My grandmothers 'thread meat'

or Ben's Beef Brisket

Ben liked this so much that he forced me to write it up. So although this is my take on my grandmother's thread meat, it really is Ben's Beef Brisket. Key for this recipe is that you need to have plenty of time. It's real easy and doesn't take long to prepare but it needs a lot of time to cook. If done right the meat falls apart into little threads, with an absolutely glorious flavor. 

Materials

• Between 2 - 4 pounds of Chuck roast. It's important that it's nicely marbled. Your limitation with the amount of meat is the size of your pan! As always the better the quality of the meat, the better the outcome will be.
• A stick of butter
• Dry Red wine (decent box is fine for this)
• Freshly ground pepper and salt
• A large cast iron pan with a lid
• Vegetables for flavoring the jus. Options I like are red onions, portabella mushrooms, carrots. You can stick some yellow, red or orange bell peppers in, but it will give a slightly different more tangy taste to the jus and is better to experiment with when you have made this a few times. Tomato is another option. Avoid garlic for this dish as it tends to overpower the flavour of the meat.
• A bay leave
• Hungarian paprika powder (optional but especially good to add if you have put bell pepper in)
• Gas hob or an oven

Preparation

1. Cut the meat into big chunks. I mean big. The only reason to cut the meat is to make it easier to get all the pieces fitted in your pan, and it helps distributing the seasoning. With 4 pounds I usually have a max of about 10 pieces.
2. Get your favourite pepper mix out (I like a mix of red and black and white and green corns) and grind liberally over the meat. Get your sea salt grinder out and grind some salt over all the meat surfaces. I use quite a bit less of the salt than the pepper.
3. Put your butter in the pan and place it on your hob. On no more than a medium heat melt the butter. Brown the meat on all sides. I tend to do this in two batches for space reasons. Take out the meat and set aside.
4. Brown the vegetables that you want to put in the jus in the butter for a few minutes and lift them out.
5. Put the meat back in the pan, add the vegetables, the bay leave and pour several glasses of wine  over the meat. You can add about a teaspoon of the paprika powder at this point as well. Since you're going to cook it for a long time, the alcohol will well and truly disappear. The meat must be submerged. If that would take more wine than you like, you can go up to 50% water. 
6. Turn the heat down to the lowest you can set it to, on the smallest burner of your hob. Put the lid on the pan and go do something else for the next 8 hours whilst occasionally checking that all is well and enjoying the delicious smell.  If you don't have a gas hob, a good alternative is to use your oven. Once everything is hot in the pan, transfer it to a low heat oven that will just about cook things very slowly in it. Leave it be for the same 8 or so hours. Please check the liquid levels (and add water if they get too low), as the jus tends to evaporate more in the oven. 
7. When the meat feels soft when poked rather than hard and stiff it is ready. You can eat it immediately but it does taste much better if you let the dish mature. 
8. To mature the dish you let the pan cool down overnight on your hob, and stick it in your fridge the next morning for the entire day. When you heat it up the day after that it will be amazing!

This recipe works really well when served with good homemade potato puree. I tend to pair it with some steamed vegetables, which will be extra lovely with some jus over them.

English Potato Salad

This is a recipe for spring and summer. Cold potato salad works well for a hot summer night where you want to eat a slightly more substantial meal than a leaf salad, but can't deal with the idea of hot food.
You do need a bit of time, because ideally you use cold potatoes that you have boiled the day before. When you go shopping, buy the local cucumber type rather than what is called an English cucumber. It is a bit dryer and has a bit more of a nutty flavor. Home grown cucumbers are ideal. I use the locally ubiquitous variety of red potatoes for this recipe. You can also buy the more expensive tiny potatoes. For this recipe, the mayonaise is the make or break ingredient, be sure to get a nice one.

Materials:

• A kg of  potatoes.
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and pepper medley
• Fresh parsley
• 1 Cucumber
• 3 / 4 Spring onions or some chives
• White wine vinegar
• 1/2 Freshly squeezed lemon
• Mayonaise

Steps:

• Peel and chunk the potatoes.
• Boil for something between 15 and 20 minutes. I put salt in the water.
• You want the potatoes to be properly cooked, but still have a firm texture when you take them off the hob.
• Drain the water out of the pan and put about 2 table spoons of olive oil over the potatoes. You want to make sure they are all coated. This will seal off the potato so that moisture will be retained and they don't turn black as you cool them off.
• Let the pan cool down and put the pan with a lid on it in the fridge overnight.
• Make sure your cucumber is in the fridge too.
• The next day, peel the cucumber and slice it length wise in 4 strips.
• Cut the cucumber into small pieces from those strips.
• Take your potatoes and cut them into smaller pieces
• Chop enough parsley so that you have about 2 table spoons of chopped parsley
• Chop the spring onions
• Put the potatoes, cucumber, parley and spring onions together in a bowl.
• Grind some salt and pepper over the mixture.
• Add about 2 - 3 full table spoons of mayonaise
• Add lemon juice and white wine vinegar to taste
• Mix it all up

For best results,  let the salad stand for a while in the fridge before serving.

Oxonian Pesto

Homemade pesto is a very useful item to have in your cupboard to feed those vegan friends that occasionally drop by. If you do intend to be able to feed your vegan friends you need to leave the cheese out, or just make a few jars without the cheese. I believe you can buy soy flakes to achieve the creamy effect without cheese.

Back in the days I had my own vegetable and herb garden in Oxford I used to have an annual pesto making session, much like some people have an annual jam making session. Thinking about it I can almost smell the scents of the process. Pesto keeps well, but can also be frozen, so one session tended to be enough and left enough to spare to give plenty away to friends.

I always grew several varieties of basil, mostly out of interest. For pesto I tended to use sweet Genovese basil. The best basil leaves come from plants that have not yet flowered. If you see the plume of flowers starting in your plants the best thing to do is to pinch them out and get your ingredients ready :)

This is a dish with only a few ingredients that does not get heated. The taste of the final product is mostly determined by the quality of the ingredients.  The 2 most important items for that taste are the basil and the olive oil. It is definitely better with home grown basil and the right oil will have a lovely fragrant smell when you open the bottle.

Materials:

* Fresh basil crowns (a basil crown is a set of 4 basil leaves in a star shape).
* Extra virgin olive oil.
* 100 gr Pine nuts.
* 5-6 Strong garlic cloves (I grew french purple garlic).
* Sea salt crystals.
* A piece of Peccorino Romano.
* A piece of Parmigiano Reggiano.
* Pestle and mortar.

Steps:

* Pinch out plenty (20 ish) of basil crowns from your plants and wash and dry them gently.
* Peel the garlic cloves and cut them into chunks.
* Grate some of the peccorino and the parmigiano, quite finely.
* Start with about a heaped spoonful of sea salt and crush these with the pestle.
* Add the pine nuts and garlic in the mortar and start crushing these too.
* Add some oil and and crush some more.
* Make sure it is all mixed up, if it is too stiff to move in the mortar add some more oil.
* Take out the mix from the bowl and start crushing the shredded basil in some oil.
* Add the mix gradually back in and add in more oil until the mixture is nicely loose.
* Now start adding the cheese in equal quantities until the mixture looks nicely creamy. You are aiming for a spring green semi oily semi creamy mass.

Pesto can be frozen in ice cube trays or kept in jars in the fridge. It can be served on its own on top of a nice pasta, or mixed into sauces to spice them up.

Magret de canard

Ducks breast is a very rich meat, I learned how to eat and prepare this in France where it is a regional specialty in the Perigord.

The fondest memory I have of duck's breast is from my oldest daughter's first birthday. We had invited friends over to celebrate the milestone. Because it was an occasion even though Anja could not really eat the meal with us, I prepared ducks breast with a strawberry coulis. Anja grabbed a piece, stuck it in her mouth, sucked on it for ever such a long time, until it came grey out of her mouth, at which point she demanded a new piece.

Materials:

* One duck's breast, or magret de canard, as the French call it

* A frying pan with a heavy bottom

* Pepper mill
* A fruit coulis (see purple bubbles)

Steps:

* Pepper the meat side of the breast. Do not remove the layer of fat. I know it looks enormous, but it is where the flavor is going to come from.
* Put your thick bottomed frying pan on the hob on a low heat.
* Once the pan has warmed, put the duck's breast fat side down in there. Keeping the heat low, the fat will start melting of the breast.
* Switch on the oven and start preheating it to about 75 C.
* Keep the pan on the hob for about 15 - 20 minutes, until the fat layer is much thinner. All the while you can take spoonfuls of the fat out of the pan. I save the fat, and use it for example for fried potatoes.
* Lift the breast out of the pan. Leave some fat in the pan and turn the heat to high. Once the pan is hot, put the breast back in, meat side down this time. Sear the meat for 6 - 7 minutes.
* Put the breast to rest for 10 -20 minutes in your preheated oven, while you get the rest of the food ready.
* To serve you slice the breast into roughly half a centimeter wide slices and put them on the plates in a fan shape, with some coulis sprinkled over the meat.

Because the combination of the meat with the fruit coulis is so rich, it is good to serve with a crisp vegetable, like fresh peas in their own pod. For carbohydrate you could serve pureed potato or a simple bread like a baguette, which will help mop up the juices from your plate.

Sateh

Sateh is spicy meat on a stick that gets grilled and served with sateh sauce. This is not a quick fix dish, but it's lovely and worth the effort. For me it is part of my heritage. I cannot count the number of times I ate this during my childhood. It is probably the most iconic dish that the Dutch imported from Indonesia and made their own.

One of the aspects of cooking as a foreigner in different countries is that you must learn to find adequate replacements for your ingredients, you will see a lot of that below.

Materials:

* You can make this from almost any type of meat, I use chicken, pork, beef, lamb, veal and turkey for this. It is important that you select good quality non fatty meat which cooks fast for this. So you'd have chicken breast, pork loin or beef steak or similar quality other meat. It needs to be cubed into cubes that are roughly 2.5 by 2.5 cm. Since this is a laborious dish, I tend to buy a kilogram of meat and prepare it all and save some ready prepared in the freezer. Make sure you buy fresh meat and that you don't buy it far in advance due to the period the meat needs to marinade.
* 1.5 bottle of sweet soy sauce. This is hard to get outside the Netherlands where it is called ketjap manis. Teriyaki sauce is a decent replacement. Salty soy sauce is really better avoided for this.
* Half or a third of a jar of high quality crunchy peanut butter. I tend to go for organic stuff, it seems to produce a better quality sauce.
* Powdered or fresh ginger or both. You need quite a lot.
* Several cloves of garlic.
* Mashed red chili paste. This is known in the Netherlands as Sambal Oelek. Red thai curry sauce is a good replacement.
* Cumin powder.
* Sesame oil.
* 2/3 shallots.
* Vanilla essence, this is my (not so) secret ingredient for this.
* Brown cane sugar.
* Bamboo skewers.
* A sauce pan with a heavy bottom.
* Milk.

To prepare the meat:

* Find a dish you can cover airtight.
* Put the meat in the dish and pour the bottle of soy sauce over it.
* Put in a teaspoon of the chili paste.
* Put in a table spoon of ginger powder and some fresh mashed ginger if you have it.
* Put in one clove of garlic mashed.
* Mix the spices a little over the meat.
* Close the box and leave to marinade in the fridge for 24 - 48 hours.

To prepare the sauce:

* Mash the garlic.
* Cut the shallots finely.
* Put the sauce pan over a medium heat on the hob.
* Put in a spoon of sesame oil.
* Turn up the heat and wait for the oil to get hot.
* Put in a teaspoon of the chili paste, a tablespoon of powdered ginger and the other 2 cloves of mashed garlic and the shallots.
* Fry this for a few minutes whilst stirring.
* Get the meat out of the fridge and pour off the liquid into the sauce pan.
* Turn the heat down to medium low.
* Start adding the peanut butter from the jar.
* Keep adding more soy sauce to thin it.
* Add 1.5 table spoons of sugar.
* Add a teaspoon of vanilla essence.
* Add a teaspoon of the cumin powder.
* Add some fresh mashed ginger if you have it.
* Use some milk to gel the sauce.
* Leave the sauce on the hob for another 5 - 10 minutes.
* Add more milk to get it as thin or thick as you like.

In the meantime:

* Put your bamboo skewers to soak in some water for 20 minutes.
* Put some aluminium foil at the bottom of your grill and oil the grate you will put the skewers on to save on the cleaning up operation.
* Heat up your grill.
* Put about 3 or 4 pieces of meat on each skewer.
* Grill the skewers under a high heat to sear the meat and leave it tender inside. You should be able to do this in 10 - 20 minutes, depending on how well done you like your meat and what meat type it is. Turn the skewers half way.

Serve 3 - 4 skewers per person, ladle some sauce over the skewers. Sateh goes well with something like a cucumber salad and french baguette for mopping up the sauce.

Enjoy!

Evert's asparagus

Lots of people have special songs that remind them of special moments or people. For me sometimes a special dish is such a reminder. Whenever I make this dish I spend a few moments thinking of Evert. It is a beautifully simple summer recipe.

In central Oxford there is a pick your own farm near the river. I would cycle there sometimes in the right season to get asparagus that had been cut from the soil that morning. Then I would cycle to the other farm where you could get eggs and jam if you put money in an honesty jar.

Materials:

* One or two bunches of asparagus, depending how asparagus hungry you are.

* 2 slices of smoked ham per person (Parma or Serrano are both great).

* 100 gr unsalted butter.

* 1 egg per person.

What to do:

Because this is such a simple dish, the quality of your ingredients is key. This dish deliberately has very few, to showcase taste and quality, but this means you can't hide bad quality. You want to select asparagus and eggs that are both very fresh. The asparagus should be firm. You should always cut or break off the ends of asparagus. Depending how thick the asparagus is you should peel it too.

* Steam the asparagus for about 8 - 10 minutes.

* After you have put the asparagus on, put the eggs on to boil. You want soft boiled eggs for this dish, of which the whites are firm, but the yolks are still slightly runny. Depending on size I boil the eggs for 6 - 6.5 minutes in water that has already come to the boil.

* While you do this take a thick bottomed pan and melt the butter on a low heat.

* You spread 2 slices of ham on each plate.

* Put the asparagus in a little bunch on each plate on top of the ham.

* Peel and slice the eggs in half and put 2 halves on each plate near the tips of the asparagus.

* Pour melted butter over the eggs, the asparagus tips and some of the exposed ham.

Serve with a chilled dry white wine such as Alvarinho and some fresh bread.

Enjoy!

avocado salad for Bryan

I love avocados! Sadly supermarkets these days either sell ones that are so bruised they are mostly black inside or hard enough to knock a hole in someones head. When I shop with this dish in mind I feel homesick of the weekly market in the local town in the Charente in France, where the avocados were beautifully ripe if they had them.

However, if you do find some avocados that are nice and ripe, this is a good recipee for them:

This recipee will do a starter salad for about 6 people or if you have some bread with it a meal for 2:

Materials:

* 2 avocados

* a coarse lettuce

* 2 ripe tomatoes that can be sliced

* a 100 gram of smoked streaky bacon cut in pieces (the French call these lardons)

* a clove of garlic

* provencale herbs

* seasalt grinder

* pepper grinder

* a table spoon of coarse dijon mustard

* white wine vinager

* extra virgin olive oil

What to do:

* peel and slice the avocados
* wash and dry the lettuce
* peel the clove of garlic and rub the inside of your salad bowl with it, or rub the plates if you are serving straight out onto plates
* put the lardons in a frying pan that has been heating up on the hob and fry them on a moderate heat for 4 - 5 minutes
* lift the lardons out with a spoon with holes so that the fat stays in the pan
* mix the mustard with the fat in the pan and add a small drizzle of olive oil and white wine vinager, use some lukewarm water (start with a teaspoon) to allow the dressing to mix properly
* slice the tomatoes
* build the salad by putting the lettuce first, then the tomatoes, then the avocado, then the lardons. Do not mix!
* pour over the dressing, sprinkle some herbs on top and some freshly ground salt and pepper

This salad is meant to be served lukewarm as far as the lardons and the dressing go, so you can serve it straight after putting it together.

Bon apetit