Chufi

Hey! I'll be watching the Gilmore Girls tonight too! Ofcourse, we are probably many sesaons behind, and your evening does not coincide with mine anyway, but still, I'll be thinking of you! I love love love this blog. I've been trying to think what's so special about it. I think it's the feeling of hospitality that runs through it.. even while you are showing us your city, they way you see it, the way you love it, I feel like I am actually visiting you, and getting to know you. And the pictures are really, really beautiful. That picture of the finished chicken with the salad on top.. wow. Thank you Megan!!

Wow. Why did I never think of that? That's such a great way to do frittata's for large parties! I make very large ones in baking pans, but cutting them in individual portions is always messy. Thanks Pille! (and by the way, they look delicious )

Just in case anybody ever wants to cook ravioli for 24, here are a few tips I used a very large pot. Don't forget to put the water to the boil long before you need it, it takes a long time. I dropped in all 170 frozen ravioli at once. The water stopped boiling, ofcourse, but I figured that was not so bad as you want to poach them, not boil them hard. I started testing after 8 minutes, they were not nearly done. I think altogether they took maybe 14 minutes. I just kept testing one to make sure. I had two large, oblong pans on the stove with sage butter. About 250 grams in each pan. I used some of the cooking water to toss the ravioli, and the butter and starchy water emulsified nicely. I did not plate them but served straight from the hot pan, to minimize loss of heat. picture here in this post They were delicious! oh and by the way, not a single one broke!

Lori, I am sorry for your loss. I love your writing and it's never arduous to me! To me, it feels like you were honouring your friend through your souffle experience. Thank you for sharing that with us. Both souffles look delicious to me! Oh and OT - you look exactly as I imagined you from your screenname. Really!

What a great way to spend the day! I'm thinking I should do this in Amsterdam. But I'll invite someone over to help me finish all that chocolate! That's interesting about the manon, Belgian chocolate. That style of bonbon is very common in The Netherlands as well.

It always makes me nervous when a server doesn't write the order down. You just know something is going to go wrong. Then they walk away, turn around, come back to your table, and say: "so.. you wanted this and this and this, right?"

BonVivant, what/where is your favorite pub? I'd love to hear about it. I'm assuming you're not talking about Brouwerij 't IJ, because that's not near Vleminckx..

Hazelnut cake with zabaglione cream filling:

I missed you and your gorgeous looking food! welcome back! Goats cheese and prosciutto, lovely..

Megan, I'm sorry I haven't been around more these past few days.. I'm just catching up now.. thank you so much for taking us to all those wonderful shops and your favorite places.. I wish this blog had been around before my trip to NY 3 years ago, I'm I sure would have had a better time then, food-wise.. Allthough I did get to eat at Babbo and had the same beef cheek ravioli!! Diet Coke, eh? I could have used some of that myself this morning.. I'll buy some to keep as an emergency stash.. I'm so glad you took a picture of your sneakers, I mean I already guessed that only the fictional Carrie Bradshaws are able to walk all over Manhattan in high heels, but now I know it's true: real women are kind to their feet! Oh and one more thing.. I'm going to buy a madeleine pan this week. I must have orange madeleines!

Ludja, the proportions for the 2 large cakes were: 500 grams selfraising flour, 500 grams butter, 500 grams sugar, 9 eggs, 250 grams finely ground hazelnuts. This gave the cake a delicate hazelnut flavor, I'm sure you could up the amount of nuts for a more intense flavor. The olives were supposed to be stuffed with fresh italian sausage (recipe here, thanks Wendy!) but I stuffed them with fresh chorizo instead. I breaded and fried them about 2 hours before serving and they were very good at room temp. It's a bit of a fiddly thing to do, and I almosted decided not to make them, but I'm glad I did because everybody loved them! I did most of the cooking and prep work myself, I'm not very good at having helpers. But he did help me scrape the cake off the floor

You are all so sweet to be thinking of me!! The party is over, the dishes are washed, the floors are mopped. Rested, I am not.. I'll need another day to recuperate from a day of very hard work, an evening of food and too much wine, and a night that was too short. But. The dinner was a great sucess. I think it was my best one (for a large group) so far, and that's no small thing, considering the amount of guests. It was a lot of work though. Did I mention it was a lot of work? There was a moment Saturday morning when the panic struck and I just knew I would never finish on time. I was not nice to my husband then. Sorry Rachel, you painted such a romantic picture of the preparations... Then there was the moment when I dropped one of my cakes on the kitchen floor, right after I had finished decorating it. I wasn't nice then, either. But I rescued it and no-one knew. Here's what our living room looked like: First course was put on the table for everyone to help themselves. caponata deepfried olives on the table together with salami, chorizo, ham, white bean puree and bread: Second course. Here are the ravioli, all 160 or so of them , being tossed with an obscene amount of sage butter: Main: here's the fish, before sealing the packages. You can't really see it in this picture but they were huge. There's about 8 kilo's of cod, mussels and shrimp here... On the table with carrots braised with capers, fennel cucumber salad, sauteed spinach and zucchini cheese bread everything on the plate; There was just the right amount of food.. just a little bit of fish leftover, no vegetables. The food was very good. One of the things I find most difficult when cooking such large amounts, is to get seasoning and texture and cooking times right.. you just can't give it the attention and thought that you give to smaller amounts.. 4 kilos of carrots behave very differently from 1 pound if you are braising them.. and you have to constantly taste and taste to get the seasoning right. But I think most of it was good.. the ravioli were a big hit.. people just could not believe I had made so many ravioli myself.. they gave me an actual applause for it... The cake was also fantastic. the zabaglione cream was very rich but not too sweet, and the hazelnut sponge cake, which I had sort of invented myself, came out perfect.. And it was the first time I made chocolate curls.. a bit nerve wrecking.. but they turned out very dramatic-looking there were 2 of those, each cut into 16 slices, not a scrap left-over Thanks everybody for your wonderful support. The creative process of assembling the menu and the thinking about the party, was almost as much fun as the party itself, thanks to all of you! See you next year on this thread.. allthough I doubt there will be 24 for dinner then, it was great do do it this way for once, but I think my husband will go back to the usual group of 12-14 next year. Because it really, really was a lot of work. Jack, next weekend husband and I are going away to the country for a coupleof days, to end the birthday marathon, just the 2 of us. So don't worry, that part of the celebrations is taken care of..

Not soaking beans is one of the great lessons EGullet tought me. Sometimes I cook them in the oven, sometimes simply in a pan on the stove. I just cooked a large pan of white beans, they were ready in a little under 2 hours. (Maybe they were ready sooner, but that's when I checked )

Thanks for the report Tammy. I can imagine this was a lot of work.. but it looks like it went very well. Oh I hate it when that happens. It always makes me mad at the shop: don't you realize I depend on you?

update! The dinner is tomorrow. The guestlist is now up to 24 people. We rented tables, chairs and china. Final menu: antipasti: caponata deepfried olives crostini with white bean puree and sauteed spinach salami and ham bread pasta: butternut squash and onion ravioli, served with sage butter and parmesan main: cod stuffed with mussles and shrimp sauteed carrots with salted capers fennel salad zucchini/cheese bread dessert: zabaglione torta My ravioli is safe in the freezer. The caponata is made and cooling on the balcony (thank God it's february!). White bean puree is also cooling on the balcony. I made a pan full of braised chicken, in case some of the guests suddenly have an aversion to fish. You never know. The cakes for the Zabaglione torta are made, and cut horizontally (one of the most scary tasks). I have a fridge and a balcony stuffed with food. It only took me 4 trips to the market to collect everything (by bike remember, no car...). The bad news: no sea bass. Apparently this is not the season for it, no large seabass to be found.. I decided to have cod instead. The cod was very fresh, and I had it filleted, so I'll do the large fillets stuffed with mussels and prawns. I decided against the whole fish because the fishmonger didn't convince me he could do it the right way, I certainly wasn't going to attempt doing it myself, and the whole thing was giving me nightmares. My peace of mind is worths something.. so it's fillets instead. It'll still have a wow-factor, these 3 huge parcels of fish coming to the table! I'm looking forward to it. Thanks again everybody for helping me decide the menu. Most of the dishes that did not make it to tomorrow's menu, are on my 'must try soon' list. And every single reply to the thread helped me organize my thoughts and helped combining the final menu. Now, if only I have enough food...

Oh my goodness. This must be the next best thing to shopping in New York.. have Megan take you on a virutal tour!! Thanks soooo much for walking all that way and showing us so much! We Want More!!

I have been thinking about fat, recently, too I have a jar in my fridge with olive oil that I used to make the coddled pork from Paula Wolferts Slow Meditteranean. I used the same fat a week later to 'coddle' some goose legs, and since then I have been using spoonfuls of the stuff to saute onions, add to braises etc. It's good stuff! But I am wondering, how long does it keep? If I want to coddle something again, this amount won't be enough. Can I just replenish with fresh oil.. but that way there will always be a little bit of fat in there that just keeps getting older and older, and that sort of worries me.

Megan, could you tell us a bit more about what you like to cook for yourself and what inspires you? Cookbooks, shops, things you ate in a restaurant? And one other question. What place in New York makes you the happiest - foodwise? Is there a cafe, restaurant or shop that will always bring a smile on your face when you visit it, a place that never lets you down because it serves or sells the exact right thing? I would love to hear about that.

you could make them yourself, using the bitterballen recipe here it's a lot of work though...

when I have a headcold like that, it sometimes helps to do a steambath right before dinner (you know, the oldfashioned one, where you sit with you face above a pot of very hot water, with a towel over your head to keep the steam in). If you have something menthol-like to put in the water, even better! and it's good for your skin too!

Ooooohhh Megan! I can't wait to see the foodworld that looms behind those glorious bowls of risotto, and the plates of golden madeleines... I went to Babbo when I was in New York 2 years ago.. it was the best meal we had in NY.. so I'm very excited about you going there! This is going to be a great week!

well thanks guys, all that talk about kroketten really made me crave one . So today I went to my favorite place to have a broodje kroket! full report is here in the Amsterdam thread

Van Dobben Eetsalon in de Korte Reguliersdwarsstraat 5-9 (near Rembrandtplein) is one of the nices places to have a quick, satisfying, cheap and delicious lunch. It's what's known as 'broodjeszaak', sandwichshop. Don't expect a ciabatta with prosciutto and arugula here though. One of the best things about this place is that since it was established, in 1945 , the menu has hardly changed. What you get is a soft white roll, piled hight with the cold cuts of your choice. But their most famous product is the van Dobben Kroket (or, croquet as they oldfashionedly spell it). Their kroketten became so famous that they are now mass produced and available, frozen, in supermarkets all over the country. As you can see this is not your typical Dutch 'gezellig' place. The staff look like they have ben here forever (and most of them have), and are known for their somewhat curt behavior and typically Amsterdam sense of humor (although I have always found them very friendly and helpful, and have seen them very patiently explaining to numbers of tourists what's on the menu). But, you don't come here for the atmosphere, you come here for this: One of their other specialties is the broodje halfom, with larded liver and pekelvlees, salted/boiled beef: On weekends they are open till 2 am (weekdays till 1 am), so this is also a very popular place with the late night crowd to go for a sustaining snack! Total cost for 4 broodjes, 3 coffee, 1 glass of milk: 16 euro.

Thanks for a wonderful blog Rochelle.. I really enjoyed it and like others have said, am amazed at your energy and the amount of things you do.. All the best for the next couple of months, and I hope you'll be able to thoroughly enjoy the first time with your baby. Relax, and let others take care of you for a while! Great column about the mashed potatoes, and I'm quite pleased you mention the Dutch and their creative ways with mash!

Made another one: Pork stew with prunes and onions this has several techniques that were unusual for me.. first you 'fry' the meat in nothing but the marinade that clings to it, you never add extra fat. It took a long time for the moistuire to evaporate and the meat to brown (longer than the time stated in the recipe). When the meat has browned you take it out of the pan and add 1 1/5 cup of white wine, but in stages, reducing each portion of wine to a syrupy glaze. Then you add the meat back in, other ingredients, stock, and braise it. It was very delicious, a round, complex, sweet flavor, it also had a sort of freshness and zing, like there was citrus in it (but there wasn't). I served it with polenta, as Paula Wolfert suggests, and a salad of roast broccoli and pinenuts.