Lunch @ Gartine

Everybody who ever visits Amsterdam and is looking for a nice place to have breakfast, lunch or a high-tea .....Gartine is the place you are looking for. They grow their own veggies, herbs and fruits in their veggiepatch. The eggs they use come from a foundation called "Adopt a chicken". You 'adopt' a chicken on an organic farm, where the chicken stays, and you can get your organic eggs at the organic store.

Everything they serve is home-made and truly delicious. Also the people working there are very friendly which, for Amsterdam, is almost unique.

I made a picture of the sandwich I ordered: a whole wheat bun with spinach, bleu de causses (French blue cheese) and apricots, yummy in my tummy!!! Also loving the plate!!!

Sandwich Bleu de Causses with spinach

To get more of an impression, I took some photo's from their website......

Owner

The veggies fresh from veggiepatch

Home made pastries

Old-fashioned style tableware

Clafoutis part deux

Since I encouraged all of you to make your own Clafoutis..... I also participated as it is well worth the try!! It is so lovely and delicious and terribly easy to make. To motivate you a little bit more I added a photo with the Clafoutis before it went into the oven and after.... don't you want to dig in?

Share some pictures of yours with me!!!

Time for dessert

And a dessert it is!
As you have already impressed your date with the delicious spare ribs, why not overly indulge him with this to good to be true chocolate mousse?

This is what you need:

250 gr dark chocolate
4 eggs
100 gr sugar
60 gr butter
4 tablesp. water

Start:
Chop the chocolate into small pieces. Then separate the eggs. In one bowl whisk the yolks, half of the sugar and the water into a foamy mixture. Put the bowl on top of a pan with slightly boiling water and whisk the mixture for about 3 minutes or till it reaches 55 Celsius.
Add the chocolate and the butter and mix till all the chocolate is melted and all is well mixed in. Take the bowl of of the pan.
In another bowl, beat the egg whites stiff and mix in the sugar while whisking. Keep whisking until all is stiff and shiny.
Stir one third of the egg whites into the chocolate mix. Then carefully blend in the rest of the egg whites until it is equally coloured.  Divide the mixture over 6 nice cups, bowls or glasses and leave it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.   Garnish with strawberries, raspberries or any fruit you think would be nice.

Enjoy!!!!

Date night... what to prepare?

OK, it's date night and for some reason, instead of going out for dinner, you've decided to impress the guy with your cooking.... o dear. Well we all know by now that preparing something really "chef worthy" will always tend to fail so we're not taking up that challenge. Instead, why not make something over which you can bond and is real 'guy-food' such as meat.... starting to get my point?
You know you will be an instant hit as I can not think of 1 girl who wouldn't make the poor guy a salad (with bacon for him), a soup or or maybe even worse.. something vegetarian (Vegetarians out there: please don't take this as an insult! I like vegetarian food a lot but statistically most guys still love their meat).
So we are making the guy home marinated spareribs! If you follow this recipe well you might even end up marrying this guy so if you might have doubts..... don't come knocking.... I told you so ;-)

Here we go, we need:

1 1/2 kg spare ribs, already cut by the butcher
1 onion, sliced in half
1 tablesp. peppercorns
a dash of Japanese soy-sauce

To make the marinade:

2 dl ketchup
1 dl Japanese soy-sauce
1 tablesp. grated ginger
3 tablesp. cane sugar
2 teasp. 5 spice powder
125cl sherry or rice vinegar

Start:
Cook the ribs in a large pot for about 30 mins with the onion, the peppercorns and the soy-sauce.
Then, mix, in a large roasting pan, all ingredients for the marinade.
Take the ribs out of the pot and put them in the roasting pan and cover them all in the marinade. Let it cool and marinade. The longer the better.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 Celsius. Take the ribs out of the roasting pan and put them on top of a oven-rack with underneath a deep oven-tray filled with water (this will catch the dripping marinade so it won't make such a mess) or simply use this. Put everything in the oven for about 30 minutes and turn them once or twice.

These spareribs will be as juicy and tender as possible. Serve them with roast or jacket potato and some vegetables or salad. The guy could probably care less about the vegetables but it is just to make it complete.

Enjoy!!!!!!