Hoirino me Seleri

Griekse winterstoofpot van varkensvlees en selderij.

500 gram varkensvlees met zout en peper van de schouder in 100 ml olijfolie en 2 eetlepels echte boter bruin braden.

Vlees uit pan scheppen.

In achtergebleven olie 1 ui en 1 prei in 5 minuten zacht fruiten.

Een flinke kop kippenbouillon erbij en 4 selderij-stengels: 10 minuten stoven.

Het vlees teruggooien en een flinke hand verse dille erbij. 45 minuten stoven.

Avgolemono-saus erbij mengen. Zorg dat de stoofpot niet te heet is. Avgolemono maak je door het wit van twee eieren schuimig te kloppen. Daarna de dooiers erdoor roeren, het sap van twee citroenen en een kopje van het kookvocht uit de stoofpot. Goed mengen en in de kookpot gieten.

Even tien minuten laten staan. Het mag niet meer koken, anders gaat het mis met het ei. Op smaak brengen met zout en peper. Er kan maar een ding echt mis gaan met dit recept: te veel of te weinig citroen. Blijven proeven!

Geen idee hoe de Grieken dit serveren. Het gaat prima met aardappel uit de tuin. Wellicht wat dille overhouden om op het bord te strooien?

Tafelspitz

Tafelspitz is the German word for a certain cut of beef, from a young ox. It's located at the hip of the ox. It's also know as Schwanzstück (technically Tafelspitz is only a small part of the Schwanzstück) or tri-tip (in the United States), although when I read the tri-tip Wikipedia entry this seems a different part of beef: Bottom Sirloin. It's all very confusing.

Tafelspitz cut:


Tafelspitz is also the word of a typical Austrian dish. Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, was a great lover of Tafelspitz.

I went to my local butcher not knowing the Dutch name for Tafelspitz. I asked for a cut of the hip of an ox, and told him I wanted to simmer the meat in stock. There was some confusion on part of the butcher; he didn't seem to know what I wanted. Then he told me to get entrecôte. I don't buy meat often enough to know which cut an entrecôte is, so I bought it believing my butcher knew best and went home. Then I discovered entrecôte is a cut from the rib, not the hip or tail.

It still don't know the Dutch word for Tafelspitz. Take a pick! It seems the Dutch never boil beef but always fry it.

Wrong meat?


I went ahead and simmered my expensive piece of entrecôte in 2 liters of water, onion, leek, salt, black pepper, bay leaf and cloves.



First boil the water, turn down the heat, then add the meat. Simmer for 90 minutes on low heat. The water shouldn't boil.



Serve with potatoes, boiled vegetables and Töginger Meerrettichsauce.

Töginger Meerrettichsauce

A simple but very effective sauce made from fresh horseradish root.

It's based on butter, flower and beef stock.

Ingredients:
10 cm fresh horseradish root (finely grated).
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flower
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
250 ml beef stock.
a dash of cream
salt.

Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Add flower, breadcrumbs, beef stock and horseradish and whisk. Add salt and cream.

Don't use commercial stock, otherwise the sauce will be too salty.

Packed in foil fresh horseradish will stay fresh for a couple of weeks if kept cold.













Serve on cooked beef, like Tafelspitz.

Karniyarik - stuffed eggplant

Karnıyarık (lit. 'riven belly' in Turkish) is best made with Turkish eggplant. A Turkish eggplant is much thinner as a 'normal' eggplant.



To prepare the filling:

Fry 250 gram ground veal (kalfsgehakt).



Add one onion, garlic a red pepper and a green pepper (see photo, I'm not sure which variety of Capsicum this is).







Add a can of tomato puree, one tomato and fresh parsley. Fry. Add 1 teaspoon paprika powder, 1 teaspoon black pepper and salt.



To prepare the eggplant slice lengthwise and heat in an oven until soft.



Put the eggplant in an oven dish and fill them with the meat filling.



Add half a green pepper on top of each eggplant and pour a thin layer of tomato sauce in the oven dish. You can easily make the tomato sauce by mixing some tomato puree with a glass of water.



Bake in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

Golubtzi with smetana

So, I bought smetana. Now I should find a recipe to use it. How about golubtzi? Stuffed cabbage.

Stuff the cabbage:
Boil cabbage leaves and spread them out on a plate once soft. Cut large veins to make rolling easier.



For the meat-mixture: saute onions and carrots until soft, about 5 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons tomato paste, some tomato sauce, salt, and black pepper, stir very well and cook for another 1 minute. Mix with rice, minced pork, fresh parsley, fresh dill and mix very well.

Put the meat mixture on the cabbage leaves and roll it into a small packages.



Make the sauce:
Fry one onion, add can of tomatoes, a small can of tomato paste and water. Boil. Carefully mix smetana into the tomato sauce. (use fresh dill)



Pour the sauce over the cabbage rolls. (the sauce can be thickened with some flower) Bake in a 170 degree oven for 1 hour.



Serve smetana on the table as well.

Pork chops in Somerset cider

Buy the best pork chops (Dutch: karbonade) available.

I bought some 'ribkarbonade'. Also available was a 'haaskarbonade'. According the butcher the 'rib' was more juicy and had double the frying time as the 'haas': 12 minutes.



Mix sage (chopped) with shallots, chopped very finely. Mix with butter, salt and pepper to coat the pork chops. Make some incisions to rub in the butter mixture deeper into the meat.

Pan fry the chops. No need to add extra oil or butter. When the chops are browned add a good organic cider (I brought one from Aubel in Belgium) and cook for 5 - 6 minutes. When they're browned add some butter and parsley.

Add some butter, parsley and serve with a simple cooked vegetable (early sprouting broccoli) and sautéed/baked potatoes. And a glass of cider, of course.

Stobá (Dutch Antillean meat stew)

Stobá can be based on beef, but we opted for goat. You have to buy goat with lots of bones. Bones give flavor to a stew. I ended up buying 1,5 kilo goat, which seemed like a quarter of a goat. Chop the goat in pieces about 10 centimeters big.



Rub the meat with lime juice and dry the meat.



Fry the meat in oil until it browns.



Add: two chopped onions, 3 chopped cloves of garlic, 3 tomatoes (cubed), 1 big tablespoon tamarind juice, a little sugar, nutmeg and (don't leave this out!): 1 or 2 madame jeanette peppers.



Mix everything so the meat gets coated with all the spices.



Add enough water to cover the meat, add salt according to taste and simmer for at least 2 hours.



Add one green bell pepper cut in small chunks and one big sweet potato (cubed) and simmer for another half hour. At this point I added a small can of tomato paste for extra flavor.



Add a handful of pickled caper and simmer another 15 minutes.



When you're finished the meat should really fall off the bone. It's almost like a soup. Since the stew contains sweat potato you don't even have to cook rice. But it's good to serve with pickled red onion.



A rare photo of myself in my kitchen:

Steak & kidney pie

More of a stew than an actual pie. It's a meat stew with pastry on top. The quantities below are for 3 people.

The filling

500 gram stewing beef, 250 gram ox kidney, 175 gram mushrooms, 50 grams of plain flour, one big onion, 700 ml. beef stock, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, bay leaf and a spoon of tomato paste.

An ox liver weighs around 600 gram. If you use a whole kidney you need around 1200 gram beef.



Cut the beef, kidney, mushrooms and onion like this:



Coat the beef in about 80 grams of plain flower.



Fry the kidney light brown (this takes a couple of minutes), fry the beef golden-brown, the onion for about 10 minutes and the mushrooms for just a couple of minutes until they are light brown. Drain the ingredients from excess fat.

Add all the ingredients in a casserole, including the flower you used to coat the beef. This will make the gravy thick. Use proper beef stock and not a cube.



Stew in the oven at 160 degrees for 1,5 hours. Cool.

The pastry

Crumble 140 gram cold butter in 250 gram plain flower and a pinch of salt. Kneed the flower and butter until it crumbles. Add one egg yolk whisked together with 3 tablespoons water. Kneed until you have a firm ball. Cool in the fridge for at least one hour.

The assembly

Buy a proper pie dish. The dish used in the photo's is not ideal to say the least. Take the dough and flatten it. Cut out the shape of the pie dish and add an extra 1 cm all round. Cut out 6 cm-wide strips of pastry to go round the rim of the dish.

Butter the rim of the dish and line it with the strips of pastry. Carefully pour in the filling. You can use a so called 'pie raiser' in the middle to prevent the pastry form collapsing on the meat stew. I used a small inverted glass.



Drape the pastry lid over and coat it with egg was (whisk one egg together with a tablespoon of milk). Make a few slashes in the lid of the pie.



Preheat the over at 200 degrees. Bake the pie for 20 minutes at 200 degrees and a further 20 minutes at 180 degrees.

The result

You need a proper pie dish to make it look nice.



But this was actually incredibly tasty.