Thai Style Mussels

It is summer, which means that there are new mussels again! Zeeland, a province in the southwest of the Netherlands provides one of the most tasteful mussels of the world. Strangely, most of these mussels are exported, probably to countries that have a higher standard of foodculture than we have here.

There are quite a lot of foodies in the Netherlands, but unfortunately the average Dutch person cares more about the price of the food than the quality...

When we go to our southern neighbours (Belgium), we suddenly find food with a much higher quality, even in the supermarkets. I love living in the Netherlands, but I really find this a disadvantage!

Although, when you look a little further than your local supermarket, you can find great food here as well, you just have to look a little harder.

But luckily we could get our hands on some of the Zeeuwse mussels, and they do taste great!
I usually simply cook them in white wine with finely cut vegetables and herbs. That way the taste of the mussel itself is the star of the show and I love it this way. However this week I wanted to experiment with our beautiful mussels and made up an Asian version.

I am not sure if I will ever be able to make the simple mussels again and get a smile from my husband again. He absolutely loved these experimental Thai mussels, and if he could give a rate above the 5 out of 5 I gave these mussels, he would absolutely take that advantage.

Thai Style Mussels

Ingredients 4p:
2-3kg of Zeeuwse mussels
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
3 small red chili peppers, fresh and/or dried (chiliflakes)
1/2 of a lemon, juice and zest.
2cm of ginger
1 spoon of oil
200ml of coconut milk
1 hand full of cilantroleaves (and stems)

Throw away all mussels with broken shells. Put the rest of them in cold water. (I usually put them in a blocked sink full of water). Leave them for a while.

Finely chop the onion, 1 clove of garlic and the peppers. Cut the other cloves of garlic in half, and make some chunks of the gingerblock. Lightly fry the onions in a little oil in a highwalled pan until they are translucent. Add the garlic, chili peppers, lemonzest and ginger for a few minutes. Pour the coconut milk in the pan, add the lemonjuice and the cilantro and heat it up.

Throw away all mussels that haven't closed in the cold water. When in doubt you can give them a little knock on the shell. If they close, they are fine, if not: throw them away. Cook the mussels in different batches in the coconut mixture. Throw away the ones that haven't opened up and serve steaming hot!

Score: 5 out of 5, or more if it were up to my husband...
Tip: Serve with some nice bread for dipping the heavenly sauce, or make it even more oriental by serving noodles. Also serve it with a fresh salad, I served it with a delicious Vietnamese salad I plan on telling you about later this week.
Time: 15 minutes
Amount of time vs waiting: 50/50 when you include stirring once in a while in the waiting period.
Degree of difficulty: Very easy. However, you will have to pay attention to selecting the good mussels, even if you buy the best quality mussels. When in doubt, throw them out!
Ideal for: Romantic dinner, dinner party, summer/autumn meal.

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Grilled Zucchini with Fresh Herbs

Italy is my favourite country in the world. It is beautiful, diverse, has a nice climate but most of all the food is great! With only a handfull of ingredients Italians are able to make simple meals that often are beyond delicious.

I absolutely adore antipasti, especially the grilled vegetables. The grilled flavour combines so well with the salty slightly acidic flavours of the dressed vegetables. Although I think that putting herbs like mint and cilantro on these antipasti will be seen as an incredible sin in Italy, I definitely think that they add a lovely freshness to this salad. So, if not forgiven by the Italians, I am totally forgiving myself for this delicious sin!


Making large portions of these, asks quite some time grilling. Your guests however, will be pleasantly surprised and impressed with this work!

Ingredients:
2 zucchini's
3 spoons of olive oil
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon of lemonjuice
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
1 hand of mintleaves
1 hand of cilantroleaves
Salt & pepper

Make long slices of the zuchini about 3-5mm thick. Cover in salt for 10 minutes, wash, let dry on some kitchenpaper. Meanwhile cut and squeeze half of the garlic clove with a little salt. Make a dressing with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the lemonjuice, vinegar an garlic.
Brush some olive oil on the zucchini and fry them on both sides in portions on a very hot grill pan or BBQ. Take them out of the pan when they are goldenbrown and rub them with the other half of the garlic clove while they are still hot.
Pour the dressing over the grilled Zucchini, add the fresh herbs and sprinkle with a little extra oil.

Combine it with grilled eggplant for an extra festive salad!

Score: 4 out of 5
Tip: Really impressive salad for a dinner party or a BBQ party. Also very nice with Eggplant. For a spicy touch you could add some chiliflakes to the dressing.
Time: Depending on how much you are making, about 30 minutes for 2 zucchini's.
Amount of work vs waiting: High, a little waiting time which you can partly fill with making the dressing.
Degree of difficulty: Moderate
Ideal for: starter, side dish/ salad, BBQ, dinner party.

Quiche

Making quiches always brings back good memories to me. When we were dating I often planned a biking or walking picnic trip into nature. Usually I would bake a savoury quiche, make a small salad, pack a bottle of good wine and we were of for the day. Enjoying the nice weather, beautiful nature, a nice meal and of course each other.

With small children and fully booked agenda's this belongs to the past, and only the sweet memories stay with us. But nothing to be sad about, there is room to make plenty more sweet memories that do or do not involve quiches! Having a family picnic isn't as lazy, and we usually go to a park nowadays where we meet up with friends instead of making trips into the woods, but they are just as memorable as the old days. 

Talking with friends while watching the children all play together, drinking a good glass of wine and enjoying the same old quiche... Life evolves, but with some sun on your face, good company, a nice glass of wine and good food, it still treats us very well!

Ingredients for 1 quiche:

Basics:

1/2 package of puff pastry. (You can make it yourself, but I like the one we have in the freezer here, and it is so much easier...)
A spoon of butter

250g creme fraiche, mascarpone, double cream or something comparable
1 or 2 eggs
200g grated cheese
garlic
Salt (a little) & pepper

Other ingredients:
Basically you can variate all you want with the other ingredients inside. See some suggestions below.

Heat the oven at 210 degrees Celsius. (410 degrees Fahrenheit)
Defrost the puff pastry. Whisk the eggs and put most of it through the creme fraiche (or whatever alternative you use) in a large bowl, save some whisked egg for later. Finely slice or press the garlic and add to the mixture, add a little salt, some pepper and the cheese.

Spread the butter on the baking mould. Cover the mould with the pastry, letting it hang slightly over the edges.
Put in the other ingredients of your quiche and cover with your cheesy/creamy mixture. Fold the edges in. I sometimes (as in the picture above) like to make a roof of puff pastry, adding a bit more pastry to close up the pie. But you can also choose to bake it without a roof. Spread the little bit of whisked egg over the pastry roof or edges and put in the heated oven for about 40-45 minutes. Let it cool for a picnic or serve hot for a simple family style dinner.

A few of my favourite quiches:

My Basic quiche, super simple but preferred by my husband:
Bacon, leek and mushrooms (I bake the mushrooms with salt &pepper before I put it in, but put the leek and bacon in raw, they cook inside the quiche)
You can keep it in the fridge overnight and eat again the following day. It is also nice when eaten cold, and is also nice without the mushrooms.

Sweet onion & goatcheese quiche
Shallots, goatcheese, honey, thyme. Gently bake the shallots for 15-20 minutes. Add the thyme to the cheesemixture. Devide the shallots and half of the goatcheese over the pastry, add the cheesmixture put the rest of the goatcheese on top and sprinkle some honey over it.
Serve hot or cold, you can keep it overnight in the fridge.

Chicken- Tauge quiche
Chicken, mushrooms, tauge, more garlic. Cut the chicken into pieces and shortly bake them with some salt and pepper. Bake the mushroom with salt and pepper in another pan, add the finely sliced garlic for another minute and put all of it together with the chicken and tauge on the pastry. Add the cheese mixture, put a pastryroof on this one and serve it immediately when it comes out of the oven. The tauge gives a nice fresh bite to this quiche, but when you leave it to cool down and or reheat it, I don't like it any more. So no picnicfood...

I can think of a thousand other nice quiches to make, ingredients that you can add to the quiches above, but I suggest you start experimenting for yourself!

Score: 4 out of 5
Tip: nice for picknick's. Quiches are also very good partyfood, especially a lot of small (different) ones in bright cupcake forms. They are easy to make and everybody just loves them.

Time: 1 hour (15-20 minutes work, 40-45minutes oven-time)
Amount of work vs waiting: low
Degree of difficulty: easy-moderate
Ideal for: Picnic, simple family dinner, party

PS, curious what I put in this one? It was my husbands favourite with bacon, leek and mushroom, but I also added a few baked onions.

Spicy Champagne Shrimp & Spaghetti

A Celebration!

This week for the first time I made a meal inspired by a recipe from a blog. Through Pinterest I started to look around at other foodblogs and I found Rasa Malaysia! I am really excited about that. Although I'm new at blogging and reading blogs, I am almost a pro in buying cookbooks and cooking magazines and Bee from Rasa Malaysia is amazing... She has so many recipes that look and sound so delicious that I inmediately want to start cooking.

I love asian food, but I don't often cook it. I will definetly try to make some of her asian food one day, but with a husband training for the marathon there was a need for a pastadish tonight. And I found this wonderfull fusion recipe which of course I altered a bit to my liking and to our spirit! Afterall today was a milestone in his running 'career', he ran half a marathon today! And believe it or not, when he arrived home I couldn't even tell. He looked like I look when I have to hurry home from doing groceries, half a kilometer away...

One of the things I love to do in life is to celebrate small victories, so this victory of my husband needed celebration. Champagne had already been chilling in the fridge, and this was the perfect moment for a festive pastadish. Inspired by Bee's Spicy Shrimp Pasta recipe I made this heavenly champagne dinner for two, and I don't think my husband will be running too far tomorrow...

Spicy Shrimp Spaghetti & Champagne
A celebrative dish
Inspired by:
Rasa Malaysia's Spicy Shrimp Pasta
Author: Bee Yinn Low

Ingredients for 2p:
150g spaghetti
Splash of olive oil
2 spoons of butter
3 cloves of garlic
1 tomato
200g of peeled shrimps
1 lime
1 glass of champagne (or cava)
1 teaspoon of chili flakes, plus a little more for the finishing touch.
A bunch of flat parsley
A bunch of cilantro leaves
Salt
Fresly grounded pepper
Some grano padano (or parmesan)

Boil your spaghetti in salted water, save some water for the sauce. Finely chop the garlic. Chop the tomato in small pieces.
At the end of the cooking time start making the sauce by putting oil and butter in a wok and add the garlic. Be carefull not to let it brown as it will then turn bitter. After a minute add the shrimps and fry for 1-2 minutes.
Cut the lime in half, use half for the sauce and slice the other half in parts for decoration.

Add the champagne, chiliflakes and tomatoes to the wok. Let it cook for another minute. Add the juice of half a lime, spaghetti and a little bit of the boiling water as well as the fresh herbs. Season with salt & pepper to your own liking. Plate up and make it look pretty by putting some grano padano flakes, shrimp, fresh herbs and chiliflakes on top.

Score: 5 out of 5
Tip: If you are not in a festive mood, don't want to open up a bottle of champagne, or you want to use this recipe on an ordinary day: a glass of white wine makes for a very nice dish as well.
Time: 20 minutes (if you buy already peeled shrimps)
Amount of work vs waiting: 3/4 work, 1/4 waitingtime
Degree of difficulty: easy
Ideal for: a celebration, pastadish, romantic dinner

Spicy Zucchini Soup

It's summertime, so I love to eat cold soups as a starter! Making a tasty soup for a dinnerparty is a great way to have a succesfull evening while still having time to chat with your guests. It is easily made and can be prepared in advance. The only thing you have to do is serve them!

The soup I made wasn't for vegetarians, because I used homemade chickenstock, but of course you could add some vegetable stock instead. Since making this zucchini soup is sooooo easy when you already have a stock prepared (or if you use a stock cube) I will also add my tips for making chicken stock...

Whenever we eat chicken, I choose either a whole chicken or chicken legs. For example, we make our Green Chicken, or any other chicken recipe. We have our family meal, and when cleaning up after dinner, I collect all the chickenbones and rests of the vegetables which have not been touched. Instead of throwing things away, I put it in a pan, add fresh water, and usually some carrots, celery, onions, a few black peppercorns, parsely or whatever useful ingredients I find in my fridge or garden. Leave it on the stove for about an hour, cool it down and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next (or another following day) I put it on the stove for a couple of hours more. After which I sieve it, season it, cool it again and use it as a base for various soups. The easiest is chickensoup, for which I use the rests of the meat on the bones. Pulling the meat of the chickenbones is a great meditative activity...  Then add some vegetables and vermicelli and you have a delicious and wholesome chicken soup. Especially recommended for when you have flu patients in your house, they'll inmediately feel better after this homemade soup.

To make your stock even more delicious, you could roast the bones and vegetables before you put them into the water. It is also possible to add a variety of herbs, or other flavours. I sometimes use thyme, garlic or ginger, but usually I prefer the more plain version.

Back to the Spicy Zucchini Soup, super easy to make, a very good start for a dinnerparty or your family dinner. For the kids, you can just skipp the sriracha if they are not a fan of spicy food (yet). You can make it in advance and have it at the dinnertable within a minute. Perfect for summer! For our family dinner I added an icecube with an oreganoflower, just to make it look nice and because it was available in our garden. (The oreganoflowers, not the icecubes..). Flavourwise it would have been better (even though we finished our soup long before the oreganoflavour reached the glass) to have a mintflower icecube. But, hey, it looks nice!

Spicy Zucchini Soup
Author: me

Ingredients for a small pan of soup:
2 onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 small (or 1 large) zucchinis
A splash of olive oil
1/2 liter of chickenstock (or any other stock)
Salt & pepper
Sriracha
For garnish: a (edible) flower in an icecube

Chop the onions, garlic and zucchini. Gently fry the onion, after 2-3minutes add the garlic and zucchini. Fry for another few minutes, add the stock and blend with an immersionblender. Put the pan in the sink filled with a layer of icecoldwater and icecubes just below the level of soup in the pan. If neccessary, change the surrounding cooling water once or twice. When cooled down, season to taste, prefill your serving glasses and put in the fridge.
Prior to serving, add an icecube and a few drops of sriracha.

Score: 3 out of 5, but for simplicity and advance preparation 5 out of 5.
Tip: without sriracha also perfect for small children. Check out the text above for tips on making the chickenstock.
Time: 45 minutes, of which 10 minutes preparing, the rest is cooling.
Amount of work vs waiting: low
Degree of difficulty: easy
Ideal for: summerdinner, simple family dinner, dinnerparty

Vegetarian Spinach 'Meatballs' for Adults

The kids really enjoyed the spinach 'meatballs'  I made last week. After a few bbq's and picknicks at which they chose to eat the meats and pasta's while carefully getting rid of all the vegetables, they could use some veggies again. Since it was a big hit with the kids last week I decided to make the spinach balls again today. So the youngest one had a feast and the oldest bravely ate one ball to be as strong as Mega-Toby (a superhero from the Belgium children's production Mega Mindy).

Although I liked them too, I wanted to give them a little bit of a spicy twist! So while the children had the original ones, I made a spicy version for us. Without nutmeg, but with homemade chiliflakes (dried chilipeppers from our garden), fresh cilantro (from the supermarket, because the one in our garden had a heat stroke which it didn't survive), and some lemonzest. Which made it a little less heavy, more fresh but also nice and spicy. Next time, I think I'll try to substitute the parmezan for feta or another lighter cheese, ideas are welcome!

Vegetarian Spinach 'Meatballs' for Adults
Inspired by:
Spinazieballetjes
Eerlijk Italiaans, pg 24
Author: Antonio Carluccio

Ingredients for 4p:
500g fresh spinach
2 eggs
chiliflakes
fresh cilantro (leaves and stalk)
zest of 1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
5-6 slices of bread without the crust (this time I used whole-wheat)
50g of grated parmezan (feta, another lighter cheese?)
50ml of olive oil
salt & pepper

Wash the spinach, boil it in lightly salted water for 1-2 minutes, drain and cool it. Squeeze the spinach untill you cannot get anymore fluid out of it.
Finely cut the leaves and put it in a big bowl. Loosely beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add to the spinach afterwards. Finely cut the garlic add a tiny bit of salt and rub the garlic into a paste. Finely chop the cilantro. Pull the bread into fine pieces. Add all of this and the parmezan, lemonzest, some salt & pepper. Mix and make balls from the mixture. (NB, if it is too wet you can add the extra bread)
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the balls and gently fry them golden brown in 4-5 minutes each side. Take out and leave to rest on kitchen paper. Serve them hot or cold. Serve as an appetizer or combine with a pastadish, a ricedish or any other dish.

Score: 3 out of 5
Tip: Easy to make as a spicy variation while you make the original
Spinach 'Meatballs' for the children. Try it with other cheeses to perfect these balls, and please let me know!
Time: 20-30 minutes
Amount of work vs waiting: High
Degree of difficulty: Medium
Ideal for: Spicy variant of kid's favorite, appetizer, vegetarian dinner

Tomatoes and Pomegranate Salad

Let's knock on wood before and after I say this... This year's summer is wonderful in the Netherlands! We've had one rainy week, but most of the time it is a very lovely Dutch summer. Not too hot, nice and sunny and around 23-25c during the day, cooler at night. It is such a delight! Lot's of days for a BBQ...
I like to serve some fresh salads with a BBQ, especially when there is only meat on the BBQ.

So when my husband had a group of his friends over, and an only meat BBQ it would be, I served this tomato salad, which we all found to be delicious! It took me ages to make for such a big group, but it was well worth it!
It has a delicate flavour combination with all of the different tomatoes, the pomegranate and the oregano.
You'll have an almost meditative work cut out for you when you're starting this job, chopping and choppping and chopping more and more tomatoes... Carefull with getting the seeds of the pomegranate out, I made somewhat of a mess by splashing some of it's juices over my recipepage.

But hey, getting cookbooks dirty means they are being used, so all the better! Usually I also write myself notes on the pages I have cooked from. It was something my grandmother did as well, and it is a very nice surprise to find one of her old notes when I cook from the book I inherited from her. So, I started to do the same!

Tomatoes and Pomegranate Salad
Slightly addapted from:
Tomaten-granaatappelsalade
Plenty More, pg 15
Author: Ottolenghi

Ingredients 6-10p, as a side dish:
500g snack/cherrytomatoes red
500g multicolloured snack/cherrytomatoes
3 truss tomatoes
3 roma tomatoes (but choose any mix of good tomatoes you can find)
1 red paprika
1 red onion
1 pomegranate
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of allspice
A dash of white wine vinegar
2 spoons of pomegranate melasse
60 ml of olive oil
A small hand of oreganoleaves

Chop, chop and chop all tomatoes and paprika in small peaces of approximately equal size. Finely chop the onion, and mix the 3 of them together and set aside. Get the seeds out of the pomegranate and set aside.
Finely chop and rub the garlic into a paste. Mix it in a bowl with the allspice, vinegar, pomegranatemelasse, olive oil and a pinch of salt to make the dressing. Put the dressing over the tomatoes and gently mingle it.
Put the tomato mixture in a nice bowl, sprinkle the seeds of the pomegranate and the oregano on top and finish up with an extra few drops of olive oil.

Score: 4 out of 5 (When good tomatoes are available)
Tips: You'll need good tomatoes for this salad, otherwise all of your chopping isn't worth it. Although it is nice to have different colloured tomatoes, the quality of the tomatoes is more important. So skip all the other collors if neccessary.
Time: 60 minutes (or so? Kind of went in a meditative state and can't really remember...)
Amount of work vs waiting: High!
Degree of difficulty: Very low, it just takes a lot of time...
Ideal for: side dish, salad, BBQ, romantic dinner, dinner party