home made cheese

Step 22: slices of fresh cheese
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

After several years of just buying the stuff, the cheesemaking bug started to itch again. There was a time I made this regularly, in a sunny kitchen at the end of the day: a fresh white cheese, home made from fresh milk, buttermilk and rennet in just over 1 hour. The process is simple and no trouble: anyone can do it. So can you, if you can get hold of rennet.

I searched for quite some time this year. I had some stuff in the fridge, but rennet doesn't keep forever, so I had to get it new. There used to be a supply at these organic shops, but they didn't sell it anymore. The place to find your rennet nowadays is to go to the Turkish / Moroccan supermarket. Here you find them in a small plastic bottle with a red lid. Just 15 drops makes a cheese the size of a tea saucer.

You will need: 2 litres of fresh milk (can be pasteurized, but it has to be the kind of milk you have to keep in the fridge. Don't use UHT mllk). Half a small cup of buttermilk (this will raise the acidity of the milk, increasing the cheese yield). Plus a thermometer and rennet.

Take a large pasta pan or something like that and pour in two litres of milk with half a cup of buttermilk. Stick in your thermometer, turn up the heat, and turn it off as soon as it reaches 32 Celcius. This is sooner than you think, watch the thermometer closely! As soon as it reaches 32 C, add 15 drops of rennet, diluted in some tablespoons of water and stir thouroughly. Then put the pan in a warm place - you can cover it with towels, or put in a box with old newspapers - and wait for about 25 minutes.

After this time, your milk will have set, resembling a pudding. When you touch the surface, it will leave a dent. Take a large knife or palette knife and cut the 'pudding' in long strips. Cut crosswise, so you will have a checkerboard pattern, each square being 1 cm wide. Put the lid on the pan again and wait for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, open the pan. The curds will have separated from the whey: a yellowish shiny liquid. Stir with a spoon for several minutes and leave to rest for 10 minutes again (covered by lid). Now the whey has completely run out of the curd. Press a conical sieve in the curd and scoop out the whey (save it!) Then ladle the curds in a colander, lined with muslin and let drain.

The curds just want to stick together and the whey will run out like crazy, producing a soft, white, firming cheese. As your first attempt, wait another 10 minutes and turn the cheese out on a plate. It has a sweet, fresh cheese flavour and is very bland. Have it with olive oil, some coarse sea salt, some basil and tomatoes as you would have mozzarella.

Ah- mozzarella! Making fresh mozzarella from scratch is my ultimate goal in life. I read a recipe on the web involving microwaving the curd after this stage. I had to heat it for 1 minute, and then stretch it., and knead it into a ball. Enthousiastically, I went out to buy milk again and tried with a second batch. But alas, it didn't work: the result was a grainy hump of rather dry cheese instead of the silken smooth stretchy mozzarella we all know and love.

So. This is going to be one of my experiments the coming weeks, and one of these days I am sure I can show you the triumphant end result! Don't forget you can make ricotta with the leftover whey. Heat it until it reaches 70C and add 1/4 cup of cider vinegar. Scoop out the curds, put on your wooden shoes, and you will definitely feel like an artisanal cheese lady!

orzo with zucchini

orzo with zucchini
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

Quick and elegant, that's how I would describe this dish. Perfect as a pasta course, with just some grilled pork chop or lamb chop on the side, or a nice grilled fish or chicken. Or just a plain salad with goat's cheese and bacon strips. Orzo looks like flecks of rice, but it is a shape of pasta. It has a funny texture which i like.

You will need (serves about 3)
1 large cup of orzo
1 large zucchini, or 2 small ones
olive oil, garlic, thyme, oregano, Parmesan cheese

Use a food processor to slice the zucchini into julienne strips. Of course you can do this by hand on a grater, but really, if you own a food processor, this job is very quick. Saute in a pan with some olive oil and a clove of garlic. Season with thyme, oregano, salt and pepper. In the meanwhile, boil orzo for about 7 minutes, then drain. Turn off heat and add to the zucchini mixture until combined. Add lots!! of grated Parmesan and some extra pepper if you like.

Barbara Kingsolver - or rather, her daughter Camille, who wrote the recipes in the book Animal Vegetable Miracle from where this recipe is taken - calls this dish 'disappearing zucchini orzo', because it really looks like the zucchini, well, disappears into the orzo.
The texture is really very pleasing, you don't feel you are overstuffing with pasta - and you aren't, because at least 50% is vegetables. The flavours all blend together very well. Will make again.

Conimex Beijing ad

Conimex Beijing by kattebelletje.

Nooooooo, you can't be serious!!!! I thought, wachting the newest tv-ad for the well-known brand of Conimex (Unilever), a huge producer of Asian convenience foods in the Netherlands. This brand has been around locally since the 1950s, when Conimex started to cater for the growing demand in ingredients for the cuisine of the former colony of Indonesia. Conimex has been selling Indonesian ground spices in small jars, spice mixtures (bumbus) and sweet soy sauces (kecap) for decades now, but have recently strengthened their share of the Dutch market by selling convenience packets of Indian, Malay, or otherwise Asian flavorings, like sauce mixes for stir-frying and new inventions for cooking, like 'wok oil'.

The newest Conimex ad features two men - probably famous Dutch sportsmen (although I don't who they are) roaming about Beijing for the Olympics. The main sports guy walks on Tian'anmen square, while the voice over says : "As a sportsman, eating well is really important. That's why I buy fresh produce at the local market."

We see him heading to this farmer's market, where there are red lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and red, green and yellow Dutch glasshouse peppers on display. Our sportsman is bargaining hard for one cauliflower (a true Dutch vegetable), pays 5 yuan for it, gets himself some spring onions, and hurries home to his Beijing appartment with his shopping bag.

When he passes a rickshaw puller enjoying a bowl of noodles, the sportman says: " They are, like us, crazy about Chinese food, but ... I'd rather cook it by myself! That's why I take as much as I can from Holland, including Conimex". He comes home, plonks his bags in the kitchen, greets the second (sports)man sitting on a couch reading the paper, then opens up the pantry, takes out a packet of ready-to-wok rice, a packet of sweet-and-sour sauce, and starts to chop up the red bell pepper on a chopping board.

He heats a wok, and in 5 seconds, he mixes the pepper and chicken (?) with the cooked rice (the cauliflower and spring onions have disappeared), puts in green peas, pours a sweet and sticky looking sauce over his fried rice, and takes two flat plates to the couch where he and his friend enjoy the view of the new 'bird's nest' stadium. He sighs happily and says: "Just like home, but don't forget: they use chopsticks here..."

I was really jumping up and down in front of my tv screen at this moment. Nooo nooo nonooooo !!! You stupid man! How can you take your own bloody rice from Holland and your sweet and sour sauce, which have nothing to do with Beijing, and cook this plainest of Chinese foods, FRIED RICE for God's sake!, by yourself, while on the streets of Beijing, everywhere, at every street corner, in every restaurant, for a price way cheaper than your own imported fake Dutch package stuff, you will eat more delicious food than the two of you will ever dream to have when you insist on 'cooking' in your appartment?

The commercial is, however, well made, and quite funny in its stupid way. But I don't think there is any hope for Dutch Chinese cooking. Want to have a look yourself ? The Conimex ad is on YouTube.

pickled cucumber

pickled cucumber ??? by kattebelletje.

These cucumber strips might look too plain and simple to blog about. But in this miniseries on Chinese starters, you really can't miss out on this one. It is actually the starter I order immediately with no second thoughts when see it on the menu - and in China that is almost always the case.

There are of course some varieties, not only in taste but the way the cucumber is cut. You have the banquet-style strips which you can pile several stories high, woodlog cabin-shape. Then you have the home-style cucumber slices or chunks, which shape is really up to you. And you have the cucumber peels which I had last time in China, challenging your chopstick skills by their curly nature, but very refreshing nevertheless. These are on the photo.

The cucumber is usually flavored with sugar and white vinegar, and some salt, sesame oil or ginger for extra flavour. In Sichuan they fry some dry chiles in hot oil and put in the cucumber chunks in the wok for only some seconds, enough to get flavors from the spiced oil.

For this recipe you need:
2 small cucumbers
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons white vinegar (I use Japanese mizkan brand)
salt / grated ginger / sesame oil
optional: dry hot chiles

Cut the cucumber. Don't peel, every version has peel for extra flavor and crunch. Style 1, restaurant style: take off both ends, cut cucumber into 3 or 4 chunks, cut them lengthwise, scoop out seeds, flatten them and cut into long, even strips.
Style 2: home-style. Slice in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds (spoon works fine), then cut into batons (half moon shape) or strips (but not as pretty as restaurant style.)
Style 3: skin-peels style. Cut the top off the cucumber, then hold it upright and slice off a 5cm wide piece of peel with flesh on. Cut all the way round as if peeling a long apple skin. Continue with next layer of peel and cucumber. They will curl up, this is half the fun!

Whatever style you use: add 2 teaspoons of salt, mix the cucumber, and let sit for about 20 minutes. Pour off drained juices and marinate the cucumber pieces in a mixture of sugar and vinegar, a little bit of grated ginger (half a teaspoon) and half a teaspoon of sesame oil. Mix well and put in fridge to cool.

When you would like the cucumbers to be more spicy: fry chilli pepper carefully in a couple of tablespoons of oil, then add the slices of cucumber to the wok, fry for 15 seconds, then put on a plate. Or just fry the spices and pour over the hot oil, then mix.

Enjoy this crunchy starter with other starters or just a glass of cold Qingdao or Yanjing beer.

1000-year old eggs with ginger

century eggs by kattebelletje.

This Chinese starter scores high on the scary-looking exotic foods list. Although your guests can tell these blackish things probably won't be monkey brains, they will not easily pick up their chopsticks to take a bite, until you tell them these are a must-try.

These duck eggs, with their black translucent outside and gooey greenish-grey from the inside, look definitely off. They have been packed in a mixture of mud, salt and lime with special ingredients, and left to cure for about 2 months. This makes the mixture permeate the shells so the eggs are cured on the inside. In Chinese they are called pidan, 'skin eggs', or songhua dan, here known with their poetic name 'century eggs' or '1000-year old eggs'.

These century eggs were originally sold out of giant Chinese ceramic jars, each packed in clay with straw and rice husks clinging to it and wrapped in a thin plastic bag. Because of a food scare they were not sold in Europe for many years, but have now found their way back into the stores, but in a different packaging. They now come from the UK in a normal looking egg-packet of six, and cost around 1 euro for each egg.

ingredients:
packet of 6 century eggs
Chinese black vinegar
fresh ginger
optional: red chiles and/or green spring onions

For a starter, shell 3 to 4 eggs carefully and wipe clean under running water. Slice them with a knife, each egg into 8ths, and arrange in a circle on a plate. The yolk might be runny and sticky when you cut the eggs, so - messy it will get. Pour over 2 to 3 tablespoons of black Chinese vinegar and sprinkle over at least 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh ginger. For extra decoration, you can add tiny slivers of spring onions or some preserved red chiles from the jar. Enjoy!

Note: when you have them the first time, they might smell really stinky; but believe me, with vinegar and ginger they really have a special addictive taste - you even might stock up on them as I do, so you can always have this side dish to a Chinese meal!

smashin' radishes

smashed radish salad by kattebelletje.

With this second post, I am on my first steps in getting together a series of Chinese cold starters for hot days. Making a Chinese meal is difficult enough with all the prep work you have to do. It can be tough: cutting and shredding ingredients for hours on end, not even able to finish one dish; so making a cold starter can be very satisfying. You do the assembly work, put it on a plate, plonk it on the table, and that's one dish less to worry about!

This starter I found at YouTube, where I found a real nice range of Chinese cooking videos by yeqiang, who is explaining enthousiastically how to make this radish salad, she sure made me want to try! She uses a large cleaver to smash radishes one by one for the full 5 minutes of the video, giggling happily all the time. This is how it goes: take 2 (to 3) small bunches of radishes and smash with the blade of a Chinese cleaver. Don't worry if they almost fall apart: they are supposed to be that way. A nice kitchen chore to get rid of any stress!

Put them in a large bowl and mix in 1 to 2 tablespoons of salt. Let sit for about 20 minutes, then throw away the water drawn from the radishes. Add 2 tablespoons of dark Chinese vinegar (or a mild white vinegar if you don't like the Chinese vinegar flavor so much), 2 tablespoons of sugar and a half a teaspoon of sesame oil. Mix to combine, put in a nice serving bowl and garnish with some beautiful radish leaves. The bitter flavour of the radish has disappeared, giving you a clean and crispy bite. Very nice. Thank you Yeqiang!

salad with tofu shreds

tofu strip salad by kattebelletje.

On my last trip to China I saw this salad everywhere on the menu: a cold salad with finely shredded strips of tofu, almost resembling noodles, seasoned with sesame oil, garlic and cilantro. This is the kind of thing you order first to have with cold beers on a warm summer night, and you practice your chopstick skills on it while waiting for more substantial dishes.

It is a perfect summer food: a small vegetarian starter, full of flavor. I made it the other day to have at home. Once you find your pressed tofu sheets in the Chinese supermarket, this dish is easy to prepare, it only involves cutting, no cooking. (Note to self: these tofu shreds might improve, texture-wise, by soaking for a short while in hot water).

Shred a package of dried tofu sheets into very fine noodle-like strips. You may have to peel the strips apart. Then cut half a clove of garlic into minute dice; mix it with 3 tablespoons of sesame oil, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 1 or more tablespoons of (homemade) chili oil to your liking. I think hotter is better!

Mix the sauce carefully with the tofu shreds and taste for seasonings - you might need some more oil, it shouldn't be dry. Adding more sesame oil might be too nutty, try adding vegetable oil. Add three tablespoons of chopped cilantro - or leave them whole, so it is strips all over - and sprinkle over some sesame seeds if you like.

Serve with ice cold beer on hot nights and wait for the next dishes to materialize on the table!

return my mojo !

two sauces: mojo rojo & mojo verde
Originally uploaded by kattebelletje.

A couple of years back I visited the island of La Palma, of the Spanish Canary Islands. It is the place which features as an island of doom in a Discovery Channel programme, because a large chunk of this island will supposedly break off somewhere in the future and splash into the sea, causing a giant tsunami to flood the whole East Coast of America.

However until it does (and nobody knows when this natural disaster will strike), you can enjoy the island's sunshine, their special potatoes, and their two kinds of mojo. Mojo is Spanish for sauce: they have a red and a green version, which is on every restaurant table. The combination with potatoes is great, especially if you serve a white fish or some chicken on the side. The mojos are really garlicky, giving a great kick!

When I went home I bought a jar of green sauce, which was in my fridge for ages. Not because it didn't taste good - it tasted too good, and I was afraid of losing that flavor if I finished it completely - I took a small spoonful every time.

To make these potatoes with sauces you will need: 1 kilo of small potatoes, white wine vinegar, nora peppers (chile de anchos will do too), garlic, olive oil, salt, paprika and a handful of chopped fresh coreander (cilantro).

Put the unpeeled potatoes in a wide shallow pan and fill with 2/3 of salted water, as salt as 'your tears'. This is 35 grams of salt to 1 litre. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 15-20 mins until nearly dry.

Meanwhile, put half a bulb of garlic in a kitchen blender. Whizz. Then add 200 ml of white wine vinegar to combine. Devide this mixture into half. One becomes the green mojo (mojo verde): add 100 ml of olive oil, half a tablespoon of cumin and a handful of chopped coriander.
The other half gets spiced up by adding the red pulp of 3 soaked nora peppers - in just-boiled water for half an hour, then scrape out the softened inside -, a dash of paprika and also 100 ml of olive oil. This is the mojo rojo.

When the potatoes have cooked for 15 minutes and they are nearly dry (pour off excess water if this is not so), sprinkle with more salt and roll in the pan until covered with salt. Then turn off the heat and cover with a tea towel. This will cause the salt to crystallize and the potato skins to wrinkle, so the potatoes look like they were dug out of a volcano; serve with the two mojos on the side.

Crispy chicken with Serrano ham

crispy chicken by kattebelletje.

Of course I was nervous about interviewing Gino D'Acampo, the young and charming Italian chef of Ready Steady Cook. I had a meetup with him for his visit to the Netherlands, last Friday, when he was here to promote his new book Fantastico. He was a little late because he got stuck in a traffic jam, but all went fine and I published by interview on Zestz. Then I went to the large Italian lifestyle-fair where Gino was supposed to do some real life cooking, in a castle nearby.


Very funny to see all things Italian concentrated in one place: Tuscan holiday village people, pizza oven sellers, olive oil stands, Boretti oven guys and even some laptop sellers, although I didn't get what they had to do with Italy. There was an impersonator of Luciano Pavarotti walking around with his white shawl and there were some Illy coffee baristas showing their skills. I was lucky to be taught by them how to do a perfect cappuccino, which is so much harder than you think. It looks easy as he explains, but when you stand in front of the large espresso machine you completely forget the right order of things. Grinding beans? Milk temperature? Weight of pressing down coffee?


Again I waited for Gino, who was supposed to do his dish at 1.30. He was stuck in another traffic jam, arriving just before 2 o'clock. Most of his waiting fans had left for other places, so he was hesitant to cook - plus a little shocked by the small scale of the cooking demo site - and decided to postpone until much later that day. I really wanted to see him cook, but wasn't willing to wait another three hours for a demo that perhaps wouldn't even happen. So I decided to go home and cook his planned dish of that day myself: Crispy Chicken Breasts Topped with Taleggio and Serrano Ham [Pollo impanato alla noci con serrano e taleggio].


[For 4] You will need: 2 (to 4) chicken breasts, some Serrano ham, breadcrumbs (panko is best), 100 grams of mixed nuts, 50 grams of flour, Taleggio cheese (I couldn't find it, so used Emmenthal instead), 800 grams cherry tomatoes, 8 anchovies and 1 red onion. You can always read the instructions on his site if you don't get my explanation, but I flattened the chicken breasts between sheets of cling film with a large wooden mallet and halved them; made up a sauce of chopped onion, anchovies and cherry tomatoes (lovely, lovely flavours!) which I let simmer in a pan for half an hour.


Meanwhile, I chopped the mixed nuts and mixed with flour and breadcrumbs (I ran out of panko and forgot to add flour). Then I dipped the chicken into the egg mixture, then in the nutty-crust-mixture and put on a plate. Finally I fried the chicken in hot oil for a total of 4 minutes, turning once; I was careful not to let the nuts burn. Then I put the chicken on a large heatproof plate and put it under the hot grill with cheese on top for another minute or so. Finally I served the chicken on top of a spoonful of tomato sauce, with some Serrano ham on top. Everyone really liked this dish and begged me to cook from Gino's cookbook again...but my tastebuds thought although the tomato sauce and the nuts by themselves were really good to eat, the combination somehow was a mismatch, although I can't say why; perhaps it was the sesame flavour in the replacement breadcrumbs I used?