A favorite meal

The other day, I was craving fried potatoes with crumbled feta and dried oregano. So I made just that.

I peeled a couple of large potatoes I found hiding in my vegetable basket among some onions and garlic heads, I cut them into long strips and fried them in olive oil.

I dropped them in a large bowl, added some good sea salt and a couple pinches of dried oregano that I had brought back with me from Euvoia last October, and tossed them.

I divided them between two plates, I took a piece of feta from the fridge and crumbled it on top, adding another pinch of oregano.

On the side, a bowlful of boiled kale left-over from the day before, dressed with olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

We ate our meal as the warm rays of the sun were coming through the window.

Greek Fried Potatoes with Crumbled Feta and Dried Oregano

This has been one of my favorite meals ever since I can remember myself. The side of boiled greens (kale, Greek wild greens like zohous or vlita , spinach, chard) is essential.

Ingredients
Floury potatoes
Olive oil (or sunflower oil), for frying
Feta
Greek dried oregano

Boiled greens with olive oil and lemon juice, to accompany the potatoes

Preparation
Peel the potatoes and cut them into strips.
Add oil in a large, deep pan (fill it halfway up) or in a deep fat fryer, heat it to 175°C and add the potatoes. Fry until crisp and lightly browned. It takes about 12 minutes in the deep fat fryer and a little longer in a pan.

Empty the potatoes in a bowl and sprinkle with sea salt and a couple pinches of dried oregano. Toss and serve into plates. Crumble as much feta as you like on top and add another pinch of dried oregano. Serve with the side of boiled greens.

Spring cooking

I love the fact that it is still light out at 19:30. The days are getting so much longer here and natural light is back for good. This means that I can shoot just before we eat our dinner which gives me more options to share with you all.

Like this pasta dish. This happened the other day when I came home with a bagful of vegetables, a fresh head of romanesco among them, and a large loaf of sourdough bread.

Romanesco is the kind of vegetable that makes me want to just sit and stare at it rather than cook it. It’s so cute and weird with its intensely green color and its little spiky florets; it’s like the prettier, more exciting sibling of the common broccoli and cauliflower.

So after I photographed the hell out of it, I decided to roast it with garlic and serve it in a pasta dish together with homemade sourdough croutons, black Kalamata olives and sun-dried tomatoes, topped with some freshly grated parmesan.

It made a delicious and fulfilling dinner for S and me, with the garlicky, nutty flavor of the romanesco, the briny olives, the crunchy croutons and sweet sun-dried tomatoes, with a nice variety of textures and clear, distinct flavors that paired together in a harmonious way.
Everyday cooking gets much better in spring doesn’t it?

Pasta with Roasted Romanesco, Sourdough Croutons, Kalamata Olives and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Romanesco has a slightly bitter and earthy flavor that is a little milder than broccoli and nuttier than cauliflower. You can treat it just like you would broccoli and cauliflower.

I used a type of pasta called boccole (not a very widely known type of pasta) which looks like shorter rigatoni but you can use any other smallish-shaped pasta you have on hand like farfalle, penne or fusilli.

By omitting the parmesan you have a perfect Lenten dish.

Yield: enough for 2 very hungry people or 4 small portions

Ingredients
2 thick, dark sourdough bread slices (about 100g), cut into cubes
1 head romanesco, broken into florets
4 garlic cloves with skins, smashed once with the blade of a knife
5 Tbsp olive oil plus extra for drizzling over the top
12 black Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped in half
6 sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
250 g dried boccole rigate pasta
Parmesan, freshly grated, to your liking

Special equipment: large baking sheet, baking paper, large wide skillet or shallow wide pan


Preparation
Preheat your oven to 200°C.
Line a large baking sheet with baking paper and scatter the cubed bread in one layer. Place on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes or until the bread is crispy and browned. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and transfer croutons to a plate.

Turn the oven down to 190°C.
In a large bowl, toss romanesco florets and garlic with 2 Tbsp of the olive oil, a little salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Line the same baking sheet with a different piece of baking paper and add the romanesco florets and garlic. Roast for about 16 minutes, until the romanesco has slightly softened and lightly caramelized. Remove from the oven and let romanesco sit in the baking sheet.

In the meantime, boil the pasta in salted boiling water until cooked al dente (to the tooth) or to your liking, stirring often so they don’t stick to one another.

In a large skillet or wide pan, add the remaining 3 Tbsp of olive oil and heat over medium heat. Take the garlic cloves from the baking sheet and squeeze the flesh out of their skins and into the skillet along with the croutons. Sauté for a couple of minutes until golden, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and being careful not to burn the garlic.
Add the olives, sun-dried tomatoes, the balsamic vinegar and a little pepper, and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the roasted romanesco and the drained pasta to the skillet and toss well to mix.
Drizzle with a little extra olive oil and serve immediately in individual plates.
Top with freshly grated parmesan and enjoy!

Intensely chocolate pudding

Some of my plans for this spring:

Spent a morning at the Japanese garden, reading.

Eat as many asparagus as I possibly can.

Have cocktails on the balcony, watching the big trees sway.

Visit Amsterdam’s open markets and parks more often.

Look for a new apartment; seriously this time.

Write.

Cook without a recipe or without jotting down the recipe of what I’m cooking.

Take my camera everywhere with me and discover beauty in the ordinary through my lens.

Not stress about the small stuff and keep focusing on my goals.

Cook more with alternative grains, sugars, fats.

Learn how to use the espresso machine, finally.

Sing more.

Find time to share more recipes here.

Like this one. Chocolate pudding.

A luscious, velvety, über chocolatey pudding, with a dollop of freshly whipped cream, because a chocolate pudding should never be served without it.

Intensely Chocolate Pudding

If you’re dreaming of the creamiest, most chocolatey and rich pudding, look no further.
I used chocolate with 55% cocoa solids but you can use 70% if you prefer a more bitter flavor. Just make sure the chocolate, as well as the cocoa you use, is of good quality.

Yield: 6-8 servings

Ingredients
120 g caster sugar
25 g corn flour
25 g Dutch-processed cocoa powder
¼ tsp salt
380 ml fresh whole milk
100 ml cream, full-fat (35%)
3 large egg yolks
95 g good quality dark chocolate 55% cocoa solids, finely chopped
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
15 g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into tiny pieces

Freshly whipped cream (unsweetened), for serving

Special equipment: fine sieve, heatproof spatula, whisk


Preparation
In a medium-sized bowl, add the sugar and sieve in the corn flour and cocoa powder. Add the salt and mix well using a wire whisk. Add 80 ml of the milk to the mixture and whisk. Then add the egg yolks and whisk well to incorporate.

Add the rest 300 ml of milk and the cream to a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over medium-high heat just until the mixture starts to foam up around the edges, stirring with a heatproof spatula so it doesn’t catch.

Add the heated milk-cream mixture little-by-little in the cocoa-eggs mixture, whisking continuously, empty this mixture back into the saucepan and place over a low heat, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula. In the beginning it may seem like it won’t thicken up but don’t worry, it will. It will take about 6 minutes to thicken. Just be patient and keep stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan well, so the mixture doesn’t get stuck. Be careful not to over-heat the mixture or it will get burned. When it starts to thicken, it will start to create small lumps; at this point, switch to a wire whisk and continue whisking until the mixture becomes smooth and thickens (as thick as mayonnaise). Remove the pan immediately from the heat and pour into a bowl on top of which you have placed a fine sieve. Pass the mixture through the sieve, using a spatula to help pass it all through. In this way, you won’t have any lumps in your pudding.

Immediately add to the mixture the vanilla, the chopped chocolate and the butter and slowly fold them in using a spatula. Don’t be too aggressive with the mixing because you don’t want it to split.

At this point, if you want to serve your pudding warm, then do so. If you prefer to serve it cold, empty it into a clean bowl and, if you like a skin to form on top, place it in the refrigerator uncovered, but if you’re like me and dislike the skin, then place a piece of plastic wrap over the pudding, pressing it on the surface of the pudding.

When you want to serve the pudding, give it a light whip with a spoon or spatula to lighten it and serve in small bowls. Top with unsweetened, freshly whipped cream.

You can keep the pudding covered in the refrigerator for 2 days.

Roasted carrot soup with Puy lentils

Spring is officially just around the corner; unofficially it’s been here since last week. It’s sunny and hot, the birds are chirping and the bugs are going crazy, Dutch tulips are blooming and are prettier than ever, and the Dutch are reveling in the warmth, wearing their flip-flops and t-shirts. I, on the other hand, am still wearing my boots and long-sleeved blouses.

The pain I told you about from the wisdom tooth extraction is still present, however it is slowly fading and I’m heading towards a full recovery. I still can’t quite chew from the left side of my mouth and the right side is getting a real work out these days, so I have been making soups and smoothies and foods that are easy to chew.

To avoid feeling like an old lady, eating just watered down soups and soft rice, I’m trying to cook appetizing and flavorful dishes that will perk me up and put a smile on my face. Food has that effect on me.
This roasted carrot soup with Puy lentils managed to do just that.

Carrots are usually overlooked in favor of other vegetables and rarely take center stage. They lie in the background, enhancing the flavor of other ingredients, and together with vegetables like onions and celery create the base for bolder flavors to stand on and shine.

In this soup, though, carrots are the protagonists and along with a dash of ground fennel seed and some olive oil, they are first roasted in the oven. Don’t think of roasting the carrots as an unnecessary step, it is absolutely worth it as they lightly caramelize, creating a deliciously sweet flavor base for the soup.

Then they simmer for a while together with some onions, garlic, celery, some spicy, peppery ginger and woody thyme, and at the end, after the soup is puréed, the little green pebbles that are the Puy lentils go in and give the soup texture.

This creamy, beautifully orange-colored soup, speckled with the green lentils was enough to make me forget about my pain and enjoy it to the fullest. Hope you enjoy it too.

Roasted Carrot Soup with Puy Lentils
Adapted from Dutch Delicious

Puy lentils or lentilles du Puy as they are called in French, are lentils from the volcanic region of Le Puy-en-Velay in south-central France and they are the only lentils in the world that are identified by area of cultivation. They are small, green-black lentils with a blue marbling that have a very rich flavor and a superior quality, and they hold their shape when cooked, retaining their firmness.

You can use beluga lentils instead of Puy, or even regular small brown lentils, just make sure that you don’t boil them for too long as they need to have a bite to add texture to the dish.

It goes without saying that the best accompaniment is a good loaf of bread; I made a no-knead loaf.

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients
1½ kg carrots, peeled and sliced 2cm thick
1½ tsp ground fennel seeds
6 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 celery sticks, chopped
6cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
Leaves from 4 fresh thyme sprigs, plus extra for garnishing
1½ liter vegetable stock
200 g Puy lentils, rinsed well
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Lemon, to serve

Special equipment: large baking tray, baking paper, grater, immersion or regular blender, colander


Preparation
Preheat your oven to 180°C.

Line a large baking tray with baking paper and add the sliced carrots. Sprinkle with the ground fennel seeds, drizzle with 3 Tbsp of the olive oil and season with salt and ground black pepper. Mix everything well with your hands and place the baking tray on the middle rack of the preheated oven.
Roast carrots for 30-35 minutes or until slightly softened and lightly caramelized.
Remove from the oven and keep in the baking tray until ready to add to the soup.

In the meantime, heat the remaining 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat, add the onions and sauté them, stirring often, for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and sauté for 1-2 minutes, stirring often. Add celery and cook for 3-4 minutes until soft.

Then add the grated ginger, the thyme, the vegetable stock, the roasted carrots and the juices accumulated in the baking tray, a little salt and pepper, and bring to the boil.

Put the lid on the pan, turn heat down to low and simmer for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced a little and the carrots have softened.

While the soup is simmering, prepare the lentils. In a medium-sized pan, add 1 liter of water and bring to the boil over high heat. Add the lentils and ¼ tsp salt and boil over medium heat for 15-20 minutes until tender yet still al dente. Drain them well in a colander.

Once the soup is ready, remove from the heat and then, if you’re using an immersion blender, blend the carrots in the pan until smooth and creamy. If you have a regular blender, transfer the carrots little by little to it and blend until you have a smooth and creamy soup. Return soup to the pan.

Add the cooked lentils to the soup and stir well. Check the seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if needed.

Serve hot, garnished with a drizzle of olive oil and fresh thyme leaves.
Have some lemon at hand to squeeze over the soup; it benefits from a hit of acidity to counterbalance its sweetness and earthiness.