What’s the first thing you think about when Dutch cuisine comes to mind? Raw herring? Gouda Cheese? Liquorice? Or maybe the remnants from our colonial past, such as Nasi Goreng or the Rijsttafel Clotilde raved about in a recent post? When I am abroad, I usually don’t miss much about our traditional Dutch cuisine: it is often accused of being very frugal, which is reflected in the large number of dishes consisting of potatoes, vegetables and a bit of meat and gravy. I’m more of a fan of Italian and French cuisine, where taste comes first, not cost. However, there’s one thing I do crave after coming back from aholiday: the Dutch kroket (or croquette, if you want to be fancy about it). It’s a cylindrical-shaped snack, consisting of meat ragout, rolled through breadcrumbs and then diep-fried. Yum.

I’ve been planning to make croquettes for a few weeks now, but my first attempt with shrimp croquettes failes miserably. The ragout was far too runny and I wasn’t able to form the characteristic cylindrical shape. Not all was lost though, I added a bit more flour and turned the mixture into shrimp-cookies, which were very tasty as well (especially with a home-made alioli).

Anyway, I decided to shelve the project for authentic Dutch croquettes for a while, and instead found a recipe for salmon croquettes which uses potato instead of flour, which makes for a far easier mixture to deep-fry. The recipe for the meat-croquettes will follow in a few weeks, when I’ve tried the fail-safe recipe my cousin has given me.

So, for the salmon croquettes you will need:

• 450 grams floury potatoes
• 500 grams salmon (fresh salmon, not tinned. A fillet will do fine)
• 300 ml. milk
• 1 large onion
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• a pinch of smoked paprika (or regular paprika)
• A bunch of parsley, chopped
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 3 large eggs
• 4 tbs breadcrumbs
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1-2 tbs flour
• Oil, to fry in

First you peel and boil the potatoes. After they’re done, mash them with a fork or put them in a ricer. You will want a smooth purée, no lumps allowed!

Then you poach the salmon in the milk.

I used a fairly thick fillet which had to be poached for about 7 minutes (I turned it after 4 minutes or so). Make sure the salmon is cooked through, although some raw bits don’t matter. When the salmon is ready, use a fork to shred the salmon and discard any skin or bones you may see.

Next, sauté the onions in a skillet, add the minced garlic and paprika after 4 minutes. Sauté for two more minutes, then turn off the heat.

Beat one of the eggs in a bowl and add the salmon, onion and parsley. Add salt and pepper  to taste, then spoon the mixture in the potato purée.

Make small balls (a little smaller than a ping-pong ball) from the mixture, and roll them through the flour.

Beat the other two eggs. Roll the balls through the egg, then through the breadcrumbs.

Now, if you’re in the possesion of a deep-fryer, you could use this to fry the croquettes. However, the oil will be ruined (unless you like the fishy taste with everything you’re deep-frying), so I chose to use a regular pot with a thick bottom for this task. You only need about 3 cm. of oil in here, just make sure to turn the croquettes after one or two minutes:

Make sure the oil is very hot before you start frying! Toss in a piece of bread: if it turns golden in a couple of seconds, your oil is hot enough.

Drain the croquettes on paper towels and serve them with horseradish, alioli or mayonnaise, and dig in!

To explain my lack of updating: it’s not that I am already bored with the new site, but my internet connection has been down for the past two weeks, which makes it hard to update… I’m hoping the provider will have fixed the problem soon, but so far my numerous phonecalls failed to get any result. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, when I was reading the paper today I read some great news for chickens (well, the European chickens at least), because the European branches of Unilever and Mcdonalds have decided to stop using eggs from battery hens. By the end of 2010 all McDonalds restaurants in 21 countries will solely use free-range eggs.  Unilver has promised not to use eggs from battery hens by the end of 2012, because it takes some time to find enough providers for the free-range eggs.

This is great news, because although I always buy organic eggs in the supermarket, lots of ready-made products use battery eggs. Unless you buy organic products, it is almost impossible to determine what kind of eggs were used in, for example, the mayonnaise you like so much, or the cookies you love. With Unilever taking the first step, other international food producers will hopefully follow. Incidentally, the keeping of battery hens will be outlawed by the European Union in 2012, so the companies probably have little choice in the matter, but it is always good to see companies switch voluntarily to animal-friendly products.

I used to think that you needed a good palate if you wanted to become a good cook. Now it seems there’s much more to taste than just tasting a broad variety of flavours and learning to discern between them. There’s a whole new classification in town: you can also be a supertaster, taster, or, *gasp*, a non-taster. The latter title seems to imply you’re a lost cause in the kitchen, and it might be best to surrender your KitchenAid and find a new hobby now.

But what do these tags mean? I first read about the supertaster classification a couple of months back, when they popped up on a number of food blogs such as the Amateur Gourmet and the French Laundry Cookbook, and now a great number of people (especially those active in the food-blogging world) have come forward with the admission that they’re supertasters as well. Intrigued, and with visions of some kind of culinary superhero in my head, I googled the term and found out that the term supertaster simply means that your tongue has more tastebuds than average, which means you probably have a greater sensitivity to some flavours, especially bitter ones. This means that a supertaster often dislikes bitter foods such as beer, grapefruit, Brussels sprouts, coffee and spinach. However, Wikipedia makes sure to caution that “individual supertasters can certainly consume and enjoy these foods”. Phew. I was beginning to get worried there for a minute! It also seems that Asians and women are more often supertasters, and it isn’t exactly a rare trait: about one in four people is a supertaster, half of the people are tasters, and a very unlucky one in four is a non-taster. Being a non-taster means that you probably need more stimulation to taste something: more sugar in your tea, more salt on your fries, that sort of thing.

Well, that was certainly enlightening. But how do I find out whether I am a supertaster, or maybe even a non-taster? Luckily, there’s a website which sells a simple test you can do at home, which will tell you in a matter of seconds in which category you fall.

After reading all about these supertasters I couldn’t wait to find out whether I was one too, which would give me an excuse to brag about my culinary expertise to everyone! And I would finally have a plausible excuse as for why I refuse to eat grapefuit! Only good things could come out of this… if I turned out to be a supertaster, of course. But part of me was actually terrified I would turn out to be a mere taster, or, in my worst nightmares, a non-taster. I would no longer have any authority when it comes to culinary matters! Scorned by cooks, shunned by gourmets. A bleak future would await me.

I decided to face my fears and take the test. A couple of days later a small envelope came with the mail. Inside were two small paper strips, which I knew to be doused in the chemical propylthiouracil, which is the compound supertasters are sensitive to. If I were to taste nothing, I would be a non-taster. Slight bitterness would indicate that I am a taster, and only in the case of extreme bitterness I would be a supertaster. 

The little strips of paper in my hand would decide my future in cooking. But first, I needed someone to act as a guinea-pig with me. This fate befell my housemate Hester, who happened to be near. We each took a strip, placed it on our tongues, and started to count…

And after five seconds I spat the vile thing out. I have never tasted anything so bitter in my life. Hurrah! It seems I am a supertaster after all! Hester was not so lucky: she didn’t taste much, and has been agonising about it ever since. But I’m in the clear: I can be as pretentious about food as I want!

But all joking aside: I don’t really think that being a supertaster makes me a superior cook: if anything, I am more worried about my cooking than ever. If my family reaches for the salt after they’ve tasted a dish, I agonise about the seasoning. It still takes a lot of experience in the kitchen and plenty tasting before you can call yourself a good cook. And I don’t believe in using your supertaster-status as an excuse not to eat certain things: you can learn to eat anything. I do eat a lot of bitter foods supertasters are supposed to dislike, such as spinach and Brussels sprouts. I love beer. The only real food-problem I have is that really spicy foods make my mouth go numb, so I try to avoid these.

So my verdict about this test is that it’s fun to take (apart from the nasty taste), but it doesn’t really mean anything. A cook is more than his tastebuds: it takes dedication, and a willingness to try anything (no matter how disgusting it may seem)!

One of the best things I have done lately is giving myself ‘Charcuterie’ by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn for Christmas. Ever since then I’ve had sausage on the brain. The book guides you through all the steps with clear instructions and drawings, so making your own sausage seems like a cinch!

Dry sausages, such as the French saucisson sec and the Spanish Chorizo, are a bit more difficult to make because you need starter cultures for them, which are very hard to come by in the Netherlands*. But in a few weeks time my batch will arrive via some useful contacts in Britain, and I will conquer the dry sausage in no time at all! For this experiment I started with a fairly easy recipe for Italian sausage, which turned out to be even easier to make than I anticipated.

But before I guide you through the process, there’s some equipment which is indispensible for sausagemaking.

First of all, you’ll need a meat-grinder. These range from the very cheap to the very expensive, and while I am usually all for cheap kitchen equipment, in this case it is very worthwhile to invest in a higher price category. The cheap ones usually heat up the meat while grinding (and you really don’t want that), make a lot of noise and have plastic attachments which will break more easily. If you have a food processor such as a Kenwood or a KitchenAid, meat-grinder attachments are available for a pretty reasonable price.

Precision scales are very useful for sausagemaking (and cooking in general). Most ordinairy scales are usually a couple of grams off, and measurements are crucial in this process. Adding too much or too little salt to your mixture can make a big difference! I bought mine for about 20 euros on the internet, and it works great.

And of course you can’t make sausage without the casing! I used hog casings for the Italian sausage, which I ordered from www.sausagemaking.org, but most butchers sell them as well (again, it can’t hurt to befriend a butcher!). The casings will keep for a long time in your refrigerator, so it’s no problem if you dont use all the casing at once.

Now we come to the actual sausagemaking. I used the following ingredients:

• About 4 meters  (13 feet) of hog casings, soaked in cold water for about half an hour.
• 2 kilos of pork shoulders, cubed
• 500 grams of pork back fat. cubed**
• 12 grams of Spanish sweet smoked paprika (pimenton)
• 24 grams of salt
• 16 grams of freshly grinded black pepper
• 12 grams of finely chopped garlic
• 16 grams plain sugar
• 200 ml. red wine vinegar
• 200 ml. ice water

Make sure the meat and fat are as cold as possible before you use them: only take them out of the refrigerator moments before you will use them.

When you soak the hog casings they will look pretty disgusting:

Now ignore everything that comes up in your mind when you look at this, and instead focus on mixing the meat, fat and dry ingredients together.

Now, use your meat grinder (which has to be very thoroughly cleaned before you use it, to avoid cross-contamination) to grind this mixture very finely. The resulting mixture will look something like this:

Now it is time to mix the wet ingredients (the red wine vinegar and ice water) together with the ground pork. Make sure it is a smooth mixture. Now we come to the best part: the stuffing of the cases! For this you will need the sausage filler accessory, which looks like a large tube. Take the soaked intestine and roll it up the tube until you have a couple of centimeters overhang at the end. Now, in an ideal world there’s two of you in this step of the process: a person to put the meat through the tube and a person who holds the casing and twists it every once in a while to create the links of the sausage. Make sure the meat is evenly distributed through the tube. If you want fatter sausages, apply some pressure when the meat comes out of the tube: the casing will fill up more. The process will look something like this:

Just keep going until you reach the end of the casing, or you run out of meat. Then you’ll end up with a big pile of sausages:

Just use what you need for dinner (fry them for about 10-15 minutes, until cooked through) and freeze the rest!

So that’s how easy it is to make your own sausage. I can recommend buying Charcuterie and trying the recipes yourself: there’s something in there for every sausage lover. The great advantage of creating your own sausages is that it is cheaper than storebought, easy to make organic sausages, and you know exactly what has been put in there!

* If you live in UK, the great website www.sausagemaking.org ships starter cultures to you! Sausage afficionados in the US needn’t worry as well, www.butcher-packer.com has them as well. If you live outside these countries, you either have to befriend a butcher who cures his own sausage and is willing to order them for you, or make some friends who are willing to bring the cultures with them from the USA or UK.

** Always use enough fat for you sausage! Trust me, it makes all the difference in taste and texture.