Chickpeas and chorizo

Both are excellent together for a quick lunch.



Fry chorizo slices in as little olive oil as possible: 3 minutes.

Add sliced garlic and lemon peel: 1 minute.

Add cherry tomatoes (halved and deseeded) and chickpeas: 3 minutes.

Add basil leaves and lemon juice.

That's it!

Farfalle alla Crema di Gorgonzola

Just three ingredients: panna da cucina, gorgonzola and fresh sage. Well, and black pepper and farfalle pasta...

Melt 175 gram diced gorgonzola in 200 ml. panna da cucina (for 300 - 400 gram pasta). Add plenty of black pepper. Remove pan from heat.

In the meantime cook pasta. Drain and pour gorgonzola sauce into the pan with the pasta. Add finely chopped sage. Season with salt and serve immediately.

Aloo Palak

Aloo Palak simply means: potato spinach.

Start making a spicy spinach mixture. Cook spinach with 2 cloves garlic, ginger, onion and green chilies for 5 - 10 minutes (everything grated). Blend the spinach mixture to a fine puree.

Boil potatoes with salt and turmeric for 10 minutes.



Heet ghee in pan and fry cumin seeds, add 1 teaspoon garam masala, half a teaspoon of coriander powder and half a teaspoon of cumin powder. Add the spinach paste and fry for a few minutes.



Add potatoes and simmer to let the potatoes absorb the flavor.

Spaghetti with Tuna, Mushrooms and Pancetta

Tried & tested:

Soak 15 gram dried porcini in hot water for 20 minutes.

Heat oil, add one clove of garlic, crush gently and cook for 2 minutes. Discard garlic.

Add 75 gram diced pancetta or bacon and fry for 4 minutes.

Add drained dried porcini (chopped finely) and 225 gran chopped button mushrooms. Fry for 2 minutes and add soaking liquid from the mushrooms (about 6 table spoons). Simmer for 10 minutes.

Cook pasta, adding remaining soaking liquid from the mushrooms.

Add a can of tuna to the sauce and taste for pepper and salt.

Toss pasta with the sauce and serve with grated Parmesan.

Note: leave out pancetta (or even the tuna) for a vegetarian version. Update: tried it and it doesn't taste as good. You need some pancetta, if only a little.

Spaghetti with Saffron

For this simple dish you will need dried spaghetti, a few strands of saffron, 150 gram cooked quality ham, 200 ml panna da cucina, 2 egg yolks and 50 grams freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Cook the pasta.

In the meantime put the saffron in a few tablespoons of water and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils turn off the heat and leave to stand for a while. Add strips of ham. Stir in the panna da cucina and Parmesan. Add salt and pepper and heat gently while stirring. Remove from heat and add egg yolks. Mix well.

Add the sauce to the drained pasta and toss.

Serve with extra grated Parmesan.

Kimchi bokkeumbap (김치 볶음 밥)

Kimchi bokkeum-bap means: kimchi-mixed-rice. It's the Korean version of nasi goring. You take some left over rice (don't use fresh cooked rice!) and fry it with several ingredients. The main ingredient is kimchi (김치) made from Chinese cabbage.

The basic ingredients: cooked rice and kimchi:



Kimchi is already pretty spice but you can add one teaspoon of hot pepper paste (gochujang). You can also make this dish without the hot pepper sauce, especially when you use many other ingredients. Gochujang is rather overpowering:



Cut kimchi finely (note: I didn't cut the kimchi in the photo's below). Fry the kimchi and pepper paste in some oil (sunflower, sesame or a mixture of both):



Add the rice and fry on a low fire for 15 minutes:



I make this dish as an easy and quick lunch. Prepare some side dishes like (Japanese) pickled daikon and seaweed salad (chuka wakame) and you're done in 15 minutes.



This is the basic version. You can also add a can of tuna, left over meat, shrimps, mushrooms, onion, carrot or zucchini. A can of tuna in juicy olive oil works best. Just make sure to chop all ingredients rather small. To serve you can fry an egg and put it on top of the kimchi bokkeumbap and sprinkle some shredded gim (dried seaweed), chopped scallions or sesame seeds as a garnish. You can make kimchi bokkeumbap into a rather rich dish. Or keep it simple when you're pressed for time.

In Amsterdam all ingredients are available in Dun Yong, Stormsteeg 9 near the Nieuwmarkt.

Captain's dinner

A dish from the era of the great sailing ships. While the crew survived on hard biscuits the captain had a somewhat more luxurious lifestyle.

Heat a jar of kapucijners, a type of pea (Pisum sativum L. subsp. sativum var. arvense (L.) Poir). Kapucijners are brown rather than green. Other Dutch name: blauwschokkers, grauwe erwt. In English: Dun pea, Dry pea, Field pea, Soup pea, Grey pea, Purple-flowered pea, Canning pea, Austrian winter pea.

Fry sliced onion on a low fire. Fry smoked bacon (Dutch: spek), cut in small cubes. Drain the kapucijners, spread them out on a plate, add fried onion and bacon. Serve with pickled gherkins, Dutch piccalilly and pickled onions (Dutch: zilveruitjes).

It's a simple dish, but rather effective.

Captain's dinner being served on the billiards table in 't Schippershuis, a small café in Hoorn:

Linguine with lemon

A simple tangy lemon-cream sauce.

Juice of two lemons
50 gram butter
200 ml panna da cucina
100 gram Parmesan, grated
salt & pepper

1) Boil and simmer for 5 minutes: lemon juice, butter and cream. Add salt and pepper. You can add some grated lemon rind as well.

2) Meanwhile cook linguine (or similar pasta).

3) Add Parmesan to cream sauce. Taste. Mix with drained linguine. Above quantities are good for 2 - 4 people. Serve as an 'in-between' dish.

Just 4 ingredients:

A Chinese classic

Quick, simple and tasty. Apart from dried shrimp you can buy all the ingredients in a supermarket.

Just 4 ingredients:

25 gram of dried shrimp
4 thin slices of fresh ginger
1 Chinese celery cabbage Dutch: Chinese kool
4 spring onions cut in 2 centimeter sections, seperating the white from the green

Soak the shrimps in boiling water for 30 minutes, drain and preserve the water

Chop the cabbage in thin bite sized strips

Heat oil in a wok, fry white spring onion, add ginger. Add the shrimps, stir for a few seconds.

Add the cabbage, toss and add the shrimp water, season with salt. Cook until the cabbage is tender yet crunchy.

Add green spring onion and serve immediately. A few drops of sesame oil will enhance this dish.

From Yan-Kit So’s Classic Chinese Cookbook.