Author: Michiel and Jeen

Sharing our love for good food and excellent wine with you: mushrooms, sauces, forgotten vegetables, pies and tartelettes. Join us and Cook and Drink with us!

Garlic

5 January 2018

A recipe for garlic? Yes, indeed. The taste of fresh, crunched garlic is nice, but you can do so much better! If cooked on relativly low heat, the garlic will become soft and sweet. Great to add to a sauce and also very nice on toasted bread.

What You Need 
  • Garlic
  • Plenty of Olive oil
What You Do
  1. Remove the top of the garlic, allowing you to see the individual cloves, but not more than that.
  2. Put the garlic as one bowl in a ramekin, sprinkle with plenty of oil and cover with aluminum foil.
  3. Or wrap the garlic in aluminium foil
  4. Put in an oven for 50 – 60 minutes on 150° C or 300 °F.
  5. Remove from the oven and let cool
  6. Gently open the package and peel the garlic.
  7. If all is well you will now have cooked garlic cloves.
  8. Put in a small jar and cover with oil.
  9. Store in the fridge.

garlic ready for storage
Garlic ready for storage © cadwu

Curry with Shrimps, Cardamom, Coriander and Ginger

2 January 2018

A simple but very tasty main dish. Serve it with some rice and you will have a lovely and rich dish.

We enjoyed our curry with a glass of Spanish gewürztraminer. The white wine needs to be aromatic and herbal. The gewürztraminer should come with a touch of sweetness which links nicely to the coconut and the cardamom.

What You Need
  • 1 small Red Onion or a bigger Shallot
  • 1 Chilly Pepper (a quarter or a half, depending on the spiciness)
  • 1 Garlic Clove (both fresh and prepared)
  • 1 Cardamom
  • Coriander (seeds and fresh leaves)
  • Ginger (fresh, 5 centimetres)
  • Nutmeg
  • 1 or 2 Djeroek Poeroet leaves (these are the leaves of the Makrut or Thai Lime (Citrus Hystrix); if fresh use 1 leave
  • Curry Powder
  • 6 – 10 fresh Shrimps
  • Coconut Milk (150 ml)
  • Olive Oil
  • Black Pepper
What You Do
  1. Clean the shrimps and remove the parts you don’t want to eat, especially the dark vein. This is actually the shrimp’s gastrointestinal tract, so not something you want to eat
  2. Once cleaned, set aside
  3. Cut the onion in four and then slice
  4. Remove the seeds from the chilly pepper and cut the pepper in small bits
  5. Fry the onion gently in a skillet with olive oil
  6. Use a mortar to crush the coriander and cardamom seeds
  7. Add the curry powder, the cardamom, the coriander, the grated nutmeg and the chilly pepper to the pan
  8. Fry a bit more, making sure you get all the tastes
  9. Add one clove of fresh garlic, one prepared and the grated ginger
  10. Fry and stir
  11. Start adding the coconut milk and keep stirring
  12. Add the djeroek poeroet
  13. When the sauce starts to thicken, check if you have sufficient sauce for the shrimps.
  14. f not, add some more coconut milk
  15. When thickened, add the shrimps and let cook for 4 minutes, maximum, depending on size
  16. Chop the fresh coriander leaves
  17. Just before serving add three quarters of the fresh coriander leaves to the curry and mix
  18. Check if some black pepper is required
  19. Sprinkle some more fresh coriander just before serving the dish.
  20. Serve with rice, preferably Camargue red rice because it offers such a wealth of taste. Indian Basmati will also do the trick of course.

Antonio Carluccio

10 November 2017

Inspiration

Sadly Antonio Carluccio passed away this week on Wednesday November 8th 2017. To us he has been a true inspiration, especially when it comes to mushrooms. Thanks to him we started to explore a wide variety of mushrooms, such as Ceaser’s mushrooms and Pied Blue. His books on mushrooms showed us the world beyond the classics mushroom recipes. Every year we prepare his oysters with sabayon and white truffle. Pure magic.

Carluccio also showed us that you need to be a chef to create Michelin star worthy food, and that you need to be a decent cook to create tasty and healthy daily food. A combination of olives, pancetta, cheese, artichokes and a glass of red wine is a great way to start your meal and will only take you a bit of shopping and 5 minutes to present the food. And reading his books: you can learn how to be a decent cook.

MoF MoF

He said his motto was “mof mof” – minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour. No doubt a lot of hard work is required to reach that level, but let us assure you: it’s a great motto for daily cooking.