Dear followers,

I am currently working on a newer, bigger, better, more awesome website which will soon be online. This is why I haven't posted anything here in a while: all new posts are going directly to the new website. As soon as this is up, I'll let you know through an update here!

Thanks for your patience,

Isabella

How to make a 'snertkroket', a concept combining the two Dutch classics, pea soup and croquettes. It was a bold experiment we embarked on...



Cut your vegetables while peas and pork simmer, just the basic, classic Dutch recipe will do just fine. After 45 minutes, add vegetables and boil for another half hour.



Have a nice bowl of snert with smoked sausage, rustic bread and maybe some bacon.



Take your leftover soup and boil it down until it's very thick. Let that cool off, maybe keep it in the fridge overnight. It will firm up even more. Add some breadcrumbs until the mash has a workable consistency.



Form your croquettes...



...roll them in breadcrumbs (it helps if you use your blender or food processer to make the crumbs really fine, Japanese panko bread crumbs work very well that way), and freeze them for about ten minutes...



...then dip them in egg and, once again, in bread crumbs...



...freeze them for another bit, just to make sure they won't fall apart during cooking.



Deep fry until golden brown. Enjoy!



Beet carrot ginger juice, freshly squeezed...



...makes for a very sexy Julia.



Oat meal variations: cinnamon oat meal with fresh orange segments.



Mixed Moroccan fish grill.



Green salad with sweet potatoes, grilled mushrooms and lots of fresh herbs.



Merry no more Christmas.



Excellent Italian dinner at Cinema Paradiso in Amsterdam









Julia made a pretty perfect potato gratin.



2010's first day of work had to be celebrated with bahn mi: Vietnamese sandwiches. French baguette with mayo, homemade burgers (flavored with lime rind and fish sauce), salad greens, vegetables pickled in rice vinegar, grilled shiitake, nuoc cham sauce and lots of mint and cilantro, too good...



Cinnamon oatmeal with apple and fruit syrup.

Happy 2010!



A little fender bender to ring in the new decade, I suck at backing out of small spaces



Excellent new year's eve thanks to Adolf Butler...



...and Vanderbuyst's hardrock











A light post christmas Asian menu: homemade red miso soup with silken tofu...



...black bean sauce deviled quail eggs with green onion and toasted sesame...



...and seaweed salad with lemon miso dressing topped with this tuna and salmon, and ginger garlic tiger prawns. The fish was marinated in a soy sesame dressing, quickly pan seared, rubbed in crushed, toasted sesame and sliced.





Christmas friends



I went on another hunt this week. This time it was boar hunting in Germany, a very different type of hunt. It was just me and the hunter, sitting up in a tree stand for five hours straight, staring into pitch black forest lit by nothing but the full moon that peeked through the clouds every now and then. We didn't see a thing move that night, it was utterly exhausting. Afterwards, I got to sleep on this couch for just a few hours, as we went for another round before sunrise.





How to catch a hare



For Christmas dinner I took the hare I got on this season's first hunt, hacked it into pieces, and marinated it in buttermilk, red wine and pepper for two days.



After marinating, I floured the pieces. This is all meat from a single hare.



Brown the pieces of hare



Sweat some onions and add red wine



Add the browned hare, stock and some rosemary, bay leaf and peppercorns.



This was the meat after it had simmered all day



I reduced the juices, strained them, added them to a roux to form a nice, thick sauce. After picking all the meat from the bones, I added them to the sauce, and our christmas hare stew was done! It was excellent...











Awfully depressing christmas non-meat at the supermarket.



Salad with shrimp cooked in an orange juice vanilla sherry vinegar reduction, which we also added to the dressing.