Weekend Cooking: Soy Sauce Eggs

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

When Tes posted her recipe for Soy Sauce Eggs last week, I was immediately interested in preparing them myself. I waited a few days, though, to fit them into the weekly menu.

The full recipe you can read on Tes’ blog.

You can use these eggs as a replacement for meat and eat them with rice and vegetables. There was enough liquid to serve as a sauce for the rice.

What I liked about the recipe, besides cooking with eggs, was that it uses Chines five spices powder. I had bought some a while ago, for a recipe that I ended up not making, so this was my chance to use it. I didn’t realise how delicious it would smell! It’s sweet and has a really pleasant smell. Nothing like other spices.

The recipe uses hard-boiled eggs, ginger, garlic, the five spices powder, soy sauce, sugar, and chicken stock (I used vegetable stock).

Just let it simmer all for a while and you get a delicious egg/sauce combination. We ate this with pandan rice (a slightly sticky rice) and green beans.

We really enjoyed this and, unlike some other recipes we tried out recently, this one is “to be repeated”, according to my sons.

What new recipe did you try recently? Was it a great success?

Hello Japan! February: Japanese Cooking

Hello Japan! is a monthly mini-challenge focusing on Japanese literature and culture. It is organized by Tanabata of In Spring it is the Dawn.  Each month there will be a new task which relates to some aspect of life in Japan. This month’s task is to make something Japanese.

Last month, I’d bought some sushi, which I had never eaten before. So this month I was keen to try a different Japanese meal. But although I did eat a “Japanese meal” I still failed miserably at the task.

I decided to get a Japanese cook book from the library. They had one. Yes, one. They had a few others in the catalogue that they could get for me from other branches but hey, one book is enough. The book was Wagamama Cookbook by Hugo Arnold.

It’s a cook book with recipes from the Wagamama restaurants, a Japanese fast-food style restaurant that can be found in several bigger cities around the world.

This sounded great. The book has a good selection of all kinds of Japanese foods. At first sight. Totally missing are classics like sushi and tempura. The book has lots of stir-fry recipes and marinated meat recipes.

While I enjoy stir-fries, I don’t consider them typically Japanese. Maybe because of the addition of certain ingredients it would taste different from the stir-fries I normally make (with a chinese-style sauce) but I didn’t find this interesting enough. As far as the many meat recipes in the book are concerned: I don’t eat meat.

I do eat tofu, and there were a few recipes I could have made. But: every recipe asked for some ingredients that I could not find at my supermarket or the more exotically stocked organic supermarket. For instance, I needed shichimi (7-herbs) for one recipe and since this seemed to be the distinctive Japanese ingredient of the dish, Tahu Katsu (fried tofu in breadcrumbs and herbs), I didn’t feel I could substitute that with something else.

Another recipe that looked interesting was Yasai Chilli Men (stir fried vegetables with tofu and soba noodles – yes, I was getting desperate so stir fry was an option again) which at first sight looked like something I would be able to make until I read the final ingredient: chilli sauce. Not just any chilli sauce, but the one from page 27 with 13 different ingredients. Right!

Desperate for a “recipe” I used a packet of yakitori sauce I already had, and fried some white rice from the day before with some Quorn pieces and some frozen peas, for lunch. How about that for my improvised Japanese meal? No, you’re right, it’s pretty bad going.

Anyway, the yakitori sauce was new for me too, and it seemed to taste mainly of soy sauce with something sweet. According to the Wagamama cook book, which has a recipe for yakitori sauce, it contains sake, soy sauce, mirin (oh, I love that, see my sushi encounter) and some sugar.

My plans to make something typically Japanese failed but I can recommend the Wagamama book to people who are interested in Japanese food, can get their hands on the ingredients and are willing to look beyond the standard sushi and tempura.

Weekend Cooking

Dutch recipe: Hutspot

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

 

Hutspot is a real winter recipe. Having said that, in my family we eat it all year round, because we love it so much and because it’s so easy to prepare.

Huts means mix and pot means pot. So, it’s a mixed pot of foods. You might call it hotchpotch maybe?  The recipe we make is vegetarian, but you can easily make it meaty by including real sausages rather than the vegetarian sausages we use.

The traditional Dutch recipe is just a mixture of potato, carrots, and onion mashed together with sausages and gravy. I’ve made this into a vegetarian recipe by adding baked beans (i.e., white beans in tomato sauce), so it doesn’t get too dry without the gravy.

This recipe is for beginning cooks but experienced cooks may also like it for being a simple but nutricious recipe that can be made for a large number of people if needed.

 

Hutspot with sausages

Hutspot: What you need (for 4 big eaters)

Ingredients

One kilo (2 lbs) of carrots

One kilo (2 lbs) of potatoes

2 large onions (if used)

1 large tin of baked beans (840 grams, 1.5 lbs or 2 smaller tins)

Sausages, as many as you’d like for 4 people

Hutspot: How to prepare

1. Cut the carrots to about 1.5 cm (0.5 inch) pieces – as long as they’re roughly equally large, the size doesn’t matter. You just want them all to be ready cooked at the same time.

2. Similarly, cut the potatoes into equal pieces: cut in fours if they’re standard sized and in sixes if they’re bigger.

3. Start cooking the carrots in a large pan. When you can prick them with a fork (not too easily) add the potatoes and bring back to the boil.

4. Heat the baked beans in a separate pan and fry the sausages.

5. When the potatoes are ready, drain the water and use a masher to roughly mash the potatoes and the carrots.

6. Add the baked beans and stir these in (don’t mash).

7. Put out on four plates and add the sausages.

Enjoy!

Dutch recipe: Stewed Pears

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Stewed pears are something many Dutch people like to eat with their main meal as a side dish or for desert. We never stew apples (at least not as a nation) but stewed pears are popular, and you can also buy them ready-made in the supermarket – in the fruit section, in a plastic container with some of the juice.

Stewed pears are sweet and soft and especially nice with spicy food.  We make sure they’re cooled down before we eat it; we might even refrigerate them for a while, if there’s time!

The pears we use are pears that are especially sold to make stewed pears: Giesser Wildeman pears. They are quite small, hard, and ugly looking. When cooked, they become soft and delicious.

Stewed Pears: What you need

1 kilogram (2 pounds or lbs) of hard pears, such as Giesser Wildeman

1 stick of cinnamon or a tablespoon of cinnamon powder

water

2 sachets of vanilla sugar, 8 grams (0.3 oz) each (this is just sugar with vanilla flavor, really)

2 tablespoons of honey (optional)

3-4 cloves

Stewed Pears: How to prepare

1. Peel the pears. You can either cut them in fours, take out the core OR leave them whole.

2. Put in a pan. If the pears are whole, stand them up in a pan that is just big enough (that way, you need less water, and the liquid will become more syrup-y).

3. Add water so the pears are just covered. Add cinnamon and cloves. Bring to the boil.

4. Add sugar and honey.

5. Put on a low heat for at least 1.5 to 2 hours, until the liquid becomes syrup-y. (I never manage to get a syrup, but maybe you will!) Stir every now and then.

Above the result after one hour of cooking. After 2 hours, the pears will be even more red-brown in colour:

6. Take the cloves and cinnamon stick out of the pan and let the pears cool down. Keep them in the refrigerator until use, and don’t forget to use the delicious syrup, too!

Potato Quiche

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Potato Quiche with Broccoli

From the first time we made this, it was a favorite with the children. It’s easy to make and delicious!

The recipe I’ve got comes from a supermarket magazine (AH Allerhande 12, 2009). We make it with vegetarian bacon strands rather than real bacon, so substitute if you prefer real.

What you need:

• 5 big-ish potatoes, that stay firm when cooked
• 6 slices of puff pastry from the freezer. Ours are about 15 x 15 cm or 6 x 6 inches. Just use enough puff pastry to line a 24 cm / 10 inch oven dish.
• 125 gram / 4.5 ounces of bacon or vegetarian bacon
• 3 eggs
• 125 milliliters / 0.5 cup of double cream (dutch: slagroom)
• 125 gram / 4.5 ounces of chives (optional, dried or fresh)
• 100 grams / 3.5 ounces of mature cheese

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 220 C / 430 F.
2. Peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Cook them for about 5 minutes in salted water. Drain and let cool down.
3. Cover the quiche dish with the puff pastry slices. Cover the pastry with aluminum foil and put dried beans, lentils or baking beads on top. Put this in the centre of the oven for 8 minutes.
   
   

   Preparing oven dish

4. Meanwhile fry the (vegetarian) bacon for 5 minutes until crisp.
5. Take the quiche dish out of the oven, remove the beans and foil, and bake for another 4 minutes. Then take out of the oven again and distribute the potato slices over the dish.
6. In a bowl, mix the eggs, cream and chives. Pour half of the mix over the potato slices, then add the bacon followed by the rest of the egg and cream mix.
7. Add the grated cheese and bake in the centre of the oven for about 20 minutes.

The result looks like this:

Quiche

You can prepare the quiche one day in advance. Just warm up the finished product, covered with aluminum foil for 20 minutes at 200 C / 400F.

Enjoy!

Weekend Cooking – Pizza Time!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

This week, NumerOneSon, NumberTwoSon and me made pizza. For some people that may be something they regularly do, for others it may be something they regularly order out, but we normally don’t either – we eat deep-frozen pizzas from the supermarket (heated up!).

But, as we found, making your own pizza is fun, healthy, quite quick really and much nicer than shop-bought pizzas! NumberOneSon (13) prepared the dough. It came from a packet (add water then mix), but he managed to do it on his own, including finding the English-to-Dutch plug (from my English hairdryer) to use on the English hand mixer.

He divided the dough perfectly over the baking tray and NumberTwoSon (11) then spread tomato puree over it with the back of a spoon. While the dough was being prepared, NumberTwoSon had been busy slicing vegetables and vegetarian sausages. These were the ingredients for the topping:

Broccoli, sliced vegetarian sausages, pineapple chunks, onion, pepper and mozarella cheese (sliced).

We divided the pizza in four quarters, as we all like something else: the boys don’t like the onion, while my husband doesn’t like the pineapple (you’ll notice the bottom left-hand quarter on the picture below doesn’t contain any pineapple). I like it all .

It only needed 25 minutes in the oven, so that was quick work for a lovely, healthy pizza! Here’s a close-up of the result (aw, that looks odd!). So, the moral is: make your own pizza every now and then. It doesn’t take that much time and it’s fun to do. Even better if you can get your kids (if you have any) to join in!

Let me know what other (vegetarian) toppings you suggest for our next pizza!

Weekend Cooking: Chiang Mai

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

This week, I cooked a recipe from Weekend Cooking from last week: Margot from Joyfully Retired posted a recipe for Chiang Mai on her blog. I love Thai food and don’t need much of an excuse to try it out, so I did.

Chiang Mai

NumberOneSon and I had this for dinner and we enjoyed it a lot. It tasted quite authentic Thai-ish, and was just the right amount of spicy.

Variations

I didn’t have sweet potatoes (and neither did the supermarket I went to), so I used “standard potatoes”. I think this was just fine. Maybe having sweet potatoes would have added something to the dish, but leaving them out was fine too.

Noodles

I don’t eat meat, so the chicken was replaced by vegetarian chunks (made of soy). The noodles I used were different from normal. I usually have dried noodles that are a little curled in a packet. They only need a few minutes of hot water (no cooking). The noodles I used this time were much thicker and came as straight sticks in a packet. They needed 15 minutes of cooking, and were very starchy. They fitted this dish perfectly.

Thanks for sharing the recipe, Margot!