Chufi

the recipe is here in the Dutch Cooking thread

I'd be happy to help. I am not really a musselspecialist though.. although I did make some delicious musselsoup tonight (instead of the mussels in beer I had originally planned.. ). A roast chicken is about the only roast that I am not scared of, please give it a try! Your house will smell lovely and there is great satisfaction in taking that golden bird out of the oven ! I love Marcella's chicken with two lemons, really the easiest and best roast chicken recipe out there IMO

Wendy, sweet potatomash with sage, what a great idea. That's on the menu here soon I think! yetty, those eggplants look beautiful.. could you tell me more about the recipe, what's it called? more Dutch fare over here.. Musselsoup: and smoked eel rolls:

Zeeuwse mosselsoep - Musselsoup from Zeeland 1 kilo mussels 1/4 of a small celery root 1 carrot 1 leek 1 onion 50 grams butter parsley, celery leaves 1 liter water Chop up all the vegetables in fairly small dice. Clean the mussels. Put them in a pan with 1 liter water and salt. Bring to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes, until all mussels have opened. Drain, (saving the cokking liquid). Sieve the cooking liquid. Take the mussels out of their shells. Melt the butter in a large pan. Saute the vegetables in the butter for about 15 minutes. Add the mussel cooking liquid to the vegetables and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables are well done. Chop up the herbs and add those to the pan, together with the mussels. Heat through briefly (or the mussels will be tough from overcooking) and serve, with good bread & butter. I also made another recipe from Zeeland, Palingbroodjes - smoked eel rolls. Preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F Make a dough from 250 grams of flour, 150 ml. warm milk, 20 grams melted butter, 1 sachet (7 grams) yeast, 1 teaspoon salt. Mix well and knead for 5 minutes. Leave the dough to rise for about 1 hour. Roll out into a large rectangle and cut into 10 small rectangles. Cut 200 grams of smoked eel fillets into pieces the same length as the dough rectangles, and divide among the pieces of dough. Moisten the long edge of the dough pices with some water and roll up. Don't pinch the ends, the fish should remain slightly visible. Put them on a buttered baking tray. Laeve to rest for about 15 minutes, then brush with beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes unitl risen and golden. These were fantastic!! And so easy to make! I'm thinking smaller sized ones would make a perfect hors d'oeuvre.. The fatty juice from the smoked fish permeates the bread, delicious.. Both recipes have been added to Recipegullet: Smoked eel rolls and Musselsoup

Abra, what do you mean by French brandy. I'm sorry.. but sometimes it gets confusing with all the languages, what means what where, etc.. see my explanation about dutch brandy above. If by french brandy you mean cognac or something, no I would not use that. Use some kind of alcohol of about 30 % that does not have too pronounced a taste.. although I read one recipe from a Dutch woman living in Canada, who said she uses rum instead.. I can imagine that being delicious.. although I do think some of the delicate flavour of the egg will be lost.. Maybe wodka would do? Since you don't really cook the advocaat, but only heat it very slowly au bain marie to thicken it, the alcohol does not cook off.. so you really get the kick of the alcohol in the taste, mellowed by the eggy sugary creamininess..

I think Mickey knows that you a) gave him a name, b) talk about him to people all over the plant in a "I hate you but still think you're kind of cute" sort of way. Why would he want to leave such a loving home? Or maybe he just likes your singing.

me too. That looks so, so good. Were the peppers grilled or raw when you put them in?

Palingbroodjes - Smoked eel rolls Makes 10 rolls. 250 g flour 150 ml milk 20 g butter 1 sachet dried yeast (7 grams) salt 100 g smoked eel fillets 1 beaten egg Warm the milk (don't let it boil), add the butter, When the butter has melted, add the yeast and whisk until combined. Put the flour in a large bowl, add the milk/buter/yeast mixture and a large pinch of salt, and mix well. Knead for about 5 minutes until you have smooth dough. Set aside in a warm place, covered with a towel, to rise for about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 180C/ 350F. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, into a large rectangle. Cut it lengthwise in halve and cut each halve into 5 pieces so you end up with 10 rectangles. Cut the eel fillets into pieces that have the same lenght as the dough rectangles'longest side. Divide the fish between the pieces of dough. Moisten the longer sides of the rectangles with a little water and roll them up. Don't pinch the sides, the fish should remain slightly visible. Put them on a buttered baking tray and leave to rest for about 15 minutes. Glaze with the beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes, until puffed up and golden. from Dutch Cooking thread Keywords: Easy, Hors d'oeuvre, Appetizer, Snack ( RG1468 )

Dutch musselsoup - Zeeuwse mosselsoep Serves 4 as Appetizeror 2 as Main Dish. Zeeland is the Dutch coastal province that is famous for it's mussels. This is an old fashioned recipe for musselsoup, flavoured with two types of celery: celery root and celery leaves. If you can't find the celery leaves, use more parsley. 1 kg mussels, cleaned 1 l water 1 onion 1 leek 1 fat carrot 1/4 celery root (about 200 grams) 50 g butter handful of celery leaves handful of parsley salt, pepper Put the mussels in a pan with the liter of water and salt. Bring to the boil and cook for 5-10 minutes or untill all mussels have opened. Drain (saving the cooking liquid!). Sieve the cooking liquid through some kitchen paper, making sure there is no sand or grit left in it. Take the mussels from their shells. Chop up all the vegetables, fairly small. Melt the butter in al large pot and sautee the vegetables for 10 minutes. Add the sieved mussel cooking liquid, bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes. The vegetables should be well done. Chop up the herbs and add them to the pan together with the mussels. Heat through, briefly, and serve with good crusty bread, and butter. From the Dutch Cooking thread Keywords: Soup, Easy, Main Dish, Appetizer, Fish ( RG1467 )

Today: advocaat. Advocaat is a delicious 'drink' made from eggs, dutch brandy and sugar. A drink made from alcohol and mashed avocado's was introduced to the Netherlands from their colonies in the Caribbean. With their usual inventiveness when it comes to substituting ingredients, the Dutch started using eggs for the drink, but the name of the avocado stuck. The factorymade product is very thick and bright yellow. For this thread, I wanted to make my own so I did some research for good recipes. I found about a dozen of different recipes.. with great differences as to the ratio of eggs/sugar, alcohol. Some recipes said to use whole eggs, others just yolks. Some recipes said to cook au bain marie, others in the microwave, others said not to cook at all. Some used spices, cream or condensed milk in addition to the 3 main ingredients. Some used 93% alcohol, others Dutch bransy.. very confusing.. I ended up reading all the recipes and making up a recipe that seemed to make the most sense to me. Here's what I used: 5 eggyolks 100 grams sugar 1 sachet vanillasugar 250 ml. dutch brandy 50 ml. water Mix the yolks with the sugar until foamy. Add water and brandy. Put the bowl over a pan with hot water and cook, whisking, au bain marie until thickened. Now that sounds easy but it wasn't.. In the beginning it looked like this After about ten minutes it suddenly 'seized'and became thick. I was worried it might curdle so I stirred like crazy and guess what.. it turned thin again.. This happened two more times.. really frustrating.. After the third time, when it started to thicken, I stopped stirring and ladled the stuff into a jar. It's not as thick as I would have liked but I guess it will thicken some more as it cools. It tastes divine though. I licked the entire bowl which was somewhat of a guilty pleasure at 11 in the morning.. This would traditionally be served as a 'drink', in small crystal glasses, topped with sweetened whipped cream. It is delicious served over icecream (with whipped cream on top), as a substitute for custard in trifles, or as a sauce for strawberries. Or simply serve in small glasses for dessert, with biscotti for dunking.

Vla, in all kinds of flavours, is definitely the nation's favorite dessert. It's a thick custard, really.. but the kind you buy in the store does have a sort of thick gooey gummyness that I think is preferred by most people over homemade. I make custard from scratch (with eggs & milk or cream) to use in desserts but I actually think of it as a different product. Custardpowder will give you a result that is more like the storebought vla, I think.

Thanks Kevin.. that's great praise coming from the King of Megathreads... I'm aiming for at least 22 pages myself...

Kathleen, that looks like a wonderful evening.. dumplings and cocktails, wow.. I hope you had a good night's sleep after that..

Hey Megan! I made carbonara yesterday too! Only when the water was boiling and I reached for the spaghetti jar, it turned out to be empty.. So it turned into Penne Carbonara instead.. I did a new thing, I mixed the eggs with a little of the pasta cooking water before adding them to the drained pasta. . I don't know if it was that, the delicious organic bacon, the pungent pecorino, or the novelty of the penne pasta, but it was the best carbonara I ever made

Abra, in Holland we have 3 different kinds of soft sugar ('basterdsuiker"); dark, lightbrown, and white. You can see the lightbrown here, also with a description, maybe that helps. The white soft sugar looks the same as the brown, sort of sandy and sticking together (i.e. NOT the same as icing sugar). I've seen it described as ' crushed granular sugar with molasses and caramel added'. If you can't find it, I'd substitute any kind of fine white sugar you would normally use for baking pastry. A dark muscovado sugar would be too strong flavoured for this pastry. Hope this helps!

well except for the fact that I like eggplant, I think you are me I eat salmon sometimes but I'm always sorry when I do. I've been thinking about doing mussels with beer this week! I'd be very interested to see your recipe, so please make those!

Advocaat and gevulde koek, it might work.. I'm used to these pastries as a snack with tea or coffee, but maybe the creamy alcoholic eggyness of the advocaat will balance the crunchy sweetness of the pastries.. I'd be very interested how that turns out..

Final dish of the day... Pik in 't potje, which translates roughly (very roughly) into "picking from the pan" or "steal it from the pan". This is a recipe from Zeeland, one of the southern, coastal provinces of The Netherlands. Imagine a very big pot of this, on the table, with the extended family around it.. no plates just everyone eating from the same pan.. Ofcourse everybody would go for the best bits, the eggs, first.. hence the name Ingredients for 4 as a sidedish: 500 grams of potatoes, cooked and mashed a splash of milk 4 hardboiled eggs, cut into large pieces salt, pepper 50 grams of butter, melted 1 tablespoon of vinegar It's basically a simple mash (made with milk, salt and pepper, no butter) with hardboiled eggs, cut into large pieces, stirred into it. Then you melt some butter (well, a lot of butter actually) and whisk this with some vinegar. In an inspired moment I used some vinegar from the capers-in-vinegar-jar, which was delicious with the eggs, but you can use any kind of vinegar. Pour the butter on top and lightly stir into the dish. Serve hot as a side dish. Today I served it with such decidedly unauthentic, non-dutch items as chickpeas, grilled peppers and chorizo. (See here in the Dinner! thread for the complete meal) It was a very good combination especially with the chorizo.

presto, what a lovely post... how wonderful if you cook buttermilkporridge and think of your grandmother, like I thought of mine this morning! I was also thinking today, what a shame it is that when my grandmothers were still alive, I wasn't very much interested in cooking.. the wonderful talks I could have had with them about food... But that wasn't meant to be... Yes, I'd be interested in the roggebrood recipe, please post that! Or any other good Dutch recipe that you know

with the addition of roasted peppers and panfried chorizo, the leftovers from yesterdays salad of roast cauliflower and chickpeas turned into this: I also made some 'Daniel-inspired' parsleysalad.. parsley with shallots that were cooked down in red wine vinegar, with some capers and only a very little oliveoil and a traditional Dutch dish, mashed potatoes with hardboiled eggs, with melted vinegar-butter. Very rich, very good and these for dessert: Dutch almond pastries

not too bad.. but I doubt anyone would agree.. think thick grainy, slightly sour buttermilk.. I only made it out of nostalgia, because I was thinking so much about my grandmother lately.. she loved this stuff... details here in the dutch cooking thread isn't it an american custom as well, for moms to write their children's initials in the cereal?

buttermilk-raisin porridge with syrup

I do love how this thread has me thinking about a lot of things that I used to take for granted. I have also been thinking about the Spice Issue that was mentioned upthread. I think it was Milagai who asked where all the spices went? The more I think about it, the more I feel that a lot of the 'strange' spices have actually been incorporated very well into classic Dutch cuisine. There's the use of cloves, nutmeg and mace in braises, stews and meatpies. Cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, nutmeg etc (even pepper) are all used in the pastries and sweets. 2 of the most famous Dutch cheeses, Leidse kaas en Friese nagelkaas are flavored with cumin and cloves respectively. I think it's only the chillies that have found absolutely no place in Dutch cooking. The other spices are used, be it in a subdued and background role and not as a principle player, but they are certainly there!

will you be making you own almond paste Abra? If you do, just make sure the texture remains a little crumbly (as you can see in the close-up of the storebought pastry). I've put this in RG but I'll repeat it here: my recipe book says that the homemade almond paste will keep for a couple of weeks (in the fridge, I presume) and will improve with keeping.

yeah, that's how they should be, dry and crumbly, sandy-textured. It's interesting about this flour thing. I consider myself not very good at baking. yet the baking I have done in this thread has all turned out pretty well. Could that be because now for the first time I am using Dutch recipes (and Dutch flour, ofcourse) where as before I have often been using American recipes and Dutch flour?