Food

Ice cream, you scream (Or: Desserts by SET restaurant)

Posted on October 9, 2024 by Niki

Last weekend Marco and I went to SET restaurant here in The Hague for lunch. I had a bento box, which is what I always get for lunch there because it is so good. I didn’t take a picture this time since I have posted about it before. As always: yum!

On this rare occasion I also decided to get dessert. Here is Marco’s dessert, a mochi ice cream mix.

I have to admit, the restaurant name in powdered sugar is a nice touch. Almost like they know these photos will show up on social media…

I went for the green tea ice cream. It was a great choice, since the ice cream was a slightly more bitter green tea.

Did you know there is a store in Tokyo which sells 7 different types of matcha ice cream (reddit.com)? With 7 being the most bitter and the most intense. That is what I was thinking of while having this ice cream, although I’d probably rate it as 4 or 5 on the “intensity scale”.

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Almost December already? (Or: Kruidnoten spotted by Albert Heijn)

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Niki

Kruidnoten spotting is a tradition / sport in The Netherlands. The earliest I have spotted them is August 1, although this year I haven’t seen them yet. Marco did, though, and took a photo of them at a local Albert Heijn earlier this week:

I am sure if I went to the local Jumbo grocery store (pronounced Yumbo) I would find them as well. Although I don’t see them offered online quite yet…

Kruidnoten are a confectionery to celebrate the December 5 Sinterklaas holiday. Personally I am waiting for the gevuld speculaas, which is a cake with almond paste inside. It looks like this (laurasbakery.nl). Yum!

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Punselie’s stroopkoekjes (Or: Gone… for now?)

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Niki

Recently I read on omroepwest.nl that Punselie’s in Gouda would (at least temporarily) stop producing stroopkoekjes (=small syrup cookies) at the end of this month. See also the message on the official website, in Dutch, which says they hope to be producing cookies again in 12 months after they find a new location and secure new machinery.

Oven from world famous stroopkoek to be turned off: “Difficult and emotional” (article in Dutch at omroepwest.nl). It’s possible if you were on a KLM flight that you were served one of these. The linked article mentions that these were very popular on flights back in the day, but that the company lost a lot of revenue after 9/11. These days the cookies are only sold within the Netherlands because the machinery used to make the cookies is too old to be certified for sale outside of the country.

The cookies are pretty good. They are pretty small*, which isn’t a bad thing when you just want a cookie with your “after dinner” coffee. The ratio of cookie to syrup is also a bit more even here, so they are a bit less sweet than the bigger stroopwafels you can get on the street or in the store. All in all, a nice treat!

* The size of the cookies is given in the name right on the box, with the -je ending: stroopkoekjes. Adding -je (or -jes for the plural) to a word makes a regular sized object small. So, stroopkoekjes is small syrup cookies.

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Robotic servers (Or: Dadawan in the Mall of the Netherlands)

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Niki

A few months ago a new restaurant by the name of Dadawan opened in the Mall of the Netherlands. They bill themselves as “Asian fast food” although there are fusion options. But more importantly, they have robots…!

Okay, okay. The robots generally just bring you your drinks, not the food. But still, it’s a first for me. It was good food as well, although I oddly had a craving for – and went for – a hamburger at the Asian fast food fusion place. It was good, and not so large that it was messy. It wasn’t the best hamburger I’ve ever had, but it hit the spot. If that makes sense.

After you grab all your drinks, he prompts you to send him back to the starting point. Although he’ll go back automatically after a few minute or two if you don’t press anything.

And of course the joke on the screen was “Rice to meet you Leidschendam!” (Leidschendam being the name of the town the mall is in).

And yes, I just called a robot a “he”. Chat-GPT is also “he” for me.

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A tasty lunch (Or: Amier restaurant in The Hague)

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Niki

Last weekend Marco and I decided to go for Lebanese at Amier restaurant in The Hague’s city centre, in the same street as the American Book Center. I’ve walked past the restaurant time and time again over the years, but we had never been.

Since it was lunch we decided to share some small plates. Here’s a look at what we had:

We ordered four things:

  • Batata harra (spicy baked potatoes with lemon)
  • Arnabeet (cauliflower with lemon, pomegranate and tahini sauce)
  • Falafel with tahini sauce
  • Samboesek djaj (pastry dough filled with marinated chicken, lemon and bell pepper)

It also came with a side dish of Lebanese bread. The meal was quite tasty, as expected. A bit more subtle than I was expecting, but definitely in a good way. Lots of lemon, but it was fine! It was also fun to have a lunch date with Marco.

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Bagels (With: A Dutch flag in them)

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Niki

A few weeks ago Marco and I tried Netherlands Bagels for the first time. It’s in the city centre, a few minutes walk from the Grote Kerk. This bagel shop sells New York style bagels (the owner is originally from New York). Read more about the shop’s history.

First, our drinks arrived. Very tasty chai lattes that definitely hit the spot.

I can’t lie – we were amused when the bagels came out. Why, you ask?

I mean, it is in the name: Netherlands Bagels. So the flags make sense. It’s still funny, though.

I had an everything bagel with peanut butter on the side. A bit of a rare combination, I admit, mixing the salty menu with the sweet menu (I had to double check that I could mix it like that). My tongue also thought it was a weird choice, but it worked fairly well. For me. And as always I requested the peanut butter on the side.

Marco had a bodega bagel (eggs, bacon and cheese). It looked so good I even had a bite or three. That says a lot considering I am very much not a fan of eggs (if it looks or tastes like egg, anyway). I mean, I have a tiny bit of scrambled eggs about every 5 years or so. That’s good, but only in limited amounts. But this was nice – the salty bacon paired nicely with the egg and I could see why people liked it. Hence my having three bites! I think Marco got concerned that I might eat all of it, but nope, I gave it back.

These were some tasty bagels; we’ll definitely go back to try some of the other varieties.

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Homemade tentamen ramen (Or: Yumyumyum)

Posted on January 14, 2024 by Niki

Over the weekend, we made homemade tentamen ramen. That is, ramen with spicy ground beef. (Exceptions to “homemade” were the noodles, egg and chili oil.) The inspiration for making this broth came from Roger who gifted Marco a copy of Let’s Make Ramen!: A comic-book cookbook.

First we started with a yasai broth, which has among other ingredients shiitake mushrooms, carrots, green onions, onions, apples and ginger. After the flavors infuse into the water for an hour you take it off the heat and add a few sheets of kombu dried seaweed for 10 minutes to give it more of an umami flavor. They expanded to ridiculous levels after those 10 minutes. it was crazy!

Lots of mushrooms! But the most unexpected ingredient was the apples.

Skipping ahead, here is a look at the end product:

To make the final product we added “tare” which was a homemade mixture which gave the broth its depth of flavor, plus bok chow, an egg for Marco and Roger, spicy ground beef and dried nori seaweed. Yumyumyum!

Marco and I are already looking forward to the next recipe. We think we’ll tackle a 4 hour broth next, but this time putting it into our pressure cooker (which has way more capacity than our normal pans anyway).

Here’s to Marco, the awesome chef and Roger for the great inspiration!

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Yummy (Or: Dark chocolate Christmas goodness at Albert Heijn)

Posted on December 26, 2023 by Niki

Luckily Albert Heijn still sells my favorite Christmas cookies ever. These are dark chocolate butter cookies with red and green sprinkles on top. Plus they are nice and big, as the name suggests (Kerst kransen = Christmas wreaths). This year I think I bought 3 packages. A few years back I think I bought 5 or 6 in the end and was still eating them in May.

And here is a photo of some other Christmas cookies because I thought the idea was pretty smart. It is cookies of all difference sizes which you can stack to make it look like a Christmas tree. And then someone starts eating them 2 minutes later.

Looking at the picture on the right, I am not sure that I believe that the smallest cookie can be placed on its side to form a star. I feel like it would fall over right away. Maybe I should buy the cookies to test that theory… Hmmm.

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Hmmmmm (Or: Snack machine by Amazing Oriental)

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Niki

Something interesting that I spotted in the Amazing Oriental on the Grote Marktstraat – a hot snack machine. The machine is sometimes called an automatiek (English Wikipedia).

For the moment the only option looks to be a bag of 10 mini spring rolls for €1.60. You can either pay with coins – exact change only – or with your debit card. Here’s hoping they start offering a bit more variety!

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A crossing between a croissant and tompouce (Or: Crompouce)

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Niki

I was by Albert Heijn recently and I spotted a crompouce. What is a crompouce, you ask? It’s a cross between a croissant and a tompouce (Wikipedia). The latter is a Dutch/Belgium treat that is horribly difficult to eat. I subscribe to the method where you eat the cream in the middle with your fork, and when the structural integrity starts failing you start eating the top of it as well.

And now we have crompouces…

It’s basically a croissant with cream in the middle and the tompouce icing on top. I haven’t had one yet. I might need to have my dentist on speed dial if I try it, though.

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