Vegetarian rice from Switzerland

As mentioned in my previous blog, my dear friend C. had brought me a small book on authentic Swiss cuisine, appropriately named "Schweizer Küche - Traditionelle Rezepte" ("Swiss cuisine - Traditional recipes"). The subtitle of the book is "Da sitzt auch Grossmutter gerne zu Tisch", which translates more or less as "Grandmother would like to join". So that's it: a fantastic book filled with old-fashioned dishes, mainly quite winterly Alpine-food.

I intend to do a lot of cooking from this book, as it contains many savory soups I'd like to try. The only negative thing I can find is that is doesn't include my beloved Zürcher Geschetzeltes...

This recipe comes from the Urnerland (which I'm told is located south of Zürich), a part of Switzerland where many Italians used to work (already in grandma's days). Bless these Italian workers for bringing the rice that is the core of this easy, tasteful vegetarian dish!

Ingredients (serves 4):
2 tablespoons extra vergine olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
200 gr long grain rice (7.0 oz / 1.0 cups)
150 ml white wine (5.3 fl oz / 0.6 cups)
350 ml water (12.3 fl oz / 1.5 cups)
1 stock cube (vegetable)
freshly ground black pepper
400 gr leek, carefully washed and chopped (14.1 oz / 2.5 cups)

100 gr creme fraiche (3.5 oz / 0.5 cups)
100 gr grated mountain cheese (e.g. Emmentaler) (3.5 oz / 1.1 cups)

Fry the onion and garlic in 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add the rice and continue to fry. Add the wine and the water, bring to the boil and leave to simmer until the rice is al dente.
In the mean time, use another pan to fry the leek (until crunchy-done) in the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.
Add the leek to the rice, continue to boil a little longer and add the crumbled stock cube and the pepper. At the last minute, add the creme fraiche and the cheese and serve immediately.

Swiss creamy veal

My friend C. lives in Switzerland. She's Dutch, but she's been living in the Alpine country for some 10 years now. This means there's always a nice excuse for trip over there, but unfortunately that hasn't happened since I opened the shop. The good news is that she still visits her old friends in The Netherlands from time to time...
On her last visit to Arnhem she brought me a little authentic Swiss cookbook, with some lesser known recipes - I'll get back on that in a future blog. For now, I want to focus on a well-known and popular Swiss dish that I make on a very regular basis: Zurcher Geschetzeltes. Or: veal Zurich style. It's one of my favourite things in the world (fresh sage! white wine! mushrooms!). It's really a wintery dish, but who cares - I make it any time of the year!
The authentic Swiss approach is to serve it with rosti, but I'm not much of a potato-person, so I always serve it with brown rice.

This recipe is taken from "Winter in the Alps" by Manuela Darling-Gansser.

Ingredients (serves 6):
1 kg veal, cut into 2 cm (0.8 inch) slices (35.3 oz / 5.25 cups)
2-3 tablespoons unbleached wheat flour
50 gr butter (1.8 oz / 0.2 cups)
2 tablespoons extra vergine olive oil

1 onion, in thin slices

2 cloves of garlic, in thin slices

approx. 15 leaves of fresh sage, finely chopped

200 gr chestnut mushrooms, sliced (7.0 oz / 1.0 cups)

250 ml dry white wine (8.8 fl oz / 1.1 cups)

sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

300 ml cream (10.6 fl oz / 1.25 cups)

Cover the meat with the flour so it's well-coated. Heat half of the olive oil and butter in a pan. Add the meat as soon as the butter starts to foam and quickly brown the veal. Set aside in a bowl.

Add the remaining olive oil and butter to the pan and sautee the onion, garlic and sage for a few minutes. Add the mushrooms. Stir well and after the mushrooms have softened, leave them on the heat for another 5 minutes.
Put in the wine and use a wooden spoon to scrape remains off the bottom of the pan. Add the veal and slowly braise until the wine has evaporated. Turn the heat to low and leave to carefully bubble for another 10 minutes.
Add salt and pepper to taste and finally, pour in the cream. Let this cook for 2 minutes, remove the pan from the heat and serve immediately.

Curly kale mash - Dutch style

True, Dutch cuisine isn't as exciting as, let's say, Italian or French cuisine. Some might even say that there's no ground for foodblog entries, but I happen to disagree. You see, I'm very Dutch (blue eyes, love tulips, no wooden shoes though) and I actually really enjoy old-fashioned Dutch food.

Dutch food is most typical real winter food. Many traditional Dutch dishes are some form of potatoe mash and this favourite of mine is no exception: Curly kale mash with smoked sausage. If smoked sausage isn't available to you, you could go Italian after all and substitute it for cacciatore, a spicy Italian sausage.
Serve this dish with pickles. Give it a try, you'll love it!

From: Dutch cuisine - T. Spierings

Ingredients (serves 4):

600 gr curly kale, finely chopped (21.2 oz / 4 cups)
1 kg potatoes, peeled, in pieces (35.3 oz / 6.6 cups)
1 fresh smoked sausage
1.5 dl hot milk (5.3 fl oz / 0.6 cups)
35 gr butter (1.25 oz / 0.2 cups)
1 tbsp mustard
salt

Cook the curly kale for about 10 minutes in a pan with a little water.
Put the potatoes in a large pan, divide the pre-cooked curly kale over them and put the sausage on top. Again add a little water. Cook everything for about 30 minuten until done.
Remove the sausage and pour off the cooking liquid. Mash the curly kale together with the potatoes, milk, butter and mustard and season with salt.
Cut the sausage into pieces and serve with the curly kale mash.

Swedish summer potato salad

Depending on your whereabouts, you may or may not understand this, but: I'm totally fed up with it! With winter, frost, snow, slippery roads - it's been too much this year! Anyone who is desperate for more snow can leave for a skiing trip in the Alps, but for me, it has to stop. I want spring to start NOW.

So, in spite of the still dreary weather, I decided to make a summery dish. It's perfect for a barbecue or just as a side dish. And it comes from the sunniest places of all... Sweden!

Ingredients (serves 8):
2 kg new potatoes, cut in half (70.5 oz / 9.6 cups)
0,5 dl white wine vinegar (1.7 fl oz / 0.2 cups)
5 scallions, chopped in little rings of 0,5 cm (0.2 inch)

100 gr flat leaf parsley, finely chopped (3.5 oz / 0.5 cups)

100 gr chervil, finely chopped (3.5 oz / 0.5 cups)

100 gr chive, finely chopped (3.5 oz / 0.5 cups)

2 tablespoons finely chopped mint

0,5 dl olive oil (1.7 fl oz / 0.2 cups)

salt, pepper

Boil the potatoes in salted water. Drain them and put them in a bowl. Add the white wine vinegar and the scallions, carefully mix with the potatoes and let cool off.
Just before serving, add the herbs, olive oil and some salt and freshly ground pepper.

Spaghetti al granchio e salmone

After dining out for a few days in a row, I finally had time to cook up something myself. It was snowing, I was going nowhere and so I could continue my focaccia-baking experiment (on which topic I will return later this week). I also managed to prepare a dish from "The silver spoon - Pasta".
I was really looking forward to a simple, smooth pasta, as I had some ... interesting (?) encounters with too large lumps of wasabi the previous nights. Why do I always think that I can handle more wasabi than anyone else? And why doesn't wasabi *just*  burn in your throat, but does it cause your nose to explode? Light flash, tears in your eyes, the whole nine yards... Maybe I shouldn't be so greedy...

Anyway, "The silver spoon - Pasta" it was going to be. Huge bestseller in the store, 360 recipes, but I still hadn't tried any one of them. This mistake has now been corrected by cooking this pasta with crab, smoked salmon and vodka. I'm a big fan of cooking with alcohol! Great excuse to drink some while cooking and oh... it also tastes really good in this dish...
The original recipe uses linguine, but I've used spaghetti, which also works well.

Ingredients (serves 4):

50 gr butter (1.8 oz / 0.2 cups)
120 gr tinned crab (drained) (4.2 oz / 0.5 cups)
4 plum tomatoes, skin removed and finely chopped
80 gr smoked salmon, cut into small strips (2.8 oz / 0.3 cups)
splash of vodka
275 gr linguine or spaghetti (9.7 oz / 1.2 cups)
salt

Melt the butter in a pan. Cook the crab meat for a few minutes on low heat. Add the tomatoes and continue to cook for another 10 minutes, while stirring occasionally. Add the smoked salmon, a good splash of vodka and wait until the alcohol has evaporated. Stir and take the pan off the heat.
Cook the linguine / spaghetti in a generous amount of salted water until al dente. Drain, stir in the sauce and serve immediately.

Portobello mushrooms with goat's cheese and spinach

I've been in doubt for a few days whether or not to write this blog. Sometimes you cook up something that's so simple that a description of it doesn't qualify for the term "recipe". And yet I've decided to post this entry. Because maybe there's still somebody out there that doesn't know this dish or hasn't tried it yet.
It's a vegetarian dish, but you can easily add some meat (e.g. ham or chicken). It's not necessary though, as the goat's cheese and the pine nuts supply plenty of nutrional value.

For the record: I actually intended my roasted pine nuts to be this dark (well, black). I like it that way; there's more flavour.

Ingredients (serves 4):
4 large portobello mushrooms
150 gr soft goat's cheese (5.3 oz / 0.7 cups)
300 gr (frozen), spinach (thawed) (10.6 oz / 1.4 cups)
100 gr pine nuts (3.5 oz / 0.6 cups)
pepper, salt

olive oil

The first steps can be done well in advance:

Roast the pine nuts in a dry pan untill they've reached the colour of your preference. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (390 degrees F). Put the portobello mushrooms in an ovenproof dish (bottom up) and sprinkle olive oil on top. Cook the portobello's in the oven for approx. 20 minutes.

If you wish, you can stop preparations here and leave the pine nuts and pre-cooked portobello's in the fridge until further use.

Slowly heat the defrosted spinach in a pan and pour off as much liquid as possible. Add half of the goat's cheese and stir in. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fill the portobello's with the spinach and crumble the remaining goat's cheese on top. Finally, sprinkle the pine nuts over the cheese and cook in the oven for another 15 minutes (again at 200 degrees C / 390 degrees F).

Couscous-crusted salmon from Austria

Despite my recent statement about "rustic comfort food" I've actually made a rather elegant and sophisticated dish. Or at least as sophisticated as I can probably manage...

It all started with a small book my sister D. borrowed me lately. She and her husband are regular visitors of Austria (especially in the winter time, no surprise) and the owner of the hotel they're always staying in turned out to be the co-writer on this book about (modern) regional dishes in the Weissensee-area. Although much more posh than my usual cookery style, I decided to give it a go. The original recipe calls for trout, but - and here the author agrees - you can also use salmon.

I'm pretty pleased with the result and I'll definitely make it again. I only wonder how couscous made its way into Austrian cuisine...

Serves 4:

4 filets of salmon or trout

lemon juice

Noilly Prat

120 ml water (4.2 fl oz / 0.5 cups)

80 gr couscous (2.8 oz / 0.4 cups)

60 gr bread crumbs (2.1 oz / 0.25 cups)
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
1 teaspoon paprika powder
lemon zest
salt, pepper
400 gr fennel (14.1 oz / 1.8 cups)
0,5 liter vegetable stock (16.9 fl oz / 2.1 cups)
40 ml white wine (1.4 fl oz / 0.2 cups)
1 teaspoon dill
corn starch

Cover the couscous with the salted water and leave for 5 minutes. Using a fork, fluff it up, spread out onto a plate and leave for 1 hour. Then mix with the bread crumbs, curry, paprika, lemon zest, salt and pepper.

Sprinkle a little lemon juice and Noilly Prat (if you don't have it - just leave it) over the fish and make a crust of the couscous mixture on the upper part of the fish (press well). Heat a little oil in a pan and carefully fry the fish for a few minutes (couscous crust side down). Then place the fish under a preheated grill (180 degrees C / 360 degrees F) for approx. 6 minutes.
Clean the fennel and cut off the stalks. Slice in half and cut up in rather large chunks. Bring the vegetable stock to a boil and braise the fennel in it (this takes 15-20 minutes). Take out the fennel once it's done, add the corn starch to the broth and return the vegetables to the pan. Finish the fennel with the dill and white wine.
Place the fennel in a deep dish and put the filet of fish on top of it.

An introduction to Cook & Book

Well, basically this is much more an introduction to me, Riejanne. As mentioned in the header, I'm a 39-year old female, living in the small city of Arnhem (Netherlands). I'm the owner of Cook & Book, a book store completely dedicated to cookbooks (or more specifically: books on the subject of food and cooking).

I'm not a professional chef, just a normal home-cook. My lack of skills is compensated by great enthusiasm and fearlessness. I prefer to make rustic comfort food - do not expect any fancy haute cuisine here, that's not me at all.
As long as I can remember, I've had a thing for cookbooks, reading them the way other people read novels. A few years ago, after realising to be totally fed-up with my high profile business career, I decided to turn cookbooks into a living - that day Cook & Book was born. Life hasn't been easy since, but definitely much more fun! Now I finally get to do the things I love most: cooking and talking and writing about cooking and listening to people talking about cooking.
I hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it. Let me know your opinions! And remember...

"There is too much talk of cooking being an art or a science - we're only making ourselves something to eat" -  Nigel Slater