Chufi

Right. Fixed it, thanks I'll put this in RG tomorrow. no, but now that you mention it, I probably should have....

I eat a light breakfast at 7:30, a light lunch somewhere around 1:00, and by the time it's 6:00 I am hungry! I don't want to snack and spoil my appetite.. I just want a good meal and it has to be served way before 8! And I get very, very cranky when I don't get it. edited to add: in the Netherlands, dining early is quite normal. Most restaurants do not have different eating-shifts. 6:30, 7:00 is quite normal to arrive in a restaurant, and the table is yours for the evening.

Hmm, that is a thought. But the year's not over yet! ← Oh, yes, please!! I'd love to cook along! Kevin, I'm excited about this next region. I spent a sundrenched, food-filled vacation once on the Amalfi coast.. It's so stunningly beautiful there.. Looking forward to the food!

Frisian sugarbread: I'm thinking this will be breakfast tomorrow too

Fifi, thank you, again, for your kind words. To think that your home in Houston has the wonderful smell of Dutch draadjesvlees wafting through it.. that's a lovely thought And I've put the recipe in RG, with better instructions than in this thread I think Here as for the cookbooks. I have been thinking about that. There are some good books on Dutch regional cooking, but only in Dutch. I think that the books meant for the international market tend to be more of the touristy kind. You know, with lots of talk about cheese and stroopwafels and fries (now, not that there's anything wrong with those ), but good simple home cooking is probably thought of as not flashy or interesting enough. Whereas I thought, that exactly these types of dishes would be interesting to EGulleters. Looks like I was right. And yes, I'd love to do a book on Dutch cooking. Bring on the contract! (and a translator, please)

yes, I think it would. I even think it would be better than the "crushing the sugarcubes" trick, because it is the texture of the little clumps of sugar that is the most important, not the size.

Hi Tracy, Noord Holland is a province (stretching all the way north of Amsterdam to the North Sea). Without a more specific name, this could be from anywhere in this province. Noord Holland is famous for its cheeses because it has so many meadows for the cows to graze.. Extra oud means that it's at least 1 year old, but hard to say how old! Could be much older.. Boeren Olde Remeker: Remeker is made on a farm in the province Gelderland. They use only the milk from Jersey cows and their products are organic and made on the farm, where the well-being of the animals has the highest priority. Olde Remeker has to be at least 18 months old. (All info from their website German and Dutch only, but you can look at it to see cute cows ) Petit Doruvael: I had never heard of that! here's the website of the farm that makes it. They are the only farm in the Netherlands allowed to make a red-rinded cheese (apparently there are very strict sanitation / health regulations for making red-rinded cheese). Sounds like an interesting cheese, maybe I should go and get me some! Hope this helps!

we're going north again.. to Friesland, to make one of the specialties of that province: Sukerbole, Suikerbrood, Sugarbread. Somewhere between a cake and a bread, this is a lovely loaf with crunchy-soft bits of sugar melting in a sweet white bread dough, very faintly spiced with cinnamon. To be authentic you should use soft sugarchips ( I think these are known abroad as pearlsugar), I could not find them anywhere in the regular stores, and ended up buying a large bag from a local bakery. You could substitute crushed lumps of sugar, only make sure that the lumps aren't crushed to a powder because you want texture and crunch in your finished loaf. ingredients: 500 grams of flour 2 sachets dried yeast 200 ml. lukewarm milk 3 tablespoons syrup from the gingerjar 50 grams of sugar 75 grams melted butter 1 egg 1 teaspoon salt a grating of nutmeg pinch of saffron filling: 1 tablespoon cinnamon 150 grams sugarchips Lots of butter and coarse sugar for your tin. Loaf tin: this recipe is for a 2.5 liter bread tin. I don't have one so I used a 2 liter cake tin for most of the dough, and baked the extra dough in a small round cake tin. Mix the flour and yeast. Add the rest of the ingredients except the sugarchips and cinnamon. Mix to a dough. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, then set it in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour. Mix the sugarchips with the cinnamon. Very thickly grease your tin with butter, and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Punch down the dough a bit and start incorperating the cinnamon-sugarchips into the dough. Now the important thing is to not mix this too much. You want the finished loaf the have sugarlumps distributed unevenly through it, and you want ripples of cinnamon. Press the dough into a large rectangle, about the length of your loaf tin. Roll it up. Now push back the protruding bits of sugar into the dough. Place the roll of dough into the tin, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for another 20 minutes or so. In the meantime preheat the oven to 200 C / 390 F. Sprinkle the loaf with a bit more coarse sugar and bake for about 25-30 minutes. take it out of the tin the minute it comes out of the oven and leave to cool on a rack. Very good as it is, even better with a thicvk smear of butter. And as you can imagine, this make the very best breadpudding... edited to add: here's one I bought in Harlingen, Friesland, earlier this year when I was on a weekend trip there. I think I came pretty close!!

Hee hee! I totally forgot about your penne, Wendy! So true, so true. We ARE great! ← Hey girls.. I had penne carbonara on Tuesday! I cooked it with a friend at his house (and showed him how to make carbonara without cream). We also tossed some rucola into it to pretend that we were eating a healthy dinner I think I have come to prefer penne carbonara to spaghetti carbonara actually. Here's a simple dinner that was so unexpectedly good that i have to share it, even if the pics aren't that great. I was thinking that my Dutch applepaste would work great in a salad dressing, sort of like pomegranate juice.. and it did..watercress salad with smoked chicken, walnuts, apples, and the applepaste dressing: and a celeriac fritata. Chunks of celeriac were roasted first, then cooked with the eggs.. there was also smoked bacon in it and a little bit of parmesan.. oh sooo good... I love celeriac

Butter braised beef - Dutch "draadjesvlees" This dish has very few ingredients so they should be of high quality. Your beef should be not too lean (nicely marbled with fat). Two other secrets to succes: the flavor of the gravy depends on your patience while browning the beef. You really need to do this very, very slowly. And one other thing, do not be tempted to add any other aromatics. This dish is about the pure flavor of good beef. perfect with brussel sprouts, green beans or braised red cabbage, and mash or steamed potatoes to soak up the lovely gravy. 1 lb stewing beef 75 g butter 2 bayleaves 2 whole cloves salt and pepepr Leave the slab of beef whole or cut into chunks, whatever you prefer. Choose a sauteeing pan that will accommodate all the pieces of beef lying flat. You are going to brown the pieces for a long time, so it's not very practical to do it in batches. Make sure your beef is at room temperature, and season it with salt and pepper. Melt the butter in the pan over moderate heat. When the foam is subsiding slip in the pieces of meat. Now brown them slowly over moderate heat until they pieces are deep brown and the butter is a dark golden brown. As long as the heat is not too high, the butter won't burn. Allow at least 15-20 minutes for the browning process. When it's browned, I like to transfer the pieces and the butter to a pan that is not as good for browning, but better for braising (like a Creuset). But still make sure the pieces of beef are lying flat in a single layer. (If you are making a larger amount and the beef cannot ly flat in the pan, just add enough water to come almost to the top of the meat. Your gravy will be more watery so it might be good to reduce it when the beef is done) Now add the bayleaves and cloves. Add lukewarm water to come almost to the top of the beef. Turn the heat to low (best to use an asbestos mat or something)cover, with the lid very slightly ajar (I use a lid that has a small hole in it) so that some of the steam can escape, and simmer for hours. 3 hours is good, 4 won't hurt. By that time the meat should be so tender that it falls apart into shreds (draadjes - which is where it gets its name, draadjesvlees, thready meat). From the Dutch Cooking thread ( RG1515 )

I'm not sure what appelkraut is.. mine is called appelstroop in Dutch, there's a picture here in this post, is it the same?

would that have anything to do with the fact that orange is our national color (and also the colour of our royal family)?

Both are Gouda cheeses. (they don't have to be made in Gouda, to be called Gouda). This is the most common cheese over here. Flavor differences come from the style (factory cheese or made on the farm from unpasteurized milk) and age: the difference between a 4 week old cheese and a 3 year old, is ofcourse immense!

me too! I am planning to go back there one day and take pictures of the farm, that was just not possible on Sunday, the weather was so bad! I agree that certain vegetables have only been forgotten in certain regions. I think that in the countryside, many people have always grown (and eaten) many of them. But the past years there seems to be renewed interest in these oldfashioned vegetables: high end restaurants are using them, and many of these vegetables I can buy at my market in Amsterdam when I spend some time and energy to find them: parsnips, scorzonera, jerusalem artichoke, cardoons, kohlrabi. But the chiogga beetroot, heirloom tomato varieties, the black potato I had sunday, the yellow carrot, the medieval cabbage, and many other ' weird' vegetables as listed on the farm's website, would be impossible to track down. They are simply not grown commercially.

Chufi, if you could get me your grandmothers recipe, I would be honored to attempt the process on the Dutch Cooking thread.. ← Hey Daniel are you looking for an excuse to buy another pig's head Unfortunately my grandmother died years ago, long before I had any interest in cooking.. So I was never able to get her recipes.. I think they're all gone now.. But I'll try to find a recipe so that if you ever find a pig's head amongst the beers in your fridge again, you'll have a new recipe to try!

Glad you liked it! Seems like it would be right at home with those dishes you're doing lately. Mmmm, like that butter-braised beef . . . Did it get that sweet flavor? Did you use any special variety of cabbage or just the plain old green variety like I did? ← yes it got very sweet.. I used ordinary green cabbage.. I actually served it with the rabbit in vinegar and the apple mash that I made tonight in the Dutch Cooking thread, but I did not put it on the plate for the pic, because, well, it was Italian

It's called that ("Hemel en aarde") in some areas of the Netherlands as well. What kind of apples do you use for it?

thanks April! so, not Dutch but Danish.. I'm glad, I was getting worried that there was a Dutch appledish out there that I had never heard of

You did some serious cooking the past week Kevin! All looks wonderful. I became obsessed with that cabbage braised with oliveoil and garlic, I kept coming back to this thread just to look at it, so I finally made some today. It looked exactly like yours so I won't bother to post a pic. It was delicious!

Thanks Kevin now.. apple skivvers that does not really sound like a Dutch word to me.. are you sure that's a Dutch dish? Could you tell me a bit more about them?

Rabbit braised with vinegar, applepaste, prunes and gingerbread Apple-potato mash recipes here in the Dutch Cooking thread this was so good, one of the best things I have made sofar in my quest for traditional Dutch dishes!

Today it's time to broaden my horizon a bit and leave the farmland surrounding Amsterdam - where both my parents grew up on farms, and where many of the recipes so far have been coming from - and the province of Friesland, which I have a particular fondness for, maybe because my father's ancestors are from Friesland.. anyway, today I'm looking south. I think we spoke about the province of Limburg upthread.. Limburg is traditionally seen as the most 'burgundian' province of the Netherlands.. it is a predominantly catholic province and the people there are known for their food and ofcourse their beer.. many good beers are being made there.. maybe I should write about them also some day. In Limburg dialect this dish is called Kenien in 't zoer, which in Dutch would be Konijn in het zuur - Sour Rabbit Ingredients two rabbit legs (actually I ended up cooking 3 legs, without changing the rest of the recipe, and I think you could just as well cook 4 legs with these ingredients) 50 grams of butter 1 onion, finely minced 2 bayleaves 2 teaspoons soft brown sugar 10 ml. red wine vinegar 20 ml. water 1 slice of soft gingerbread 2 teaspoons appelstroop 12 dried prunes (pitted and soaked, or use ready-to-eat dried prunes) salt and pepper. Season the rabbit with salt and pepper. Melt the butter and slowly, thoroughly brown the rabbitpieces. When they are nicely browned, add the chopped onion. Cook for a couple of minutes until the onion has softened. Add the bayleaves, sugar, vinegar and water to the pan. Let bubble for a bit, then turn the heat to low and simmer the rabbit over very low heat until tender (about 1 hour should do it). Take the rabbit from the pan. Turn the heat to medium. Crumble the slice of gingerbread into the pan and cook for a minute or so until the sauce has thickened a bit. Turn the heat to low again, add the appelstroop to the sauce and stir until melted. Taste for salt and pepper. Put the Rabbit back in, add the prunes and serve (or reheat later). It now looks like this: I served this with Hete Bliksem, 'hot lightning', a mash made of apples and potatoes. The 'hot' part does not refer to spicyness, but to the fact that the apples retain the heat much longer than potatoes, so this is a mash that can burn your tongue! In Holland, traditionally only 'zoete appels' (sweet apples) are used for this dish. However these are now hard to buy. I got a bag from my aunt this weekend, she knows someone who grows these: However I have seen many recipes that use other kinds of apples, or even pears. Use any kind of firm, not too tart apple and this will taste great. Equal amounts of apples and potatoes Cook in salted until tender, then mash together with a knob of butter and a splash of milk. I like it best when not too thoroughly mashed, it should still have some texture. All together on the plate (with a couple of strips of smoked bacon because I thought that would be a nice flavor contrast) The sauce was really good, quite tart but with a lovely depth of flavor. I had never used gingerbread to thicken a sauce like this but it was great. ideally you should not use a gingerbread that has pieces of ginger or citron in it, but I just picked them out of the slice I had left from last week, thinking it would still be better to use my own homemade bread for this!

On their website it says that the english translation for the cabbage is Fodderkale, but googling only brings up that particular site! So maybe that's not an english word after all? Fortunately, there are many farmers now growing these kinds of vegetables in the Netherlands, but I think this farm is unique for the scale on which they are doing it, and their passionate dedication. I see in their list that they grow skirret as well!! He calls it sugarcarrot and says it tastes a bit like parsnip, but sweeter. I can get cardoons at my Turkish market, but I've never tried them. I think it's time I did.. One thing I wanted to add. This may sound incredible but everything you saw in my first post, all the food and all the wine, cost 20 Euro per person. They are most certainly not doing this for the money...

I want to add another Thank You. I have enjoyed this week so very much. Thank you for your stories, for letting us share this special week with you and your family, and for all the beautiful things you've shown us.

I looked at the jar, and it seems it's nothing but applejuice, cooked down until it's a paste. No sugar or anything added. It has a tart, very deep flavor.