Blondies are a closely related cousing of the more popular brownies, but I hadn’t discovered them until coming to the Netherlands. Their overall appearance (minus the colour) and texture are pretty similar to brownies, but with a vanilla flavour instead of chocolate.
The first time I made pancakes for breakfast, back in Canada, I had no idea how to make them, so I ended up using the packaged stuff… Soon after I realized that the package doesn’t save that much time, it’s much more expensive and the fresh ones are much tastier! Now, after dozens of trials, I have developed a failproof method that takes almost as long to prepare as just toasting slices of bread.
Chipá is a bread made with cassava starch, typical from Northeastern Argentina and Paraguay; in Brazil, a very similar thing is called pão de queijo (literally, cheese bread). I remember in my teenage years there was a start-up in Buenos Aires that was selling chipacitos all over the city, in kioscos, in the subway, train stations… You could 10 pieces, warm out of the oven, for $1; then we discovered that the factory was around the corner of our house, so we would buy kilos of the stuff, keep it in the freezer and warm it up on demand.
These were simply delicious; it’s impossible to have just one. Despite our best efforts, they didn’t last very long. The recipe I found on Sonia’s website worked very well, but the need to work with oiled hands cannot be stressed enough. The dough turn impressively sticky once the cheese is added, do yourself a favour and keep your hands oiled!
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This is another dish that I remember my mother and my grandmother preparing (called pastel de papas) when I was a child, and I loved it. Last month in the supermarket’s magazine they had a feature on European dishes, and the Brit one was a shepherd’s pie… which prompted me to give it a try. Once again, I changed a few things: leek instead of onion, carrots instead of mushrooms, peas instead of green beans. The result was great, and it is perfect to take to work during the week for lunch.
These are like pancakes, but lighter and a bit tart, by the use of beaten egg whites and cottage cheese respectively. This was inspired by a recipe from Nigella Lawson, but I added the ice cream which was a nice touch.
This recipe is inspired by one from Rachel Ray. When I was in the supermarket, I couldn’t find the piquillo peppers, so I decided to replace the red influence with tomato paste. In the end I had to use some more wine than in the original recipe, as the consistency was too thick, but that is hardly a problem, is it?
Scallops are one my wife (and myself) favourite treats. She doesn’t enjoy much seafood, but scallops are the golden exception. Pan fried-scallops are the easiest way to showcase them, and quite frankly probably one of the best ones as well (except probably for that time we follow a Julia Child recipe… I’ll remember that evening for the rest of my days).
This dish was inspired in this recipe, however I had to improvise a bit as I couldn’t get arugula or the walnut oil on a short notice… Still, it was a perfect beginning for a great meal. The touch of vinegar actually enhanced the flavours quite a bit, which is something I have been noticing of late. I noticed that the scallops look fairly small in the picture, but there were actually about 5 cm diameter, quite large indeed.
For this year’s Valentine’s Day, we decided to stay at home instead of celebrating at a restaurant. I decided to improvise a menu based on colours for the occasion: red and white. Still, I needed some inspiration and ideas to start with. I knew I wanted scallops as an appetizer, some pork as a main and something light for dessert. A few minutes of Google and voilà, a menu assembled! In the coming 3 posts I will describe the 3 dishes we enjoyed.
With the meal we had an Austrian white wine, a Grüner Veltliner “Fass 4″ from Weingut Bernhard Ott; it was delicious and went well with everything. In retrospect, the second dish would probably go well with a heavy red wine; given the Spanish inspiration, a Rioja would have been a good choice. A ruby Port would have matched the dessert very nicely as well, but hey, it was a Monday, so one bottle was enough…
I had nothing to do with the preparation of this cake, but it was fantastic. This is a contribution from my wife, who one day changed her knitting and sewing for baking, with the inspiration to remember a bit of North America here in the Lowlands…
Whenever we need a quick dinner and there are no leftovers around, we most likely fall back on a classic: pasta with filetto sauce. This sauce is not only delicious, but it also has essentially no fat. The key is in letting it simmer for at least 10 minutes, which is perfect if you start everything in advance.
