apple pie

apple pie
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

This is a great recipe for apple pie! It is sweet, tart and very yummy at the same time, and it never fails to please! You need, for the dough: 250 grams of white plain flour; 160 grams of sugar (light brown sugar or white is fine); 200 (!) grams of butter and the grated lemon zest of one lemon. For the filling you need 6 or 7 apples, peeled, cored and sliced; the juice of 1 lemon; 3 tablespoons of sugar and , if you like, a little bit of cinnamon powder. Start making the dough, mix flour and sugar and grated zest, and add the cold butter in very small dice. Work until you have a loose, breadcrumb-like consistency. Don't overwork, if it just forms a ball, it is fine. Leave to rest while you peel and core and slice the apples. Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 175 degrees. Steep apples in lemon juice and sugar. Take a baking tin of 22cm diameter, grease it with butter, then dust on flour. Add one third of the dough to the bottom of the tin, one third to the sides of the tin. Eaven it out with your fingers, then add the sliced apples. Crumble the rest of the dough on the top of the apples and bake in a 175C oven for 1 hour, or 1 hour and 10 minutes. Check during the last stages of baking; take out when nicely browned, let cool. Open up the tin, take a big knife, get a BIG slice and devour! The lemon especially gives a really good flavour, because most apple pies sold in coffee bars are far too sweet to my liking.

pork tenderloin

pork tenderloin
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

I always like pork tenderloin, it is.. well, .... tender. Much more tender than the cuts of beef you buy in the supermarkets these days. So treat yourself to this dish every now and then... For 3 to 4 people, use 2 to 3 whole tenderloins. Cut them in large chunks - you will get about 4 chunks each tenderloin - press them so they flatten out a little bit, and marinate in soy sauce, Noilly Prat and garlic slices. Heat a pan with a mixture of oil and butter and fry for about 5 minutes until done to your liking. You can press the meat with your thumb to feel how well they are done; when giving in, they are red on the inside; when you feel them tightening up, they are starting to be done. Don't overcook! Stop frying them when there is about 1 cm of push under your thumb, and leave under a sheet of aluminium foil to rest for 5 minutes. This will improve the taste. Make a sauce by adding water to the cooking juices and eat with either pasta, rice or fried potatoes.

bulghur salad with feta and tomatoes

bulghur salad with feta and tomatoes
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Forget about the weather, here is a summery salad: take one cup of bulghur (little pellets made of wheat) and pour one cup of boiling water over them. Let it absorb the water, then use a fork to loosen up the bulghur. In the meanwhile, cut up some tasty tomatoes, cucumber, shred some lettuce, and add pine nuts, raisins, cut up dried dates and sun-dried tomatoes. Add mint, basil and feta cheese and drizzle with olive oil. Eat with nice crusty bread, or as a side dish with grilled meat.

asparagus, slowly cooked in oil

asparagus
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Intrigued by what I read on the NRC food-blog the other day, I decided to slowly cook asparagus in oil, instead of boiling them in water. The idea behind all this is that asparagus easily loses its delicate flavour to the water it is cooked in; but when cooked in oil on a slow simmer, the flavour stays inside the asparagus and it was said to turn out much tastier, with deeper flavour. The original recipe called for oil at 100C, and asparagus cooking in the oven in 100C oil and thermometers and all that, but I decided to give it a try in a large saute pan. I poured in about 1 litre of oil to about 10 asparagus, barely covering them. Warm the oil slowly and slip in the peeled asparagus. Keep on a slow fire for about 30 to 40 minutes, then the asparagus are done. Mine started to brown just a little bit, but after taking them out and sprinkling on some flaky sea salt, they turned out to be the tastiest asparagus I've ever had! The flavour is much more intense, sweeter somehow, and they don't taste oily (since they don't absorb the oil, they just cook in them). From now on, I will always keep an extra bottle of oil in my pantry, for this is really a brilliant way of cooking asparagus!! Don't forget to serve them with a mixture of boiled eggs and butter, the classic accompaniment to this dish.

eggplant fritters with huajiao-dip

eggplant fritters with huajiao-dip

Chinese snack time: eggplant fritters with huajiao-dip. Huajiao ??, usually called " Sichuan pepper" or "Szechuan pepper", are the fragrant, almost hallucinating husks and berries of the huajiao shrub, which grows in the hills of Sichuan province of China.

Although you can buy several brands here in Europe, I got a bag of the stuff, imported from China by a friend, and they turned out to be very aromatic indeed! I think their intense flavor spoiled all the things in her suitcase, impregnating it with its strong smell. To use Sichuan pepper, roast two tablespoons of huajiao in a dry pan, when they start to give off their flavor, take off the heat and let cool. Add 1 tablespoon of salt and grind them into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. Set aside.


Cut a small eggplant into slices and make a batter of 1 egg and some tablespoons of corn flour. Mix until you have a smooth paste, in the beginning it looks very lumpy, but this will smooth out. Dip the slices of eggplant into the batter and shake off excess batter, then slip into hot oil (a wok is fine). Fry in not so hot oil until brown; drain on kitchen paper. Serve with the Sichuan-pepper-dip, it will be sharp, tingling and numb-making , but oh so good!!!

pasta with salmon, shrimps and cream

pasta with salmon, shrimps and cream
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Pasta with salmon. Make the sauce when you boil the water for pasta, spaghetti is fine, linguine would be even better! The sauce is a basic roux with some garlic and sauteed chopped onion. First sweat the onion and garlic on a low fire in some butter, add flour and then slowly some milk. Stir to prevent lumps forming. When done, add some Noilly Prat or white wine; also add cream or creme fraiche. Taste sauce, then add raw salmon, cut into cubes. Heat slowly until almost done, add pre-cooked shrimp, and just before serving, add fresh dill for some flavour and colour. Add a little lemon juice as well, plus some ground pepper and salt to your liking. Serve over pasta.
The brownish looking things on top of the picture, just belove the RAV of RAVIOLI are fried pieces of bread. I use kaiserbrötchen for this; I halve them first horizontally (does this make sense?) and then cut the top half and bottom half into six wedges each. Fry in some oil with some chunks of garlic and sprinkle with sea salt and parmesan cheese when done. Serve this meal with a green salad.

sate (pork on skewers)

sate
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Buy pork or chicken meat; pork can be a little fatty, I like it anyway... cut meat in small dice and put it on skewers. (Now they always tell you you should soak the skewers in water, because they may burn, but it doesn't get that bad) After making a couple of skewers, start making the peanut sauce that goes with the sate. Put 1 tablespoon of oil in a small saucepan and fry two tablespoons of chopped onion; a clove of smashed garlic; and a tablespoon of sambal hot sauce. Fry gently, then add 4 or 5 tablespoons of peanut butter (the Surinam variety is great!! because it has madame Jeanet pepper in it) and slowly add hot water. Stir until you have a sauce, add some lime leaves for extra flavour, and add coconut cream and lemon juice at the end. Taste for flavour, you might want to add more sugar or salt.
Put the skewers under a hot grill or on a BBQ until done, this could take as short as 5 minutes, so keep watching. Add peanut sauce on your plate and enjoy with a cucumber salad on the side.

butterfly shrimp

butterfly shrimp
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

I really like shrimp. I know, they can be fussy to do, because they have skins and all. But here is how it works. Buy big shrimp with heads and tails on; take off the skins - keep them for later in the freezer if you want to make a really good shrimp sauce, for example to put in a pasta sauce or shrimp risotto. Then devein, keep on the tails. Cut them open carefully, don't cut them through; then marinate in garlic, salt and Noilly Prat for half an hour or so. Coat them in eggyolk and then breadcrumbs. Fry the shrimp in hot oil with some butter, they will curl up and turn a delightful red. Eat with a green salad, chilled white wine and some crusty bread. Or with home made mayonnaise, my favourite!

organic tomatoes & smoked eggplant salad

choice of tomatoes & smoked eggplant
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

This is a very tasty side dish. It consists of a choice of small organic baby tomatoes in all flavours. There were small cherry tomatoes, tiny plum tomatoes, the green salad tomato, which from the outside is a little marbled like a water melon... very cute. Also, some yellow tomatoes. They were really tasty with a sprinkling of fleur de sel and some good olive oil. Around the plate are some smoked eggplant slices. These are made by putting an eggplant over a gas flame until it starts blackening. Turn with a fork or fireproof chopsticks until blackened all over. It might even start to smoke, from the inside. I do wonder wether these are bad for your health or not, smoke-wise. Or is it nicotine that does the damage? Anyway, when blackened, leave to cool. Peel and cut in chunks. Really good with some crusty bread and a glass of chilled white wine on a summer evening!

pizza

pizza
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Home made pizza: use 200 grams of flour with 110 mls of water. I used 600 grams of flour to 330 ml of water and one packet of yeast to make this pizza. Knead for 10 minutes and let rise for some hours. Make a basic tomato sauce with 2 tins of peeled tomatoes, adding some olive oil and half an onion for taste. When risen, flatten it out on an oiled oven tray and add tomato sauce. Add anchovies, olives, artichoke hearts, tinned sardines, red peppers. Drizzle with olive oil and add shredded mozzarella (I used 2 balls of mozzarella for this). Bake for 20 minutes at around 225 degrees and enjoy with a nice salad on the side.

pasta & sausage

pasta & sausage
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

A lovely summery meal, very easy to do! Make a salad with rocket, diced cucumber and artichoke hearts (from a tin) with a nice yoghurty lemony vinaigrette. Fry sausages of your choice - I had organic sausages, which tasted MUCH better than the normal kind - with some chopped onions and garlic for around 20 mins. Then cook some angel hair pasta (the shop ran out of linguine which was my first choice); and when done, add a small amount of dried pepper flakes and grated parmesan. Also, we had home made pesto. Write more about that later.

lentils with grilled haloumi

lentils with grilled halumi
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

This was the side dish for our pasta and sausage meal. Boil a couple of handfuls of green lentils (the small, French lentilles de Puy variety) in plenty of boiling water for about 15 minutes. Don't add salt, because this makes the lentils go mushy. When finished, drain and add a vinaigrette of balsamico and olive oil. Cut some cherry tomatoes in half and arrange these attractively round the plate. Take some haloumi. This is a Greek or Cypriot cheese, sold in small portions in Turkish shops; rather salty with some bite and very suitable for grilling. Slice the haloumi in half cm slices and grill those on a griddle pan (cast iron works good) until the professional-looking << I am a chef >> patterns appear. Add on top and drizzle more olive oil on the plate.