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
Region:	Worldwide

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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Opening the box!!

The first round of the black box has officially been cooked by chef Tom… On friday around 6 pm the box was opened. I had to drive to Amsterdam on the friday afternoon to get some of the ingredients I wanted, put them in the box and Tom got to open it… We possibly had as much fun with the whole “official” part as we had with eating the final results..lol… Ok,so the ingredients I picked were :

vealcheeks, beets (raw), chanterelle mushrooms and in addition I bought some fresh herbs (oregano and thyme), a bottle of wine and tahoon cress, purely for decoration (although a very tasty cress too! It takes slightly like nuts..) So the ingredients that were most important were the vealcheeks, beets and the chanterelle mushrooms. I had never made anything with veal cheeks myself so choosing it was based on what I had heard about it and it was supposedly very tasty and tender meat. What it didn’t tell you is that it is also hard to clean..

Raw veal cheeks, chanterelle and herbs

You can probably tell by the photo above that there is quite some parts that need to be cleaned before you can actually eat it. Tom cleaned it first, then marinated the veal for about 2 hours in red wine. Then the meat was cut into chunks and further prepared in a Dutch oven, again in the same red wine. I’ll give you the total recipe for the veal below. In addition to the veal he wanted to roast the beets in the oven with olive oil, balsamico , salt and pepper but timing wise the beets took a lot longer then he had anticipated. The recipe he saw on the internet said that it would take 20 minutes to roast beets and it took a lot longer then that!

The chanterelle mushrooms were combined with sweet potatoes and baked. (he first cut the potatoes in small squares, baked them golden brown and then added the chanterelles.

Potatoes and mushrooms

So how did I like the dish? Well the meat was delicious, very tender and soft and very tasty. For some reason it had a slightly sour aftertaste which was not unpleasant but that could have been better. We’re not entirely sure where it came from either, but I am thinking maybe the result of the wine? Anyone an idea on how that could happen? He cooked the meat for about 2 hours in red wine but because one bottle was not enough he used three different wines… Could that have been the issue? I think they were all merlots.

The combination of the sweet potatoes with the chanterelle mushrooms was quite good too. Better then I would have thought. And the beets…. well, we never ate them as by the time the other items on the menu were done, the beets were still rockhard (40 minutes in the oven at that time) so we did taste one but obviously a beet that is not done is not very tasty. We normally cannot buy raw beets here very easily. The ones you find in the supermarket are always already cooked. So we have one beet leftover, which I will try and prepare better. See how it tastes!

I do have to warn you that the photo of the final dish looks terrible. Since the meat is close to black, as well as the beets (due to the balsamic used) and the potatoes and chanterelle also brown it was certainly not the most photogenic of dishes, but then that was not the purpose of this excercise. Tom bought a very tasty wine to go with the stew with the funny title of Misterio… He thought it very fitting for our first Black Box experiment..!

RECIPE FOR STEW OF VEAL CHEEKS

1 kg uncleaned veal cheeks

tomatoes

rosemary

garlic

onions

Marinate the meat for about two hours in red wine to get the wine to break down the meat and make it extra tender. Then make the stew in Dutch oven and add all the ingredients. Make sure the meat is covered with wine and check on a regular basis to see if there is still enough fluids in the pan. Let the stew simmer for about 1,5 to 2 hours. The meat was melt in your mouth tender when it came out of the pan. I even think it would have been good with a shorter time but just check as you go along. Add seasoning to your liking

The final dish...

All in all a good result for our first experiment… Not everything was succesfull but the aim was to start thinking more creatively about ingredients and to use things we wouldn’t normally buy ourselves and I think in that respect it was certainly 100%! Our next black box (round #2 is planned on April 3rd…Yours truly will then be the chef of the day and Tom will be buying the ingredients!! Can’t wait!!

Tom plating the dish

Beet prior to going in the oven. It does look good doesn't it?

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Whoohoo!!! I made it!! It’s now official. One of my recipes will be featured in the Foodista Cookbook! I just received the email confirming that I was one of the 100 lucky winners out of about 1500 entries. Now how cool is that? I just think it is fabulous..

The winning recipe is one of my favorites and is for chanterelles mushrooms. It couldn’t have come at a better time as it is almost time to have them again.

Here is (one of) the winning photo and you can pre-order the book here! (set to be released on October 19th) Recipe you can find under Chanterelles mushroom pie

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Chanterelle mushroom pie

I was so happy when we went to the farmer’s market in Amsterdam on saturday to find an entire stall filled with all sorts of mushrooms. Remember that in the supermarkets here you can only ever find button mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms and the occassional oyster mushroom and shiitake if you’re really lucky. But I had never even seen Chanterelles, let alone eaten them fresh, so I was quite excited when we found them in the market. They had other varieties of mushrooms as well that I had never seen before, but I couldn’t bring all of that with me ofcourse so had to do with just the chanterelles.

Fresh chanterelle at the Noordermarkt, Amsterdam

I wanted to make these as an appetizer for when my friend would come over for dinner tuesday and Olga had come with the suggestion of making them into a tart with puff pastry. Which reminded me I still had puff pastry in the freezer, so that would be perfect to make some quick appetizer for dinner. The main would be work enough so I didn’t want to spend more time in the kitchen then I had to.

Because I wanted to try out the flavors I made a little one in the afternoon with chestnut mushrooms and the cheese I bought and it was delicious. And it is really almost too simple to throw together and looks quite good and tastes fantastic. You can ofcourse use any kind of mushroom you want with this, but the chanterelles were very tasty. I actually made this three times now and the flavors get better everytime I make it, so just use your own taste to put whatever in that you like.

I used storebought puff pastry, but if you have anything leftover in the freezer from the Daring Bakers challenge you can certainly use that!

Storebought however, is especially quick since you don’t have anything to roll. In the Netherlands puff pastry is sold in little square packets with separate sheets about 10-15 cm square and already thin enough to use as it is. Ideal for these little pies.

The recipe gives approximates qty’s for 4 people

4 square sheets of puff pastry

200 gr chanterelle mushrooms

blue cheese. I used Castello Blue which is nice and creamy and melts beautifully, but you can add any kind you like

Pecorino. Because the Castello Blue is lovely but when warm looses some of it’s strength, I added a bit of grated pecorino on top just to pick it up a little. Ofcourse you can use parmezan or another hard and strong cheese.

Preheat the oven to 225°C.

Cut the chanterelles into manageable sizes. Keep in mind it needs to fit on top of the puff pastry and you don’t want huge chunks here but not too small either. In a bowl toss the mushrooms with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Take the puff pastry (defrosted ofcourse) and put some of the mushrooms in the middle, making sure to leave the sides free. Don’t be too shy; you want to have a nice little pile of mushrooms there. They will decrease in size in the oven. Generously add little chunks of the blue cheese here and there. Make sure to have an even distribution of cheesy goodness there.

Put some eggwash on the sides of the puff pastry and fold it creatively in a little basket, so that the cheese stays in when it starts to melt. Plus the corners will become nice and crispy too. Pinch it tightly to make sure it stays put once heated.

Put the little pies in the oven for about 12 minutes on high, then bring the temperature down to 190 °C and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Tomato version

I also made a version with tomatoes for the simple fact that I did not have enough chanterelles left for the second pie (I had already made the pie two times before at that point, so they were gone… ) so I filled it up a bit with little pomodori tomatoes, which worked very well too. It’s a little less strong in taste and I prefer the flavors of the chanterelle only version, but ofcourse you could make endless variations with this. Maybe add a little fresh thyme to it (which I didn’t have in the studio when taking the photos) or mix the mushrooms or… well, just go wild.

I love it!! And apart from the time in the oven, it takes literally 5 minutes to assemble. Perfect!

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