foodanddrinks

Here's an example of the use of hagelslag.

The dessert "gele vla" is a one of my favorites and it is served with chocolate sprinkles, lots of them.

I made seroendeng tonight, an Indonesian mix of peanuts, coconut and spices.

It came out nicely; it has the mouth feel of the coconut that I like about seroendeng and was tasty. A next time I'll put a little more spices with the coconut so it has a stronger flavor. I added a tiny bit of sambal to the spices and that worked out great.

I found real gula jawa at the Asian store. I've never used it before, it's palm sugar (see picture, the dark brown stuff).

Today we baked a dessert, French profiteroles. It was a wonderful success.

Interestingly, it turns out that the recipe for profiteroles is very similar to my favorite Dutch gebakje: the moorkop. The difference is the filling; instead of ice cream a moorkop is filled with whipped cream.

We tried both versions -- the French profiteroles with vanilla ice cream, and a small moorkop. The bakery in Middenmeer serves moorkoppen with a piece of pineapple on top.

It's a neat idea that we can bake our own pastries, even a good old moorkop.

I got nostalgic for a dish that I haven't had for a long time, a slavink.

A slavink is a meat patty wrapped in a thin layer of bacon, based on a Dutch recipe. We used to eat them frequently in Holland. The are sold pre-made in most butcher stores and supermarkets, and I had never made them by hand before but I found a good recipe online.

The author of that (great) recipe presumably lived in the US for a long time, since he writes: "We eat them here with vegetables and potatoes but they are also good cooked on the BBQ and served on buns with ketcup and mustard."

The patty is made of a mixture of ground pork and group beef, with seasonings. I'm pretty sure that the (breakfast) bacon that I used is a bit different than the ontbijtspek you'd use in the Netherlands, but I found a brand that wasn't smoke flavored so the end result was pretty authentic. We had a great meal, with some rice and a green salad, and I made some extra that I'm keeping in the freezer for busy days.

Chicken with tarragon sounds less delicious than 'poulet poêle à l'estragon', but that is of course what that is.

After an easy Sunday I cooked a Julia Childs dish and that turned out delicious. I used the huge Dutch oven that I recently bought. We had Argentine sweets for dessert.

This weekend is graduation weekend, and the parking lots are completely full since many parents are in town for the ceremonies and to help the graduates move out of their apartments. Classes have officially ended, so the 'quiet time' start again, until the end of August. Oprah Winfrey was at Duke today to give the commencement address.

A few weekends ago we had guests for lunch, and I wanted to make a fully vegetarian onion soup.

Obviously, onion soup is mostly vegetarian by itself, but the exception is the bouillon which is typically based on beef. So the night before I made a vegetarian bouillon for the first time. It was a lot of work, but interesting to do, and the result was very good. I used half of the bouillon for the soup and froze the rest of it.

The recipe was something like this: bake carrots, celery, potatoes and onions in the oven for 45 minutes so they become crispy. Then, put those vegetables and a bunch of herbs in a big pan of water, bring to a boil and simmer for a long time. Interesting enough you can even add the skins of the onion (not baked); they'll give the bouillon a nice dark color. At the end, you filter the vegetables and herb out and you're left with the bouillon.

The lunch the next day was a great success, and the soup was well received.

Vegetables, ready to be boiled.

Filtering the bouillon.

I realize that it may sound like I do nothing but cooking these days. Having said that: tonight we cooked nasi goreng with real krupuk and it was great.

Nasi goreng is an Indonesian fried rice dish which is popular in the Netherlands.

In Grand Asia, an Asian grocery store near my work in Raleigh, I found real Indonesian krupuk; crackers made of shrimp. They are deep fried for a minute or so in the pan and expand to three times their dry size.

Last but not least I experimented with a peanut sauce from Hong Kong, and that was a very lucky choice. It was delicious, a great combination of sweet and spicy at the same time.

For the first time in some 5 years I cooked shoarma tonight. The last week or so we’ve really been in a Dutch cooking mood. While shoarma originates in the Middle East, it is very popular in the Netherlands and when we lived there we cooked it quite often (shoarma is spelled shawarma in the US).

Many butcher shops and super markets in Holland sell pre-marinated ‘shoarma meat’: usually pork, sometimes lamb or chicken, with a marinade of spices. The traditional way to serve the meat is in a warm pita bun, with a generous portion of a garlic dressing (knoflooksaus). You can't find this premarinated meat or the prepared dressing in the States, but I found a number of recipes for them and we liked the result. The knoflooksaus was especially good, and very close to what I remember from the Netherlands.

Below is the recipe that I used tonight. A next time I'll change the shoarma mix -- it was good but not quite like in Holland.

For the shoarma meat we used chicken breast, but a more traditional (Dutch) choice would be pork. In any case, slice the meat in thin slices, no longer than 1.5 inch, and marinate them with some oil and a blend of the following spices.

- 4 tsp cumin
- 3 paprika powder
- 2 tsp coriander
- 2 tsp pepper
- 2 tsp salt

Above are the proportions that I used, a little bit more than needed for two chicken breast. I used about 75% of the blend. Fry the chicken with the spices, until the meat is done.

In the mean time, warm up 4 pita buns in the oven.

For the knoflooksaus, mix the following ingredients (portion for at least 2 people, it was too much for us):

- 4 tbs mayonnaise
- 4 tbs yogurt
- 1 small clove of garlic, smashed
- 2 tsp dried parsley
- Salt & pepper

Yesterday I cooked babi pangang and oh boy, that was delicious. I don't think I've ever made babi pangang before, but inspired by all the Dutch things last weekend I prepare pork ribs in a marinade on Sunday night. It stayed in the fridge for 24 hours and I cooked it yesterday. It was an excellent dish and got great reviews from my audience.

I also made a small pan with sauce, but that didn't turn out very nice. The recipe called for tomato ketchup, which should have been a warning sign, and the result just wasn't delicious. Next time I'll use another recipe.

The meat in the babi pangang is pork, but there are a couple of different cuts you can use. Yesterday I tried pork ribs, another time I'll probably go for boneless meat. In Holland a great choice would be speklapjes (pork belly strips). Marinade the meat and let it stand for at least an hour, preferably over night (see ingredients below).

Cook the pork on a medium high fire, with the marinade in a pan, for about 30 to 40 minutes until the meat is done and tender. Then, put the pork with some of the marinade, in a pan in the oven (400 degrees) for about 10 minutes so it gets crispy. Serve with white rice (and a babi pangang sauce, if you can find a good recipe).

Ingredients for the marinade:

- 6 tbsp ketjap manis (sweet Indonesian soya sauce)
- 2 tbsp oil
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tsp fresh, finely cut ginger
- 2 mashed cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp koriander
- some salt

For best results, use fresh ginger and fresh garlic. Don't be tempted to use that 4 week old garlic you have in your pantry! Garlic is cheap but it's very important for the flavor.

Tonight we made shiitake mushrooms with angel hair pasta.

The mushrooms are sauteed in onion, garlic and olive oil, and then made into a nice sauce with wine, chicken stock and some cream.

It's served with a very thin pasta, and topped with Parmesan cheese and some parsley.