Valentine's Breakfast

As a little surprise for Valentine's Day, I made breakfast served in bed.

The main was a little roll, cut in halves, put sliced pork roast meat on top with a poached egg and a slice of (canned) pineapple. On top of that satay sauce. Yummy! I got the idea for it from a lunchroom in the village of Vaassen, where I had a bigger version of this for lunch.

Served on the side were a grapefruit half, freshly squeezed orange juice and a cappuccino.

Of course, it being a Valentine's breakfast, I gave N some flowers. Pinkish tulips.

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.

Happy New Year

As a first blog post in 2010, there's nothing that special on the menu: a plate of "Mixed fish" at storehouse V&D today. It consisted of a piece of salmon, a piece of tuna, a shrimp, some "sauce of the day" (herbs? garlic?), some large-leaf spinach or chard and a nice piece of well-flavoured potato-gratin, which seemed to be made of grated potato. The fish was a little too dry, but all in all the meal was doable for the ten bucks it cost.

Since my Blackberry takes meager pictures not worthy of publishing, I tried taking a picture with N's iPhone; alas, lighting conditions were that low, that it didn't turn out too well either. Anyhow, nothing that a little Photoshopping can't fix.

Snow

26,5 cm of snow. That equals 10.4 inches of snow. It's been snowing ever since last thursday, and today it was apparently causing so much troubles, our national weather forecasting institute issued a Weather Alarm. Oooh, spooky!

Inspired by the whiteness of the snow, today we ate some white food: A poached egg and fried cod on a bed of crushed creamed cauliflower. Granted, the potato parts on the side were more yellow than white. Anyhow, it tasted well.

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.

Pumpkin soup (2)

Today I (N.) made pumpkin soup. And as Kurgerbing mentioned before, I am the queen of pumpkin soup (wow, that sounds horrible). I used 2 little pumpkins (I made a jack-o'-lantern out of one of them, because it will be the 11th of november this week. In Holland we celebrate Sint Martin's day, on which children will come by the houses to ask for candy. On this day lots of the houses are illuminated and ours will be by the jack-o'-lantern).

Besides the 2 pumpkins I used 2 pieces of garlic, 5 potatoes, a vegetable bouillon cube and 1 litre of water. And - a friend of mine told me that this is the piece of resistance (translated by wikipedia :-)) - above that all I added two shallots. This friend (B.) told me she once read that masterchefs use them all the time. I think they smell bad, but taste quite good.

Of course the soup tasted great and looked wonderfully yellow.