What's for dinner in Holland?

When you ask that question, there is a big chance it will be one of the following dishes or a variation to these dishes... 


The Dutch love potatoes very much. The average Dutch family eats potatoes at least 4 times a week. They eat them in quite some variations: Baked, deep-fried, boiled, mashed, they will put them in tinfoil and put them in the oven... Many variations to one simple piece of food: the potato. 
I do not eat potatoes that often, I am not a big fan. I prefer pasta or rice, but for this blogpost I cooked two typical dutch meals so I can show them to you. I think these two meals are by far the two most popular Dutch meals. 


Here we go, the first one is:
Boiled potatoes, boiled veggies and a piece of meat. 
I think a typical Dutch family will eat this meal about 4 times a week, really. There will be some variation in veggies and meat, but always: boiled potatoes. 

Cooked way too much potatoes, whoops!

Would you like to prepare a Dutch meal? Here's how you do it:
Get a big pan and fill it with water, put some peeled potatoes in it and some salt and wait for it to cook... When you can easily prick a fork in the potatoes (after about 20 minutes), they are done and ready to serve. 

Do the same thing with the veggies.
Finally: bake some meat, make a sauce to put on your veggies, and dinner can be served!

And here's Dutch meal number two: Stamppot!!
This will be the same as meal number one, but the difference is: you mash it all together. Wait, really? Yeah, really... 


I am not a big fan of 'stamppot', but I came up with a variation I actually like very much. 
Again, boiled potatoes:

But now: break some cashews into pieces and take a piece of French cheese and chop that into little pieces. 

Mix those two ingredients with a little milk, the boiled potatoes and some raw endive. Mash it all together!
It will end up looking like this:

This may not seem very appetizing, but it really is. 
I would say, give it a try! It's really simple, takes about 20 minutes and you can say you ate a typical Dutch meal. Enjoy!

Review: Emmi's Swiss fondue

Hi there!

Today a review on one of my favourite meals: cheese fondue.
In Dutch supermarkets you'll find about three brands of cheese fondue. The cheese fondue I have reviewed is one of them:

Emmi's Swiss Fondue 

This fondue comes in packages of 400 grams. The box says one package is enough for 2 persons, but I bought two for two persons, you can never have enough cheese!

To heat the cheese, I put it in a fondue pan and put it on the stove. In about 8-10 minutes your cheese fondue will be ready to be served. Be sure to stirr it well while heating it or a lot off the cheese will stick at the bottom of the pan.. waste of cheese, we do not want thant to happen, right? While you are heating your fondue, you can put some bread in the oven and chop some veggies in pieces, so you can dip them in the cheese later. 

Once you have finished heating your cheese, be sure to keep it warm while eating. 

I always put in one of these things:

This cheese fondue seems to have a really nice stucture, it isn't too soft, so all the cheese would dripp of your bread and not too thick. Looks good!

What I use to dip in the cheese is simply some bread and some raw cauliflower. 

Just as easy as that! You could also dip small tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, ham, salami, whatever you like! I always like to keep it simple, for me it is all about the cheese. 

Now, let's put a piece of bread on a fork and dip it... 

Looking good, right?

The taste of the cheese is delicious!! It's a perfect mixture of cheese and wine, neither of them is dominant. The cheese still has a nice structure, it's fluid with no chunks in it. If there is something I really hate... cheese fondue with chunks, yikes!

Be sure so stir the cheese about every 4-5 minutes, so it won't stick to the bottom of your pan too much and  to avoid a crust on the cheese. 

After about half an our, we were done eating. We had eaten about three quarters off the cheese, so I would recommend byuing two packages, instead of one.

The price of one package of Emmi's cheese fondue is about 4 euro's. So a simple meal of cheese fondue for 2-3 persons will cost you about 10 euro's. Maybe not a student-friendly price, but it is so good, I love to pay the 10 euro's!

I really really liked this Emmi cheese fondue! I have tasted some other brands in the past, but this one really stands out. The taste is delicious and well balanced, the structure is good (no chunks!), it's just yummie!

I would really recommend this easy meal if you do have a lot of time to cook, but still want a delicious meal with a real Swiss taste. 

Love it!

I hope you found this review useful and I really to hope to see you next time!

Chicken and Spinach Pasta

A tasty pasta dish!

INGREDIENTS

• 4 slices of chicken filet
• 450 gram of fresh spinach
• 1 small jar of green Pesto
• 1 small bag of grated Cheese
• 400 gram of Pasta (any type)
• 1 small bag of Pine Nuts

Preparation

Start of with roasting the pine nuts in a dry frying pan. Slice the chicken into small cubes. Cook the pasta as recommended on the package. Bake the chicken in a frying pan till it is golden. Add the fresh spinach and stir for a short moment while adding a few teaspoons (depending on how much you like green pesto) of green pesto. Allow the grated cheese to melt over your mixture. Then add the pasta and garnish it of with the pine nuts.

Enjoy!

Eating Tosti's @ Esplanade

This week we went to eat toti's at Esplanade in Tilburg, Netherlands. Esplanade is a restaurant at the Tilburg University campus. They have great food there most of the time and te price of the food is very good. 

(Esplanade Restaurant)

The service is very fast. We went in at 13.35, the waiter came at 13.40, we got our drinks at 13.44 and our food at 13.51. I would say that is really quick! That also makes me wonder, if our tosti's can be served so fast, how freshly made are they? Are they pre-made and do they only need to be re-heated, or are the cooks just really, really fast? I was wondering about that, while drinking my fastly delivered diet coke.

Well, how about those tosti's, right? You may ask yourself: what on earth is a 'tosti'? Well, tosti is the Dutch name for two roasted slices of bread with melted cheese in between and mostly some ham or salami. At the Esplanade they also sell a veggie one with goat cheese, walnuts and honey. For this review I ate a tosti with ham and cheese, and Anne ate the veggie one. They respectively cost 3.00 and 3.50 euro's.
As said above, the tosti's were served quite fast and they looked very tasty!

(Anne's veggie tosti)

(Lindy's ham and cheese tosti)

That looks tasty, right? The tosti's are served with a small cup of mixed salad with some dressing and the ham and cheese tosti also comes with a little bowl of Joppiesauce. Again, a weird Dutch name for sauce with some small pieces of onion, tasting a bit like mayonaise with curry, jummy!

The taste of the tosti's was very good. They were a bit on the cold side, they should have been roasted a bit longer. The amount of cheese and ham on my tosti was perfect, as the goat cheese and walnuts on Anne's tosti. The honey could have been more present on Anne's tosti, she didn't taste much of it. Overall, the tosti's are quite nice.

But then there was that small cup of mixed salad. I took a bite and tasted someting really slimy in my mouth, yuk!!!!! I swallowed it - I do not spit out things in public ;) - and looked at my bowl of salad and saw the following:

Those slimy green things were once in their life little pieces of cucumber... but it looks like they have died 2 days ago. Nasty! Needless to say, I did not finish the rest of my salad.

In conclusion: we had a great time, we had a great laugh about the nasty pieces of cucumber and the tosti's tasted pretty good. The cucumber on the onther hand: nasty! We will definitely not eat those cute bowls of salad the next time ;)