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!