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.

Dinners at Restaurants Weekend

So. Here another blog post. Like I've said before, ordinary life has kicked in. In my case, that means being on the job from 08:00 - 19:00. Or until 21:00. Anyway, too short a time left for my spare time to also actively foodblog.

So, when I would have had more time, I could have told you about our visit with L&L to local japanese restaurant Fujiyama, to celebrate I got my first salary (which has already been entirely spent *sob*). Even though I did take my photo camera there, I felt somewhat embarrased to start taking pictures, seated in plain sight around the teppanyaki hot plates. I didn't take any. So, I can just say that it was a very nice dinner, with a lot of food and a lot of juggling from the show-off teppanyaki chef.

The next day, we went to Bistro Taste! in Makkinga, in the province of Friesland (a province situated next to the province of Groningen), a gift from S&O for my graduation. I could have told you about that, if it weren't for the lack of lighting in the restaurant which made for very blurry pictures (I didn't want to draw unwanted attention by using a flash).

Now, something I did manage to take pictures of the canapes I made for N's birthday, which she celebrated today (even though it's still four days until her birthday) at . So, here it is:


From back to front:

1. Meatballs, with a mayo/mustard dressing and pickled gherkins
   
2. Deviled eggs
3. Canapes with sweet pepper cream cheese
4. Rolled anchovies with pickled gherkins and pickled capers

After the party, we went to eat again at 't Koetshuys across the street, but again, due to lack of decent lighting and my unwillingness to use a flash, I got very blurry pictures not worthy of publishing.

So, I guess there's nothing else left for me than to just eat at daylight at restaurants, in order to take some decent pictures.

Hamburgers

Fear not, beloved readers. Kurger Bing is still alive.

However, since the Rest of my Life has just kicked in two weeks ago, and I was more busy with starting up at my new job, food-blogging got a little subdued.

No matter, today I've returned with an appropiate post:

Hamburgers!

I chose to create them McDonald's' style: A very thinly patted patty (hm, would that be why it's called 'patty'?), some mustard and ketchup, a few slices of pickles and some raw onion.

However, since I saw the Keuringsdienst van Waarde TV-show episode on hamburgers, I had always wanted to make them once the way they were made in the show:

Putting sliced onions on top while frying the patty, so the onions get partly steamed by the juices released from the patty - and when flipped over, they get an additional frying.

On the plus side, when the onions create a little space between the patty and the pan, they prevent the patty from being cooked too much, so it's easier to get a rare patty.

The buns were roasted.

Well, it was nice. And easy to make.