It’s chaos everywhere; one person is running around with smoked eel trying to remove all the bones, the other is rummaging through the racks beneath the kitchen counter searching for an empty pot, someone else is peering over my shoulder to see if I maybe have the gelatin powder, while on the other side of the kitchen a few folks are stirring and chopping. (not necessarily in that order)

It’s really not that easy cooking with a large group of people. Did you know that? You would think that maybe all those hands would make the job lighter, but I’ve found sofar that it actually makes the job at hand harder. Trying to concentrate over measurements is virtually impossible if chaos is all around you.

Organized chaos

But then again I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. It’s great fun and yes, we have more failures then I would care to mention here, but we laugh about it, eat it anyway and move on to the next dish. Our group is usually around 14-15 people which is a large enough group. Some have a lot of cooking experience, others have virtually none, but we all help eachother and in the end it is about sharing the experience, having a good laugh and a fun dinner at the end. Our cooking club is now over a year old already and still with the same folks except for one. No one ever really misses a session unless on holiday or away for work, but we’re all pretty faithful. It’s only once every two months to I guess that makes it a little easier to plan into any one diary plus the dates are fixed at the beginning of the year so we know where to keep the diary empty!

Cleaning eel

Last Friday was our first session in a different location. We had some disagreements with the owners of the previous place. Let’s just say that we were forced into doing things we didn’t want to do so that was end of story. Luckily we found a new place immediately as this is the same cooking location were Tom and I have done countless cooking courses over the last couple of years so we know the place. It’s a much older kitchen (and arguably it could be a little cleaner) but it’s a good location with a lot of atmosphere and in the middle of Amsterdam so close to the Albert Cuyp market.

Me having fun!

The menu this week was a smoked eel with fried herbs, shrimps with risotto, watercress coulis and crispy ham, escalope milanese with tomato and courgette and strawberry soup with vanilla icecream and caramel sauce. Not too complicated you would think, right?

Well, the starter went a bit wrong, so we had eel soup instead of the turned little pudding it was supposed to be. Actually that was the only real failure, the rest of the dishes were pretty much ok.

Shrimp risotto

But the highlight of the evening really was the delicious dessert of strawberry soup, homemade vanilla icecream and caramel sauce…. So for that I will share the recipe with you; well for the soup as the recipe for the icecream was changed at some point and I don’t want to give you false information!

Strawberry soup

Strawberry soup

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Serves	10
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Dessert
Misc	Serve Cold

Ingredients

• 1kg sweet strawberries
• lemon juice
• 1/3 dl water
• sugar (to taste)
• 1 pinch salt

Directions

Puree about 2/3 of the strawberries with a little bit of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Add some sugar if needed. The rest of the strawberries you can use for decorations. Strain the strawberries through a sieve and put into a deep, cold plate. Garnish with the rest of the strawberries and ad a ball of icecream in the middle.

Note

Well ofcourse this recipe is so simple you can hardly call it a recipe but that doesn't make it any less tasty!

Don't mess with the chef!

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Dreaming the day away...

Every once in a while you have to give yourself something new and exciting to play with and in fact I got two new toys today. But then you know I have no self control to speak of so that must be the reason… I was meeting Julia and Dan for lunch today in Amsterdam. Julia (Always leave room for Dessert) and Dan are from Canada and I met Julia almost a year ago now during the fabulous Plate to Page workshop. I heard they were coming to Amsterdam for a couple of days so I pursueded them to have lunch with me at restaurant De Kas.

Julia and Dan (look in the window!)

Julia is a fun and lovely lady and I was excited to meet her again and meet Dan as a bonus. De lunch was lovely and in fact we had so much fun that we sort of didn’t notice that the restaurant was already closed… They are too polite to send people away apparently and we lost track of time. Anyway, Julia had this fun new toy on her camera, called a lensbaby. I’ve been wanting to get myself one of those for a pretty long time, but either forgot or had other stuff to buy and I had already planned on going to the camera store and get myself a 50mm 1.4 this afternoon. But then, here comes Julia with the lensbaby and I was sold. Just love the little thing and it is so much fun to play around with.

Gizmo thinks it is so not interesting!

I already have the 50 mm 1.8 which is a fantastic little lens for the cost involved but the 1.4 is sharper at full opening and well, I can always use a little extra light. We will be going on a fun little visit to Brugge with our Belgian friends soon and this is the only lens I will bring (plus the lensbaby to play around with!) Love to travel light!

Gotta love the special effect of the lensbaby!

So this post was all about making you jealous of my new toys and the fact that I got to meet the fabulous Julia and Dan for a fantastic lunch and I’ll leave you with one last shot of Gizmo taken with the new 1.4.

Do I see a bird over there moving in the bushes?

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Potato cakes

It’s been said before and I will say it again but sometimes the simplest things in life are also the best… Last night was our 6th session of our cooking club, with the fancy name of Kookclubbie (maybe we should come up with another name??) and it was great fun again, good cooking, lots of laughter and some serious things in between as well. The group is still in the original shape as it was a year ago when we started. One person left due to other priorities but we’re still with 14 men/women. The menu yesterday was:

1. potato cakes with creme fraiche and trout eggs
2. Mushroom veloute
3. Lemon spoom
4. Dorad with ovendried tomatoes and tapenade
5. Creme brulee with icecream

Ofcourse all those drinks are purely water or soda...:)

The menu was fairly laid back this time, so we had some time to catch up with the news after New Years. Our cooking sessions are only once every two months, so while we do see some of the people on a more regular basis, others we only see at the cooking club, so that means lots of things to talk about! Saskia and I were responsible for the potato cakes and truth be told, she did most of the work. Lol.. I think I whisked the eggs, does that count for anything? To make up for that lack of eh… cooking, I made the potato cakes again today for dinner. They were totally delicious and they fit well within a budget too. Yesterday we had these with trout eggs but since those are fairly expensive I left them out today and we spiced up the creme fraiche with spring onions, mustard and some chili pepper instead. Also totally delicious!

New Years, group hugs!

These cakes are easy to put together and we’re having them tonight with some fresh mackerel fillets (with an orange and harissa glaze) and  pak choi that will be quickly stirfried in the wok. All in all in a delicious dinner that costs a little and goes a long way. And it’s also within the budget for Mona’s living leaner challenge!

Potato cakes

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Serves	12
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	30 minutes
Total time	40 minutes
Allergy	Egg
Meal type	Side Dish
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Hot

Ingredients

• 500g potatoes
• 6 pieces egg
• salt
• pepper
• 250ml creme fraiche
• 6 pieces eggs (hardboiled)
• 1 spring onion
• 1 red chili
• 2 teaspoons mustard

Optional

• few teaspoonstrout eggs

Directions

Peel and wash the potatoes and then grate them finely. Crack 6 eggs open and whisk together. Season with salt and pepper generously. Add the grated potatoes to the eggmix and stir everything together. Taste and add more salt and pepper if you want. If you do want to taste raw eggs, bake one cake and taste if it needs additional seasoning

Boil the other 6 eggs till hard. Peel and keep yolks and whites separate, mashing them finely with a fork.

Cut the spring onion and the chili pepper finely and stir through the creme fraiche together with the mustard. Add the trout eggs if you want. Since these are very salty, make sure you keep that into consideration when your seasoning your potatoes. Taste your creme fraiche mix and add seasoning where needed.

Heat a frying pan on medium heat, add oil to the pan and with a spoon form little rounds of your potato-egg mixture. You can use a baking ring if you want or go freeform. Bake until golden brown, flip and bake the other side until done and transfer to a baking tray.

Once all your potato cakes are done you can leave them on the baking tray until you're ready to eat. Heat them through in the oven and serve with the creme fraiche. Add the egg crumbles to your plate and - if using - you can also add some additional trout eggs too.

Note

At the cooking club we had these with the trout eggs, but at home I prepared them without since those eggs are fairly expensive. Instead of the eggs we added some mustard, spring onions and chili to the cream, which works just as well and makes it a vegetarian dish too!

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Have you ever tasted a really bad risotto? One that is mushy, overcooked and just terrible? Well, I have to confess that we managed to make such a risotto in our cooking club last friday.. Ofcourse I can also tell you that I did not personally cook this risotto and in fact a couple of us (including myself) were very sure that we should wait with the risotto… But that is just excuses right, since ultimately we were all responsible for the end result.

Filet of beef with tarragon sauce and juniper berries

We had an interesting menu this time with the main being wild duck with garlic risotto and red wine sauce. The entire menu was:

• Goose liver cappuccino
• Beef tartare with tarragon sauce and juniper berries
• Wild duck with mushroom risotto, red wine sauce and chanterelle puree (whatever happened to that puree by the way??)
• Spicesicecream with orange syrup and mango

Gooseliver cappucino with mushrooms on toast

Ofcourse the first item was immediately cause for discussion as goose liver is a controversial topic and a few people refuse to eat goose liver which is fine. I’m not a big fan of duck liver and/or goose liver but I did want to taste this cappuccino so I did eat it. I read this entire article the other day on goose liver and the fact that it can be sustainable and animal friendlier then it is currently produced but still… it remains a difficult one. I’m glad that a lot of the practices we have seen in the past have improved when it comes to animal cruelty and food production but there are still a couple out there, that really should be changed. In the end it is also for a large part down to the fact of what we are willing to eat and what we are not willing to eat. If no one buys it anymore, what’s the point of producing right?

Saskia, Mike, Tom. Winfried and myself were assigned to both the starter cappuccino as well as the main. The boys started on the starter while Saskia and I – for some reason – decided it would be a good thing to start to clean all the ducks… I had never used a wild duck before but there is a noticeable difference between a wild one and a tame duck. Usually when you buy duck breast it would be from a tame duck with a very thick fatlayer on the breast. Wild ducks don’t have such a layer unless it is shortly before winter.

Yep that is me not paying attention while Mathijs is showing us how to dissect the duck.. Ofcourse I had to ask him again later..

I also thought the taste of the wild duck was much ‘gamier’ then the tame one.. I definitely prefer the taste of the tame one to the wild one, but then again it could have been our preparation that was wrong. I just didn’t like the entire dish one bit… Bleh… And it was sooooo much work! We cleaned the ducks, removed the breasts from the karkasses as well as the legs. Then we started braising the legs slowly in duckfat, and the karkasses went into the stockpot. In the meantime we had to cook whole garlic cloves in milk for about ten minutes and then transfer to the oven to slowly roast to become soft and tender to go into the risotto. We chopped and we cleaned and we did lots of stuff and ended up with a shitty dish… O

Saskia looking so thrilled to clean the duck..lol

hahaha… Well we did learn a lot of stuff in the process but I was slightly disappointed by the outcome. The risotto had been on far too long. It takes only 20 minutes or so to make a risotto but we put it on before having the second course (of which I will give you the recipe below) and then it had to be kept warm in between meaning it was on the stove way too long. Then Winfried decided not cleaning the chanterelles was a good thing (…) so there was sand in them.. I didn’t like the taste of the duck and that was the end of our work..

Remco and Janis doing the filet of beef

For me the real winners were the filet of beef (see recipe below) and the dessert which was delicious (even though the spices in the icecream got sort of left out..lol and the composition split so it had to be reheated to come together again (which worked by the way) but was still very delicious! I might share that recipe some other day cause this post is already becoming very long.

All in all, we had a great time, lots of laughs and well not all food was as good as we hoped but that is what we’re there to learn right? (that and to drink wine and have fun…)

Beef tartare with tarragon sauce, horseradish and rocket

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Serves	10
Prep time	30 minutes
Cook time	15 minutes
Total time	45 minutes
Meal type	Appetizer
Misc	Serve Cold

Ingredients

• 600g Filet of beef
• 3 tablespoons Olive oil
• 1 bunch tarragon
• 1 piece sjalots
• 1 clove garlic
• white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon chicken fond
• olive oil
• 8g juniper berries
• 3g caraway seed
• 1 teaspoon horseradish (from a jar)
• rocket
• 2 slices dark rye bread
• butter
• seasalt
• pepper

Directions

Chop the filet of beef. Don't make it too fine, add a little bit of olive oil and leave in the fridge, covered until ready to use.

Remove the tarragon leaves from the stalks. Chop the shallot, put both into the magi mix and grind finely. Put in a bowl. Add the vinegar and chicken fond. Mix until well combined. Add the olive oil little by little until it starts to resemble a cream. Keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

Roast juniper berries and caraway seed in dry pan and ground once they cool down in a pestle and mortar.

Cut the second shallot into thin rings. Crumble the rye bread and bake until crispy in some butter.

For presentation: Use a big cold plate and either make a ring or square of your tartare. Divide rye bread, horseradish and shallot rings over the meat. Briefly drag the rocket through some olive oil and put 5 rocketleaves in a half circle around the meat. Drape some of the tarragoncream at the foot of your circle. Sprinkle some of the white spots on your plate with the juniper berry powder

Note

Delicious little dish which is great if you have a beautiful piece of beef. The horseradish here really adds to the dish so while you still have to use it sparingly (it's strong!!) it does bring out the flavors.

And here it is... the terrible dish from hell..

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Delicious spicy beef dish at Thai restaurant

When I met Ishay for the very first time during our Plate to Page adventure in Germany it became immediately apparent that she is a very socially engaged person. She is originally from South Africa where she lives with her Dutch husband (who came with her to Germany since they were on a vacation too and had just come from Barcelona (or they were just going to barcelona after Germany… sort of forgot the details) and she writes the fabulous blog Food and the Fabulous.

Now just before we left for home after that wonderful weekend in Weimar Ishay asked us all to think about contributing to WeFeedBack, an organization where she is rather active. I was initially a little confused as to what it was that was required of me, but after having checked out their website I became enthusiastic about participating in this great cause. WeFeedBack is all about fighting world hunger and then in a very simple way. Let’s say you organize a dinner for your friends and you decide to have a BBQ. What does a typical BBQ cost? Let’s say a low budget one would be € 10,= per person. If you have 10 friends over that would be a total of 100 euro.

The idea around WeFeedBack is that you basically give that amount back to kids around the world that are suffering from lack of food. For a 100 euro you could feed 500 kids! An if each of your friends brings 10 euro to the table it’s not a lot of money for a cause as good as this.

Wefeedback is an initiative of the World Food Programme as a means to use social media and social platforms to build a community. A community that can give back by donating the value of their meals and with that feed kids.

It doesn’t have to be 100 euro. Any little contribution is welcome; even your ham and cheese sandwich could already help 1 or 2 kids! The explanation on the site is much better then what I can do here, so I will let you check out the site and see for yourself how easy it is to contribute.

I kept it small and went for dinner with my good friend Hermin (who is featured in the little video above) She made a video of me too, but chicken that I am… she looks much better then me, so I thought I show her video instead of mine.. ‘m also rubbish at editing it, but well…. you can hear what she had to say!

For starters we had some lovely Thai snacks

We had a great Thai meal with lovely starters, pad thai noodles and spicy beef with spring beans. It was – for a change – a dry day so we could eat outside on a terrace (we were in Amsterdam).

Making that little video was sort of hilarious… I mean; I am not sure how many takes we did before we ended up with a video without a fit of giggles in between but it was great fun and all for a good cause too.
If you want to join wefeedback too, please use the link here

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