foodanddrinks

Last year we made oliebollen for the first time. Jaap, my father, sent me his recipe and I have adjusted it for American measurements and ingredient names.

We used it for the New Year’s Eve party this weekend and made around 100 oliebollen. Ilana helped make the dough.

For 30 oliebollen:

1. Soak 1.5 lbs of raisins in water for at least 30 minutes.

2. Mix the following ingredients:

- 4 cups of flour
- 1.5 teaspoon salt
- 1.7 tablespoons sugar
- 1.6 cups of milk
- 1 egg

3. Proof 4 teaspoons of Active Dry yeast in 0.5 cup of water (100 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit) with two teaspoons sugar.

4. Once the yeast has activated, add it to the dough, mix it, and add the drained raisins.

5. Let rise for 1 hour.

6. Fry in oil (I used canola oil), at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Fry in batches of 6 or 7. Start timer after the 6th is in the deep fryer, then wait 6 to 6.5 minutes.

I had a quiet weekend. I’ve had a cold for a week and I used this weekend to recover. Today I felt a lot better than yesterday.

Being at home, I had ample time for a recipe from ‘the Bread Bible’, an appropriately named cookbook of which I’ve now tried three recipes, all great. I made the hearth bread, with whole-wheat flour.

I started the sponge (the starter) last night, and tonight we had the end result for dinner. The best bread I’ve ever baked.

Sasha’s parents will arrive next weekend, so it’s time to brush off my Bulgarian language. A while ago I converted my vocabulary list from my home-made software (in Microsoft Access) to Anki SRS, a tool that I use for my French as well, and this weekend I started going through all 2,000 words in Anki.

After a very “Dutch 2010” it seemed natural to make oliebollen.

I’d never made them before and I did a try-run tonight. It worked very well. In a few of them the raisins moved to the outside of the oliebol.

They were delicious! We finished all 5 of them… tomorrow will be the real ‘production’.

Tonight I cooked a dish with Belgian andive. I saw this vegetable at Whole Foods when I was there for lunch, and it reminded me of a delicious dish, witlof met ham, that we’d eat in Holland sometimes.

The ham was a little too sweet for my liking but the dish turned out great.

I like to joke: “how can a country that put a man on the moon be so incapable of producing good bread?” An exaggeration, of course; there is plenty of good bread available if you know where to look, but in general Dutch bread is much better than American bread.

My yardstick is the bakery in Middenmeer: a small village bakery which creates amazing breads daily, like bakeries throughout the Netherlands.

This weekend I found a bread that is as good as the bread in Middenmeer: an honest whole-grain bread with seeds. Sure enough, it is produced in a German bakery (Guglehupf) and is called “Copenhagen multigrain”.

I finished my French book today and in the afternoon visited Belen and Esteban. We went for a long walk in the late afternoon, just like yesterday.

I know, I know, not healthy… but so delicious!

Tonight I made kroket for the very first time. It’s a deep fried meat snack, and very popular in the Netherlands.

I compared three different recipes to create my own, and it worked well. The crust was great, the filling tasty. Not 100% like in the Netherlands yet, but very close.

I’m making Dutch pea soup (erwtensoep) and red cabbage with apples tonight. Visiting the Dutch stores this weekend inspired me.

It was the first time ever that I’ve cooked with celeriac, knolselderij in Dutch. It’s an ingredient for the pea soup, according to the recipe I’m using. It smells good.

It’s that time of year — days are shorter, it’s getting cold and thus time for some good old Dutch cookies.

We made speculaas this weekend for the first time and it worked out very nicely. I used the speculaas spices Ettie and Gerben gave us.

The reality with baking cookies is that it’s great to have 1 or 2 cookies, but that two pounds of dough make more cookies than anyone could ever eat. So I’ll bring them to my work tomorrow, as sort of a birthday cake.

(Here’s a recipe in English).

We had a great weekend together. We went out together on Friday, saw friends on Saturday evening and had no major activities.

Tonight after the gym we cooked a Dutch soup, groentesoep met balletjes. The “Dutch” in the recipe is mainly the use of small meat balls (pork/beef mixture) that are boiled with the bouillon before you add the vegetables.

Nothing beats the taste and smell and warmth of a home made soup.

I found a large supply of ketjap manis last week.

Ketjap is an Indonesian sweet soy sauce and important ingredient in the Indonesian kitchen. Sometimes they carry it in A Southern Season but not consistently. In Grand Asia Market I found ketjap from an Indonesian brand, ABC, and when I knew what to look for I saw it in the local Asian store in Durham also.

I just finished the second of the two bottles we brought from St. Maarten so we’ll try out the flavor of this new ketjap soon.