Food

Satay rempah (Or: Indonesian cooking with Marco and Roger)

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Niki

On Saturday Marco, Roger and I made satay rempah with jalapeño atjar. As mentioned last week, Marco received the recipe book “Indostok” from Roger for Christmas. Satay rempah is a satay made from minced meat. In this case “rempah” translates loosely to “spices”, with minced meat used for the satay. We made the spices first (including but not limited to star anise, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, ginger and lime zest because we couldn’t find lime leaves, etc…). Oh, and also candlenuts (English Wikipedia) which are mildly toxic when raw but perfectly fine if cooked. Who knew.

You then mix the spice with the minced meat and add some breadcrumbs and corn starch on the outside to give it a nice crunchy coating when fried.

The cool thing about this recipe is that the sticks that normally hold the satay were sticks of lemongrass.

You then fry them in a wok in a thin layer of oil. This was the only annoying part, since we ended up cutting the lemongrass in half to handle them better. Some of them also had a tendency to fall apart.

The finished meal: satay rempah, jalapeño atjar (sour/spicy vegetable pickle) and basmati rice. Yum yum yum!

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Nutella oliebol? (Or: So sweet you can’t eat it all)

Posted on January 16, 2021 by Niki

Roger brought me a gift today, from the oliebollen stand at the Grote Marktstraat, a Nutella oliebol:

As you can see the top is covered in Nutella (English Wikipedia) and chocolate shavings. The inside of the oliebol is also filled with Nutella, because it can never be sweet enough. And it was delicious! The dangerous kind of delicious that makes you want to buy one every week…

However, it was sweet enough that I decided to save half of it for tomorrow evening. Otherwise I’ll be bouncing off the walls in no time.

Random article of the day: Anger over NS plan to remove conductor whistle from nltimes.nl. It is not quite what it sounds like. Each train has a conductor who checks to make sure that all passengers have entered the train. When it is time to leave the conductor blows their whistle and passengers (in theory) do not try to enter or exit the train after that moment. The NS (the largest Dutch train company) plans to use cameras instead to watch the doors. They say this will make trains more punctual however the union sees that as an easy way to get rid of the conductor’s job altogether.

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Time to celebrate (Or: The weekend has arrived)

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Niki

I am not sure why but this work week has seemed so very long. My coworkers agreed during our team meeting today (on Teams, of course). But Marco and I celebrated the end of the work week in style, as he picked up our meal from FOAM late in the afternoon.

Today’s menu was Sri Lankan curry with pumpkin, spinach and sweet potato served with homemade naan:

It was very tasty! I am not the biggest fan of sweet potato, but the flavors definitely lifted up the taste. In the middle is a homemade yoghurt as well. Have a look at the naan bread – do you also think it looks like a face?

And now… Marco and I are going to watch Disney+’s WandaVision (English Wikipedia). It’s a superhero show, set after Avenger’s Endgame… but written as a sitcom. Two episodes premiered tonight, and we’ve seen the first already. And now on to the second! I can’t wait.

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Snow (Or: What is snow again?)

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Niki

Buienradar (“Shower radar”) says parts of the Netherlands are looking at snow this weekend. As usually happens, it’s a minuscule amount, maybe an inch or two. It will also probably disappear within 24 hours when it starts raining later on Sunday – but hey, it is still snow!

Snow expected in NL this weekend from dutchnews.nl

It’s definitely been a few years since it has snowed here. Maybe Spring 2018? I posted a photo of the Hofvijfer with snow on top of the water that month. Either way, this weekend should be interesting.

In other news, we had tacos last night and Marco took a photo of his. Check it out:

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Anyone up for some satay? (Or: Tasty Christmas gifts)

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Niki

Roger gave Marco a recipe book for Christmas: Indostok (bol.com, in Dutch). The title combines two words, “indo” and “stok” (stok=stick). The book includes many, many different satay recipes from Vanja van der Leeden.

Another skillfully posed photo by Marco

Satay (or saté in Dutch) was one of the few Dutch meals we made in Chicago for relatives. We brought along spices to make the accompanying peanut sauce (pindasaus) and then cooked and skewered some chicken. We also brought along a small jar of acar (atjar in Dutch – I had to look up how to say it in English, even), which is a vegetable pickle dish.

For me, the sourer the atjar is, the better. Consider this: one of my favorite random side dishes is cucumber with white wine vinegar, a bit of lemon juice and hot sauce. My mouth is puckering just thinking about it…

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Indian Dahl and naan bread (Or: Friday meal from FOAM)

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Niki

Tonight Marco and I enjoyed a meal of Indian Dahl and naan bread from the FOAM restaurant in The Hague – yum yum yum:

It was a tasty meal for a Friday evening and a great way to bring in the weekend. Generally they post their Friday FOAM @ Home offerings on their Facebook page.

In other (expected) news: Rutte: Lockdown extension decision to come on Tuesday from nltimes.nl. Spoiler: There is no way they will not extend the lockdown (where all non-essential stores are closed) due to the number of corona cases we have currently.

Oh well. At least we can enjoy the weekend in the meantime!

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Sushimex (Or: A new restaurant for those who can’t decide)

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Niki

Do you want sushi? Do you want Mexican food?

If you answered “both”, why not try the new restaurant in The Hague’s city centre? Sushimex (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch) opened last month on the Korte Poten. The menu at thuisbezorgd.nl (in English) lists poké bowls, temaki, burritos, nachos, spring rolls, mozzarella sticks… it’s so crazy that I might just be interested.

The Dutch ministry of health has released their vacation plan:

Living in the Netherlands? Find out when you can get vaccinated against Covid-19, and where from nltimes.nl. Spoiler: As a healthy adult under the age of 60, I have to wait a while. The vaccination location in The Hague is actually at the parking lot of the ADO Den Haag football stadium (adodenhaag.nl, in Dutch), although I’m not sure if other locations will be available in our area later in the year.

It’s possible to get to the stadium with public transportation (and a 10 minute walk) or by car, at least. I know that because a group of us went to an ADO Den Haag game back in October 2017:

Start of the ADO Den Haag game, back in 2017. The opponent was Rotterdam Sparta. Back when crowds were allowed…
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New beginnings (Or: A lazy start to 2021)

Posted on January 2, 2021 by Niki

The perfect kind of lazy – we got up after 10:00. That doesn’t happen too often, so when it does it is nice.

Here is a photo which sums up the new world we live in. It was taken outside of a McDonald’s in Utrecht:

Thuisbezorgd (Translated as something like ‘Delivered to your house’) is similar to GrubHub or UberEats in America. That was the line of delivers waiting to pick up their orders to bring to customers. Just from McDonald’s! Check out this article in Dutch from nos.nl – 1 januari was drukste dag ooit voor Thuisbezorgd – which says that yesterday was the busiest day for Thuisbezorgd ever. The NOS article also has a picture of that McDonald’s in Utrecht, showing an even longer line.

And since we all need a bit of cute, here is a video of two lion cubs going outside for the first time this week (at a zoo in Amersfoort):

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Good start to the New Year (Or: Homemade oliebollen)

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Niki

Happy New Year! Yesterday morning Marco and I made oliebollen (Wikipedia) to bring Roger’s. Plain oliebollen for me and oliebollen with raisins for Marco and Roger. Yummy!

Thanks to the fireworks ban in the Netherlands, New Year’s Eve was a bit quieter than normal, although there were still a a lot of fireworks right before midnight and for a half hour or so afterwards. Most likely people had an old stash lying around that they hadn’t used last year – or they bought fireworks illegally.

There were still some issues, of course. In nearby Rijswijk, someone set a camper on fire. The only problem? There were gas tanks inside. Several people catch fire after blowing up a caravan from nltimes.nl. (On the one hand, warning: you will see people on fire. On the other hand, no one turned up in the hospital and the victims were long gone by the time the police arrived, so it seems their injuries were minor. If you can call being on fire minor.)

Firework ban widely ignored, but police report fewer incidents during New Year festivities from dutchnews.nl.

However, the Dutch Health ministry did report two thirds less dust or particles in the air last night compared with last year so most people obeyed the ban on fireworks. See also this article from nos.nl in Dutch. Local hospitals were also thankful that the evening was relatively calm: Ziekenhuizen dankbaar voor rustige jaarwisseling: ‘Hele andere nacht’ (from omroepwest.nl in Dutch).

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Christmas men made of bread? (Or: More breakfast fun)

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Niki

Here is another breakfast item Marco bought at the local supermarket, Albert Heijn:

We decided to be funny and bake some bacon as well. That way they would have a scarf to keep their necks warm. What do you think? This bread was not that much different from the bread shaped like a Christmas tree we had earlier in the week. (Which, if I must admit, was a bit tastier. These weren’t bad, though.)

And yay, I have a day off tomorrow! I am quite looking forward to sleeping in. And later in the day Marco and I will be going to Roger’s for New Year’s Eve. It is hard to believe I haven’t been to his place since March (!).

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