English > Archive by category 'Recipes'

Fall Food: Hutspot / Hotchpotch

By
Inge
 – August 29, 2010Posted in: The Netherlands

HutspotFrom July to August 28, 1672 Groningen was under siege: the prince-bishop of Münster, Bernhard von Galen had surrounded the city to reclaim what he considered to be rightfully his. Until this day, the city of Groningen celebrates the Relief of Groningen at August 28.

Since today was also a rainy day, more like Fall then like Summer, I decided to make a traditional Dutch meal that’s normally associated with the Relief of Leyden (1573/1574). After the Spanish soldiers left, the hungry burghers found fires with hotchpotch cooking over it abandoned by the Spaniards. At least, that’s how the story goes. They probably used parsnip (sweet potato) instead of our modern potatoes but apart from that the recipe has been unchanged. Normally people who celebrate the Relief of Leyden on October 3 will eat herring on white bread and hotchpotch. Here is how you make the hotchpotch:

Ingredients:

  • 300 grams / about 1.5 cup carrots (peeled and cut into 1/4″ slices)
  • 300 grams / about 1.5 cups onions (peeled and cut into rings)
  • about 2.2 lbs potatoes
  • a bit shortening / lard
  • milk
  • coffee milk
  • chuck roast / beef shoulder chops (the cheaper option would be meatballs)
  • salt, pepper, sugar to taste
  • gravy

Directions:

Peel the potatoes and put them in a large pot. Make sure they’re about 3/4 immersed with water. Add a bit salt to make the water boil faster. Prepare the meat by seasoning it with salt and pepper. You can roast it or bake it. If you make Dutch meat balls, this is how it is done:  1 pound ground beef, 1 egg, some salt and pepper are mixed in a bowl. Then breadcrumbs are added until there’s one big ball. Divide it into smaller balls which are fried in a sauce pan with butter.

Peel the onions and the carrots and cut them into coarse pieces. Add this to the potatoes. Cook for about half an hour until it’s done. Drain the pot with the water.

Add a lump of shortening and mash everything. Add a bit milk and mix everything together until a lumpy mixture. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Serve with gravy, meatballs or chuck roast / shoulder chops.

Eet smakelijk.

Variation: For the “original” version use parsnip instead of potato.

Popularity: 6%

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Sunday Treat: A Discworld Cake!

By
Inge
 – August 22, 2010Posted in: Picturesque, Recipes

Since the day I’ve started reading the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, I’m a huge fan. Especially the older books are cleverly written and the whole concept of a discworld with dice playing gods is brilliant! I also love baking and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this webpage which describes how to make a Discworld Cake. The page the cake is displayed on is just a plain html coded page with no way of Search Engine Optimatisation. Therefore I post it here and link back to the site, because this piece of art has to gain more visibility:

disc-cake-01 disc-cake-02
disc-cake-03 disc-cake-04
disc-cake-05 disc-cake-06
disc-cake-07 disc-cake-08
disc-cake-09 disc-cake-10

This cake was made for her daughter’s wedding. What a devoted and sweet Mum, to make this beautiful cake for the wedding! To find out how she did it and what everything is made of, go over to this site.

Popularity: 17%

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Fish On Friday

By
Inge
 – August 20, 2010Posted in: Breakfast and Lunch

209727 Cinnamon-Curry Tuna Salad

Ingredients

  • 2 (6 ounce) cans water packed tuna, drained and flaked
  • 2 teaspoons mayonnaise
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon sweet pickle relish
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • salt to taste

Directions

In a bowl, mix the tuna, mayonnaise, mustard, relish, lemon juice, cinnamon, curry powder, pepper, and salt. Cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Source: allrecipes.com

Popularity: 3%

Real Dutch Pancake Recipe

By
Inge
 – February 23, 2010Posted in: The Netherlands

Shrove Tuesday I saw on Twitter that today marks the “International Pancake Day”. At least according to IHOP. I don’t need to go to IHOP to get the best pancakes in the world, since I rely on my trusty Dutch recipe:

Ingredients:

  • one cup of buckwheat flour
  • one cup of self rising flour
  • 3 or 4 medium sized eggs
  • a dash of salt
  • about 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
  • milk
  • shortening (for baking)

Directions:

Sift the dry ingredients in a deep bowl. Add milk until you get a nice smooth batter which shouldn’t be too thick. It’s best to add most of the milk, and add a bit later to get the right viscosity.

Add the eggs one by one. And then a bit more of the milk to finish it. The batter should have about the same viscosity as syrup, not too liquid, but most certainly not too thick. Dutch pancakes are thin, like crepes.

Take a pan and bake the pancakes on both sides until golden brown. The Dutch have a variety of toppings. You can add molasses, sugar, jelly, cheese, champignon ragout, anything you like.

Since it’s Lent right now, I didn’t make bacon pancakes. But if you want to try that, you need to put a thin slice of bacon in the pan before pouring a soup spoon full of batter in the pan before baking golden brown on both sides. Bacon pancakes taste best with molasses.

Popularity: 21%

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Chili Con Carne (Without Carne)

By
Inge
 – April 16, 2009Posted in: Mexico

Bison ChiliIngredients (4 servings):

  • 1 small can black beans
  • 1 small can kidney beans
  • 1 small can chilli beans
  • 1 big can of brown beans
  • 1 small jar crunchy corn
  • 1 can peeled tomatoes
  • 2 onions
  • 2 green bell peppers
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 red chilli pepper
  • 1 teaspoon chilli powder

Directions:

It’s all very simple: cut the bell peppers, garlic, pepper and onion in small pieces. Take a fairly big pot and fry it on a moderate fire. Add chilli powder and the peeled tomatoes and mix everything well together. I mash the tomatoes in smaller pieces with the spoon I use to stir everything. If everything starts simmering again, you can turn down the flame until a small fire and put the lid on the pot. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. After that you can rinse the beans and add them to the mixture. Heat it for ten minutes, add the corn and you’re done.

If you are a carnivore, you can leave out about a pound of beans and substitute that with fried loose minced beef (or pork). You would start cooking the beef and then do everything else. I advise to season the meat with meat seasoning to up the flavour a bit.

Popularity: 3%

Chili Con Carne (zonder Carne)

By
Inge
 – April 16, 2009Posted in: Mexico

Bison ChiliIngrediënten (voor 4 personen):

  • 1 blik zwarte bonen
  • 1 blik kidney bonen
  • 1 blik chili bonen
  • 1 potje knapperige mais (Hak)
  • 1 blik gepelde tomaten
  • 2 uien
  • 2 groene paprika’s
  • 1 teentje knoflook
  • 1 Spaanse peper
  • 1 tl. chilipoeder

Bereiding:

Het is heel simpel: snijd de paprika’s, knoflook, peper en uien in kleine stukjes. Neem een vrij grote pan en bak dit alles door op een matig vuurtje in olie. Eén minuutje is lang zat. Doe er de chilipoeder en de gepelde tomaten bij en meng het goed door. Ik prak de tomaten in kleinere stukjes met de houten lepel waarmee ik alles door roer. Als het allemaal weer een beetje pruttelt zet je het vuur op klein en doe je een deksel op de pan. Laat dit ongeveer 15 minuten stoven. Daarna kun je alle bonen afgieten en toevoegen, laat het doorwarmen en nog tien minuten doorkoken. Voeg als laatste de mais toe en warm het goed door en klaar is het al!

Als je liever Chili Con Carne mét hebt (met gehakt) dan kun je een pond rundergehakt helemaal aan het begin rul bakken en ongeveer een pond aan bonen (2 kleine blikken of 1 grote) weglaten. Ik kan wel aanraden om het gehakt dan wel een beetje te kruiden met gehaktkruiden.

Popularity: 3%

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Spicy Shrimp Spread on Nut Bread

By
Inge
 – April 8, 2009Posted in: Breakfast and Lunch

prawn-bread Ages ago I met handimobility in the SQPN chatroom and while we chatted, the topic changed to food. He linked to his blog with a great recipe. I browsed it and bookmarket it. Then I forgot about it. At the moment I’m doing a kind of spring cleaning. I’m not only cleaning out my house and my cupboards, but also cleaning up my PC’s hard drive and my web browser’s bookmark section. This way I stumbled over this recipe. His weblog is in French, not a problem for me, but I know a lot of other people don’t understand it. But the new recipe software on my laptop only speaks English. That’s why I’m translating it to English. I will post a review of the recipe software later, but first here’s the recipe for my followers on the internet:

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Popularity: 3%

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Lentils for Lent

By
Inge
 – February 20, 2009Posted in: Soup

lentilsLent is coming and since I’m “officially” Catholic now, it means there will be two Fasting Days (this year on Ash Wednesday on Feb. 25 and on Good Friday on Apr. 10) and the period in between is a time of moderation. Catholics eat less than they normally would and live a more simple life in order to prepare for Easter.

Although I’m a new Catholic, it’s not a new thing for me to do some kind of fasting during Lent. The Protestant churches I’m familiar with also do some kind of fasting, but that’s more something people individually choose for, it’s not a Protestant tradition, but a tradition a lot of Protestant people came up with in the past few years. A lot of Protestants make a ‘mistake’ though: they will also fast on Sundays, but that’s not what Catholics do. A Sunday is by its very nature a Feast Day, a day of rejoicing, although we are dialing back the rejoicing a bit during Lent: altar triptych is folded up, covering the painings at the inside, there are no flowers.
The Presbyterian Church I’m coming from has no liturgical year and people have very vague concepts on liturgy. More and more people in the Presbyterian churches think it’s a nice gesture to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Good Friday, where in the Catholic Church this is the only day there is no Eucharist, hence no communion. The altar gets dismantled and Christ is completely absent during that day: the sanctuary lights won’t be burning. Catholics can receive Communion every day of the year, whenever they want, but NOT on Good Friday :gosh:

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Popularity: 5%

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My Apple Cream Pie

By
Inge
 – February 16, 2009Posted in: Pastry

Apple tart

Ingredients
1 pie crust  ø24 cm / 9.45″) OR ± 340 gr. / 12 oz. croissant dough (Danerolles) + pea or bean weights for the pie shell + parchment or wax paper.
500 gr. / 1.1 lbs apples (Belle de Boskoop) or any sour/tart apple)
sugar (to taste)
cinnamon (to taste)
lemon or lime juice
shortening
1 container (± 240 gr. / 1/2 pound) cream cheese (e.g. mascarpone)
1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
± 335 ml. / ±11 oz. milk
a bit of grated lemon rind
± 2 tbsp. apricot jelly

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Popularity: 5%

Pita Breads (Bread Maker)

By
Inge
 – July 30, 2008Posted in: Bread

Naan

It’s very simpe to make your own pita breads. They will taste so much better than those prefabricated ones you buy in the supermarket. And if you’re really in a hurry: you can put both the dough as the breads in the freezer!

Ingredients:

  • 400 grams / 14 oz. flour
  • ¼ litre / 8 ½ oz. lukewarm water (about 40 °C / 104 °F)
  • 4 grams / 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

  1. Put all ingredients in the order listed in the baking tin and select the ‘dough’ programme. When the program has ended, leave the dough in the tin for another half hour to allow it to rise properly. After that, remove the dough from the tin and divide it into 12 equal little balls. Roll these out on a flour-covered working space until you have small pancake like patties with a diameter of about 12 cm or 5 inches.
    Find the middle of each pattie and make a cut with a knife from the centre to the side. You’ll be able to roll up the pattie in the shape of a cone. Put the cone upright on your workspace, with the base sitting on your counter. Press it to a flat pattie again with your flat hand. Roll it out again in the shape of a flat little breat AT ONLY ONE SIDE! This way you create an air pocket in the middle of a bread.
  2. Grease a baking plate and put the breads on it. Allow the breads to rise for another 10-15 minute, covered with a towel.
  3. Bake the breads in a preheated oven of 220 °C / 425°F / gas oven mark 7 (if you have a convection oven, subtract 10% from the temperature). You can put a small bowl filled with water in the oven together with the bread during baking to avoid scorching.

Like I said, pita breads can be frozen. Make sure to use good quality freezer bags, to avoid freezer burn.

Popularity: 4%

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