Kung Pao Pork

Long time since I blogged. So here comes a new dish:

Kung Pao Pork, 2 persons (plus left-overs for the day after)

1 pork steak

a little salt

1 teaspoon rice wine

a little potato flour + a little water

1 teaspoon oil

Sauce:

see the recipe from Kung Pao Brussels sprouts

2 cloves garlic

1 cm ginger

2 spring onions

1 tablespoon chili bean sauce

15 szechuan flower pepper corns

a handful bean sprouts

2 handfuls potato slices (pre-boiled)

a handful peanuts

Dice the meat. Put it in the bowl and add salt, rice wine, the mixture of potato flour and water, and oil. Let it marinated for at least 10 minutes. Mix the sauce. Slice garlic and ginger. Slice spring onions. Rinse the bean sprouts. Rinse the peanuts, if salted. 

Add oil to a really hot pan. Fry the pork until it's almost done, adding the szechuan flower pepper corns almost at the end of frying. Add the chili bean sauce. Stir well. Add bean sprouts and potatoes. Stir well so that the vegetables get coated with the sauce. Add garlic, ginger and spring onion. Stir. Add the sauce. Thicken the sauce with potato flour (1 teaspoon is enough) mixed with water in a little cup. Bring it to the boil. Add the peanuts. Serve with rice!

Spaghetti Aglio E Olio Challenge

What I've been doing with my time lately: been busy applying for jobs (outcome: 2 job interviews coming up :D and going to a Dutch class every Tuesday evening. 

The evening course calls for an early dinner and something that goes really quick. Like Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. 

So, I devised a little challenge for myself: making up 5 variations on Aglio e Olio. If you want to start working out your own variations here's my basic recipe: Basic recipe Aglio e Olio

Here comes the first one in the challenge!

1. Aglio e Olio with Walnuts

1 batch of basic Aglio e Olio
1 handful walnuts

Prepare the Aglio e Olio according to the basic recipe, you can add a chili to the oil if you want it a bit hotter. Chop up a handful of walnuts and add it at the stage when you're mixing the oil mixture with the spaghetti. 

Enjoy!

Belgian Beer Top 3

Back from one weekend vacation in Ghent, Belgium. I had a blast! And tried many beers ;)

My top three was:

1. Vedett White
Fruity and really refreshing for the hot summer days. 

2. Gruut
One of the city beers of Ghent, the blond is delicious. 

3. Mort Subite Lambic
This one is here because I was suprised on how good it tasted, I'm not a lover of Lambic, but this one wasn't overly sweet. The bar where we had this was a really cute coffeebar by the canal called Mrs. Beanzz Barazza. 

The perfect oven-baked chicken breast

Got home from Dutch class (really nice!) and as promised, here comes how I cook chicken breast. 

Chicken breast in the oven, 2 persons

2 chicken breast (if they look good don't do anything with them)

olive oil

salt

pepper

paprika

various spices and herbs

Take the chicken out a while before you start cooking, so it gets to about room temperature. Put out a glass tin and put some oil in it. Put the chicken breasts in. Cover lightly with oil. Add a thin coating of paprika. Add what spices you like. I used garlic powder and Provencal herbs this time. Finish with salt and peppar. Repeat on the other side. Put the oven to 230 degrees Celsius. Put the tin in and bake for 10 minutes. Take the tin out and turn the chicken over and bake for another 8-10 minutes, depending on the size of the meat. Take it out and let it rest for about 5 minutes under aluminumfoil. Serve with a side-dish and salad. 

Tot snel!

The perfect potatoes

We almost never buy potatoes, because boiled potatoes just aren't that much fun. And fried sliced potatoes most of the time just get mushy. Some time ago we bought 3 kilos of potatoes for €3.79 and decided to do something fun with it. So I've made a soybean potato curry (it lacked something, so I didn't post it here, will continue working on it) and one of the steps was to sort of dry-boil or steam the potatoes in a pan. This really made the potato taste more and just cooking the potato like this for a side-dish is really yummy. 

The soybean potato curry can be found here: Soybean Potato Curry

Perfect potatoes, 2 portions as side-dish

2 big potatoes (vastkokend = potatoes that don't fall apart when boiled)
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Wash and peel the potatoes. Slice it in half. Slice the halves in half and then cut across, 3-4 cm big pieces. Heat up a frying pan to high heat. Put some oil in. Put the potatoes in and fry them on high heat for about 10 min, let them get some color. Stir when needed so that they don't stick. After about 10 min, reduce the heat to low and put a lid on. Stir every few minutes and let the potatoes steam for about 15 minutes. They're ready when they are soft. 

The best way to eat potatoes according to my boyfriend!

The potatoes can be served as a side-dish to for instance oven-baked chicken breast, which I'll write about tomorrow. Tomorrow I start my Dutch course, finally I'll get some structure to all the Dutch flying around in my head. Frankly if I don't take this course my Dutch will stay at this level forever. Maybe someday I'll write a blogpost in Dutch. 

Tot morgen!

Chocolate muffins

These are a basic version of chocolate muffins with easy available ingredients. 

Chocolate muffins, 6 muffins

1 dl sugar
0.75 dl milk
75 grams butter
1 egg
1.75 dl flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar
0.75 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons cacao

Put half the sugar and the milk in a pan and bring to the boil. Let it cool. Mix the rest of the sugar in a  bowl together with the butter. Mix in the egg. Mix in the flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder, cacao and the milk mixture. Put in a cup-cake tin. Warm the oven to 170 degrees Celsius and bake for 25-30 minutes. You can test with a tooth pick if the muffins are ready, by sticking one in the middle of a muffin, it should be dry. Enjoy!

Sesame and Honey Bread

I've been baking my own bread now for a couple of weeks. Not only is the taste better (Lekker!) but you can vary your bread as much as you like and it's cheaper too. With 1 kg of flour, I can make one big loaf and one small. Unfortunately here in the Netherlands, the only flour (unless you want soya flour) you can find in the supermarket is  normal white wheat flour. Don't get me wrong, you can go a long way with plain white flour. But I miss the Swedish supermarkets with a wide range of flour and seeds. 

I've been making a plain white bread many times. My boyfriend wanted to try a bread with sesame seeds in it (not just sprinkled on top of the bread). So I went looking on Youtube and the internet and finally ended up with this recipe:

Sesame and Honey Bread, 1 small loaf

2.5 dl water

1 teaspoon of instant yeast

1 teaspoon salt 

6-6.5 dl wheat flour

1 handful sesame seeds

1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 1/2 tablespoon honey

Heat the water to 37 degrees Celsius. I have a water cooker with temperature setting, I heat the water to 40 degrees Celsius and then I add a little glas of cold water and then feel if the water is warm enough (you don't want it to be too warm). 

In a bowl, mix flour (save 1/2-1 dl for kneeding), yeast, sesame seeds and salt. Add oil and honey. Mix. Add water and make a dough. The sides of the dough should release from the sides of the bowl. Put plastic foil over it, I usually smear some oil on it so it doesn't stick. Put it in the fridge over night. I tried this method recently and the bread tastes more. If you don't have the time, let the dough rise somewhere warm (like in a cupboard or in the oven - no heat!) for an hour. 

From the cold-rise method, it should look something like this: 

It'll rise more or less half of its original size. 

Take a tin out and put oil in it. Line it with flour. 

After rising put the dough out on a board and kneed it until it's not sticky, add saved flour when needed. Form to a loaf or braid it. Put into the tin and let it rise again somewhere warm for 30 minutes. 

Put the oven on 230 degrees Celsius. After the second rise, put the loaf (if you've made a loaf, cut the surface a few times before putting it in the oven) into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 180 degress Celsius and bake for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven. Enjoy!