My kitchen.

I like cooking and to eat the result, of course.

On my plate
Every day gets a little extra when you cook your own meal. Even more so, when you cook and eat with friends. I don't limit myself to one cuisine, but Medeterranian cuisine happens to appear a lot on my plate. I also like Southeast-Asian food, like Thai food. I don't mind a little spice.

Sla op mijn balkon


Inspiration
Every time I shop for books somewhere (like at het Boekenfestijn in Rotterdam or Utrecht), I intend not to buy any more cookbooks. Yet somehow, my collection of cookbooks is growing. Books about grilling, baking cakes, hors d'ouvres, the Maroccan cuisine, vegetarian food or books by Jamie Oliver: my collection has grown to more than one meter on the shelves of my bookcases.


Een selectie van mijn kookboeken
Another source of inspiration for me are tv shows about cooking, especially a couple of programs that you probably won't find on European tv: Good Eats, America's Test Kitchen and Iron Chef America. I've learned a lot from the first two about ingredients and techniques.

If you ask yourself how I translate all these cooking terms between Dutch and English, try the Food Lexicon. This site has translations of names of ingredients, cookware and other stuff in the kitchen between Dutch, English, French, Spanish, German, Danish and Swedish. You can find the word you want by looking up the first two letters. Very handy!


The best food
What food do I like the most? I regularely cook the following dishes:

  • In summertime I make wraps with roast beef, avocado, tomato, chives and coriander (cilantro).


  • Wraps with roast beef and avocado
  • Spaghetti alla carbonara, Jamie Oliver style. That is spaghetti with pancetta, sausages, cream, parmesan (freshly grated of course) and parsley. They say it isn't really an Italian dish and I say: tough luck. I like it.
  • Spicy beef with curry paste, spring onions, cucumber and fresh roasted cashew nuts. This recipe, you could say, has kind of Thai roots and is very tasty in summer.
  • Thai burgers with mushrooms and coriander in sesame buns. My favorite comfort food.
  • Maroccan kefta "from the busstation" (it says so in the recipe): meatballs with tomato sauce and eggs. This is so tasty, that when I make a double portion, in the end nothing is left.

  • Of course there is more. Much more. Let me finish this list with my favorite dessert, that is also the easiest to make: frozen sweet blue grapes. This might not sound much, but it is incredibly delicious on warm summer evenings. You need to eat around the seeds, of course.

    Frozen blue grapes.




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