Christmas Planning

Hey guys!

Sorry it's been so long, been having a lot of problems with my internet lately. :(
So I've only started thinking about Christmas dinner a few days ago. I know there are some Americans and Brits out there shouting "WHAT!? She's CRAZY!!!!", but bear with me. For my Christmas dinner you'll have to keep a few things in mind;

1. It's just me and the BF
2. We'll be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day at our parents', so that leaves me with just Boxing day that I need to plan for. *phew*

Now, here are the things I need to keep in mind for Christmas dinner;

1. The BF and I are on different diets i.e. he eats meat and seafood, I don't
2. We come from completely different cultures, even though I'm from the UK and he's from the Netherlands, I'm used to a really traditional Christmas dinner (Turkey with Stuffing on the side or Duck with Caramelized Apples, potatoes, green beans, gravy, etc. etc. you know.. the works) and he's used to his mother's cooking. Let me tell you, Christmas is a snoozefest here, she makes steak, green beens, applesauce and a potato dish. Doesn't sound very different from what I grew up on, except for the fact that I wasn't even halfway through the list of stuff we had when I was a child and I've listed the whole meal as far as my mother-in-law is concerned. When I make a steak dinner for the BF I already pull out way more stops than she does for Christmas dinner and no offense, because it all does taste great, but I just expect a lot more from Christmas dinner. 

So when it comes to planning out my Christmas menu I find myself having to open up the BF's mind and make him think beyond the limited repertoire his mother has, I'm more of a "the sky's the limit" kind of cook when it comes to special occasions such as Birthdays, Anniversaries and Christmas. 

So for now I have an ever expanding word document with a list of possibles that I will have to choose from this week for breakfast, daytime snacks and sweets, evening snacks and sweets, lunch, entrée, main and dessert. I hope I'll manage, but for now I'm still adding ideas, so if anyone has any, they're more than welcome!
What are you guys planning for Christmas?

Oh my Vanilla!!

Okay, I've been meaning to post this for a while, as so many people seem to be using vanilla in all the wrong ways. So here I'd like to clear up a few things on vanilla sugar and high quality (usually expensive) versus lower quality (usually cheap).

Here's my collection, from left to right and also in order of highest to lowest quality:

Vanilla Sugar (with real vanilla pods in there!), vanilla bean paste, vanilla bean seeds, vanilla extract (high), vanilla essence (medium), "pure vanilla extract" (low)

Now you might be wondering why I rated my vanilla essence as medium quality and the so-called "pure vanilla extract" as low quality, so I'll tell you why. The extract is a five dollar bottle that I bought in San Francisco, so it is made following FDA regulations which state the following about vanilla extract: "Extract must be based on ethyl alcohol of at least 35% vol and may be extracted directly from vanilla beans, or added in the form of concentrated vanilla extract or concentrated vanilla flavoring." 

That's mistake number one, as real extract is indeed made from alcohol with at least 35% vol, but further must it always be made with real vanilla beans, NEVER from concentrated anything. 

Also, the FDA states the following about additions to the extract:

"Vanilla extract may contain one of the following optional ingredients:
(1) Glycerin.
(2) Propylene glycol.
(3) Sugar (including invert sugar).
(4) Dextrose.
(5) Corn sirup (including dried corn sirup)."

And that is clearly mistake number two as real extract is made from two ingredients only(!) and those are the aforementioned vanilla beans and 35+% vol alcohol.
Now my "essence" however is made in Israel and is defined as essence by the rule that extract must me made of only vanilla beans and 35+% vol alcohol. This essence however contains a lower percentage of alcohol, and is therefore essence.
So baring all this in mind and also knowing what they both taste like in a dish where vanilla is the dominant flavour, I can definitely say that the quality of the essence is much higher than the quality of the so-called "pure vanilla extract".

Now, on to the mistakes I see so many recipes and cooking shows make.
First of all, vanilla sugar;
A few weeks ago I was watching Everyday Italian and got kind of pissed off. Giada was making vanilla sugar, but in such a wasteful, expensive way! What she did was pour fine sugar into the food processor and then she scraped out two (expensive!) vanilla pods and added the beans to the sugar and blitzed it.
I suppose if you have unlimited funds of unlimited access to vanilla pods and are going to make a gigantic batch of something right away, you could make the sugar this way, but really, the best way for your pods, wallet and also sugar is the following:

• Find a jar that will hold a full length vanilla pod without having to bend or cut it in half and clean it thoroughly
• Preferably you would start with at least five pods, but more is always better so long as there's room for the sugar
• Now, place your pods in the clean jar and fill it up with super fine castor sugar
• Let it sit for at least two months now before using it and every time the jar is about half empty, add some more sugar and shake well, you can keep doing this for years and years but you must occasionally add some new vanilla pods too and definitely replace pods when you use them.

 My sugar with pods. 

Moving on to the next mistake:

Using vanilla in brownies, chocolate cookies&cakes.

I'll start by saying that I have never understood the addition of vanilla in chocolate doughs and batters as in the resulting cookie or cake, you simply can't taste that vanilla has been added, trust me, I've made cookies with vanilla and without and there is absolutely no difference! But the thing that I really don't understand is that recipes always tell you to use high quality vanilla extract, which of course is ridiculous as the stuff is expensive and also completely overpowered by the chocolate or cocoa in the recipe.

My main advice really is, if you feel like you have to add vanilla when there's chocolate or cocoa involved, fine, but please stop wasting the good stuff on it! Just use your cheapest vanilla essence or extract which isn't really extract.

And now on to uses of vanilla that are appropriate:

Vanilla Sugar:

~Sprinkle over fruits such as Strawberries

~Mix with unsalted butter and cinnamon for a delicious (holiday) butter on toast or fresh, warm bread

~Substitute half of the white sugar in a recipe for vanilla sugar in vanilla or citrus flavoured cakes and cookies and also scones

Vanilla Pods:

~When you go old school on making custard or vanilla sauce, there really is now substitute for the real vanilla pods just cut in half, scraped and all steeped in the milk or cream used in the recipe

Vanilla Bean Paste:

~The easiest thing to use in a vanilla cake if you can find it, otherwise try to find vanilla seeds

~In a baked custard such as a custard tart I'd also use the paste as I think it's a waste of money to use the amount of pods that the recipe probably asks for when a lot of the flavour is most likely to cook out during baking

Vanilla Bean Seeds:

~When making vanilla flavoured cookies or cakes, these seeds are a great time and money saver in comparison to using pods, but as I said, if your making a vanilla cake with no additions (chocolate chips, nuts, citrus peels etc.) the better option would be the vanilla bean paste

~We used to make semolina for breakfast using the pods in the milk as there used to be no other options, but these days we add the seeds for ease and it's still delicious

High Quality Vanilla Extracts and Essences:

~When making cakes and especially cookies with vanilla flavour or a light (citrus)fruit flavour, use higher quality extract or essence

Low Quality Vanilla Extracts and Essences:

~For all other cakes and cookies with more dominant flavourings such as cocoa, chocolate, cinnamon and other spices (think gingerbreads), if you really feel the need to add vanilla, use the cheapest stuff you can find and I'd still just leave it out of brownies and chocolate flavoured cookies&cakes

So there you have it! All you need to know about making vanilla sugar and choosing what vanilla flavouring to add to whatever it is you're making! But feel free to ask me any questions you may still have.

Enjoy!

My little Garden part 1.

Living in an apartment, obviously I’m not lucky enough to have a garden, however, our downstairs neighbours who do have a garden are kind enough to loan theirs to us for garden parties and barbecues, which is great of course, but I can hardly plant my stuff in their garden now can I? This is where my back balcony comes in handy and we’ve recently acquired some new pots for on the balustrade and filled them up straight away. We already had some Basil and the Onions and Garlic planted in small pots in our front window, but now we’ve given them some more space and some more plantly company, they’re really thriving!

Well, without further rambling, I’d like to share my three favourite (classic) recipes with the herbs we have; Basil, Parsley and Chives.

So for Basil, we have our take on the classic pesto sauce, which is only just a recent use for me, I used to only put Basil in my Tomato-Mozzarella salad, because my plant never grew fast enough for me to be able to do anything with it. But now they’re growing like wildfire we decided to blitz the leaves up and enjoy them as a sauce with our pasta, because I LOVE pasta!

With the Parsley it’s another classic sauce, only this time Parsley isn’t the core ingredient: Alfredo sauce. It’s really best when you add some fresh Parsley at the end!

And for the Chives; Egg Salad. Easy, but delicious and if you’re anything like my family, it’s the quickest way to get rid of eggs. We tend not to eat a lot of boiled or fried eggs, but when there’s egg salad, we always need to boil at least ten eggs, just so the salad might last for two days!

Basil – Pesto Sauce

·         A lot of Basil, I fill up half my colander and am then able to make just enough sauce for pasta for two

·         One clove of Garlic, big or small, doesn’t matter it just depends on your taste

·         A good glug of Olive Oil, yes, the cheap stuff

Now, I would like to use the magic bullet for this, because for some reason my boyfriend bought one years ago, but we couldn’t find the attachments anymore, so we ended up using the blender which works just fine, but if you have something smaller than a blender I’d go with that.

Basically what you do first is roughly chop the garlic and then blitz it up.

Once the garlic is chopped up enough you just chuck in the Basil and a small splash of Olive oil to start with.

When blitzing the Basil you might need to give it a hand, but never actually use your hands! We find it works if you pick up your blender, while still blending, and tilt it a little bit; just let gravity do it’s job.

Then when everything is mixed just add enough Olive oil to get it to the consistency that you want and tadaa! you now have a delicious sauce for your pasta.

We liked it with some Spaghetti, grated Parmesan and halved Cherry tomatoes.

Parsley – Alfredo Sauce

I tend to eyeball my Alfredo Sauce, but here’s approximately the amounts I use.

·         1 cup (200-250 mL) heavy cream, I’ve used the “low fat” version, which is fine, but your adding a load of butter anyway

·         ¼ to ½ cup of unsalted butter, less is definitely not more in this recipe!

·         A really good amount of cracked pepper, I use all four colours, but when using just one colour, black is best and I think I crack at least half a teaspoon in it, but I’m not sure as I always grind mine straight into the pan to taste

·         ¼ to ½ cup of finely grated parmesan cheese, really, it’s just to taste add the ¼ cup first, taste and then judge

·         A good handful of parsley, I prefer curly, but most recipes use flat leaf

All you do is put the cream and milk in a saucepan and warm it on low heat until the butter melts.

If you’re like me and only use freshly ground pepper, you might want to start grinding the moment you have the butter and cream in the pan and just keep going until it’s the right flavour for you.

When the butter has melted add the parmesan and whisk or stir until melted.

Now taste the sauce again, because sometimes it still needs a small grind of salt, but most of the time the parmesan will have done the job and also, don’t forget that if you’re eating the sauce with pasta, that will also be salty from the water you’ve cooked it in.

Now at the very end, for us that’s just before we add it to our Penne, chop up your parsley and add it to the sauce, or do like I do and just snip it above the saucepan with a pair of scissors.

Apparently I don’t have a photo of our Penne Alfredo, but next time I make it, I’ll take a picture and update this post. ;)

Chives – Egg Salad

Like I said, if you’re like us, you’ll need a lot, so I’m giving you my full recipe which lasts a maximum of three days in the fridge at my parents’ house when my dad and I are around.

·         Ten medium or large eggs, hard boiled and peeled

·         Two to three full tablespoons of GOOD mayonnaise, we like ours fairly dry and really, if you don’t live in the Netherlands, just make your own mayonnaise because I can’t stand it when people use Hellmann’s or other American style whipped mayo’s, it really makes a huge difference to go the extra mile of making or finding a store with real mayonnaise. Though honestly, the only place I’ve found mayonnaise that even resembles real homemade mayonnaise is the Netherlands, but I suppose that would mean that Belgium and Germany have it too

·         A good pinch of salt

·         A good amount (¼-½ tsp) of freshly ground pepper, four colours or just black

·         Chives to taste, snipped or chopped

If you own a egg cutter, use it to cut your eggs into a nice dice, otherwise just attack them with a knife until they’re all finely diced.

In a big mixing bowl, add the salt, pepper and mayonnaise to your eggs, I always start with two tablespoons of mayonnaise and add more if needed.

The chives are optional, I need to be patient enough to want to snip them up before I can attack my egg salad, which I’m usually not, so start with about six or seven long sprigs and snip them into the bowl and if you need more, just add more.

 So that’s it for the herbs, but all together with a clove of garlic and a pinch of salt, blitz them up with some unsalted butter and I’m sure you’ll be very pleased when spreading it on some toast or a nice, warm baguette!

Banoffee, banoffee, banoffee!

Okay, so about two weeks ago I had a really naughty "Banoffee day" with a good friend of mine and it was great!
It all started when I made a Banoffee Cheesecake together with my dad and my friend Tara had coincidentally made a regular Banoffee pie the same day, but that only accounts for two of the three banoffees. Since we promised each other a taste of the banoffees and we felt like going out to dinner, we went to the Tapas bar in Utrecht where one of the desserts is... Banoffee! So that was banoffee number three. The only way the evening could have been better was if the cocktail bar we went to afterwards would have had a banoffee Martini. But even without a banoffee cocktail, it was all great!

 Our yummy, oozy banoffee cheesecake.

Tara's delicious and very easy banoffee pie!

El Mundo's semi deconstructed banoffee pie.

Now of course I can't just show you the end result without giving you a recipe, so here's the recipe that we used for our banoffee cheesecake. Also, I took photographs pretty much every step of the way, so I'll add those for a mouthwatering visual!

Banoffee cheesecake.

Bottom and middle crumb layer

• 1 whole pack of digestive biscuits
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of light brown sugar
• Enough melted butter to bind everything, I think between 1/3 and 1/2 cup, but you'll know once you're busy

Basically you just blitz the digestives in the food processor until it's nice and crumbly.
If you want you could also add spices such as cinnamon or ginger when you add the golden brown sugar.
Reserve about 1/3 of the crumb and sugar mix in a separate bowl.
To the other 2/3 of the crumbs add the melted butter, as much as needed, and mix well.

Banoffee layer

• 4 (over)ripe bananas
• A sprinkling of custard powder
• 1 (14 oz or 396 gram) tin of sweetened condensed milk

You need to boil the tin of milk for at least two or three hours, so it's a good idea when making any kind of banoffee this way to start with that.
Make sure you use a heavy bottomed pan and that you put a buffer (such as a piece of once folded cloth) between the tin and the pan.
Then all you do is bring the water up to the boil and then let it simmer gently on a very low flame for about three hours.
When enough time has passed it's best to remove the tin from the water with some kitchen tongs and have a teacloth at the ready to place your wet tin on.
After removing the tin from the pan, let it rest for at least ten minutes before attempting to open it very carefully while protecting your skin with long sleeves and teacloths.
Once the tin opener gets through the tin the caramel will most likely come oozing out, but that's okay because whatever I spill I get to lick! Yum!
Then when you're ready to assemble the cake, just slice the four bananas.

Cheese layer

• 500 grams mascarpone, normally we use a mix of sour cream and Mon Chou cheese which is basically a brick style cream cheese, but we had this sitting in the fridge just doing nothing, so we used it
• 1/2 cup regular white sugar, if you like it extra sweet use 3/4 cup but with the caramel it's not really necessary
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla seeds, in this recipe it's optional though
• 3 whole eggs
• 2 to 3 tablespoons self raising flour

This recipe is really super easy, start by mixing up the mascarpone.
Then add the sugar and vanilla, mix again.
One by one mix in the eggs and finally fold in the self raising flour.

Assembly and baking

First press the buttered crumb mix into a twenty three centimetre spring pan and rest it for half an hour in the fridge.

In the mean time heat up your oven to 210°C.

Then cut up the bananas over the crumb bottom and sprinkle with a bit of custard powder to keep the bananas from becoming completely mushy during baking.

By now you should have your caramel ready and rested, so carefully open the tin and pour the contents over the banana slices.

Here's where the rest of the crumb mix comes in, we used it as a barrier between the caramel and the cheese so the cheese would set and not be soggy, but after spending a while in the fridge it had soaked up all the caramel, so next time I'll try it without the crumb buffer to see if the caramel stays oozier after baking and hanging out in the fridge.

Now mix up the cheese batter and pour on the banoffee bottom.

Place your baking tin in the 210°C oven and bake for 12-15 minutes, it's best to place your rack slightly lower than the middle.

After these 12-15 minutes, lower the temperature to 150°C and bake for one hour and five minutes or until set in the middle, you can start checking at forty-five minutes, keep in mind that this cake will go darker than you would usually bake a cheesecake.

With this cake we then removed it from the oven which is different from what we would do with a regular cheesecake, then we let it cool on a wire rack and once at room temperature we were ready for dessert, so we had a nice, warm, oozy banoffee cheesecake for dessert; yum!

After we were done with it we put the rest in the fridge to cool down thoroughly and of course later that evening had some to snack on. ;)

 So there you have it, our banoffee cheesecake, it really was delish! But maybe next time I'll make a thicker banoffee layer so we can really enjoy it's oozy, caramelly and sweet goodness!

Smoked Chicken Apple Sausages.

As promised, here's an update of what I've been up to last month. I think I'll do it in parts as my boyfriend and I are tied up in an ongoing bet that means we can't use the Internet between 10 am and 10 pm, but since I couldn't sleep any more I figured I'd grab this opportunity to blog!

So, first things first, the most awesome thing I made last month was together with my dad; smoked chicken and apple sausages. When my boyfriend and I were in San Francisco, we loved having breakfast at Lori's Diner, especially the one on Mason. Now, I'm a vegetarian and a Hashed Browns addict, so everything that came with meat would of course be substituted with Hashed Browns. And if somebody has a good recipe for them, PLEASE let me know! I have yet to make the perfect Hashed Brown myself. :( Anyway, the boyfriend is definitely an omnivore in most cases, but if he would have the choice between eating the California Omelette every day for the rest of his life or being able too eat anything he wants except the California omelette for the rest of his life, I'm not completely sure he'd go for the latter one, because he REALLY loves the California omelette. So, keeping this in mind, last year I tried to re-create the thing. Should be easy enough right? Three egg omelette, smoked chicken and apple sausage, grated cheddar and some chives. Sure, easy-peasy, except for one little detail which is the most important part of the whole dish: you cannot get smoked chicken and apple sausages here in the Netherlands! So, the solution; make them ourself. Of course they don't taste nearly the same as the ones in the states, but they're a real improvement from whatever it was that I used last time.
So, the recipe, it's not very specific as it depends on your own preferences for sausage texture, but one thing is important: where you should never overwork meat for burgers, it is thoroughly welcomed when making the mix for sausages.

Okay, what we roughly used is the following:
1 200-300 gram package of smoked chicken cubes
3-4 medium sized chicken thighs, skin on! (I suppose in America they would be small chicken thighs)
1 fresh baby/spring onion (given to my dad by a friend with a fantastic community plot)
1 or 2 cloves of fresh garlic (bought at the farmer's market)
Some fresh herbs from the garden, we used parsley and some thyme, also some dried sage as we didn't have any in the garden at that moment.
And lastly, we also put some liquid smoke in the mix.

So, you might notice something, we didn't add any extra fat. That's correct, it's why we left the skin on the chicken thighs.

• First we chopped up the chicken thighs, taking all the meat off the bones and then blitzed them in the food processor
• Then we roughly chopped the garlic and onion; blitz
• Added the smoked chicken bits after dad and the dog ate a couple of them first of course; blitz
• Then the herbs and blitzed it until it was a fairly smooth mix
• At the very end we added the liquid smoke and blitzed it thoroughly again

I'll tell you one thing, it's seriously handy to have a dog stalking your every move when making sausages, because every time something falls, he looks at you, begs you to let him have it and then cleans it up. And every bit of chicken skin that didn't get processed well enough, you fish out of the mix and throw it into the doggie bin. Clean-up has never been easier!
And of course after all this we tested a little patty in the pan for taste and then filled up the sausage casings.

 The mix.

 The doggie bin.

 Our doggie is so cute!

 Filling the sausage maker.

 Filling the sausage.

Rolling the sausages.

 Sausage animals! A poodle!

 All sausages rolled!

  And now first some sausages in the pan!

After these sausages were cooked, we smoked the rest of the sausages and I took them home to use them for their original purpose: to make a semi-authentic California omelette and this is the result:

Well, my time is up now, I don't want to lose our bet, but I hope you enjoy the sausages!