Junglefrog Cooking » kookstudio amsterdam

Cooking and the group process

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:36:06 +0000

Outdoor kitchen in Ahun

I’m sure we all have similar experiences where you meet with a group of strangers and in the beginning you’re thinking; who are these people and they really do not seem to be nice… Then after a couple of days, you realize that they are not as bad as you thought they were and then finally you realize they are a wonderful group of people… I think the best example of that was when we went to Thailand 6 years ago; the first night we met with the entire group of 16 people and we went to bed that night thinking we would be having a rather horrible vacation as it was such a terrible group of people only to end up with the best vacation ever and the most fun group of people we had been with in a long while.

In fact; we are still seeing some of those people today…! So what is that?? Why is that? Is it because we tend to stick to the people we know rather then meet new faces? But then; I love meeting new people, so that just doesn’t seem right. But still it sort of happened in a small way the cooking week as well. In the beginning it was a little akward, but very quickly we ended up having a great time with a fun group of people.

Maybe it is also the activity that bonds; cooking together is almost guaranteed a quick way to get to know people. Same as travelling really. I’ve been in situations where a group of strangers felt like people we had known for a long time, after something as little as one day. Ofcourse this all only works if you want it to work. There will always be those people that should not be travelling in a group. For the simple reason that they are anti social and don’t like to spend time with other people (it always baffles me why those people would chose to go on a grouptrip anyway? What are they thinking??)

Free style Gazpacho

While our cooking group last week was made up of quite a variety of people, I do think we all got along quite well and it was sort of sad to have to say goodby after such a relatively short time. But hey we can always go back and cook some more next year!! All in all a fantastic week. So if you want to go and cook in France or be creative in France check out the website Kookstudio Amsterdam.

And I just had to finish with one last photo of Frits… (I wrote his name wrong the first time around… it’s not Fritz.. but Frits…!)

Markets and cooking

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:20:00 +0000

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

Cooking in France

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:53:17 +0000

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??

Cooking course lesson 2; chicken and fowl

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:22:21 +0000

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??

Cooking course is back!!

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:54:58 +0000

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...

Junglefrog Cooking » kookstudio amsterdam

Cooking and the group process

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