Hete bliksem

I suspect with a title like this one there might be a bit more spam then the usual amount..lol.. But I couldn’t resist the literal translation for this typical Dutch dish.

When I was asked by Ben from What’s Cooking if I wanted to do a guestpost in his worldseries I was flattered. I love Ben’s blog and have been following it faithfully for years now. His Mexican dishes are fantastic and you should really check out his blog. He lives in Mexico so you can be sure those are authentic Mexican too. On top of that he is also a really nice guy… Ben has an awesome series of guestposts by bloggers around the world. He has done a series before and is now bringing it back. And I’m one of the lucky people that gets to play a small part here!

So the idea was to write something about a typical Dutch dish. So that got me thinking, what is a typical Dutch dish? Our national ‘cuisine‘ doesn’t have a lot of highlights. The first thing that springs to mind is that we have lots of different mash-dishes (called stamppot) as our national kitchen, but then again those are terrible to photograph, so did I really want to go there? Plus most of them are typical winterdishes and in this part of the world it is spring so not the dish I was looking forward too. What is it with the Dutch and stamppot anyway? Why do we mash everything together..? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love stamppot and in winter we eat it at least once a week. We have several different varieties, but most commonly the potatoes are mashed with some kind of vegetable; endive, curly kale, brussels sprouts, carrots (in which case it is called Hutspot) and spinach, we like to add little bits of cruncy bacon to it and eat the lot with a smoked sausage (rookworst)

Apples, potatoes and cinnamon

I could make croquettes but then, they do exist in other parts of the world. And I was stuck with all these winter dishes in my head. Or I could attempt to make stroopwafels but having never done that, I had no idea where to start.

But then it hit me; I could make hete bliksem (hot lightning)! This is a dish I hadn’t made in at least 20 years. Not because I don’t like it, but because it goes together with a baked slice of cheese, something I couldn’t put Tom through as the cheese hater that he is. But he was going out for dinner with work so I could make this. It’s still a mash and therefore by it’s own nature wildly unattractive, but hey, it’s Dutch! So I apologize for the somewhat unappealing photos as I assure you that the content of the plate are in fact quite good.

Jacqueline, my friend, and I used to make this all the time when we were student nurses. Mostly because it was quick and tasted good and didn’t require extensive kitchen space (which we certainly did not have) It’s a pretty old fashioned dish, as it doesn’t get made a lot here anymore either. The core ingredients are apple and potatoes, in equal quantities which are then mashed together. There are a couple of varieties out there. Some with onions in it and other ingredients. But pair this with the caramelized apples and some crunchy bits of bacon and you’re gonna love it as it is the perfect combination of sweet and savory!

Now go on and check out the recipe on Ben’s blog What’s Cooking Mexico? You might be surprised at how tasty this little Dutch dish is!

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Pretty bundt cake

I made this pretty moist and delicious bundt cake this afternoon. It came out of the oven around 4.30 pm, then had to cool and by the time I wanted to take a photo there was no light left whatsoever. That meant having to wait either until the next day or find an alternative solution. I still had this one daylight lamp that I took out of the studio at some point, used once, didn’t like it and tossed it in a corner to get dusty. Enough with the lazy and comfortable daylight! Time to get cracking on some serious stuff..

I’ve received many a question from people desperate to find out how to work with lighting in the night or for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, in the wintertime when light fades after 3 pm. I’ve written something about it before which you find here but thought I could do a little more research myself so why not share? As I said; I never use this lamp as it’s just not the same but in case of emergency, you would have to do with what you got right? So for today I dusted of my daylight lamp, took it into our kitchen and started moving it around.

Position of the lamp

As you can see I positioned the light to come from the right and back and from above a little bit. The lamp has 5 separate bulbs I can turn off individually, so I turned three of and left two burning as it was far too bright, causing burnout and heavy shadows. With a little less light it started to look a little better. I had only one light, so you can see that there is quite a bit of shadow in front of the cake. In order to fill that up a bit I used a silver reflector (you can also use foamboard, aluminiumfoil or something similar) to bounce a bit of light back to the front of the cake. In the two photos below you can see the difference with or without the reflector.

With or without reflector

You can tell that there is a big difference here. You can still tell that these are shot with artificial light but the result is acceptable and you can actually use this. Now what is most important I find when working with lights is the direction of the light. That is also true for daylight but that can be a bit more forgiving. I’ve taken two shots where I changed the position of the lamp and see what happens.

Ok first of all; what I like, might be something else from what you like, so it’s in the end all personal preference but to me the photo on the right is boring and lacks something. I turned the light more towards the table coming more from straight above almost (not quite) which made the light a bit flatter and shadows less pronounced.

I will be doing more tests with other lights that anyone would have in their home. Just to see what the issues are and how to possible solve those (or not). These lights are the easy ones since they are daylight balanced and need limited tweaking when it comes to color. In general for shooting at night, it is extremely helpful to use raw instead of jpeg. It gives you more control over the white balance so you can correct it later where needed. For now I will leave you with this delicious bundt cake!

Apple pear and nut bundt cake

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Serves	8-12
Prep time	15 minutes
Cook time	1 hour
Total time	1 hour, 15 minutes
Allergy	Egg, Peanuts, Tree Nuts
Meal type	Dessert
Misc	Pre-preparable
Website	Epicurious

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup light brown sugar (packed)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks, softened)
• 3 eggs (large ones)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pears (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
• 2 apple, Golden Delicious (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
• 1 cup Mixed nuts (coarsely chopped)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a small bowl put the cranberries with a bit of warm water and let them soak for at least an hour. Drain, discarding the water and set aside. Position rack in the middle of an oven and preheat the oven to 180 C. Lightly butter the bundt tin, then dust with flour, knocking out the excess.

In a large mixing bow or bowl of electric mixer, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add brown and granulated sugars, butter, eggs and vanilla. Using electric mixer, beat on high speed, scraping down sides of bowl with rubber spatula as needed, until batter is pale and smooth, about 3 minutes for handheld mixer and 2 minutes for standmixer. Stir in apples, pears, nuts and cranberries. Spoon into prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. About 1 hour. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert and unmold onto rack and cool completely. Cake can be made up to three days in advance and stored at room temperature wrapped tightly in plastic wrapp

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Delicious and healthy salad with quinoa, feta and apple

It’s no big secret that I love quinoa as it has been featured here a couple of times, as you can see with this delicious quinoa salad with courgette, the quinoa salad with pomegranate and most recently the pumpkin stew. I was reading a couple of blogs on my Iphone this morning (don’t you just love the possibilities of wireless internet??) when I came upon this delicious recipe from Reeni of the blog Cinnamon spice and everything nice. She had this quinoa salad on and I immediately knew what I wanted to make for lunch. I had everything in house so it was perfect.

I knew I would be baking the entire day for a customer who wants to have all the recipes on their site re-shot, so I figured I could do with something NOT sweet for lunch. I’ve been pretty good too, despite being covered in flour and buttercream most of the day. I have not eaten anything of the sweet goodies!! Proud of myself…. I’ve lost 9 pounds so far and want to keep the momentum going. It’s not that I don’t allow myself anything “bad” but all in moderation. And if I have to choose between – for instance – a good piece of cheese or a cupcake, I would go for the cheese anytime, so I’ll stay of the sweets for a while.

And I gotta say that after having this delicious salad I did not feel the need to snack on anything so that was all good. This salad is definitely going to be on my list of favorites. I changed the dressing and the qty’s a bit from the original but I’m sure it was just as lovely!

And I can say that in terms of the Living Leaner project, this did not cost me anything, but that is not entirely fair of course as I have bought these ingredients at some point in the past. I’m pretty sure that it would fit nicely below the 10 euro budget as the most expensive ingredient in here is the feta of which I used about 1/4 of the package, so still some left for more yummy salads this week! The rocket cress we grew ourself on our window sill. Love rocketcress! So tasty and so easy to grow too (and trust me when I say I do not have green fingers at all.!)

Quinoa, apple and feta salad

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Serves	1
Prep time	15 minutes
Cook time	15 minutes
Total time	30 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Website	Cinnamon spice and everything nice

Ingredients

• 75g quino (cooked and cooled off)
• 50g feta
• a fewwalnuts (roasted and chopped)
• 2 tablespoons dried cranberries
• 1 head apple (I used half an apple here)

Optional

• 1 tablespoon rocket cress

Dressing

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon coarse grain mustard
• salt
• pepper
• 1 teaspoon honey

Directions

In a small skillet over medium heat toast walnuts about 5 minutes stirring often. Remove and allow to cool. Chop the walnuts into smaller pieces. Chop the cranberries also into smaller pieces. Crumble the feta cheese and peel, core and cut the apple into bitesize chunks. In a large bowl combine quinoa, apples, cranberries, feta cheese, and the walnuts.

Make a dressing of the oliveoil, limejuice, pepper, salt, honey and mustard and taste to adjust seasoning to your liking. Pour the dressing over the bowl of quinoa and enjoy!

Note

This is an incredibly tasty and really healthy lunch salad that is quick to put together. You can also use another grain such as couscous or pearl barley for this.

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salad ingredients

The indecisiveness is driving me completely insane… While I thought I had made the final decision to get rid of my studio, every time I go there for work or something else, I get sad… really sad.. So now I am starting to question my own decision. Maybe there is another way to make it work and where on earth to I keep all the things I collected over the years that fit fine into a 120 square meter space, but not so fine into a 10 square meter space that will be all that I have left… *Big sigh and pulling my hair out*

What I did do today is go to my landlord and just tell him my problem. That I don’t WANT to leave but that is has become too expensive for the amount of time I am there and well, basically I asked him if he would rent it for a little less.

So healthy!

He didn’t say no right away so that is the good news. He will need to discuss it with his brother and business partner, so the story continues. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore it feels like. My mind jumps from decision to decision; one minute I think ‘Yeah it makes sense to give it up.” and the other minute I get all desperate and wonder where on earth would I be able to do my job?? Ofcourse there are pro’s and cons that I can think about all rationally but in the end it is my heart that is the biggest problem. I love that space; it is so me. I’ve been there for almost 4 years, we decorated it ourselves and build it up from scratch.

As if it had to be I was contacted today by someone who wants to rent the studio every now and then. That would help although the problem with things like that is that there is no certainty. But if the rent would go down a bit plus this man would rent the studio every now and then, I could maybe, just maybe, keep the studio… We’ll see… time will tell! I have till the end of March to make the final and definitive decision, so I have some more time to drive myself insane.. Yeah!

Still some poppyseed left!

Now on to this lovely salad; I’ve been really good these last few weeks. Tom and I have taken on the habit of going for a walk together every day after work, we’ve been eating very healthy, no snacking in between and no wine other then in the weekends… (a girl’s gotta have some fun!) For a lot of our grocery shopping we now walk to the store instead of taking the car (saves on gas too) so all in all, we’re doing good. The result is that I lost 8 pounds so far (as you can see from the little badge on the right) and while still a long way to go, the beginning is there!

I made this delicious and very quick salad while I was in the studio this morning and I had it for lunch. It’s a bit too light with only 138 kcal so I did have some bread later. No need to starve myself, but this is delicious and adding a bit of bacon maybe would make it a bit more filling too.

This salad is also very fitting for Mona’s Living Leaner as this is literally made from leftovers we had in the fridge and cupboard! So cost for extra was 0 and I prevented wastage!

Lettuce, chicory and apple salad

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Serves	6
Prep time	15 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Salad, Side Dish
Misc	Serve Cold
Website	BBC Good Food

Ingredients

• 100g mixed salad leaves
• 1 head white chicory (trimmed and separated into leaves)
• 1 piece apple (cored and sliced)
• 25 g toasted pistachio
• 25g sunflower seeds
• 75g cherry tomatoes (halved)

Dressing

• 2,5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2,5 tablespoons Honey
• 2,5 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 tablespoon whole grain mustard
• 1 teaspoon poppy seed

Directions

Arrange the salad ingredients on a large plate or big salad bowl. Put all the ingredients for the dressing together in a jar or bowl and shake or stir until well combined. When ready to serve sprinkle some of the dressing over the salad and toss together.

Note

Quantities and ingredients are adapted from the original recipe to what I had on hand. Obviously you can change nuts and other ingredients to your liking

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Sometimes, just every so often, you try out a recipe and it is just plain wrong… I had never before have that happen with a Donna Hay recipe, so I guess kudos to their team for testing most of their recipes. And I say ‘most’ because the recipe I picked for this months Donna Hay Challenge is certainly NOT right. I was alerted to the problems initially by Laura from the blog Tiramisu who had tested it to see how it would look and it turned out the caramel sauce stayed far too watery to be considered a sauce. So I tested it too and indeed, it was nowhere near the right consistency of a sauce. Plus, due to the watery nature of the caramel the dumplings became very soggy in the oven.

So I thought about it, tweeted a bit here and there with Jenn, Astrid and Alessio and I decided in the end I would split up the components of the recipe and make them separate. I still had some dough leftover from the dumplings, so I used those to make 5 small dumplings and baked them in the oven for about 25 minutes. I poached the apples on the stove in a mixture of sugar, verjuice and water with cinnamon, cardamom, staranise and cloves and made an orange caramel sauce to go over the finished product.

Too sweet!

And while all the separate components worked really well this time, the end product was too sweet. Initially I thought that I should have poached the apples in a sugarless solution but I don’t think that the apples were the problem. The caramel, while delicious, would probably be better for an creamy dessert. The dumplings soaked it up quite well so they too, became too sweet. Pfft, what to do now? I’m thinking the solution might be to change the water qty in the original caramel recipe (which was great in taste, just too soggy) and add the butter into the caramel at a later stage. Anyone any thought on how to resolve this? It’s quite a tasty recipe otherwise, it’s just too soggy, that’s all…

I will share my take on the recipe with you below but first let me get into the photo process here. Based on the original photo I used a table with backlighting as you can see in my setup. Apart from the obvious differences in props for me the biggest difference is the texture. The recipe does not state to add sugar to the dumplings but that is clearly what they did in the photo. Also I did not have small apples, so I used bigger ones and cut them. As soon as you poach apples, either in the oven or in a pan the color starts leeking out of them. So while they were quite red at the start; it soon turned rather yellow. I wish I had small apples and if I do manage to find them I might make this again.

Donna vs mine

See how the texture of the sugar on the dumplings and the more wrinkled appearance of the small apples adds a really pleasing contrast to the tin they serve the apples in? In my photo it is all too smooth. Also because I did not want to overcook the apples and have no color at all left.

To reflect some of the light back onto the apples I used my foamboard wrapped with aluminium foil plus the lid of a pan. I could not – for the live of me – find my reflector, so that is probably still in the studio..

See my messy table and the reflecting lid of the pan

I will now share how I prepared this, but for the original recipe best look at the Donna Hay post. I would love to hear your thoughts on the recipe and the problems you encountered while cooking it!

I used the recipe for the dumplings as per the original, but baked them separately in the oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

I poached the apples in a liquid containing verjuice and water, about 1/2 cup of sugar, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 staranise, 5 cardamom pods (crushed) and 3 cloves. I brought the liquid to the boil, added the apples and simmered for about 15 minutes.

Orange caramelsauce

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Serves	4
Prep time	5 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	15 minutes
Meal type	Condiment
Website	Epicurious

Ingredients

• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Directions

Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in heavy small saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil without stirring until deep amber color, occasionally brushing down pan sides with wet pastry brush and swirling pan, about 8 minutes. Carefully add orange juice and orange peel (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir over low heat until smooth and any caramel bits dissolve. Cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.) Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Orange-Caramel-Sauce-106133#ixzz1dJGke6fw

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