Traditional Cuisine: Kale Mash

Ask any Dutch person what kind of dish they'd choose to be the national dish - chances are, they'll mention Boerenkool (Farmer's Cabbage). It consists of nothing more than kale and potatoes, boiled in a pan.
Common sides include rookworst (smoked sausage), fried bacon rinds, a small pond of gravy and also pickles.

It's typical winter fare. It's also typically Dutch: simple, no hassles, hardly any discerning flavours.

That about sums it up. Tonight, we ate this. I thought I'd post something no matter what, since the lack of posts lately. Now if I only had some writer's talent to put all this together to form a coherent piece of copy, or at least could think of a nice finishing line...

Alas, I'm not such a talented writer.

Barbecue

I know what you're thinking. "What, spareribs? Again?!". As usual, there was some sort of celebratory event, that justifies eating this.

M, one of N's friends, came over all the way from Brabant. We wondered what we would have for dinner, and a BBQ seemed like a nice idea, even though we'll be having another BBQ tomorrow at J&L's.

The spareribs were bought pre-marinated and pre-grilled, so they only had to be heated basically. Tasted quite nice.

These were some curry-marinated chicken breast strip skewers. Quite okay, but a little dry. Went well with BBQ-sauce.

These were some cubes of old cheese, wrapped in baconstrips. Simple and nice!

To go with the meats, I had prepared some couscous salad, welded in vegetable stock, mixed with orange and grapefruit parts. Also, I had made grilled pepper strips, marinated in garlic. Then, I made cucumber pickle and tzatziki, using soy yoghurt (not gross at all) and tzatziki mix my parents brought with them from their holiday in Greece. Finally, I made some satay sauce, using soy milk, peanut butter, chili sauce and soy sauce. Traditionally, in Holland, we have sliced baguette with it and a variety of other sauces. I picked Heinz's barbecue-sauce and herbed butter for the baguette.

Now, this gun-shaped device is so cool! It's not 007's latest gadget, or the newest G.I. Joe toy gun. Well, the writing gives it away of course. It's a BBQ fan! You squeeze the red trigger-like thing and the fan starts blowing through its metal nozzle. Pointing it at the charcoal, you direct a jet of oxygen straight into the hot spot. It works great. Saves you waving a piece of paper to supply an undirected amount of oxygen in the charcoal's direction.

There were a lot of leftovers, mainly sides. We'll take them with us to the BBQ @ J&L's.

Dinner at E's

I wouldn't want this to become a new blogging-habit, but this post will be another one without a picture. Again, because I didn't take one.

I had dinner at E's. He prepared a nice spinach quiche for L and me. It was great, (because) it had a lot of garlic in it too. He feared my food-criticism wouldn't make his quiche stand my tastebud-test, and that I would comment about it on this blog. I assured him that I don't blog about bad food usually (well, except for that quinoa).

Not blogging about it would make it seem like I didn't like the quiche however. So, I wrote a post about it. That's also the reason there aren't any pictures. You see? It all makes sense once I start explaining things.

So, thank you, E, for the nice quiche!