Gourmetten

Breakfasts don't really change all that much here. Usually I settle for an egg until I can't face them anymore. And themes recur. Yesterday was ham and mushrooms. Today was scrambled egg, ham and mushrooms. Surprise.

Lunch? Who knows? Who cares? I was probably too busy thinking about dinner.

The Dutch have a custom called Gourmetten. I've never really understood how this works, but I bought myself a Gourmetten Set, which is basically a Raclette Grill. Mine is kinda nice because it has a stone grill and a little ridged teflon thing.

While I was wandering around the shop looking for ideas for a nice New Year's Even dinner I spotted a tray of Gourmetten meats which had no sausages or crumbed things on it. It was in a box, so I picked it up and was trying to figure out what was in it, when a man came up, rattled off the contents, and stuck a 35% off sticker on it. Well, that decided that, then.



As you can see, it's a selection of mostly pork with various marinades, little hamburgers cut into quarters, and some plain beef.

Being new to all of this, I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but I also prepared a plate of vegetables to cook on my toy.



In separate bowls I also had little servings of sauerkraut and broccoli.


I had an idea one needed sauces, so I made my simple cream sauce. (Yes, I know the diet says AVOID cream due to cholesterol, but it doesn't say NO cream, and in any case I'll worry about cream once my body starts producing less cholesterol than my food provides. Body fat is the biggest source of cholesterol!)

Anyway, to make the sauce, pour plain whipping cream into a pot and cook it over a low heat until it reduces to half. I guess you could add salt and pepper, or any flavouring you like, but believe me, there's nothing wrong with a simple cream sauce.

I grated some mature Gouda, and crumbled some roquefort into a small bowl.I chopped up some chillis in adobo (thanks MK for bringing them all the way from the States!), some garlic and some olives.

The way we handled this was we cooked the veg on the stone grill, and the meat on the teflon grill, then we combined them in the little raclette dishes, covered them in toppings and put them under the grill to brown.




Well, there were just two of us and the set is for eight, so we had four raclette pans each at any time. I think we're supposed to get by with one. So having done this now, I think a better way would be to have a salad or two ready, a tray of vegetables and toppings, the meat/fish/chicken, and bread for those not on a starch-free diet. Cook the meat on the grill while you whip up a delicious little vegetable accompaniment in your (single) raclette dish at the same time. I'll try it sometime and let you know.

The diet says to eat only three meals a day, but we have a New Year tradition that needs to be observed. We see the Old Year out with a little dessert (an ender) just before midnight. In this case, it was a simple baked apple with cream, but very delicious. We open the champagne, and then just after midnight we have a little starter. In this case it was a trio of amuses that I made myself.

We have an amuse spoon with salmon and sour cream; a lollipop with a cherry tomato cut in half and sandwiched around a filling of brie and a little glass with serrano ham and a ball of melon.

Happy new year!

Moroccan lamb

You may have noticed that I've got as bored with my photos as I get with my food and have tried new ways of cropping them. They look so nice when they're large and full screen on my computer, and sort of ... sad... when they're shrunk to a manageable size.
So here's an exciting crop of today's breakfast, ham and mushrooms.

Lunch was the main meal of the day. Paul was starving because the smell of the stew cooking all morning and had been titivating his taste buds.
We finished off the broccoli soup. There was enough to fill the amuse glasses. More like 50 ml each than 500 gram, but it's still a soup course.


Salad. Umm, how about a tomato, feta and olive salad. It's a shared tomato, but it's still a salad!


Then we had the Moroccan Lamb Stew from the Epicurious website. I left out the honey, mainly because I was too lazy to fetch it from the pantry. I don't think 1 tablespoon of honey across a kilogram of meat is going to affect anybody's diet too adversely. I served it with chinese cabbage stir-fried with finely-chopped fresh ginger and garlic. A poor substitute for couscous I know, but needs must...

The lamb was nice. I really like the flavour of the orange coming through. I think it will be stunning tomorrow, after an overnight infusion. I made a full recipe, so there will be plenty of opportunity to test the theory.


Supper was leftovers, in the form of a salmon mousse. This is really easy to make! i took the leftover roast salmon and leftover smoked salmon, and mashed them to a creamy paste in the food processor. You can use just roast salmon, or just smoked salmon, or if you don't have any leftovers, open a can of salmon. What the heck! Then add salt and pepper to taste, and a spoon or so of sour cream, yoghurt or ordinary cream. Voila! Delicious.

Of course, this is fabulous with thinly sliced bread, currently verboten. I used thinly sliced fennel, which is kinda tasteless but crunchy. I guess you could use any firm leaf as well, such as raw Belgian Endive or Little Gem lettuce.

Er, leftover turkey and sauerkraut, take 2

Paul was having a long doze in, so I had half a mango and yoghurt while he slept. Not much of a breakfast, but still a breakfast.

Lunchtime, the sun was shining. It was icy cold out, but the sun was shining. Celebration! I made a salad platter with whatever looked salady in the fridge and some leftover roast salmon.


Dinner was scratchy. No soup, no salad. The same ingredients as last night, except that I had broccoli instead of carrots. And I changed the presentation slightly.

I sliced the leftover turkey breast thinly. I grated some cheese. Then I put a small cylinder (two actually) on some aluminium foil on a baking sheet. (The cylinders are actually bean tins with both ends removed.)

First I put in a layer of thinly sliced turkey. Then a layer of sauerkraut. Then a very thin layer of sour cream and grated cheese. Then another layer of turkey. Another layer of sauerkraut. You have to press everything down firmly so it holds its shape. Very firmly. Then I mixed the grated cheese with some mayonnaise (bought, but not low fat, this won't work with low fat mayo) and topped the creation with that.

I put it in a 180C oven for about 12 minutes until the cheese mayo mixture had melted and looked yummy and bubbly. Took everything out of the oven, transferred the cylinders to plates and sprinkled some steam-fried broccoli florets (yes, the same ones I didn't use for the soup!) around the plate. These were flavoured with salt, black pepper and nutmeg but you could use anything that turns you on. Then it's time to carefully remove the tins and serve the leftovers and everyone thinks you're a brilliant cook.


You could call them Turkey Reuben Stacks if you wanted to be really fancy.

Leftover Turkey and Sauerkraut

A bit of fun with breakfast. I scooped the insides out of two tomatoes and filled them with scrambled egg. They don't take a lot of egg though, I need bigger tomatoes, so i served the rest on the side with some bacon.

I was still hungry so I finished off the half orange left over from last night's butternut salad with some yoghurt and nuts.

Lunchtime, I mixed the scooped out tomato with the last of the vegetable soup and warmed that through, and ate it with some yoghurt as garnish. I had another courgette carpaccio. Then I had two handfuls of nuts and some cheese. I couldn't face anything heavier.

I was unmotivated for dinner. The vegetable pack was full of cabbage: red cabbage, chinese cabbage, sauerkraut. Oh wow.

I had it mind to do a nice turkey sauerkraut thing, but didn't have the energy nor the appetite to be honest. So we had the turkey thighs, some sauerkraut and some sliced carrot for a bit of colour. There were beetroots in the bag, which would have been better for colour and would have suited the sauerkraut better, but they are verboten. I might give them to my neighbour.

Roast Salmon

Breakfast was virtually the same as Christmas day, without the new dish.


Lunchtime I took a single metformin, I think I need to work myself into the lunchtime dose slowly. I had with a mug of leftover soup from last night. I made a courgette carpaccio to follow, that was my salad.

Then I had a sliver of turkey with gravy, a handful of nuts and 2 nartjies. How much is a handful? Well, I weighed it. 10 grams.
A nartjie is a South African generic term for all things mandarin, clementine and the like. Here's what I had, and the size.


The shops were open and I needed some basic stuff like catfood. I trawled through the post-Christmas markdowns and found a side of salmon for roasting. OK it's Scottish salmon, which I normally avoid because the stuff is so full of hormones. But I guess once in a while it can't be too bad.

We started with a broccoli soup, which I made with the thick stalky parts of the broccoli that aren't great to eat as a vegetable. Just cut the stalks off your broccoli and save the florets. Easy. I steamed those until tender. While they steamed I just softened up some onion and celery over a slow heat. I threw the whole lot into the blender with some of the water from steaming and a couple of cubes of frozen reduced stock from the deep freeze, and then reheated it. I served it in glasses with a little cream poured over the top.



Then I made a butternut salad. I peeled a piece of butternut and grated it, then mixed it with some orange zest, orange pieces and the resultant orange juice. Normally I like to do this with passion fruit, but it's winter here and my choices are limited. Raw butternut is fine! Try it!


I did the roast salmon with some steamed and glazed belgian endive. You know, I think I don't like this endive stuff much. It really is a bitter vegetable. I ate the inside bits, and only about half the salmon. It was too much food.

Roast Pork leftovers

Breakfast was not leftovers, Breakfast was a BLT omelette. It was delicious!


Also, I'm getting worried about not eating enough food. So today we definitely aimed for three meals. I we used up the leftover duck in a fresh salad. You don't need a recipe, you can see all the ingredients! A nice vinaigrette is fine as a dressing.


For dinner I tried to follow the diet suggestions, though in greatly reduced quantities.

A tomato and mozzarella to start.


I revisited yesterday's soup by adding the tomato offcuts from breakfast, plus the pumpkin I didn't use before, and whizzed it up to get a totally different colour! I did warm it, but the tomato kept its fresh taste and gave a nice tang.


And then it was the leftover pork roast from the other night. I cooked a little plain broccoli to go with it. There was also leftover gravy with onion and green beans in it.


Three whole meals on a public holiday!

Christmas!

Despite my best intentions we ended up with a two-meal day.
A late brunch, almost lunch, of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and a little tomato on the side. I served them in the new dishes I got for Christmas.

Besides the turkey, I hadn't really thought about Christmas dinner at all. But there was plenty of stuff in the house, so it was easy to busk it. I made a brine for the turkey (300 mls salt, 6 litres of water, a handful each of peppercorns, juniper berries and star anise, plus about 100 ml of brown sugar. Bring this to the boil, add another 6 litres of cold water and let it cool. Then put the turkey in a LARGE tub, cover with the brine, cover the tub and leave it in a cool place for 2 hours per kilogram).

I put my turkey tub outside for four hours, rinsed it off and then roasted it breast side down for 45 minutes. At that stage I turned it, added the parnsips to the same dish and put the mushrooms in alongside and left it in the oven for another 30 minutes. It cooked at 180C.

Let's begin with a photo of the festive table.


You can see the now-familiar amuses from Albert Heijn. That's the last of them. One was paté and cranberry sauce with cream cheese, and the other was melon and ham. The cranberry sauce was probably a no no but at less than a tablespoon, and plenty of protein in the meal to balance it out, I decided it would be fine.


We can buy carpaccio packs here, and I bought one rather than make my own. So all I had to do was put the beef slices on the plates, sprinkle them with dressing, pine nuts, and parmesan, and leave them to stand to come up to room temperature and infuse with flavour.


Soup was easy. I puréed a selection of the leftover roast vegetables (trying to leave the pumpkin out so I would get a nice green colour) with a bit of stock and heated it slowly. The garnish is fresh chopped peeled tomato.


Then came the mushrooms, which by now had cooked. I took them out of the oven along with the turkey and left everything to stand, the turkey especially needs to rest before being carved. I took the centre stem out of the mushrooms, seasoned the mushroom cup and then tossed on some sliced cooked bacon and sliced red pepper. I covered that with slices of goat cheese and left it to bake for 30 minutes. 20 minutes may have been better, but I was eating the earlier courses while it baked so I didn't check them.


The mushrooms were very rich, so a little palate-cleansing salad was very welcome. This was just lettuce, radish, olives and little of the now almost finished wasabi ginger dressing, that tastes neither of wasabi nor ginger.


At last, the highlight of the meal, the turkey, with roast parsnips and nuked green beans. The parsnips were woody and unappetising so we didn't eat them. Clearly they need to cooked and served when very, very fresh.


And yes, we did squash in dessert. Mango and yoghurt, layered in a glass, and topped with a hint of whipped cream.


That was a lot of food! I felt quite replete at the end of the meal and had to sit relaxing on the couch for it all to settle, drinking lovely Christmas tea from Simon Levelt. It's a tea laced with dried fruit and spices, and is like gluhwein, except non-alcholic. Wonderful!

We had Wolf Blass champers with the first couple of courses, which was disappointing. It had very little mousse, although the flavour was nice. The main wine was the Wolf Blass President's Selection, which was rich and full-bodied and very satisfying.

Duck a l'orange

What better way to start the festive week? Simple scrambled egg, a couple of rashers of bacon, fried mushrooms, a little salad.

Lunch I thought I'd have the leftover garlic prawns and some avocado, but the prawns looked so unappetising as a leftover even the cat wouldn't eat them. So I threw them out and just ate the avocado.

Dinner was quite late as we put up the Christmas tree and made the lounge look festive. It was a duck breast a l'orange from the Albert Heijn festive range. I roasted some vegetables alongside (hint: I use a melon baller to scoop out pumpkin once I'd sliced it in half; much easier than trying to peel the bloody thing, and much prettier than my uneven cubes.)

Roasted veggies are easy and delicious. Take any selection you like, get them into bite-size pieces, put them in a casserole with a cover or a cooking bag, add s&p and drizzle with olive oil. Shake well to coat all the veggies with the olive oil then put in a 180C oven for about half an hour.

I tried some fresh orange slices with the duck. If the oranges had been sweeter (yikes, they were sour!) it would probably have been magnificent rather than OK.

Lamb chops with aubergine

Does this look familiar? It's the chopped beef for the moussaka, except I added a whole two tomatoes to it to make it juicier. Paul had his over a slice of bread. I made do with getting carbs from 3 nartjies. Just not the same as having the gravy over bread, though. There's something about bread and gravy...

So that was breakfast. Paul was going to sing in the Messiah and had to be at the Anton Philipzaal by 11am for rehearsals. I joined him there at about 13h30 and we had lunch at Havana. We had to wait a long time and barely had time to eat. I ordered a tomato soup and a chicken and cashew nut salad. I didn't eat much of the soup; I don't think it had too much real tomato in it anyway and given the time constraints the salad looked the safer bet.

We got home well after 6, so my intended lamb stew was once again postponed. For dinner we clocked up another two of the amuses from Albert Heijn, I'm building up a collection of those little glasses. I need 8.

Instead of stew we had lamb chops. I had originally thought these would make a nice Christmas Day course, but that was before I bought the turkey. These I doused with Robertson Barbecue Spice (bless all my friends and family who keep me supplied with this wonderful, unbeateable South African spice mix.)

I FRIED (yes, in lots of oil) some aubergine slices. What the heck, it's low carb, and aubergine is really nice fried. It absorbs so much liquid that normally I par-steamfry it, and then finish it in a little oil. (In fact, if you ever really have to drink half a cup of olive oil for any reason, just put it in a pan, and fry aubergine slices in it. A much tastier way of ingesting neat oil.)

I finished that off with a sprinkling of feta. What better combination?

Instant Moussaka

The neighbour came around just as I was serving brunch, which was the last pieces of fish from the Gourmet platter, scrambled egg and tomato. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, it tasted a bit like tilapia, but it had some orange marinade stuff on it.
It was fine, not great.

She wanted to borrow cutlery, crockery and glassware for Christmas day, as she is having 12 guests and has nothing. But she knows well that I am well-stocked! I suggested she may want to serve her soup in shot glasses, but she said it was a plain vegetable soup and not fancy enough for glasses. Ha ha ha. I told her it was the glasses that made the soup fancy, and not the other way round.

Perhaps she should have popped around at dinnertime. I had planned to make a lamb stew, but left it a bit late. So instead we started with a melon and ham amuse from the Albert Heijn Festive range.

Aren't those glasses cute? That's why I bought them.

Then tomato carpaccio. I have an electric slicer, not a mandolin, and I cut the tomato about 2mm thick. I used bottled dressing (wasabi and ginger, which tastes neither of wasabi nor ginger, but makes a reasonable vinaigrette), s&p, parsley and feta as a sprinkle over the top. It's always nice to let these stand for a while so the tomatoes can absorb the flavours.


Main course was leftovers. There was about 250 gram of leftover roast beef in the cold drawer and I wanted to use it up before it went off. I chopped it finely in the food processor, and cooked it up with some chopped shallot, a peeled tomato, and a dash of red wine. That mix went into individual ramekins (there was too much for just 2) and I topped it with peeled aubergine slices. Very thin slices. Then I made a sauce with one egg, half a cup of milk and about 4 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese, which I poured on top of the aubergine. All that went into the oven for 20 minutes, and hey presto, instant moussaka.

I served it with cooked beans tossed in walnut oil, with walnuts added for show.

Fish Quartet

What did I eat for breakfast and lunch? Who knows, because I have forgotten completely and Paul is no help. Almost certainly an egg for breakfast. Omelette? Scrambled? Did I have fruit? Can't remember.

Lunch, ah yes, I recall eating the leftover roast vegetables with some cheese. I did not have leftover pork, but other than that my recollections are faint.

Supper I cooked up a Fish Gourmet platter. (Gourmeting is a particularly Dutch thing, you get little bits of meat, cook them on a raclette grill then add them to a little pan with sauces and put that UNDER the raclette grill.) I skipped all those steps, and made up the meal using the Amuse dishes from the other evening and cooked them in the oven like the Amuses.

I bought a second Fish Amuse from the Albert Heijn Festive series. Both the Gourmet Platter and the Amuses had prawns, salmon and white fish, so I hauled out my new dishes from the other night, cooked some broccoli, beans, red pepper and courgette to match the amuse, and made up a second set. I also added bits of extra fish and veg to the original amuses to make them more substantial.

You can do these in any ovenproof dish. Use any vegetables you like as a base, add fish on top, cover with a bit of sauce (real mayonnaise will do fine!) and some shavings of parmesan, and pop them in a warmed 180C oven for about 8 minutes.

Voila!

Albert Heijn's Festive Pork

Breakfast was cheese and tomato omelette followed by strawberries with yoghurt. It's not the season for strawberries, but I guess they're getting them out of the greenhouses for Christmas. They were tasteless and about half squishy. I kept the squish ones aside and used them for another cheat lunch.

Yup, I did the metformin trick again. Took the dose, then drank a strawberry yoghurt drink made with the squishy strawberries.

For dinner I had no energy. I threw the Albert Heijn Festive pork fillet with creamy pepper sauce in the oven, alongside a dish of various vegetables cut into bite-size pieces, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with olive oil. Then I put the lid on the dish and gave it a good shake to get all the veggies coated. 35 minutes is plenty, and the roasted vegetables were delicious!

Garlic Parsley Prawns

Breakfast was exciting, I managed to buy eggs fresh enough to fry! So we had a proper fried egg and bacon breakfast with 3 rashers bacon followed by the leftover mango with yoghurt.

I had a busy day, so at lunchtime I took the two metformin to suppress my appetite, and ate a handful of nuts. Bad, I know.

For dinner, I made a celery and celeriac soup. I don't know if celeriac is allowed, it's not mentioned, but I had some so I used it. I made this by cooking equal volumes of celery (mainly the green parts of the stalk) and peeled cubed celeriac in about twice the volume of chicken stock, added s&p to taste, then puréed it.


Then we had another of the Albert Heijn Festive offerings, giant prawns in garlic and parsley, which I served with avocado.

Festive amuses and a mushroom burger

Breakfast: same as yesterday, scrambled egg with 2 slices serrano ham.

Lunch: almost the same as last night. I finished off the vegetable soup and followed that with mango and yoghurt. This is nowhere near the amount of food the dietician is expecting me to eat. As a reminder, an advisory lunch is 500 g of cooked vegetables pureed into a soup with some bouillon; 50-100 gram of a protein source such as meat, chicken, fish, egg, nuts or cheese; a salad with an oil and vinegar dressing and about 150 grams of fresh fruit.

Dinner: It should be a soup, with meat/chicken or fish and vegetables
A generous 100-150 gram of a protein source with 200-300 gram of vegetables, and a salad with oil and vinegar dressing.

What it turned out to be was a selection from Albert Heijn's Christmas goodies.

First, a trio of amuses: a miniature meatball, salmon mousse and some goat cheese. I guess that accounts for around 20 gram of protein food?


Then, a duo of soups, one being tomato with mascarpone, the other being a gorgozola and white wine, I think it was:


Then, two fish amuses from a selection of four. I had the prawns and a white fish, and Paul had the salmon and the other white fish. These I had to bake in the oven for about 8 minutes, and obviously something baked onto the little dishes.


The reason I bought all of these strange things was for the dishes, of course. Much cheaper than buying them in a kitchen shop, and they come filled with goodies, to boot!

OK, onto the main, which was a proper portion size of cheese and mushroom burger:


What I did here was remove the central stem of two portobello mushrooms, and I grilled them until they were done before I cooked the burgers.

Then I dressed the mushrooms with onion and tomato as you would do for a bun.

The burgers I made with minced beef, and I chopped the mushroom stems into it as well. If you want to make burgers at home, use a lot more seasoning than you think you need; something about that minced beef just absorbs it and it can be pretty tasteless if you aren't prepared.

So I grilled the burgers and topped the mushrooms with them, and then added a slice of cheese and put them in the oven. I don't know that lightly matured gouda is the best cheese for this. I think that's better eaten raw. Next time I'll use the fully mature.