Cooking Club Leftovers

A three course tasting menu of leftovers! First on the list is the salad with liver and black pudding. Luckily I had some leftover, if somewhat bitter, lettuce in the fridge to make the liver and black pudding look more like a salad.



This is the leftover langoustine I described yesterday, complete with foamy goat's cheese sauce. Also the leftover ratatouille.



Finally, the leftover rabbit tournedo. Here I stirred mustard into the leftover goat's cheese sauce to make a mustard sauce to accompany the morsel of meat.

That gives you a brief glimpse of what we do at cooking club. There is a movie you can watch, taken in April last year, if you'd like to know more.

Cooking Club

No photos today as I don't usually take a camera to cooking club. I did once make a movie, which you can see here if you're really interested. I may redo it with a voice-over and post it elsewhere.

One of the things my cooking club has to understand is that if you're serving a six-course meal, then each course needs to be just a couple of mouthfuls. I usually eat half or less when the courses grow too big, and take the rest of the plate home, so you may still get to see some photos during the week.

The menu was:
Trio of Amuses. Well, I always through trio meant three, not an entire platter. I guess because they made a lot they thought it best to serve it all. The trio comprised:
- choux pastry filled with a trout cream. I managed to snag one of the platters with just one of these, as I'm not supposed to be eating any flour at the moment. I did, of course, on the principle that one day should not make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things.
- courgette roll-ups filled with ricotta. These were very nice and low-carb friendly. I may well make them and then you will be able to see what they were.
- A quails egg on a bed of radish.

Salad with calf liver and black pudding
Those are heavy meats, and you would expect just a sliver of each. Nope. That was a main meal and most of it came home with me. It was a bit of lettuce topped with a generous slice each of liver, black pudding and fried apple. The black pudding is one specially made for Paul van Waarden, one of our Michelin chefs, and you can buy it at Slagerij Waayer , 275 Frederik Hendriklaan, The Hague. I've never eaten black pudding before and found it delicious!

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Jerusalem Artichoke Chips
A very nice soup made with equal parts poultry stock and milk and finished with cream. Some lemon and shallots, but just a touch. Some of the artichokes were sliced thin and deep fried for garnish. I don't know if Jerusalem Artichokes are on the allowed list, they aren't mentioned, but I guess they're not commonly eaten in this part of the world.

Smoked langoustines with ratatouille and Goat's Cheese sauce
This was the dish I cooked, with Martine. We peeled and cleaned the langoustines (2 per person) and then smoked them for about seven minutes in stove-top smoker. Those are cute and I may get one. Then me poured basil and garlic oil over them (15 basil leaves, a clove of garlic, 100ml oil blended together) and left them covered in the fridge.

Interesting ratatouille method: chop up one aubergine, one red pepper, one yellow pepper, one courgette, into tiny 1/4 inch squares. These are each fried separately, until soft and just cooked, without colouring. One onion+one shallot+one clove garlic are all chopped finely and softened and then combined with a bit of tomato paste. I think I'd leave the paste out, it dominated the dish somewhate. The vegetables are combined and warmed just before serving.

The sauce was dead easy: 100ml vegetable stock, 200 ml cream and 75 gram goat's cheese for 15 people. Warm through and melt the cheese, then beat until foamy.

Just before serving we warmed the langoustines in the oven for about two minutes.

I have leftover ratatouille, sauce, and uncooked langoustines. The smoked ones were very rich, by the way, and two was more than enough.

Rabbit tournedos with mustard sauce

I brought most of this home as well, so a picture will come later.

Mandarin sorbet, chocolate tarte and orange compote

Yes, I did, I'm afraid. They did give me the merest sliver of chocolate tarte, which was a buttery crust with nuts and a chocolate ganache topping. Something I will make I think, it was delicious - but it will wait till I'm at least the weight I was in England. The biggest culprit was certainly the sorbet, as this is made with sugar syrup.

However, I am no heavier this morning than I was yesterday. I may take an extra dose of metformin during the day to compensate for the sugars.

Lunch was leftover greek chicken with carrot salad and tomato. Breakfast was simply a bowl of all-bran with milk though I had a bit of yoghurt at around 11. I just did not wake up hungry like I normally do!

Danish Cabbage Soup and Leftover Lamb

Saturday again, and once again we have things to do other than eat. It's sad that, as eating can be such a pleasure.

Anyway, brunch was a trio of hams, one from Spain, one from Italy, and one normal everyday ham. There is not much to choose from between the two specialty hams and I would guess you can interchange them. The taste differences are subtle.

Dinner we started with a Danish Cabbage Soup. This is actually surprisingly delicious! Also very easy to make.


For three people, slice a small onion, remove the core from about 400 gram of cabbage and slice the leaves very thinly. Melt a heaped tablespoon of butter and stir in about a teaspoon of soft brown sugar. Really, this is such a small amount of sugar it doesn't make any difference in anybody's life! Stir the sugar till it melts and caramelises a litte, which takes about two minutes. Stir the sliced onion and cabbage into the caramelised sugar and cook for about four minutes, till they're well-coated and starting to simmer, then pour in 400 ml of water or stock - I used chicken stock. Add a pinch of allspice, some salt and pepper to taste, cover it and let it simmer gently for about 35 or 40 minutes. Just before serving stir in about 75 ml of sour cream or decent yogurt, heat through and enjoy. It really was very nice!



Then we finished off the lamb from the other night, with some pumpkin and fennel. The vegetables were steamed very plainly, as the lamb fills your mouth with flavour. It was not as good as expected but perhaps we should have eaten the leftovers the very next day and not left them as long as I did.

Leftover salmon

Unless I vary from the usual egg and something, I guess there's no reason to write it down. I do need to make a better effort with lunch though.

Dinner today started with a simple salad of lettuce, tomato, onion and cashew. Probably a dressing of some kind, they're easy enough to make: one part vinegar, three parts oil, seasoning to taste. The trick comes in choosing nice vinegar and nice oil. Dressings are where extra virgin olive oils take pride of place: you ruin them when you cook them.

There was still leftover salmon, so I cooked some leeks until tender and combined the two, with a dash of cream to round out the flavour. Nothing exciting going on here at the moment.

Marinated pork

Breakfast and Lunch have long since been forgotten, but luckily photos remind me of dinner. It was a Thursday, so probably egg for breakfast, nuts and cheese for lunch. That nuts and cheese is very addictive.

Dinner was one of the sections from the gourmetten pack that we hadn't yet eaten: little morsels of marinated pork. I grilled them and served them with leftover sauerkraut and carrots. Sour cream just ... goes... with sauerkraut.

Steak, red cabbage and guacamole

Back to the usual breakfast. Egg. In this case and omelette with mushroom, cheese (recognise any leftovers?) and tomato.

Mid-morning I was hungry. I guess that's what comes from ditching the diet for a day. Rather than let my blood sugar plummet, I had slice of melon with yogurt and nuts.

Lunch was another slice of melon with 2 slices parma ham. Someone has to eat the stuff, it may as well be me. I also had some vegetable soup with slices of cheese instead of bread.

Dinner was a simple grilled steak with guacamole and a red cabbage and apple salad.



The salad was equal volumes of thinly sliced cabbage and peeled apples cut into julienne strips tossed in a dressing. Use any dressing you like. It doesn't keep well, so don't make too much.

Ditch the diet for a day

I need time off from this full time eating.

Breakfast. Well, seeing as I bought an entire melon to make two melon balls for the amuses, breakfast was leftover melon. A generous slice with yoghurt and two slices of Parma ham.

Then I gathered all the leftover bits of pieces from last night's Gourmetten. I softened the onion and fennel in a little oil, then added all the other vegetables plus the leftover chili in adobe, added water and let that simmer till I thought about it again. When I did, I tasted it, and it was a little hot with the chili. So I added the two turkey drumsticks and let it simmer some more until I thought about.

When we felt ready for lunch, I removed the drumsticks, took the meat off the bones, took off the soggy skin, chopped the meat and added it back into the soup. Everything looked a little thin, so I took half the soup, puréed it and added it back. Hey presto, instant body. For serving I stirred in the leftover sour cream and grated some cheese.

That was it I'm afraid. No salad. No 50 gram of something proteiny plus a side of veggies. Just soup.

Dinner was much the same. I took one complete set of meats, little marinated pork pieces, and grilled them. We had that with some sliced raw courgette (not carpaccioed, though I did add a little feta for the look) and a couple of cherry tomatoes. And we drank lots of wine.

I also took no metformin today, not at lunch nor before bedtime. (Too much wine!)

As I said, ditch the diet for a day.