Side by side experiments are a great way to find out if what you are doing when cooking actually makes a difference. For instance, is it worth making pesto by hand with pestle and mortar instead of in the blender … Continue reading Cooking Sous-Vide With(out) Sauce Experiment (Coda alla Vaccinara)
This celeriac soup is very simple, but tasty, healthy and nourishing. I had cooked it about 5 weeks ago and almost forgot to blog about it. Celeriac (celery root) is almost out of season now, but with the cold weather … Continue reading Celeriac Soup with Walnuts
Béarnaise is one of the classic sauces from French cuisine and it is great with steak. The traditional way of preparing it au bain marie requires quite a bit of skill, as the sauces curdles easily. It also requires you to make … Continue reading Easy Foolproof Béarnaise Sauce
My favorite way of blogging is to cook something, eat it, blog about it right afterwards, and then read your comments. That’s what I did today. From the kitchen to the blog in a couple of hours. Risottos always take a bit … Continue reading Risotto with Cream of Shrimp (Risotto con Crema di Gamberi)
Canard à l’Orange is a French classic that I hadn’t cooked in a while. It can be prepared either with a whole duck or with duck breast, as I did here. Duck breast is called magret de canard (magret because it is, relatively speaking, … Continue reading Magret de Canard à l’Orange (Duck Breast with Orange)
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of inspiration from three Italian food blogging ladies that I follow. Even though I like to experiment with different cuisines and techniques, Italian home cooking always stays closest to my heart. In this case … Continue reading Breaded Lamb Chops (Costolette di Agnello Impanate)
“Secreto” is a cut of iberico pork that is called the “butcher’s secret”. It is very flavorful and marbled, and fairly thin. So thin in fact, that it made me think of veal scaloppine. One of my favorite preparations of … Continue reading Secreto Iberico Sous-Vide ‘Saltimbocca’
Hazelnut and coffee are a great combination, and this torte has it all: crunchy hazelnuts, crispy hazelnut meringue, and a luscious coffee-flavored buttercream. For this cake I used the recipe of the famous retired Dutch pastry chef, Cees Holtkamp. I’ve posted … Continue reading Hazelnut Mocha Meringue Torte
We are having some wonderful weather here — I would sign up for weather like this in Summer — and so during my lunch break I walked to the market to pick up some fresh fish for dinner, to be … Continue reading White Fish Gratin (Pesce Bianco Gratinato al Forno)
Have you ever heard of risotto alla bolognese? I had not. Or at least I couldn’t remember, because I found it in a cookbook by Biba Caggiano that I’d had for years. It’s not a traditional combination, but it it … Continue reading Risotto alla Bolognese
When I had made my first batch of homemade chipotles in adobo, I wanted to try them in a recipe. As a variation on chicken with mushrooms, chipotles, and cream, I prepared pork shoulder cooked sous-vide with chipotles, mushrooms, and … Continue reading Pork Shoulder Sous-Vide with Chipotles and Mushrooms
My favorite kind of chiles are chipotles because of their smokiness. Chipotles in adobo sauce, a sauce made from tomatoes and ancho chiles, are a great condiment. I love them for instance with chicken, mushrooms and cream. Chipotles in adobo … Continue reading Homemade Chipotles in Adobo Sauce
The more muscles work during the life of an animal, the more flavor the meat will have and the tougher the meat will be. The muscles in the cheeks are used for chewing food, and so it’s not hard to … Continue reading Wild Boar Cheeks Sous-Vide (Ganacini di Cinghiale)
To celebrate the coming of Spring I wanted to create a dish with spring vegetables, and came up with these wonderful ravioli filled with baby asparagus, snow peas, peas, baby carrots, ricotta, parmigiano, and basil. Served with a fresh tomato … Continue reading Ravioli Primavera
Seaweed is healthy and delicious, and it is pretty simple to make your own wakame seaweed salad. With a soy, sesame and chili dressing the crunchy seaweed is a delicious appetizer or snack. Wakame salad is usually made from reconstituted … Continue reading Wakame Seaweed Salad
Happy Easter everyone! With Easter we celebrate Spring by eating eggs and lamb. Recently I posted a recipe for veal scaloppine with balsamic, and blogging buddy Kathryn aka Anotherfoodieblogger commented that it could also be made with lamb. I really liked … Continue reading Lamb Scaloppine with Balsamic and Roasted Eggplant
Pastiera is a traditional Easter cake from Naples, filled with boiled wheat, ricotta, and candied citrus. The wheat provides an interesting texture and also makes the cake quite filling. The candied citron, candied orange, lemon zest, orange blossom water, and … Continue reading Pastiera Napoletana
Cooking a delicious weekday meal can be as quick as it takes to cook the pasta. Thanks to my blogging friend Simona and her wonderful blog Grembiule da cucina, here’s another one. The combination of tomatoes and sundried tomatoes works … Continue reading Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes and Olives (Orecchiette con Pomodori Secchi e Olive)
Research has shown that eating nuts on a regular basis is healthy. The best reason for baking these cookies however is that they are delicious! They are gluten free and dairy free, if that matters to you. Walnuts and hazelnuts … Continue reading Walnut-Hazelnut Cookies
After figuring out the best time and temperature to cook rabbit sous-vide, I wanted to put my new-found knowledge in practice to make a proper sous-vide rabbit dish. That’s when I remembered reading about cajun rabbit on REMCooks.com. As Richard’s … Continue reading Cajun Rabbit Sous-Vide
Rabbit meat is very lean and easily becomes dry and/or tough. With sous-vide this can be fixed: the meat will be tender and succulent. So far I’ve been cooking rabbit sous-vide for 3 to 4 hours at 60ºC/140ºF. Sometimes it … Continue reading Rabbit Sous-Vide Time and Temperature
Do you like to spend less time cooking? How about less than 10 minutes?! Veal scaloppine are delicious, and cook very quickly. There are many variations, like with marsala, or piccata, or saltimbocca. In this case the sauce is made … Continue reading Scaloppine all’Aceto Balsamico (Veal Scaloppine with Balsamic)
There is a drawback of being a good cook — some friends tend to be intimidated by your prowess in the kitchen and don’t dare to invite you back over for dinner. And so I appreciate it a lot when someone does … Continue reading Butternut-Parsnip Soup with Shrimp
Happy St. Patrick’s day! It’s an Irish-American tradition to eat corned beef with cabbage on St. Patrick’s day. I usually don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day (most people in the Netherlands haven’t even heard of it), but when I came across … Continue reading Corned Beef for St. Patrick’s Day
This decadent appetizer was inspired by the signature appetizer of Martín Berasategui, three Michelin star chef from San Sebastian (Spain), “Mille-feuille of smoked eel, foie-gras, spring onions and green apple”. The combination of foie gras with smoked eel and green … Continue reading Layered Foie Gras, Smoked Eel, and Green Apple
Fennel develops a great flavor when it is braised slowly until it lightly caramelizes and becomes mushy, and it pairs well with fish. In this case I chose whiting, and used the heads and bones of the fish to make … Continue reading Risotto with Braised Fennel and Whiting
This recipe is an embellishment on the easy flourless chocolate cake I posted about recently. I decorated the cake with whipped cream and amarena cherries, and used the syrup of the amarena cherries for the cake batter instead of hot … Continue reading Flourless Chocolate Tartlets with Amarena Cherries
Smoked eel and celeriac go very well together, and I’ve already posted about risotto and pasta with this combination. Even more refined are these ravioli stuffed with a creamy filling of celeriac and smoked eel, and served with a creamy … Continue reading Smoked Eel and Celeriac Ravioli (Ravioli di Anguilla Affumicata e Sedano Rapa)
Sea scallops are one of my favorite foods. This quick and easy preparation makes them shine: they are pan-fried and then finished with a sauce of white wine, lemon, capers, and anchovies. The sauce is pretty hefty, but the scallops … Continue reading Scallops with Capers, Anchovies, Lemon, and Wine (Cape Sante in Padella)
This post was inspired by two of my blogging friends. The idea to use riso venere, black rice, came from ChgoJohn. Black risotto can be made in two ways: by using squid ink to make ordinary risotto black, or by using … Continue reading Black Risotto with Crab and Artichoke (Riso Venere con Granchio e Carciofi)
