Sate Bar

Great Indonesian satay in Rotterdam!

Nasi Goreng

Sedap.

Buncis and Rendang

We used James Oseland's wonderful cook book again. I am convinced there must be a shorthand system for his recipes, so that every recipe is about 20 characters instead of several pages.

Mehr Spargeln!

And more of the usual.



And more of the usual gado gado (avant la sauce).



One wonders what is preferable: radio silence or a boring blog post.

Buncis!

We are really enjoying the fact that we found some great Asian shops here! Today we enjoyed the smell of fresh galangal, before we threw it into the pan with the other ingredients.

Asian Week Continues

We were planning on making our usual mango and carrots recipe, but the mango was a little too old and brown. So we improvised with the few ingredients that we could find in our fridge, and came up with a really tasty nasi goreng.

Gado Gado

A little bare bones this time: no bean sprouts, no krupuk, no fried onions.

Wat een gadoe gadoe

I channeled my inner Ellen and did not make my usual messy mountain of gado gado.

Netherlands, Dutch Food and More

The day after the wedding, we went to "In den Bockenreyder" to get some real Dutch food. Pictured above is a "Ferme Ötsmijter". It's great to be in the Netherlands and finally be able to eat eggs and bacon again.



One of the other things that we hadn't had for many years: real Dutch Chinese food. Finally we could enjoy babi pangang with bami, tjap tjoy, koe low yok and nasi. Of course, we had "sambal 'bij".



This is not cake, this is vlaai. And it is not Dutch, it is from Limburg.



After eating vlaai, we went for a very nice hike through the rolling green hills of Limburg. Highly recommended!



Look at the muscles of this beautiful animal!



We ended our day in Limburg in Maastricht, where we finally settled for this Indonesian restaurant. Rijsttafel!

Smuggling

Even though there are severe restrictions on taking plant products into China, we brought some lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and fresh turmeric from Malaysia, so we could make some Indonesian foodz.

(I would like to add that we were very goody two-shoes about the smuggling --we had the lemongrass conspicuously sticking out of a bag and we asked the customs guy if it was OK if we smuggled in some Malaysian ingredients. They looked a bit suspicious at first, but when we told them it was just for our own cooking, they waved us through.)

Sadly our meatz was not fatty enough, so the beef rendang was a little dry and not as brown as I would have liked. The fried boiled eggs were great though, as was the acar.

Gado gado

Our friend, James Oseland

Or maybe, he's just Frans's friend, because Anke never met him.

Anyways, he has some wonderful recipes for chicken satay and shrimp satay and bean sprouts, which we made today. And also we made Cordon Bleu's recipe for peanut sauce, kindly sent to us by Ellen of ellenkokkerelle fame.

It was wonderful!



UPDATE: Frans never met James either, but will still refer to him as his friend anyway!

Home cooking... the real deal (almost)

Since Amanda has run out of restaurant ideas, we decided we should try to cook dinner for her. She may be going to Malaysia for work soon, so obviously we thought we'd make Indonesian food. First of all because Indonesia is just like Malaysia, and second because for lack of a decent Dutch cuisine, we have appropriated Indonesian cuisine as our heritage.

We spent Sunday trying to buy ingredients. It turns out that it is impossible to find lemongrass, lime leaves, coconut milk, shrimp paste, or even something as mundane as parsley, in Chinese supermarkets. In the end, we realized there was no way we could make Beef Rendang.

Instead, we settled for dadar hati ayam (chicken liver omelette), babi lombok kecap (pork with chillies in soy sauce), chuan chuan (mackerel with chillies and garlic), acar timun (cucumber and carrot pickle) and sambal goreng buncis (green beans with coconut milk -- not easy to make without coconut milk! (also not really that much of a success without coconut milk)).

We got home at 5:45 today and started cooking like crazy. At 7:45 it was done. It was not up to the level Frans achieved in Ithaca (not easy cooking with just two burners that were made for stir frying at high temperatures only), but we were happy nonetheless. We just hope Amanda liked it too...

Sambal

After having our fill of German food, beer and Glühwein, we went to Sambal, an Indonesian restaurant. The place has been here for a while, and we were wondering when they will get around to decorating it.

We had gado gado:

beef randang:

and some more dishes, which sadly are not pictured, because our everlasting batteries finally died.

Sunday Offal Day

Nasi goreng: acar timun, babi kecap, dadar hati ayam.

Offal omelet

Sunday came early this week. We made Dadar Hati Ayam again. Also a poor man's version of Acar Timun: only carrots.

Sunday Offal Day: Mini Rijsttafel

Who knew chicken livers could be part of a rijsttafel? We certainly didn't, but it worked out WONDERFULLY (as a certain Harvard Law scholar to whom we sold our bookcases today would say).

Dadar Hati Ayam


Dadar Hati Ayam, Babi Kecap and Acar Timun.

Also, Lonny Gerungan's recipe for Babi Kecap is really wonderful, wonderful.

Rijsttafel, part II

Two more:
First of all some healthy green beans. The flavoring ingredients:


And the final product:


Also, some more protein: Babi lombok ketjap.

This is an Indo-Dutch ("Indisch") recipe, distinct from the Indonesian recipes so far (even though "rijsttafel" is also Indo-Dutch --- note that it may contain Indonesian (and even Chinese or Chinese inspired) recipes).

Rijsttafel, part I

We are following the advice of Frans's former Indonesian neighbor, and we have started cooking today for a rijsttafel that will hopefully take place next week.

We made eggs in a spicy tomato sauce (prep photos only):



And we made our favorite: Beef Rendang. As our cookbook author says, "the meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will [...] go on a fascinating journey":

Eggies

Yum. Pinot gris too sweet, but it worked well with the eggies.