friederike's Reviews
6 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 6Sort by: Title 
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Holländisch kochen: Gerichte und ihre Geschichte
By Erik Winkelmann, Christine Moser
Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH - 2011
This was a very small meal, and it was a bit boring as it was, though I think that was mainly due to the flat tasting black pudding. It also had a crust of breadcrumbs that was slightly weird (and not very crusty, by the way), and a vinaigrette that felt pretty strange.
We ate it again the next day; this time without crust and without grilling (just frying), as well as without the vinaigrette. It immediately tasted a lot more interesting - if you had told me that it was a different black pudding, I wouldn't have bashed an eye. DH thought it was too heavy, and that the sweetness of the quinces didn't help that at all - he much rather would have had something slightly sour (kind of ironic that we skipped the vinaigrette). In contrast, I thought the flavour of the quinces complemented the black pudding very positively. We ended up debating whether making two fruit purées (quince and sour apple) would be a solomonic solution.
Once you've made the fruit purée (or opened a glass of apple sauce) it's a very quick dinner.
It makes for a very (very) light meal. Serve with a salad, and preferably also home fries.
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Cream of Asparagus / Aspergeroomsoep : page 60
A bit complicated for what it is, and with 1 tbsp cream per person this is hardly a cream soup, is it?
I think what annoyed me most is that you're supposed to make an asparagus soup without cream, ladle into 4 bowls, then whip 4 tbsp of cream until creamy but not fully whipped, and decorate each bowl with one tbsp of cream. First of all whipping such a tiny quantity of cream feels really silly, then it's only used as decoration (I just don't think that soup with a bit of cream on top is the same as a creamed soup), and last, the cream will melt into the soup anyway, and that doesn't even look nice! So why whip it, and why not mix it through (for what it's worth, cream poured into soup looks much nicer).
Also, the recipe specifies to add salt, which is a big mistake as you're already using chicken stock. Don't do it, you'll oversalt.
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Drie in de pan : page 192
Too salty for our taste, but otherwise good. We'll try half a tsp of salt next time. Also, they definitely need more raisins, I'd double the amount. Nice that it's a sugar-free dessert, though a little sugar would probably work nicely as well.
Edited the next day:
Haha, DH made these yesterday, and complained about the amount of salt. Today, he confessed that upon re-reading, he found that the recipe only advised 1/2 tsp salt - no wonder that they were too salty!
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Poffertjes : page 198
A lot better than the poffertjes we made last year. The main differences are that this recipe features yeast, more buckwheat, and less normal flour.
I had some problems with baking them, as in the poffertjes pan they seemed to burn in no time in the centre places, and not at all at the edge, but I guess that's more a problem of my pan/stove. I also tried making them in a normal pan, and that didn't really work well. They didn't get burnt, but they didn't rise as nicely, nor did they really get crunchy on the outside, which made them a little boring.
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This was really nice! We used cod instead of zander as it seemed the most comparable fish. The glasswort made an interesting addition to the potato mash, though to my surprise it wasn't really salty. As a whole, the zander and the mash combined very well, and it was interesting to see this as a kind of modern take on the typical Dutch way of eating potato mash (Dutch often serve potato mash mixed with kale - being German, I prefer my kale served next to the potato mash, but this combination was really good).
DH tried to adapt the recipe by using the video blog for "Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Potato Mash", but unfortunately he managed to turn it into "DH's Perfectly Ruined Potato Mash" ("I guess with this stuff I don't even need to show up for Master Chef") - the taste was nice, but the texture was very, very gluey.
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Zoervleisj / Sauerbraten : page 103
Very nice! It was a bit of a pity that the instructions were scarse - I didn't know if I had to chop the gingerbread into pieces before adding it, if only 40 ml vinegar leftover for the marinade would be enough, if the braise needed to be covered, etc. - otherwise I would have given 5 stars.
To address the questions I had: I decided to add the gingerbread slices in cubes - I didn't like the texture, though, so next time I will probably chop them finely or even pulverize them. Because I probably used a much larger pan than they did, I had to add 300 ml water above what was instructed, so I decided not to cover the braise. I also decided that 40 ml vinegar would be quite enough, as the other 60 ml of the original 100 ml in the marinade haven't disappeared but have simply been absorped by the meat.
It does seem to be Rheinischer Sauerbraten, which is probably the version most Americans know, containing gingerbread or lebkuchen and sugar beet syrup or apple butter. The only exception here is that the meat is cut into cubes, which means that the time for both marinating as for cooking is greatly reduced, very useful.
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