Tag: food

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)17 Comments

Iberico Secreto Sous-Vide with Celeriac Fondant Sous-Vide

StefanGourmet

The dinner we cooked when Teun came over consisted of tuna with runner beans as antipasto, gnocchi alla sorrentina as primo, iberico pork sous-vide as secondo, and finally chocolate stuffed ancho chile with amarena cherries as dolce. The pigs that are grown for the famous jamón ibérico from Spain do not just yield the hams, but also other fine cuts of meat. The finest is called the secreto (literally secret) and is a very nicely marbled piece of pork with lots of flavor. Teun and Albert introduced me to this cut, and I absolutely love it. Cooking it sous-vide is of course a great way to enjoy it to its fullest. I thought it would be nice to combine it with celeriac fondant, and the dish did turn out great. Continue reading “Iberico Secreto Sous-Vide with Celeriac Fondant Sous-Vide”

1. Antipasti (appetizers)9 Comments

Tuna Tartare with Runner Bean ‘Seaweed’

StefanGourmet

Teun came over to cook together for the first time again after my trip to Australia, and we created this appetizer together.  This use of runner beans was inspired by snow peas that looked like seaweed at Vermeer. The combination of the raw tuna with the crispy runner beans and the spicy dressing works really well. Continue reading “Tuna Tartare with Runner Bean ‘Seaweed’”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)17 Comments

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

StefanGourmet

Home made potato gnocchi made from scratch are the best! They are so much better than chewy store-bought ones. I’ve only posted about potato gnocchi once before: gnocchi with gorgonzola was the first recipe I ever posted on this blog. The city of Sorrento is near the island of Capri, the island that gave its name to the famous Insalata Caprese with tomato, mozzarella, and basil. You can think fo Gnocchi alla Sorrentina as the gnocchi version of this salad, because the gnocchi are dressed with fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil, and parmigiano reggiano. This combination is always a winner, and it is even more so with feathery light homemade potato gnocchi.
Continue reading “Gnocchi alla Sorrentina”

4. Dolci (dessert)13 Comments

Ancho Chile with Chocolate Mousse and Amarena Cherries

StefanGourmet

Guess whose idea it was to use chile peppers for dessert? Who else but Richard McGary! I found his recipe for Cinnamon Candied Chile Relleno with Red Wine Chocolate Sauce very intriguing, and knew I had to try something similar. I thought it was very appropriate to use the ancho chiles that Richard had sent me to prepare this very unusual but very tasty dessert. The base of the dessert is a chile pepper stuffed with chocolate mousse. Richard soaks the chiles in cinnamon syrup and serves them with pecans and red wine chocolate sauce. I made my own version with an Italian twist by pairing the chocolate stuffed chile with tart amarena cherries and almonds. It was really good, and definitely something I’ll make again. Thanks Richard! Continue reading “Ancho Chile with Chocolate Mousse and Amarena Cherries”

4. Dolci (dessert)17 Comments

Chocolate Mousse (Mousse au Chocolat)

StefanGourmet

Mousse au Chocolat is one of the standard desserts of France, along with the perhaps even more common Crème caramel. My first attempt to find a simple recipe failed miserably, as the mousse turned out way too dense. I found the solution in a recipe by Delia Smith, which is to use water. This makes for a nice light mousse. To make things a little more interesting I decided to substitute half of the water with amaretto liqueur, but that is not at all necessary for a great result. If you have a stand mixer or another way of whipping egg whites, this is relatively easy to prepare and oh so good if you like chocolate. And who doesn’t?! Here’s my version.
Continue reading “Chocolate Mousse (Mousse au Chocolat)”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)9 Comments

Pasta with Mussels, Roquefort and Broccoli

StefanGourmet

The second time I cooked in someone else’s kitchen because I couldn’t use mine, I went to my parents. (In the meantime the floor has been finished and I can use my kitchen again, and I have been so busy cooking to celebrate that I didn’t have time left to post — the posts from that cooking frenzy will follow soon.) As I was surprised how good mussels with roquefort turned out to be, I thought it’d be nice to share this with my parents as I know they love seafood. To turn it into a whole dish of Italian-French fusion, I made a combination of pasta with mussels and broccoli with the roquefort sauce. It was no surprise that it turned out nicely. If you like mussels and blue cheese, you have got to try the combination. It really works!

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Continue reading “Pasta with Mussels, Roquefort and Broccoli”

4. Dolci (dessert)25 Comments

Apple Tatin Cheat

StefanGourmet

We’re back home from our trip to Australia. After cooking for 4 weeks in a very small primitive kitchen inside a camper van I was really looking forward to cooking in my own kitchen again. During our absence, the wooden floor in our living room and ground floor has been sanded and varnished to make it look as good as new again. It was convenient to have this done during our absence, as all the furniture needed to be removed and the varnish needs to harden for a few days before you can walk on it again.

Unfortunately, when we came home we saw that they had not done a good job and so now an additional layer of varnish will be applied. This means that I won’t be able to use my kitchen for another week 😦 But luckily I have friends who don’t mind having me come over to use their kitchen 🙂

Since a lot of my supplies and equipment are stored in the garage and cannot be reached easily and it’s always difficult to cook in a strange kitchen, for dessert I resorted to this ‘cheat’ to make something that is like tarte tatin, but a lot simpler to make.

Continue reading “Apple Tatin Cheat”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto), Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)8 Comments

Pork Chop in Tomato Sauce (Primo + Secondo)

StefanGourmet

map
We are back home from our travels through Australia. Since this is a food blog rather than a travel blog, let me suffice by showing you a map of the route we have traveled (6000 km or almost 4000 miles altogether) in a camper van from coast to coast.

In the other posts I wrote about cooking in the Outback, I told you about how we would on most days kept the cooking to a bare minimum and simply put meat like beef, lamb or kangaroo on our small BBQ. But on one day during a long drive from the West MacDonnells to Kings Canyon I had plenty of time to think and decided to make something that would require more actual ‘cooking’ with the ingredients I had in the camper and of course taking into account the very limited equipment at my disposal. We did not have time to do any shopping, so I used only the ingredients I had bought without a clear idea of how I would use them.

I thought it would be nice not to use the BBQ for a change, and so I decided to simmer pork chops in tomato sauce and then serve the tomato sauce over pasta with additional mushrooms as a primo piatto, followed by the pork chops with the remaining tomato sauce as a secondo (click here if you’d like to know more about the Italian menu structure). I would have liked to use a better marbled shoulder chop for this, but I only had a loin chop so that is what I used. The result was quite nice and I will probably repeat this at home with a shoulder chop or perhaps even sous-vide. Here’s what I did. Continue reading “Pork Chop in Tomato Sauce (Primo + Secondo)”

Eating12 Comments

Dining in Australia: Hentley Farm, Barossa Valley

StefanGourmet

After our camping adventure with simple but tasty food our trip to Australia ended on a gourmet note with a visit to Hentley Farm in the Barossa Valley. Hentley Farm is a winery that showcases its wines in a gourmet restaurant. The restaurant is open for lunch Thursday – Sunday and for dinner Saturday. We had the Discovery menu with paired wines for AUD 210. The menu took us about 4 hours, so it is quite substantial for lunch. There is also a smaller Du Jour menu. All the wines are from Hentley Farm. Continue reading “Dining in Australia: Hentley Farm, Barossa Valley”

1. Antipasti (appetizers)17 Comments

Improved Fennel Polpette

StefanGourmet

A few weeks ago I prepared fennel ‘meatballs’ for the first time, based upon my memory of having them at the great trattoria Tischi Toschi in Messina, Sicily. I was aware that Luca Casablanca, chef and owner of Tischi Toschi, follows my blog, but I had not imagined that he would react to my post. He did, and he left me some constructive feedback. I loved this, as what better way is there to improve upon my cooking then to get feedback from a master? He wrote: “E’ preferibile non passarle nella farina, l’uva passa deve essere quella nera ” Corinto Nero ” nel soffritto mettere cipolla e non aglio, non pomodoro fresco a pezzi bensì salsa di pomodoro, e mi raccomando di metter almeno la metà di parmigiano . Complimenti e grazie del ricordo.”, which means: “It’s better not to put flour on them, the raisins need to be those black ones “Corinto Nero”, use onions instead of garlic for the sauce, not pieces of fresh tomatoes but a tomato sauce, and I recommend to use only half the parmigiano. Well done and thanks for remembering.”

I decided straight away to honor his reaction by making the polpette di finocchietto again, using his suggestions. As you may remember I was not completely happy with the texture of my first attempt, as they were too wet and didn’t keep their shape. I really needed to fix that as well, as without flour they would be even more prone to falling apart. I decided to wring out the fennel greens with a kitchen towel to remove more water from them, and that worked like a charm. Continue reading “Improved Fennel Polpette”

4. Dolci (dessert)16 Comments

Hazelnut Meringue Cake

StefanGourmet

This cake is relatively easy to make and can be presented as a neat layer cake or, as I chose to do in this case, in a more ‘artistic’ way. Kees hates regular meringue, but he loves hazelnut meringue. Traditionally, hazelnut meringue cake is made with a complicated butter cream. The butter cream in this recipe may be slightly less creamy, but it is a lot easier to make and very good all the same. Hazelnut meringe cakes are often coffee-flavored as well, but I decided to use hazelnut liqueur to flavor the butter cream instead. Continue reading “Hazelnut Meringue Cake”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)13 Comments

Chicken Ravioli with Sage

StefanGourmet

I’ve never seen ravioli with a chicken filling before, but I couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be nice so I decided to give it a try. I used a good quality free-range chicken with a lot of flavor, cooked the legs sous-vide for the filling and used the rest to make a chicken demi-glace (reduced stock) for the sauce. You could also just braise the chicken legs instead, so it is not needed to own a sous-vide cooker to be able to give this a try. The chicken ravioli turned out just like the name suggests, with a good chicken flavor. The concentrated flavor of the sauce helped to get this effect. If you like chicken, you’ll love these ravioli. Here’s what I did… Continue reading “Chicken Ravioli with Sage”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)12 Comments

Risotto alla Bartolini

StefanGourmet

When I saw that John had shared the recipe for one of his family’s crown jewels, the Bartolini family risotto, I knew immediately I was going to prepare it. Even though one of its main components is chicken gizzards, an ingredient I’ve never cooked with before. But I trust the culinary wisdom of John and his Zia (aunt), and it was no surprise that this risotto turned out great. First, because John’s recipes are always top notch, and second, because the idea to parcook the chicken gizzards and prepare the stock for the risotto at the same time makes a lot of culinary sense. The combination of mushrooms and chicken gizzards in the risotto works really well. We liked both the flavor as well as the texture.

Continue reading “Risotto alla Bartolini”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)15 Comments

Roo Fillet from the Barbie

StefanGourmet

So far during our travels through Australia we had seen plenty of live kangaroos and especially wallabies, but were confronted with an unexpected lack of kangaroo meat at the butcher shops and supermarkets that we visited. Luckily I found some kangaroo fillet steaks at a butcher shop in Alice Springs, so we could finally eat something very Australian: barbecued (grilled) kangaroo. Continue reading “Roo Fillet from the Barbie”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)13 Comments

Flank Steak Sous-Vide with Tian Provençal

StefanGourmet

When Clayton told me he’d be coming over to Amsterdam for a vacation, I thought it would be nice to cook dinner for him and his friend Paul.

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Clayton is one of the founding fathers of the International Shanghai Chicken Project. I know he’s very interested in sous-vide, so I picked some nice sous-vide dishes. I prepared sous-vide sea bass with crispy skin, sous-vide chicken ravioli, sous-vide wagyu flank steak with tian provençal as a side. To include something Dutch, I ended with an apricot vlaai (tart from Limburg). Continue reading “Flank Steak Sous-Vide with Tian Provençal”

Contorni (side dishes)19 Comments

Tian Provençal

StefanGourmet

When I saw Richard McGary’s vegetable tian, I knew I’d prepare one too. A tian is actually named after the traditional earthenware dish they are made in. There are vegetable tians, meat tians, and fish tians. I wanted to prepare a tian as a side dish, and so I chose a very traditional tian provençal with eggplant, zucchini, and tomato. Don’t let the simplicity fool you: this tian bursts with flavor anyway thanks to the slow roasting and the herbes de provence. I do not own an actual tian from Provence. For presentation purposes I opted to make single serving mini tians using small ovenproof dishes, but that did mean that it was more difficult to neatly arrange the sliced vegetables. Continue reading “Tian Provençal”

Cooking25 Comments

Cooking in the Outback

StefanGourmet

Thanks to the wonders of scheduled posts, new recipes are posted on a regular basis while I am actually travelling through the Australian Outback in a camper van with very limited internet access and an even more limited kitchen. Even though it’s even more sparsely populated around here than in the South-Western USA that we were touring last year, the supermarkets here are well-stocked and so we’ve not been lacking in terms of nice food. Continue reading “Cooking in the Outback”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)8 Comments

Fennel Pasta

StefanGourmet

I had fennel left over after making fennel polpette using only the greens. I decided to use the fennel to make a Sicily-inspired pasta dish with raisins, pine nuts, and saffron. When I made this for the first time, I thought it was a bit bland. Now I added sugar and parmigiano and the result is very tasty. The flavors of the raisins, saffron, and fennel work together very well and are supported by the pine nuts and parmigiano. This is a nice vegetarian pasta dish that I will make again. I am not sure if it resembles any traditional Sicilian pasta dish. Continue reading “Fennel Pasta”

1. Antipasti (appetizers)8 Comments

Grilled Octopus with Octopus Sponge, Bell Pepper Coulis and Romanesco

StefanGourmet

This is another dish that came out of the collaboration with Teun and Albert. I wanted Teun to try octopus sous-vide, and I remember how much I liked the char-grilled octopus at La Madia in Sicily. Although we ended up doing something different, our original idea was to do something along the lines of the octopus dish from La Madia. That dish featured a rock. Due to timing constraints (and also because the rock at La Madia wasn’t very tasty even though it looked great), we decided to go for a soft octopus sponge cake instead.

Recently, Paul of That Other Cooking Blog wrote about a microwave brioche. This is a trick that was originally devised by Ferran Adrià of El Bulli. A batter with a lot of eggs is siphoned into paper cups with nitrous oxide and then cooked for 30 seconds in a microwave oven to get a sponge cake. As octopus leaks a lot of juices when cooked, we thought it would be nice to reduce those juices to a thick octopus syrup and use that to flavor a sponge. We thought it would pair well with a bell pepper coulis, and when we realised our menu needed more vegetables we also included some oven-roasted romanesco (green cauliflower). Continue reading “Grilled Octopus with Octopus Sponge, Bell Pepper Coulis and Romanesco”

1. Antipasti (appetizers)5 Comments

My First Poke

StefanGourmet

We eat most fish on Fridays and Saturdays, since I prefer to eat fish on the day that I bought it. The well-known Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam is just a few blocks from the office, and I should take more advantage of that to go there and get fish during my lunch break so we can have fish on other days of the week as well as we both love fish.

When I was on the Albert Cuyp market I saw some nice tuna and thought it was time I would give ‘poke’ a try. Poke is a Hawaiian dish that I had never heard of before, despite having been to Hawaii for a week two years ago. I had noticed it on Richard McGary’s blog REMCooks.com before, but only when I saw the photo of the Baby Lady smugly enjoying poke I knew I really had to try this 🙂 I was not disappointed, as we both loved it and I will definitely make poke again.

Poke is a Hawaiian dish made with raw tuna (called ahi in Hawaii, either big eye tuna or yellowfin tuna) and a variety of other ingredients. I based my first attempt upon Richard’s post about Pesto Poke, but I added some avocado as well and replaced the cilantro with parsley.  Continue reading “My First Poke”

Contorni (side dishes)9 Comments

Eggplant Caprese Pasta Salad

StefanGourmet

Pasta salads are great summer food and perfect as a side for a cook out. I like to prepare pasta salads with lots of vegetables, as a cook out or BBQ as we call it here usually involves a lot of meat. For some variation from a Greek style pasta salad, I prepared this pasta salad with eggplant, mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar. These flavors go together very well, also without pasta. Continue reading “Eggplant Caprese Pasta Salad”

4. Dolci (dessert), Dutch cuisine22 Comments

Apricot Tart (Limburgse Abrikozenvlaai)

StefanGourmet

The dinner I cooked for Clayton when he visited had to contain something Dutch. After some thinking, I came up with Limburgse abrikozenvlaai, a tart from the province of Limburg that is made with a yeasted dough. I already wrote about kersenvlaai (with cherries) a while ago. Since it’s summer, fresh apricots are available. The apricots are cooked before they are used in the vlaai.

DSC08710 Continue reading “Apricot Tart (Limburgse Abrikozenvlaai)”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)18 Comments

Tagliatelle alle Zucchine

StefanGourmet

This time of the year zucchini or other types of squash are abundant and so I decided to create a recipe for pasta with zucchini. To give the dish a nice flavor and a nice texture, I separated the seeds from the firmer flesh. I diced the firm part and sautéed the diced zucchini briefly over high heat. I chopped the soft part very fine and cooked it to a ‘sauce’ together with an onion and white wine. The resulting dish was very nice with a lovely flavor and texture just like I intended. Here’s what I did… Continue reading “Tagliatelle alle Zucchine”

Secondi di Carne (meat dishes)35 Comments

Parsley-Crusted Steak with Mushroom Ketchup and Garlic Puree

StefanGourmet

One of the best ways to become a better cook is to learn from others. I asked my modernist cooking friends Teun and Albert to join forces with me to create dishes together. This dish is the first result of that collaboration. It was loosely based upon a dish that Albert had cooked before out of the Big Fat Duck cookbook. We wanted to do something with wagyu sous-vide. The idea for the mushroom ketchup came from the Big Fat Duck dish. As parsley and garlic are friends of mushrooms in Italian cuisine, we decided to coat the steak with parsleyed bread crumbs and serve it with a garlic puree.

For me the main success of this dish was the crust. The wagyu flank steak was very tender and flavorful because it had been cooked sous-vide, and had additional flavor because it was finished on a charcoal grill. The tender beef was complemented very nicely by the crunchy parsley crust. The combination with the mushroom ketchup, mushrooms, and the garlic puree also worked very well. Continue reading “Parsley-Crusted Steak with Mushroom Ketchup and Garlic Puree”

2. Primi (pasta, risotto)17 Comments

Seafood Cous Cous

StefanGourmet

The final dish in the series of Sicilian dishes I cooked for my parents is a seafood cous cous. I’m hesitant to refer to it as “Cous Cous Siciliano”, because I used a few shortcuts. You see, traditional cous cous in Sicily is made from scratch from coarse semolina flour and water, and then steamed in a terra cotta pot with holes in the bottom called a cuscussiera. The cuscussiera is sealed to the pot with simmering water underneath by a simple dough of flour and water. Instead, I used store-bought cous cous (also made from semolina flour) and followed the instruction on the package for cooking it, which says: combine the cous cous with an equal amount of hot water or stock, cover, and wait 7 minutes. That is indeed a whole lot easier, and although I didn’t do a side by side comparison the cous cous didn’t seem any different from what I remember from trying it in Sicily.

In Sicily, cous cous is flavored with bay leaf, cinnamon, almonds, parsley, onion, and garlic, and served with a tomato-fish stock and fish. I made up this recipe using this general guideline and using gurnard (“rode poon” in Dutch) and mussels as the seafood and we loved it. They keys to great cous cous are fresh fish, homemade stock, and not overcooking the fish. When using store-bought cous cous, it’s not that hard.  Continue reading “Seafood Cous Cous”

1. Antipasti (appetizers), Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)10 Comments

Sarde a Beccafico (Stuffed Sardines)

StefanGourmet

Apart from the fennel balls, I prepared another antipasto for my Sicilian dinner: Sarde a Beccafico. We really liked this dish when we had it at Tischi Toschi, and I copied the presentation from there. Sarde a Beccafico can be served either as antipasto or as secondo (main course). Sardines are stuffed with bread crumbs, raisins, anchovies, parsley, pine nuts, sugar, and baked in the oven with some orange juice. This dish is very tasty and easy to prepare if you ask the fishmonger to turn the sardines into fillets for you.

Continue reading “Sarde a Beccafico (Stuffed Sardines)”

1. Antipasti (appetizers), Secondi di Pesce (fish dishes)11 Comments

Smoked Halibut ‘Pizza’

StefanGourmet

The following I dish I prepared for the Sicilian dinner was very loosely based upon one of the appetizers at La Madia, the best restaurant in Sicily with two Michelin stars.

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The ‘pizza’ at La Madia

This is what I wrote about this dish in my review of our dinner at La Madia: “We were thoroughly fooled by this pizza, because we were wondering how we were going to survive 8 courses if they were all going to be this big. It turned out to be very light actually. What looks like melted mozzarella is actually potato mousse. The crust was only a very crispy very thin round of dough, and underneath the ‘cheese’ there was lovely cod smoked on pine wood and some semi-dried tomato. Great flavors and wonderful presentation. 10/10”

The dish I prepared is by no means an attempt at recreating chef Pino Cuttaia’s dish, but it has been heavily inspired by it. My ‘pizza’ was made with hot-smoked halibut, potato mousse, and semi-dried tomatoes. It was more substantial than at La Madia and I served it as a main course. Continue reading “Smoked Halibut ‘Pizza’”

1. Antipasti (appetizers)24 Comments

Fennel ‘Meatballs’ (Polpette di Finocchietto)

StefanGourmet

As an appetizer for my Sicilian dinner I prepared vegetarian meatballs made from fennel and dill, served with a tomato sauce. In Italy these polpette di finocchietto are made with wild fennel greens, which grow abundantly in Italy in spring. For lack of the wild fennel greens, I decided to use a mixture of fennel fronds (the green stuff on top of fennel bulbs) and dill. We loved the polpette di finocchietto during our wonderful dinner at Tischi Toschi, the best trattoria of Sicily in the port town of Messina. I did not ask for the recipe, so this is my own version. They came out great with a lot of flavor. If you’d like to cook vegetarian, this is also very suitable as a main course. Continue reading “Fennel ‘Meatballs’ (Polpette di Finocchietto)”