Yesterday we visited the market in Bourganeuf, which – thankfully – had a little more produce then the previous two markets. We had quite a large group so making decisions is always a little bit harder when there are 8 people with opinions… lol… But Jan-Willem was to be the chef of the day, so he had the final say in what we were gonna buy. The idea was to check what produce was available and with a reasonable price, buy that produce and in the afternoon come up with a menu.

Busy cutting

We have a large white board where the ideas are written down and once we all agree that is what we are going to make; we create a mise en place list and tasks are being divided among whoever wants to help in the kitchen that particular day. Not everyone is cooking every day; there are other activities being offered, so there are also people who prefer to go painting some days and work in the kitchen another day. So that means that the kitchencrew varies. Which is fine but it can be a little messy and unorganized as not everyone has cooking experience, but it makes it fun at the same time.
We ended up with a menu that went something like this:
Antipasti the french way (we had rillette, baked terrine of duck, tomatoes with mozarella and basil and grilled veggies)
Salmon tartar with lemon mayonaise and a sort of pesto (I ended up making it with salad (initially the idea was to make rocketpesto, but we forgot to buy rocket)
With a piece of Conquer eel
Roasted chicken with home made french fries, fresh green peas steamed with sjallots and saladhearts
Clafoutis with strawberries and mango

The chicken was from a local farm so a really good one and ofcourse; who does not like good fries…
The group of people that had to be fed keeps growing as a few family members also arrived, so in total we had 16 people at the table.

I was not too impressed with the fish; really too much bones and not enough flesh. So as good as the shark was the day before, as bad as the eel was… O well, it can’t all be perfect right?

Steamed green peas with sjalots and saladhearts

Tonight there is going to be an additional 6 people that come for a table d’hote (basically it’s paying customers) which makes it kind of scary, but also fun to be cooking for “real” customers…. We’ll see how that turns out!! I’ll keep you posted!

Checking to see if the fish is fresh

Fresh shark (yes, that is me and Mathijs)

I apologize for all the french people out here for not spelling the above  title correctly but it kind of sums up what we are doing here perfectly. I was planning on posting something here yesterday but…. unfortunately the internet connection was lost. The wifi was connected only the day before yesterday and we are sort of in the middle of nowhere (biggest places Gueret is 20 km from here and Limoges is I think about 80 km so not exactly close) so any regular connection is not existing. Rob had a special antenna placed so there is at least a better internet connection then via a telephone line, but it’s still a bit shaky.. But if you can read this; that means we had a connection plus it has its charms to be out in the country right?

Yesterday we had planned to go to the market in one of the little places around here but one of the markets was not there and the other was so small that we only bought some goatcheese and nothing else. So we ended up going to the Carrefour again.

We bought loads of fresh produce and then once back we had to come up with a menu to make.

Smoked shark with rocket and lemon mayonaise

The menu for yesterday was as follows:

Soup of roasted peppers with creme fraiche and basil

Smoked shark with rocket and lemon mayonaise

Beefstew with red cabbage, pear and mashed potatoes

Pannacotta with mango

Now I don’t know about you guys but I had never had shark before (called saumonette in french and apparently it is sold as sea-eel in some countries)

and I totally totally loved it.

It was first rubbed in seasalt and left to rest for about 30 minutes, cut into portions and patted dry with kitchen towel. Then it was put into the big green egg with Jack Daniels wood for smoking…

Absolutely delicious; the lemon mayonaise it simple. Fresh mayonaise, with some lemon zest and about the juice of half a lemon and you’re good to go. The french mayonaise is quite good, so you can use that as a base or simply make fresh mayonaise from scratch.

The beefstew was maybe my favorite…. We used a large piece of beef (I think it was 2 kilo in total but then we are with 12 people) and first removed the tendons where necessary. The beef (at roomtemperature) was then marinated for about 30 minutes at least in red wine. Briefly sauteed in various portions (if you put all the beef in a pan at the same time, you end up cooking it, instead of frying it. That is not what you want!) and then we put it in the oven with all the marinate. The beef was seasoned with salt and pepper during the sautee part. We added some whole cloves of garlic (including the skin), onion and a little later in the process some mushrooms and crispy bacon bits. In total it simmered in the oven for about 2 hours (in a crockpot) but just check when the beef is done, as you do not want to overcook it.
I seriously think it was the best stew I have ever had and combined with the red cabbage and mashed potatoes it was a delicious meal.

The pannacotta was just big enough. The previous day we had made two cakes (one lemon and one chocolate ) and while delicious it was a bit tooo much after a rather heavy meal! So the pannacotta was a better portion and delicious as well. As a base for the pannacotta I used this recipe and then just substitued the cranberries for the mango. The sugar got reduced to 90 gr (for 3 portions of the recipe) and I mashed some of the leftover mangoes into the cream before pouring into their forms.

Beef stew

After such a meal it was time for some of us (…) to stretch their legs in a battle of tabletennis. And did I already show you our gorgeous sleeping room, which is in an old cowstable and one of the best things is that – while it is pitch dark inside with no windows – it is fabulously cool!! Totally love that… plus… we have no mosquitos!!

Our stable room!

Views from Ahun

I told you right, that I would be very soon off to France to enjoy a week of cooking..? It’s been busy up till now and I had wanted to complete the Daring Bakers too as I totally love the recipe but with everything going on these days it’s hard to complete anything. So it does come at a fairly good time that we can relax here in France.

We’ve already done loads of cooking with Rob from Kookstudio Amsterdam and he and his wife have started a cooking/creative venture here in France too. They are situated in a very small town called Ahun, which is about 950 km drive from where Tom and I live. The area is absolutely beautiful and you wouldn’t believe how quiet it is here (ok, except for the occassional cow… They bought this place about 5 years ago when it was complete rundown and have managed to make a couple of gorgeous rooms, an outdoor kitchen and still give it the feeling of an authentic french place (with lots of brocante that is used throughout the in- and exterior.)

Painting by the river

Apart from cooking you can also learn how to sculpt with stone and get painting lessons from an authentic artist. I am really not into sculpting or painting, but if you are into it; the area is beautiful and apparently the painting lessons are real fun or so I’ve been told.

We’ve arrived here on saturday while most of the group arrived on sunday, but it gave me the time to take photos of a few of the rooms before they were occupied… We’re actually sleeping in the former cowstable.. They’ve really managed to make it look like a very cosy bedroom!

There is lots of other stuff planned for the rest of the week, so I am sure you will be hearing more of me in the days to come. Wifi was installed here today, (yes, hot of the press!)

Today is a day when there is no market in the area, so we went to the carefour for groceries and based on the ingredients we found we have come up with dinner for tonight which you will hear about tomorrow.

Outdoors kitchen area

That is the whole idea anyway during the entire week; to try and create a meal based on the ingredients we will find at the local markets. I think probably we will take turns in being the one deciding on the menu and if all goes well, we will actually also be getting a live rooster and duck to…. eh… prepare… if you know what I mean. I am not sure yet, if I will be able to go through the motions with that although I have done it before, but well, it’s different with live animals! All in all, it’s gonna be a fun week and I will be posting more. For now it’s time to go back and check on dinner for tonight. It’s sort of unnerving if you have to suddenly cook from scratch for 12 people! (ok, with loads of help, but still….)

O and that gorgeous red cat is Fritz….. Isn’t he cute??

Steamed dorad

Remember when we had one of the first Daring Cooks challenges and one of the things we had to do was to clean a squid?? Remember how incredibly wrong mine went?? (if not, you can read about it here…   But don’t say I didn’t warn you!) Ever since that first very frightful (haha, well… ok messy for sure!) experience with cleaning a squid I had not attempted it again. I mean; squid is not my favorite food in the world so why bother if they have exploding and nasty intestines?

So imagine my surprise when Matthijs, who was doing the fish lesson yesterday since Rob is in France right now, was taking out some squid for us to “play” with… Ofcourse I could not resist and I just had to try it again. I mean; I had read about it before starting on my adventure the previous time and I did watch several youtube videos thinking it would be really easy to do, so I was a little careful this time. I knew what could go wrong!

Shall I do it or not??

Matthijs showed us how to filet a flat fish and a round fish and then showed us how to clean a squid. Again; pretty simple if you look at it, but as you can see by the look on my face I was still not so sure that mine would behave better this time!!

Imagine my surprise when the squid was beheaded, cleaned from insides and skeleton within literally maybe three minutes!!! I couldn’t believe it, which only proved once more that I had a very strange squid that first time. Filled with very unpleasant insides plus everything else went wrong with the damn thing as well. I got mad at the first one all over again. He or she could have made my life a little easier by behaving as the lovely little squid did that I cleaned yesterday. I even cleaned two of them, both equally easy. I still don’t really like the taste except when they are fried. But to be honest I like the outside of the batter more then the squid inside.

But I did it and I am glad to say that I have now successfully cleaned squid in my life. Possibly never to be repeated but hey, I did it! One thing to cross of the list…

I did like the steamed dorad we did a whole lot more as well as the seabass which was baked in a saltcrust in the oven. In addition to that we also fried some tarbot and we made little fishcakes which were also very good.

If I have to choose I think I liked the dorad that was steamed the most. It was so quick and easy and the taste was pure and delicious! And I think it looks good too don’t you agree?

As Mathijs was explaining it is always better to buy a whole fish rather then the filet as at least then you will be able to tell for sure if it is fresh or not. You could still ask the fishmonger to make them into filets but if you pick the fish you decide on the freshness, sort of…

I’ll tell you how to make the fishcakes as I really liked those. We used a little bit too much potatoe but still very tasty. You can use leftover fishscraps from when you are making filets or you can use whatever other fishbits you want. Mix that finely in a kitchenmachine but not too fine. No need to puree the fish!

Add salt, pepper and (depending on the qty you make) half a chili pepper, deseeded and chopped finely. Add chopped flatleaf parsley and cooked potatoes (great for leftovers!!) and roll them into cookie sized things. Roll them into flour and then into egg and bake in a pan until golden.

You can obviously add whatever you want in these little darling and I think they would actually work with just about anything!

I haven’t really done any “normal” posts lately now have I? It’s about time I got to do some proper cooking! I need to try out some things plus I should be doing the Daring Bakers challenge for this month in a hurry as it is close to reveal date and I have yet to start! Hmm…. stay stuned for more to come!

Our loot of the day

Photo of me taken by Stanley

Last saturday it was the second lesson of the cooking course at Kookstudio Amsterdam and the lesson was this time chicken and other fowl. I should have waited with making the stock for the Daring Cooks challenge as I would have had plenty of bones!! But as we all know the date for the Daring Cooks was shortly before the date of our lesson so that wasn’t possible.

We’ve mutilated a couple of chickens and cut a quail into appropriate size portions… I am not going to be making this a very long post as I have been behind the computer too long and my right wrist is kind of bothering me, so I have to take as little computertime as I can; which is hard in my profession!! But ok, so I will let the photos speak for itself plus this little video below that I shot as well of Rob cutting the quail. It’s in Dutch but the video speaks for itself I think. Have fun and I hope I will be able to have more text next week. Fingers crossed!!

Our produce for this week

Guess who is burning stuff again??

Rob making mayonaisse

Remember when we did the cooking course in Amsterdam at the Kookstudio in March of last year? That was the so called beginners course and we followed the advance course after that but when it was finished we kind of felt we wanted to do some more. The problem is that you can find loads of cooking workshops in the Netherlands but not a lot that actually teach you about product and techniques rather then simply following a recipe in a class.

I am not interested in someone showing me a recipe and telling me that I can follow the recipe. I know I can do that by myself at home if I so desire. I am interested in finding out how to treat the various products, how to recognize good from bad and how to cook from scratch really. So…. after some discussion between Tom and myself we decided to do the same course we did last year again… Is that silly? Our reasoning is that we got so much information that it’s hard to remember it all plus we do look differently at things compaired to last year. But anyway we signed up again and last saturday was our first lesson.

And I have to say it’s actually very usefull doing this for the second time. When you are trying to learn something new at school it’s the power of repetition that works there too right? It’s the same in cooking class. The first lesson is all about cutting, making mayonaisse and roux and transforming that into croquettes and cutting fresh fries from potatoes. So ok, probably not the most exciting lesson to do for the second time, but still I found it useful. I remember from the first time that all that information was quite overwhelming. The second time around I was more like; ‘Oooo, now I get it!’

As far as cutting goes; I know how it should be done in theory and I have becoming much much better in cutting but it is still work in progress. I guess that is really a case of practice makes perfect (and using good knifes)

What I did do this time around that I had not done before is that I made a basic salpicon (base for a croquette) in the Taurus Cook. It’s supposedly a machine that does most of the work for you. It cooks, blends, mixes etc and it – or so I have been told – perfect for making a roux or for making soup and sauces. To be honest; when I saw the thing I was a bit overwhelmed. I mean; making a roux is fairly straightforward when you do it on the stove so why would you even spend all that money on a machine that makes the whole process look more complicated then it really is?

But it was new and I did want to see if it would do the job better in the machine then if you would do the same thing by hand. The machine has a couple of buttons but what you basically have to do for each step of the process is to set the right temperature, the mixing speed and the time required for each ingredient. Unfortunately you still have to do the chopping yourself.. I would have thought a machine like that should do that as well. If you’re gonna be making life easier then why not add that functionality as well. But it doesn’t so chopping the ingredients is still required but that is really the only work you need to do.

You add the onions, cook for about a minute, then add the next ingredient and so forth and after a couple of minutes out comes a salpicon. In terms of speed and ease of use it gets good points from me. Once you’re over the initial hurdle of getting familiair with the various buttons it’s really quite simple. The biggest disadvantage is the fact that it’s really hard to taste in between the various steps, so adding salt and pepper or other seasonings during the process is not easy and becomes a bit of a hit and run kind of thing. We could have used a bit more seasoning as the taste was very bland.

But before we could transform the salpicon into little croquettes it had to be chilled in the fridge. As soon as it came out it became apparent that the “perfect” process in the taurus does not make a “perfect” salpicon. The structure was just wrong; very plastic and rubbery almost. We did roll them into balls and fried those, but apart from the taste that wasn’t as it should be, the texture of the thing was just not good. You know when you make it the traditional method on the stove I think it is almost the imperfections in the process that make it perfect…. Does that make sense?

In this case everything was cooked at the right temperature for exactly the right time but probably the gluten in the flour therefore got activated more bringing it all together much more then if you put it on the stove. I don’t know… I am getting way to technical here…lol  Bottomline is; easy to use, but the results were very disappointing. It would be interesting to see what the machine would do to a soup, but quite franky I fear it will do the same. Plus…. the biggest drawback is the fact that I miss the action!! What is the fun in cooking if a machine does it all for you?(I know for a fact that there are many people out there that would buy it for that reason alone.. But not if you love to cook!!)

I love my tools such as the Magimix and the KitchenAid but they do not do all the work for you. They merely make it a little bit easier. This machine is different in that it does it all. I certainly would not bother spending money on a machine such as that. But that’s just my opinion ofcourse.

Machine at work

I did find it interesting to be able to try out a machine like that and it does look impressive with all the steam coming out don’t you think?

Next week is going to be the chicken and poultry lesson. One of my favorites!!

Tom likes to burn stuff...

Pheasant wrapped with coppa di parma ready to go in the oven

Let me first start by saying that this post is not for the faint of heart as some of the photos are quite bloody. If you are a vegan or vegetarian probably best not to read on! If you are – however- interested in finding out how to skin a hare then please read on..

I was a little anxious about this lesson as we could have gotten just about anything here and my fear was of walking in and finding an entire deer lying on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t a deer, but instead we had two hare, two pheasants and two wild ducks lying there completely intact as you can see below. There was also some pieces of wild boar meat and some deermeat, but that was both already processed.

Now I like to think of myself not being too squeamish, but hmmm, not sure about all these little furry and fluffy creatures on the table as I knew what would be coming next! You see; I grew up with a friend whose parents owned a farm and as a kid I used to be at that farm almost every week. If you live at a farm you know that chickens eventually get slaughtered and since they lived close to the an area with lots of bunnies you even realize that bunnies get shot too. So I had killed and cleaned chicken before and I had even seen someone skin a bunny before. Still…. that was all different from the experience of last night! Probably a good thing too that it was the last lesson and not the first. Someone even suggested of starting with this lesson in the beginners course; you’d would – for sure – not have any people left after the course..lol..

After Rob had explained to us the differences between the various types of game we went to the kitchen area to watch the skinning and cleaning process on one of the hares. Now before I go into that; there are people opposed to hunting and people that are ok with hunting. I will not go into the right or wrong here, just to say that I used to be really against hunting but I have come to see the other side as well and are a bit more relaxed about the whole subject. I mean; if you think about it; If you are a meat-eating person your anonymous piece of meat that you buy at the butcher used to be a live animal as well and I can bet that your cow or pig probably had a lousier life than the hare you see lying in the photo above. So in terms of animal friendly (not getting into the whole pro or con hunting discussion!!) the hare would win over the average cow anyday, right?

Skinning and cleaning a hare

But still…. I had to swallow once or twice when Rob started skinning the hare and part of that was due to the horrible stench coming from the hare. Apparently real game can smell that way when it has been hanging for the appropriate amount of time to tenderize the meat. In this case the hare was shot roughly ten days ago and you probably get used to that smell but it was disgusting! The first thing he did was cut a little slit into the hare’s neck so that you can put a finger underneath the skin. Then the process of stripping the animal of it’s little furry coat is remarkably simple. Just make sure you remove the lower part of all four of the legs otherwise you won’t be able to pull of the skin. Once skinned you can remove the head, which then makes it look a lot more like something you can buy at your butcher… But overall, a pretty bloody process! Also you can see where the hare was shot as those parts have  hematomas of where the coagulated blood is sitting. That is also where you will most likely find the little bullets that killed it, so make sure to remove those!

After the hare we got a demonstration of how to clean a duck (nightmare with all those feathers!) and then it was time to take it into practice… At which point I have to make a confession; I chickened out.

I am ok with watching someone dissecting a hare, duck or pheasant, but to do it myself I just didn’t feel like it! Instead I took photos and well, I did pluck a little bit of duck, but that is as far as it goes. I mean, the chance that I will ever be cleaning my own hare is not so big. Unless I am forced to live in the wild and will need to live of the animals that I catch with my bare hands; in which case the knowledge will come in handy.. lol.. In fact I was not the only one having a little bit of trouble with this lesson as only Arjen and Mike where brave enough to start on a pheasant and hare, respectively. Francoise cleaned a lot of the insides of the hare (to be used for something) which deserves an applause in itself as the stench was overwhelming but the rest of the group stayed with the safer meats that were already cleaned (the wild boar and deer)

The guys with their respective trophee...

And obviously at some point some of it had to be eaten. Now I found that the problem with the hare is the smell really. Once you have smelled that stench it stays in your nose and even after having been prepared in the oven we could all still smell it. And since taste is for a large part smell I had a hard time liking it! The boar wrapped with prosciutto was lovely and delicious, the filled boar was also great. The pheasant that Mike is holding on the left was delicious as well (that is the first photo of this post as well) and the coppa di parma really added a nice little crunch to it. The duck has a liver taste to it and I didn’t like the skin as that was thick and fat. Not so tasty, but the meat itself was ok. You wouldn’t expect a duck to have red meat now would you? But it does have red meat.

So in terms of our last lesson it certainly was a memorable one! It was the first time I did hardly anything in the kitchen though which is a little weird. Well I cut some veggies for a dish that we didn’t eat in the end, but that’s about it.

And now it is the end of our course again, such a shame really. There is still sooooo much more to learn, so I hope there will be another one after this.

Rob also gives summer courses in France where you spend a week cooking and/or doing other fun activities (painting, fishing etc.) as well. You go to the market in the morning and learn what to buy and then how to prepare all that in the afternoon. Sounds like a lot of fun and definitely something we will be doing next year. At the moment the farm where this will all be taking place is still under renovation to make it suitable to host guests but it should be finished beginning of spring next year. Courses start somewhere in june, but you can check the website for more details if you’re interested!

Pheasant with hare feet...

Produce of the day; some alive and some not...

I was a littttllle bit anxious about this lesson as, let’s face it, shells, shellfish and the like are not really (really not) my favorite kind of food. Maybe it stems from the time that I still didn’t like fish, having not grown up with the stuff and while I love fish now, that took about 40 years (or so)! So maybe it will take even longer for me to ever like shellfish, but quite frankly I have a hard time believing that it might ever happen.

Take oysters for example; whole generations of people love oysters and would spend a fortune for getting a good oyster in their mouth. Of course preferably raw. I had tried an oyster once at a Chinese restaurant (a very good Chinese restaurant I have to add) and well, I didn’t like it. It was prepared so I think it might have been steamed although I am not sure of that anymore as it is years ago. I just felt it was a mouth full of snot so to speak… But of course one of the topics of the class was how to open an oyster (that was one) and then ofcourse eating one… Rob (who’s hands you’re seeing on the photo on the left) looooves oysters so he had eaten the first two already before he started passing them around. I first didn’t want to eat one, but then I figured; what the hell… you have to try everything once right? So Rob opened the oyster, poured out a bit of the seawater inside and gave it to me giving me instructions on how to eat it. And so I did…. and aaaaggghhhrrr, what a horrible mouthful of salt blubber!! Disgusting… Sorry, but that’s not ever gonna make me want another one.. Sorry for all you oyster fans out there, but how can you possibly like that? In case you are wondering; we had one of the best types of oyster around. Don’t ask me which one, but knowing Rob, he would not have cheap oysters lying around.

So did not like the oysters; then Rob went on explaining all the different animals you have, such as lobsters and their different varieties, crabs, prawns, river crayfish, scallops, clams (!), cockles, mussels, langoustine, oysters ofcourse and probably a few I forgot.

The lobsters and the river crayfish where alive, as were the clams and cockles and the scallops (for those paying attention to the photo; yes, they are open but they were closed when bought earlier that day) and after the extensive explanation on how to clean each one of them and what you could do with each one we got to choose what we wanted to do. We picked scallops to make “coquilles in safron creamsauce” and crabs, which where gonna be filled. Cleaning the scallops is not really hard. They open much easier (I had scallops that were closed) then oysters or clams and you then proceed to remove the beard and the gallbladder (? not sure if that’s what it’s called but it’s the black part) You can eat the coral (the bright yellow part) as that is very proteinrich (it’s basically the sexorgan of the shell if I understand correctly so eggs and seed and full of protein… )

Opened coquille

I actually do like scallops so naturally I picked those to prepare. We made a sauce basically by sauteing the beard (after rinsing it from sand and other debris… Wow, what do those creatures eat? Sand?? ) adding wine and fish stock, then reducing and once reduced use the mixer to puree it, add cream into the pan and reduce some more until it has the right consistency. Once you’ve done that put it through a sieve to get rid of all the beard pieces that are too big and with the handmixer put in two of the coral, which binds the sauce a little. The rest of the coral we left on to be grilled later, as it is quite edible so I am not sure why they are removed so often. I think it looks quite pretty that yellow part.

We grilled the scallops in a wok, since the grill was occupied with loads of langoustine and ended up flambeing the scallops with calvados and I can tell you they were delicious!! I would probably never have bought whole scallops without having this class but I am thinking now I will. They are quite expensive here. One piece is about 3 euro, so that is quite ridiculously expensive for a little bit of meat, but for special occassions this might still be worth it.

One of our group made scallops with the same sauce although it tasted very different so I am not sure what she added in there and with pear, which was delicious too. But it looks good doesn’t it? We sure liked it.

Scallops flambe

Then on to the crab which was ok, but I wasn’t wild about the final taste of the dish although Rob thought we did a pretty good job. We had an entire table filled with goodies by the time it was 10 pm so when we sat down to eat, it was almost ridiculous so much food we had made. Normally you can bring home a lot of the stuff you make but this was not a real easy topic to take home. Although most of the leftover went home anyway (not with us though… noooooo sir)

Ooo, I wanted to share the photo of Tom grating cheese, as I thought that was pretty funny, but I have already added so many photos here, you might get bored… Haha… You see him (yes, he is the bald handsome guy.. ) practising his Jamie look (we always joke when I want to take a photo of someone in action I ask them to take on the Jamie pose… haha and it works too!) From left to right you see Tom seasoning the filled crabs, Mike grilling his scallops, clams being prepared and the steaming of some oysters.

What a feast… While not my favorite kind of food, I loved this lesson again as I learned a great deal plus I am now no longer afraid to clean my own scallops. I will never be found killing a lobster, although yes, I do realize that is on the hypocritical side, but then again, there are things I just won’t do…

O and I did also try one of the prepared oysters and I still thought it was disgusting. They say it is like olives, you have to learn to eat them (and it is true, I thought olives where disgusting at some point and I love them now… mmm, weird really!) but I just think I will pass on the honour.. lol..

Again, fabulous fun, so if you want to join in the fun have a look at the website of Kookstudio Amsterdam for the latest and greatest courses. I assure you it is worth the money! (and I am not saying that because I have to, but because it is true…)

Couldn't resist: Tom grating cheese!! Now that is a sight...

Homemade pate

Remember when we started our cooking course in the Kookstudio in Amsterdam, back in March? After waiting for what feels like forever, yesterday we finally started on the follow up course! Whoohoo!! It’s going to be 5 lessons of which the first one was making your own pate and sausages. Something I had never before done, but boy…. how good was that pate! I still have to taste the sausages so I will be able to tell you about those later, but the pate was seriously good.

As Rob always does he started with explaining all the different meats and seafood we had lying on the counter and the basic things we needed to know about making a pate and about making sausages. We started out making sausages first as the meat had to be chilled before creating the sausages and we figured we could make the pate in the time that the sausages where chilling. Making them was much more fun that I had ever thought it would be and actually really simple too. The only essential tool you would need is something to put the filling into the casings (is that the word for it? Not sure…)

Obviously there are a zillion variations to what you put in your sausages and I guess that is part of the fun. We choose pork for the filling so this is roughly what we put in. It makes sense to keep tasting the meat as you add spices since we basically got creative….

This is what you need:

750 gr porkshoulder

250 gr pork belly fat

salt (2 gr), freshly grounded pepper (2 gr)  and nutmeg (0,5 gr)

That’s your base. Then you start adding whatever you like; we picked the following herbs and spices and other ingredients. Qty’s all to taste:

flatleaf parsley, onion, garlic, five spices, chili, button mushrooms, porcini mushrooms (soaked in water first for about 10 minutes)

General preparations:

1. Cut the meat into small cubes. If using one of those machines to make meatloaf make sure you make the pork fat smaller then the lean meat. Remove bloodvessels or tendons from the meat. Cut the lean meat in cubes of about 1 cm.

2. Mix all the herbs and spices through the meat and put in the freezer so it can reach a temperature of 0°C.

3. In the meantime cut your bigger vegetables such as mushrooms and/or onions etc. and if necessary saute them quickly in a pan so they become softer and easier to distribute through the meat later.

4. Once the meat is cold enough put it in the magimix and start with turning the fat to a homogeneous mass. Add the lean meat and continue and put the vegetables in at the last minute. Depending on how long you keep the magimix turning your sausages will become smoother and less chunky.

The machine we used to make the sausage is shown in the photo above and in the photo below, where they are making the sausages and turning them. The only thing I don’t know is if it would still be possible to make sausages without owning one of those machines… Maybe with a piping bag… Yeah, I guess that would probably work too…

For the pate we went with the recipe for Pate de Campagne. The photo on the right below is our filling and the filled form with the layer of fat…

Here’s what you need:

250 gr pork liver

400 gr porkmeat

300 gr pork fat

1 tsp chopped parsley

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp marjoran

1 bayleave, crumbled and 10 pieces of juniperberry.

1 tbsp of chopped sjalots

1 tsp of chopped garlic

1 tbsp of salt

black pepper

2 tbsp of jenever

2 eggs

Patedish or ovendish

magimix

pestle and mortar

PREPARATIONS:

Chop the herbs, grind the juniperberries in the pestle and mortar, chop the garlic and sjalot.

Preparing

Put the meat into the magimix and make it into puree. Put into a large dish. Add herbs, sjalots, garlic, salt, pepper and jenever or armagnac or any other drink you would like.

Mix the ingredients well and put the bowl in the fridge overnight. Mix the eggs and divide the mass equally in an ovendish. Smooth out the topsurface and cover with fat or membrane of pork stomach.

Bake in a 180 °C oven for 90 minute covered. Leave the pate to cool and then leave in the fridge for 24 hours before cutting.

Obviously we didn’t have time to leave the pate in the fridge overnight so we skipped that part and it still worked well.

We had the pate this afternoon for lunch with glace of onions. That is rather sweet but still has a strong onion taste. Lovely combination!!

Chopping strawberries

I am sure we all have that one “issue” at some point in our lives… There is so much to do and just so little time!! I’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks with assignments. It’s wedding season after all, so that means a lot of work for me as well. In addition to that a lot of people choose the summer and spring period to have family portraits made, so that is another big part of my work right now plus I also get a couple of companies for assignments. In general I find that people are terrible in planning which means I get a phonecall a day before they want to have a photoshoot done! The only exception to this seems to be weddings which are planned years in advance sometimes.

So all in all I have had very little time to do any proper cooking recently, let alone taking photos of it! To be honest; Tom has been the one doing most of the cooking the last week…

Last wednesday I went to the kookstudio for a photoshoot with a model. I had wanted to do some kitchenstuff for stock photography and when thinking of which kitchen to use, I naturally thought about the place where we had so much fun recently. Kookstudio Amsterdam. Rob was more then willing to let us into the kitchen, so we arrived there in the morning last week. I think the photos turned out great, although the model wasn’t really into cooking… haha… I hope it doesn’t show too much! While I was there we got invited to join the cooking class of this friday so yeah!! We got to be back in cooking class again! Obviously we kind of missed our friends of the cooking course, so this was all with new people, but it was great fun to be back again anyway.

It was cooking a menu this time, although there was enough room for interpretation as to how you would prepare the actual ingredients. There were a couple of fish, a large piece of lamb (the two hindlegs and bottom), some chickenlegs and a pig’s neck (Baambrugs pig) and ofcourse lots of different vegetables and fruits. Since we were added kind of at the last minute both Tom and I felt we would do whatever was left over after the different dishes had been divided.That seemed only

Making the bavaroise

fair to the people there, so I ended up doing a strawberry bavaroise (I can never pronounce that name!!) and Tom did various different jobs throughout the evening. Making my strawberry dessert was no punishment ofcourse. I love strawberries and I love desserts, so nothing wrong with that and the end result was lovely and very very tasty!

Some of the other people made a clafoutis with strawberry and apricots, but it tasted too much of egg so something had gone wrong there and for the tarte tatin something went wrong with the dough. It was ready made, but didn’t rise at all. We had roasted leg of lamb, with grilled vegetables and asparagus. I should ofcourse start with the starter as I am working my way backwards now…

Starter was a salad with bits of smoked fish and chicken leg, second course was mashed potatoes with ‘raapsteeltjes’ and mashed potatoes with ‘postelein’ (I have to look up the english words for those!) accompanied with some grilled porkneck (which maybe doesn’t sound too good, but was delicious!) and then we had the lambshoulder with the grilled vegetables as I mentioned above. Rob was serving us some lovely wines to go with each course, but ofcourse I had to drive again, so I didn’t drink that much… We ended with the three desserts and some caramelized pineapple. It was great to be back and we seriously can’t wait untill the follow up course is starting!

All in all, sorry if I haven’t visited any blogs lately but I will hopefully be back soon!