Once the days get longer and warmer, I have far less desire to spend my free hours in a hot kitchen with the oven on. Speedy meals become very important in those days: I want my dinner on the table in half an hour or less. A salad usually doesn’t take long to prepare and has the advantage that you can add most leftovers in the fridge to it. I created this puy lentil salad tonight when I had some pumpkin I needed to use up, and it is very filling. Spicy chorizo and tangy goats’ cheese are excellent companions for the neutral pumpkin and chewy lentils, while not overwhelming them. From hob to table this meal took me around 25 minutes to prepare (including cooking times for the pumpkin and lentils), so you can sit in front of the tv in time for the world cup matches! I used Puy lentils, a kind of green lentil that doesn’t turn to mush once cooked, but you can substitute green or brown lentils if you can’t find these French ones.

You’ll need (to serve 2 persons):

- 125 grams Puy lentils

- 500 ml. stock (chicken or vegetable)

- 300 grams of pumpkin, peeled and diced

- 125 grams Spanish chorizo, diced

- 50 grams soft goats’ cheese

- salt and pepper, to taste

Put the Puy lentils in a medium-sized pot and add the stock. Cook the lentils for about 20 minutes, tasting after 15 minutes to see if they are ready. These lentils will still have a bite once fully cooked, so they should taste ‘al dente’. When in doubt: cook a bit longer, it can’t hurt them. Meanwhile, heat some oil in a large skillet and add the pieces of pumpkin. Brown them on all sides and turn down the heat. Let the pumpkin cook until soft, around 10 to 15 minutes, and take it off the heat. Put the cooked lentils in a bowl and toss the pumpkin and chorizo in as well. You can add salt if you want, but I find that most stock contains a lot of salt, which the lentils will absorb during cooking, and the chorizo isn’t exactly lacking in salt either. Mix well. Finally sprinkle the goats’ cheese over the salad, and grind some fresh black pepper over it.

There. That’s everything to this salad, and it’s delicious. Ideal for people who cannot subsist on lettuce leaves only, no matter how hot it gets. You can also prepare it in advance and take it with you to work or picnic; it tastes great when cold.

As a child, I was obsessed with sugar. My family likes to relate the story of how I decided to collect sugar packets when I was about 6 or 7 years old. This resulted in my mother entering my room to find me frantically tearing open all the packets and tipping the contents straight into my open mouth. I must’ve been destroying the house hopped up on sugar the rest of the day. Anyway, like Jerry Seinfeld tells us in this video, my only clear thought was: ‘get candy get candy get candy’. However, around the age of 15 the need for sugar just tapered off and was replaced with my love for cheese and similar savoury snacks. I’m surprised there are even any recipes for desserts on my blog at all, since I rarely eat it. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate dessert at all: a well-made cake or pie will always find a place in my stomach, but it’s just that given the choice, I’d rather eat something savoury. Anyway, all this needless info is just an introduction for, wait for it, a recipe for dessert. Yes, I’m contrary like that. I made this recipe when the whole family was invited to dinner at my brother’s girlfriend’s house, and it was a smash hit. Very easy to make as well!

Hazelnut Torte with Moscato Zabaglione (recipe taken from BBC Good Food Magazine)

You’ll need:

150 peeled hazelnuts, roasted in a pan (like you do with pinenuts) or in the oven

150 grams of plain flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

150 grams of caster sugar

2 eggs

100 grams of cream

100 grams of melted butter

powdered sugar, to dust.

For the Moscato Zabaglione:

- 4 egg yolks

- 90 grams of caster sugar

- 250 ml. Moscato wine (or plain old sweet Muscat wine)

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celcius. Grease a 20 cm. loose bottom cake tin and line it with baking parchment. Grind the hazelnuts in a food processor or just chop the hell out of them with a knife (be prepared to find hazelnuts everywhere for the next decade if you choose the latter option). Sieve the flour and baking powder and add the hazelnuts and the caster sugar. Add the cream, eggs and melted butter and mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture in the cake tin and bake for around 40-50 minutes. Check regularly to see if it’s not getting too dark: if you think it is going to quickly, lower the temperature somewhat. The cake is done when a cake tester (or fork) comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool and prepare the zabaglione. This is very easy: take a large heatproof glass bowl (if you don’t have one, just use a large saucepan) and put this on top of a pan with boiling water. Add the yolks and whisk them until they are slightly creamy and have bubbles (this takes about 20 seconds). Add the sugar and the wine. Now keep on whisking until the mixture becomes thicker and thicker and the bubbles have almost disappeared. Don’t let the heat get too high or you’ll end up with scrambled eggs. It took me about 10 minutes of stirring until I was satisfied with the texture. Don’t give up too quickly: the mixture can go from very liquid to almost pudding-like in texture in a minute or so!

When the zabaglione is finished, let it cool slightly, or you can just pour it in cups and put it in the fridge until needed. It’s pretty to serve it in cups alongside the cake, but I just spooned some on a cake plate and put the cake smack in the middle of the zabaglione, which maximises immediate access to it. It’s up to you to decide! I will leave you with this: this dessert made me rethink my allegiance to team cheese. That is all.

I’m slowly recovering from the world’s worst cold (well, that might be exaggerating, but let’s just say I went to bed at 7 PM yesterday), and today I suddenly had a craving for corn. Which is slightly odd, to say the least, because corn never features high on my list of things to crave. This list is usually topped by foods such as popcorn, hummus, french fries and of course my not-so-secret lover, cheese. Anyway, since I was still feeling a little under the weather it seemed like a perfect opportunity to make soup. Corn chowder is a play on the famous New England clam chowder, with corn substituting the clams. Usually bacon is added as well, but for a slightly healthier option I used smoked chicken breast. Since I can never view soup as a meal on its own, I made a very nice ham and cheese quesedilla with some leftover parma ham, and I must say it was a perfect partner for this hearty chowder. Dinner was on the table in less than 30 minutes, which means it is a perfect and quick dinner for the weekdays!

You’ll need (makes enough soup for 2-3 persons, 4 if you’re like me and serve more food):

-25 grams of butter

- 150 grams of potato, peeled and diced

- 1 shallot or red onion, diced

- 2 tomatos, diced

- 1 dl of white wine

- 400 ml of chicken stock*

- 1 smoked chicken breast, diced

- 1 can of sweet corn, around 300 grams

- 4 tbsp of cream

- some herbs, like chives or fresh thyme, chopped

- salt and pepper to taste

For the quesedillas:

- 4 corn tortillas

- grated cheese

- (parma) ham

For the soup: melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot and add the potatoes, tomatoes and onion. Let it sweat for 2 minutes on a medium to low heat. Then add the wine and chicken stock and simmer for 10-15 minutes more, or until the potatoes are cooked through. Then add the corn and about three quarters of the diced chicken breast, plus your herb(s) of choice. Simmer for a few minutes more. I like my soup smooth, so here’s where I blend the soup with my immersion blender, until it resembles a purée. If you like your chowder chunkier, leave as is. Add the cream and season to taste (stock from a jar or cube tends to be much saltier than homemade stock, so I usually just add some pepper). Your corn chowder is now finished.

While your soup is simmering, whip out the tortillas and cover with ham. Grate lots of cheese over it, and cover with another tortilla. Heat a pan (don’t put oil or butter in it: it needs to be dry) and put the quesedilla in. Lower the heat, otherwise it’ll burn quite quickly. When the underside is browned and the cheese is starting to melt, flip the quesedilla over and brown the other side. When done, slide it on a plate and cut into wedges. Hey presto, you have quesedillas! Repeat as often as you like. Serve with the chowder.The fun thing about quesedillas is that they are very easy to vary. You could make them with cheese only, or with smoked chicken, or with tomatoes, or with avocado, or with chorizo, or with mushrooms… Let your imagination run wild!

*I used chicken stock from a jar. Don’t judge me! I made chicken stock a few weeks back and I put the pot on my balcony to cool off slightly before I froze it, where I discovered it again a week later. So yeah, I used chicken stock from a jar. Plus, most cookbooks advise you to keep chicken carcasses in the freezer until you have enough to make stock, and I just don’t have the room for that. Also, I don’t like Foghorn Leghorn (or rather, his dead body) to stare me in the face every time I take out some frozen peas.

I’m generally not a fan of fruit in savoury dishes. No apple with my goat’s cheese salad, no grapes with my fish, and certainly no watermelon with my feta. However, all my prejudice about fruit in my food (I’m apparently a poet today) disappeared when I tasted these cheesy toasts at a wine tasting evening a few months back. The combination of fennel, peach, caraway seeds and oozing cheese, combined with a Gewürztraminer, was enough for me to toss out all preconceptions. The person who made this dish was kind enough to point me in the right direction for the recipe, and last Saturday I made them myself. Unbelievable. Seriously. Go out to your cheesemonger tomorrow and make.this.dish. You won’t be sorry!

The original recipe, from the Dutch version of Delicious! Magazine, used Ossau-Iraty cheese, a semi-hard cheese from the French Northern-Basque country. It can be hard to obtain, so I substituted it with Reblochon, as did the person who made this for the wine evening. I think you could also use Gruyere, Fontina, Brie or Munster cheese. Any mild cheese will probably work, and it can’t hurt to experiment!

The chutney also requires caraway seeds, pictured above. These seeds have a mild aniseed-like flavour, which perfectly complements the fennel. Don’t omit these, as they are essential for the final product!

You’ll need:

- 1 French baguette, sliced thickly

- 300 grams of tinned peaches (you can reserve some of the liquid to use in the chutney)

- 150 grams of fennel, cleaned and stalks/leaves removed

- 2 teaspoons of caraway seeds

- 1 tablespoon of brown sugar

- salt, peper and lemon juice, to taste

- 1 Reblochon cheese (I think it weighed about 300 grams, but you’ll probably use half of that. You can use the leftover cheese to melt over your roast potatoes, to name just one delicious recipe)

Chop the peach and fennel in equal cubes. Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and add the fennel and peach, together with the sugar and caraway seeds. I added about three tablespoons of peach liquid to the chutney as well.  On medium heat, let the chutney simmer for an hour or so. When it has a chutney-like, thick consistency, turn off the heat and let it cool slightly. Add a little lemon juice and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Turn on the grill of your oven (if you don’t have a grill, don’t worry: you can also heat the oven to 225 degrees. That should do the trick as well). Put the baguette slices in a ovenproof dish and toast them under the grill, until they are a nice golden brown. Remove from the oven, turn around and top with the cheese of your choice. Put back under the grill for another few minutes, until the cheese is all runny. Take the dish from the oven, top the slices with a few heaped teaspoons of the chutney, and enjoy. Preferably with a nice glass of Gewürztraminer.

After more than a month of snow, low temperatures and general winter malaise, I think everyone is looking forward to spring. Alas, winter has no intention of letting up, and it’s back to the kitchen to whip up some comfort food. Probably everyone with good intentions (health-wise) has fallen off the wagon by now, so this recipe for a perfect cheese souffle will probably hit the right spot! It’s a recipe by Gordon “You Donkey!” Ramsay, and it almost rivals my mother’s recipe (which I didn’t have at hand when I made this, but I’ll be sure to post it later). Now, souffles have a reputation of being tricky food; almost every chef has their version of  the ‘open-the-oven-door-two-seconds-too-early-and-it-will-go-to-hell’ mantra. However, what people neglect to tell you is that when a souffle falls (which is caused by the cooling of the hot air in the souffle structure), it is easy to puff up again: just put it back in the warm oven again, watch it rise, and take it out again when your guests are finally at the table and ready to tuck in.

This recipe uses three different kind of cheeses. I used Gouda, parmesan and goat’s cheese, but you could also use gruyere or cheddar, for instance. Go with what your instincts tell you! (But leave that Swiss powdery cheese/horror out, it’s disgusting. You want cheese that makes you go ‘oooh!’.)

You’ll need:

- 75 grams of soft butter

- 50 grams of flour

- 500 ml of milk

- 1 onion, chopped

- 1 star anise (can be left out if you can’t find any)

- 3 cloves (ditto)

- 1 bay leaf

- 6 eggs, separated

- 100 grams goat’s cheese (or gruyere, or whatever), crumbled

- 100 grams Gouda (or cheddar, etc.), grated

- 85 grams parmesan cheese, grated

- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

- 1 tbsp mustard powder (or use a bit of regular mustard if you don’t have the powder)

- juice of 1/2 a lemon

- (Gordon uses 100 grams of ripe brie for the top, I left it out. If you want to go overboard: just slice it up and go wild!)

First, you have to mix 50 grams of the soft butter with the flour (this is called a beurre manié, if you want to be all fancy about it). I used an electric whisk, but a balloon whisk should work fine as well. Make sure it is not lumpy. Put it in a bowl and set in the fridge to chill.

Heat the milk in a large saucepan, and add the star anise, cloves, onion and bay leaf. When it boils (and you have to watch that pan like a hawk: milk has the habit of boiling over when you turn your back on it for a nanosecond, so don’t be fooled by its innocent surface), turn down the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool (occasionally stirring to prevent a skin from forming: it won’t matter for the recipe, but I have an irrational fear of milk skins).

Strain the milk (if it has a skin, it’ll be removed this way) into a large pan, and press down on the onion to make sure all the juices are extracted. Put the pan back on the stove and gradually add the beurre manié, which you have cut in small pieces (hopefully). Stir constantly, and if all goes well you’ll end up with a thick white sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Don’t be too generous with the salt: remember that the cheeses contain a fair amount of salt as well.

Leave the sauce to cool for 3-4 minutes, then add the egg yolks, the goat’s cheese and the Gouda, as well as two-thirds of the parmesan cheese. Stir well. Add the Worcestershire sauce and the mustard (powder). Check the seasoning. Gordon tells me this step can be completed up to two days before you plan to make the actual souffle, so if you have a dinner party coming up, you can stuff the mixture in a covered bowl in the fridge now and put your feet up. However, do make sure you’ll let the mixture come up to room temperature when you continue with the next steps.

Brush the insides of a souffle dish (mine was about 20 cm across) with the remaining 25 grams of butter (you used the other 50 for the beurre manié) and scatter the remaining parmesan cheese around the bowl. The bowl should have an even coating of cheese when you’re finished. The butter will help your souffle to rise, so don’t omit this step! Ground some black pepper in there as well. Put the bowl in the fridge.

Use a grease-free bowl to whisk the eggg whites. To make sure it is grease-free, coat the insides with the lemon juice. When the egg whites are sufficiently whisked (meaning you can hold the bowl over your head without the egg whites falling out), whisk around one-third through the cheese mixture you’ve prepared earlier. This will loosen it up. Very carefully mix the remaining egg whites through the mixture: you want a light and fluffy souffle, not a brick.

Spoon half the mixture in the souffle dish you have taken from the fridge. If you are adding brie, now is the time to put the slices on top of the mix.  If not, you can just put the entire mixture in the dish. You can add some more parmesan cheese to the top, if you like (if you’ve come this far, why not go all the way?).

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees. Bake the souffle for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to around 180 degrees, and bake for 15-20 minutes more. The souffle should be evenly risen and slightly wobbly. If you’re unsure, just lower the temperature to 175 and leave in a while longer. Resist the urge to open the oven door every 10 minutes to check, this will surely cause your souffle to fall.

When everyone is sitting at the table, proudly present your perfect souffle! I usually serve this with a crisp green salad and some good crusty bread. Salted butter is very good with the bread, but your arteries will probably diagree. Best leave it for another day then…

Good news for those of you who are the proud owners of an iPhone (and like to cook): Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio app was released today. This app helps you to calculate the exact ratio for doughs, batters, custards, sauces and many more kitchen staples. The good news is that its not all in cups or ounces, you can set the app to recalculate in grams, milliliters and kilos. Even eggs are recalculated to 85.05 grams for the muffin recipe! (I usually go by : use 1 or 2, but that’s not how ratios work). There’s also an option to save your own favorite recipes and share them with others. I think this app is indispensible for enthusiastic cooks. Like Ruhlman puts it: With a ration, it’s not like knowing a single recipe, it’s like knowing thousands!

Ever since fall has been in full swing I’ve been craving risotto. I usually make it once a month, but lately my consumption has increased to more than once a week. Combined with the pumpkin season I think I am in heaven. And if you try my pumpkin risotto combination I hope you feel the same way!

In the picture above I have combined the risotto with roasted pork shoulder (I marinated it in garlic, olive oil and mustard and it was delicious!) and I think that is really a winning combination. Other favorites include sausage and roasted chicken. But for all you veggies out there: this will work perfectly as a stand alone meal as well!

To serve three to  four people (depending on their appetites), you’ll need:

800 ml. vegetable or chicken stock, hot

1 glass of white wine (around 200 ml)

olive oil, for the pumpkin and the risotto

1 onion, diced

200 grams risotto rice (I use arborio)

400 grams  pumpkin, diced

100 grams mascarpone

grated parmesan cheese, to serve

salt & pepper

First, preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Put the diced pumpkin in an oven tray and roast it for about 15-20 minutes until it is soft. Meanwhile, heat some more olive oil in a skillet and add the onion. After a minute or 2, add the risotto rice and coat it with the olive oil. After 30 seconds, add the glass of white wine and stir. When the white wine is almost evaporated, add some of the hot stock. Wait until this has almost evaporated, then stir in some more stock. Continue this until the rice is al dente (meaning it should still have a little bite when you taste is). This usually takes me around 15-20 minutes. Add the pumpkin to the rice, together with the mascarpone and some freshly ground pepper. Mix very well. Add salt and parmesan cheese to taste. I tend to err on the side of caution with salt, and I usually put the salt shaker on the table for my guests to help themselves: better to add some more than to add too much!

This dish will not win the pretty picture award, but the taste more than makes up for it!

I was going to write about my homemade ketchup, but I dropped the first bottle I made on my kitchen floor. If I had taken pictures then this would become more of a CSI fan blog. Of course I made a new batch, but I haven’t gotten around to taking pictures yet. Besides, it’s practically winter here, so I don’t think anybody has kilos of tomatoes just lying around waiting to be turned into delicious ketchup. Then I figured I would write about my favorite stew, but then I discovered I already did that. Is that Mr. Alzheimer calling? Anyway, you’ll have to make do with another cake recipe for now. But not any old cake, no, this is the one and only Mars cheesecake. I had never heard of such a concoction, but my little sister had a slice and couldn’t talk about anything else for days. So when her birthday arrived I didn’t have much of a choice: a Mars cheesecake had to be created. It actually was a breeze to make, and it gave me the chance to experiment with swirly chocolate and butterscotch decorations, which, as you can tell from the picture above, I still need to practice. Best thing about this recipe? No baking required! The original recipe can be found here.

You’ll need:

250 grams of chocolate chip cookes

125 grams butter, melted

2 tablespoons brown sugar

20 grams butter, extra

300 ml cream

50 grams milk chocolate

3 sheets of gelatine

60 ml. water

500 grams cream cheese

110 grams caster sugar

3 mars bars (around 60 grams each), chopped very finely. And I mean VERY finely.

To make the cake:

Blend the cookies in a food processor until they are very crumbly. Add the butter and mix until combined. Put the cookie and butter mixture in a springform tin and put in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Then we move on to butterscotch sauce: combine the brown sugar with the 20 grams of extra butter and 2 tablespoons of the cream in a saucepan. Stir over low heat and make sure the mixture doesn’t boil! When the sugar is dissolved you are done. Just let it stand while you make the chocolate sauce and the cake mixture.

Now make the chocolate sauce by melting the milk chocolate with another two tablespoons of cream in a small saucepan.

Heat the 60 ml of water and add the gelatine: stir until the gelatine dissolves completely. Let it cool a bit.

Beat the cream cheese together with the caster sugar into a smooth mixture. Beat the remaining cream until soft peaks form. Add the gelatine to the cream cheese mixture, together with the chopped Mars bars. Finally fold in the cream.

Now we come to the decorating part. First, pour about half of the cream cheese and Mars bar mixture in the springform tin. Get a spoon and drizzle the butterscotch in lines over this mixture. Repeat with the chocolate. Now get a skewer (or use the handle of the spoon) and pull it backward and forward through this mixture to create lines. Sounds difficult? Take a look here to see how a real pattisier does it. Add the rest of the cream cheese mixture and decorate the top the same way. Now you can just put the cake in the refrigerator and let it set for at least three hours.

Ta-daa! Your Mars cheesecake is done. I didn’t get to taste it, because I don’t eat chocolate, but I have it on good authority this cake is quite delectable!

Carrot cake seems to have an uncanny ability to divide a room full of people within seconds. In the one corner you have its very vocal advocates who can’t stop praising the delectable combination of carrots, nuts and cream cheese, while in the other corner people are pulling very strange faces at the very notion of putting vegetables in dessert. I haven’t told them yet about zucchini-chocolate cupcakes, for I fear that it would lead to anxiety attacks. I just don’t have enough paper bags to deal with that.

Anyway, I’m very much in favour of carrot cake. Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it, that’s all I can say. And with the following very easy recipe, trying it shouldn’t pose too much of a problem!

You’ll need:

For the cake

175 gr. of carrot, grated

75 gr. almonds, coarsely ground

75 gr. walnuts, coarsely ground

175 gr. butter

250 gr. sugar

2 tablespoons of cinnamon

3 eggs

225 gr. self-raising flour

For the frosting

50 gr. butter (soft)

100 gr. cream cheese

125 gr. powdered sugar

1 sachet of vanilla sugar.

To prepare:

Preheat your oven to around 200 degrees C. Mix the ground walnuts, almonds, sugar and carrot together. Add eggs and butter and mix until it resembles a homogenous mass. Slowly add the self-raising flour and cinnamon, make sure to prevent lumps! Sieving the flour helps, but I’m usually too lazy for this and it seems to work out fine most of the time.

Pour the resulting mixture in a springform cake tin with a diameter of about 20 cm (a bit smaller or bigger won’t make much of a difference). Put the cake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes. Turn down the oven to about 175 degrees after 30 minutes, and check every 5-10 minutes if the cake is done. It really depends on the kind of oven you use how long the cake has to bake: it has taken me everything from 35 to 60 minutes. You can tell if the cake is ready if a knitting needle or fork comes out clean when you poke it in the middle of the cake. If it is finished baking, take it out of the oven and let it cool.

Meanwhile, mix the butter and cream cheese together in a bowl, and add the powdered and vanilla sugar. Make sure the cake isn’t warm anymore when you spread the mixture on top, otherwise you get a fairly runny frosting.

Put the cake in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve.

It is also a great idea to decorate the carrot cake with tiny marzipan carrots and such, but a few walnuts also make it look very sophisticated if you aren’t patient enough for that kind of thing. As you can tell from the picture I don’t even have enough patience to put walnuts on top, but the cake was a smash hit anyway!

Just one more tip for serving: small pieces are usually quite enough for most people, this cake tends to be on the heavy side…

soon, with, among others, a recipe for fried green tomatoes, vegetarian lasagna and homemade ketchup. Until then, here’s a fantastic video of hand-pulled noodles being made. It is really mesmerizing… And I wish I had those wicked skills!