakes, because there's only 2 of us eating them. if you double the ingredients, use a 26 cm cake pan/springformtin. 75 g sugar 75 g butter, melted and cooled 75 g flour pinch of salt 3 eggs, seperated zest of half an orange 250 g young rhubarb, sliced 2 T brown sugar Butter, flour and sugar a 18 cm. springform tin. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Crema the yolks with the sugar. Add the flour, salt and orangezest and mix well. Beat the eggwhites until stiff and fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the tin. Spread the fruit on top in an even layer (as the cake bakes, the fruit will sink to the middle of the cakeand the batter will rise up around it). Sprinkle with the sugar. Bake for about 40 minutes, until golden and risen. Because of the juicy fruit, the inside of this cake will remain very moist so the toothpick trick won't work here. The end result is a ring of crumbly cake and a center of fruity 'custard'. The middle will sink upon cooling. Keywords: Dessert, Fruit, Easy ( RG1959 )

I've also read somewhere (but can't remember where - sometimes I'm a terrible researcher ) that spekkoek is 'Indisch', not Indonesian, just like rijsttafel. Mark do you know the English word for Indisch?

I've been thinking about the pastry that in The Netherlands is known as 'spekkoek'. Koek means cake and spek = pork belly, because of the dark and white layers resembling pork belly. In The Netherlands, you can buy spekkoek at Indonesian shops and toko's, and i't's served as dessert in Indonesian restaurants. I've never seen it, or anything like it, in Dutch shops or bakeries, not have I seen anything like it in my old Dutch recipe books. Recently I found this recipe online: James Oseland's spekkuk. The author says this cake is 'an inheritance from the Dutch colonization of Indonesia'. Sri Owen basically says the same thing in her book Indonesian Regional Food and Cooking. Of all the recipes I've seen, there seem to be 2 basic ones: either there is one spiced batter which is baked/ put under the grill in layers, to get the layered effect, or the batter is divided in 2 , 1 part spiced and 1 part plain, and then baked in alternate layers. Oseland's version linked to above, is the only one I've seen that bakes the cake in it's entirety (ie not in layers). The confusing thing to me is - if this is a Dutch legacy, why isn't there a Dutch pastry that resembles this? The pastry that the Dutch tried to recreate while in Indonesia? I know there are Indonesian layered sweets (kue lapis). Somehow, spekkoek does not seem Dutch to me at all. So, maybe lapis legit was already an existing cake in Indonesia, and the Dutch just gave it the Dutch name? Is this cake a regular fooditem in Indonesia nowadays? Any thoughts?

I have some overdue restaurant reports. Yamazato A couple of weeks ago I had dinner at Yamazato, the Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant of the Okura Hotel. It was the day before Girls' Day, so my husband and I each had the Girls' Day menu (iirc, 85 euros for about 9 courses). The food was amazing and beautiful. Great attention to detail, explanations about each dish, wonderful, atentive service. The only thing that struck me as odd about the wole dinner was the fact that after about 7 very subdued, elegant, delicate courses (all of them fish-based) there came a dish of Wagyu beef and goose liver in a very salty, bold red miso sauce. It was delicious, but somehow did not match with the rest of the dinner. If you go to the Okura, I highly recommend a visit to the topfloor (where the Michelin-starred French restaurant Ciel Bleu is located) and visit the bar, for a drink and the most amazing view of the city. Le Garage Le Garage is the restaurant of Dutch tv chef Joop Braakhekke. It's in a little street near the Albert Cuyp market, and I have passed it 3 times a week for 10 years every time I go to the market. I finally had dinner there recently. It's a bistro/brasserie, famous for it's flamboyant chef, it's guests (even the website boasts that 'it's clientele consists of Dutch celebs') which always made me pretty suspicious of the food. But, it was good! I had their 'famous' tuna pizza, with raw tuna and wasabi cream. Steak tartare, which was prepared according to my instructions. Excellent frites to go with that. A delicious Ile Flottante for dessert - a huge portion of dreamy, cloudlike meringue in a pool of excellent vanilla custard. The food is showy, gutsy and highly flavored, nothing elegant or delicate about it (come to think of it, the wagyu beef with miso from Yamazato would not have been out of place on Le Garages menu), but good. It is a place to go and see and be seen - which is facilitated by the mirrored walls, they make it easy for you to check out your fellow diners without acually looking at them We found service to be good if a bit unexperienced, we had the feeling there were several new people there. The 3-course menu marche for 35 euros is great value, considering that many of the a la carte main courses are about 30 euros. Hap Hmm 1e Helmersstraat 33 This is the other end of the culinary scale. Fot about 7 euros, you get meat, potatoes and a vegetable - the kind of food my mother makes, the kind of food most Dutch people 30 + grew up on. From outside, the place looks like somebodys living room, and that doesn't change much when you're inside. Lots of people from the neighborhood, elderly gentlemen eating alone, convivial but efficient waiters. The food (meatballs, buter braised beef, liver and onions, sausage, steak) comes to the table in small metal bowls. You choose your meat, your vegetable, your starch. Maybe vegetablesoup to start, and semolinaporridge for dessert. There's nothing fancy here, no garnishes, just very basic home-stylecooking. If you want to experience some old-fashioned Dutch food, and not spend a fortune while doing that, I recommend this place if only for the couleur locale!

Thanks, Cadbury! My mom never made vla herself.. when I was a kid, it was a real treat to have both chocoladevla and vanillevla, the vanillacustard. You would pour them simultaneously into your bowl and carefully mix them together for a rippled effect. Nowadays, you can buy large cartons which are filled with both types of vla (not mixed - seperate, I don't know how they do it!)

It's a glorious day, when the season's first rhubarb appears. Today was the day. I was at the market, and there they were, bright rosy-red stalks, right next to the muddy beets and black scorzonera. I said it out loud, like I always do, even though I'm shopping on my own, and people will think I'm crazy: YES! Rhubarb! At 3 euro's for half a kilo, it's an expensive treat, but I can't resist. Isn't it the most photogenic of foodstuffs? I made a simple little rhubarb cake today. I see LOTS of rhubarb in the near future..

I think that these circumstances made your pictures of the indoor market exceptionally beautiful. The lighting and colors are amazing, much more interesting and mysterious than had they been flooded with sunlight. The meat: Wow. Many of that stuff, I have no clue what it is!

Hi, if you click the link in my sig, you'll get the Dutch recipe index for the thread about Dutch food I did on eGullet. There are a couple of dessert there! Post any questions here or feel free to PM me.

This puzzles me.. you trust the restaurant more than you trust yourself (your choice of meat supplier, your handling and storing it, your cooking it)?

John, thank you SO much for taking the time to give us this trip report. Having done a number of trip reports myself I know it's a lot of work, but you can be sure yours is very much appreciated! Threads like this are what makes eGullet great. I'm anxiously awaiting the graphic meat pics!

Split pea soup, I only make it in january Spring: the White asparagus dinner, asparagus with ham, boiled potatoes, eggs and lots of melted butter Spring: Rhubarb, rhubarb, anything with rhubarb.. it's almost time! Oh and game in fall and early winter. Something to reconcile you with the end of summer.. and fall is actually my favorite coking season. Mushrooms, game, stews and braises!

Made the end of summer green beans again, but with runner beans cut into pieces because they were cheaper and looked better at the market. My husband said, on tasting the beans: "you can make anything taste good" (he doesn't really like runner beans) and I said, "no give the credit to Molly" It really is now my favorite way to prepare green beans and runner beans!

Thank you so much Doddie, again I've been introduced to a new world. I love how these blogs can give you such an intense feel of a country, a family, a life style. I know blogging only shows a slice of life, but I think you did a truly wonderful job.. I really felt part of your family this week. Thanks again and see you around the Dinner!thread!

when I was a kid, my grandparents no longer had a working farm, but the one thing that remained from their farmer's life was a bunch of chickens. The Hen's First Eggs was always a memorable occasion, and some of those eggs were saved for my mom and me when we came to visit. They were very small and had great flavor. Some things are the same, all over the globe!

I saw bergamot lemons at my farmers market last week! They looked like big, irregular lemons. Didn't buy any. Maybe this Saturday, I'm intrigued now...

Yes, anyone can join in, as long as you cook & eat dinner! Welcome! Great looking pot roast.

Thanks Brad. Turns out we had one 96 and one 2002 Priorato - the 96 was the superior one, which was no surprise. I made albondigas - lamb meatballs and little mushroom/leek/porcini tarts. We also had chorizo, but a very mild one, some young, mild Manchego cheese, chickenlivers in sherrysauce, and a truffled game pate. I felt the lamb meatballs were the best match.