Mushroom Cabbage Galette

I have had Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cookbook on my shelves for a number of years but barely cooked anything from it. It's considered a bible for vegetarians, but somehow very little actually appealed to me. I already know about lentils and risottos, legumes and pastas, and the recipes seemed too basic. The one bread recipe I tried had very odd proportions so I had to make a lot of adjustments to get it to a kneadable state.

But I recently decided to make the effort to try more recipes from this book, no matter how simple sounding,  and I have now struck gold.

This is essentially a vegetable pie, but instead of the familiar quiche, it uses a combination of mushrooms, cabbage, and herbs that meld together really well. A hard-boiled egg adds some protein and texture, a bit of quark and vinegar some tang. It's a new favourite in my house, and it is actually very easy to make, especially if you have a dough or pastry already available.

Glut of Plums? Cake!

The purple Italian prune plums are available in abundance right now, at least at the Middle Eastern groceries in my neighbourhood. Last weekend I bought a huge bag for €1.50 a kilo, which I think is incredibly well priced.

Coincidentally, the blogosphere is awash with recipes  for German yeasted plum cake (Pflaumkuchen). Who am I to resist?

I've tried several recipes, all good, although not equally successful. I've had trouble with getting the dough to rise, which I first attributed to old yeast, but have now concluded is due to using the wrong kind of flour. I only had cake flour (patent bloem, in Dutch) and it's low gluten content just doesn't work with yeast. When I used ordinary flour, success!

This cake is an amalgam of several recipes, producing a fresh, not-too-sweet cake that goes well with the morning coffee. I think you could serve it for brunch or as part of luxurious breakfast. It also freezes reasonably well.

Walkorn Crispbread

When I was in Denmark recently with my sister and brother-in-law we stayed at a wonderful B&B (Dalsgaard B&B) on a small farm 20 minutes from Århus. The accommodation was in a separate building, with separate living room (including fireplace), and two bedrooms. There was no kitchenette or WiFi  but these inconveniences were completely compensated by the fabulous breakfasts featuring homemade bread rolls and preserves, lovely cheeses and sliced meats, and what our hostess Karin called Swedish crispbread (also homemade). These were seed-filled, nutty, crunchy and utterly satisfying.

She very generously gave me the recipe, and I made it almost as soon as we got home to Amsterdam.

On Poached Eggs and Shakshuka

Have I ever mentioned how much I love eggs? I love eggs—poached, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, fried, in omelettes, egg salad, as accents in other salads, not to mention their essential use in baking.

I think my favourite egg dish is eggs benedict, but always have trouble with the poaching. The egg white just drifts off and I can't get it to go around the yolk in that lovely oval nestling way that proper poached eggs should have. I have tried all kinds of techniques: creating a gentle vortex, adding vinegar in the water, precooking the egg in the shell fo 30 seconds first.

I think the biggest problem is that supermarket eggs are just not fresh enough. In Europe they believe that eggs should not be chilled, so that they are sold at room temperature, which does not help in keeping them fresh. They should read Harold McGee.

In my recent visit back home I picked up some silicon egg poachers that I hope will help me in my quest for better poached eggs. I have tried them once and they were OK, but I needed to peel the eggs out of them. Next time, I'll try a bit of oil spray.

But another variation on a poached egg is to simmer it in a sauce. So today I tried that Middle-eastern favourite, shakshuka, which are eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce.

Charred Eggplant Soup

I have acquired new cookbooks! Both are by the London-based Israeli chef Yottam Ottolenghi, who is famous for his restaurants and catering shops in London. I've never been to one, but he's also well-known for his eclectic and original recipes, often featuring vegetables in the starring role.

So my first recipe to try was using one of my favourite vegies—eggplant. He has a number of recipes that call for burnt aubergine, which means cooking them over a gas flame until they are charred  on the outside and soft and smoky-tasting on the inside. One of them is a soup, so I tried it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Holland has good bakeries, but the Dutch are not home bakers. Flour and sugar are only available in 1 kilo packages, baking powder comes in small envelopes, baking soda is not sold at all, and the rest seems to be box kits. And chocolate chips are unknown. On the plus side, you can buy ready-made  amandelspeis (somewhere between marzipan and frangipane), the almond filling used in a lot of baked goods here.

For chocolate chip cookies you need to either chop a chocolate bar in pieces (we do have good chocolate here!) or rely on visitors from across the pond. So when one of my colleagues emailed me from Vancouver that he could pick something up from the grocery store, I asked for chocolate chips.

Shortcuts are Good, or The Thrifty Cook

"Shortcuts are good" and "who's got time for that?" These are common expressions adopted from a friend of my sister. She must be a practical, busy woman.  I use it to explain why, despite my cooking hobby, I do not make everything from scratch. I use commercial pasta sauce,  canned beans, bagged salad greens, frozen potato croquettes, bouillon blocks, jarred fond, and lots more convenience foods.

But I also make some of my own convenience foods, usually just trying to be less wasteful. Or I try to prepare things in the weekend ready for lunches and quick suppers in the rest of the week.