Dinner

Tada, Pasta Carbonara

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Just like the title says, Tada random recipe out of nowhere!

It is not literally true, but there haven’t been much on this blog recently. You could say that I am inactive, not realy proactively in creating new content. The thing is: There are just lots of things in my personal life that prevents me from creating new contents, but also very important in life. It has consequence on my lifestyle. And I like to get rid off some of it, but it might take some time.

In the mean time I’ll post when I have the time to do so.

Pasta Carbonara
Ingredients

150 grams of Pasta (macaroni)
100 grams of Pork belly meat or bacon
20 grams of Parsley
30 grams of Butter
125ml of Cream
30 grams of Grated Cheese
1 egg
Some Salt & PepperSome Oil

Get a pan and turn on the stove. Put enough water into the pan for the amount of pasta you are cooking. When the water in the pan starts to boil add pinch of salt, some oil and the pasta. Let the pasta cook and stir once in a while.

Next chop up the bacon into bits and parsley as well. Set the parsley aside for later on. Now start heat up a frying pan and bake the bacon in their own fat. It takes a while before the fatty bacon can be baked in it’s own fat, be patient. When it happens fry the bacon until it is crunchy on the outside. Take the bacon of the heat, pour out the oily fat and set the bacon aside.

Take a look at the pasta, when they are soft enough pour it out into a colander and catch a half cup of the pasta liquid for the next part.

The preparations are done and the next part is to create your pasta.

Take a frying pan, heat it up and melt the butter in the pan. Put it on low heat when starting to add the bacon into the pan, followed up by adding the egg, the cream, the pasta liquid and the pasta. Stir everything well and taste the flavour add Salt & Pepper, if it is too bland. When the sauce starts to bubble, add the chopped parsley and the grated cheese. Stir the pan a few times and remove it from the heat when it becomes one. Plate the Pasta and it’s ready.

Buon Appetito! 

It is easy to make, however some steps have to be done to make it great.

I hope you like it, have fun trying and Keep Experimenting!

Throw it all in!

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The Story of this dish is that I was out of inspiration and still wanted to ‘whoop’ something up. I started to work out more again and wanted to have something filling and also healthy with out much fat in it. Greens was one of the condition, so lettuce, cucumber and arugula. The second condition a colourful dish so I added capsicum and corn. The third was it needs to be filling so I threw in some chick peas and kidney beans. Next was to add some flavour to it so some goat cheese. Then I thought honey goes great with goat cheese, but it would be too sweet. The thought-process was ‘Ok, lets make it mustard-honey and add a little bit of lemon juice too for some acidity and freshness.’ By then it was this piece of hideous art.

Below are the Ingredients for one person, but I made more than the amount specified below and had some leftovers. Because I used mostly whole products or packages.

Ingredients: For 1 person

70 grams of Lettuce
35 grams of Arugula
1/2 Red bell pepper
1/2 Cucumber
70 grams  of Crispy corn
70 grams of Chickpeas
70 grams of Kidney beans
100 grams of Goat cheese
100 grams of Wall nut
1 tablespoon of Mustard
2 tablespoons of Honey
1/2 Lemon

To make it, is simple just cut everything up into bite size. Throw it all together and plate it like how you want to serve it. Rinse some of the vegetables before cutting it.

The Honey-mustard sauce, is made by heating a sauce-pan and add two spoon of honey first and then add the mustard. The honey will turn more liquid when heated. Stir the honey and mustard. Do not let it cook just make it warm enough for the two ingredient to mix. Finally add some lemon juice to the pan. Stir again and add it to the salad.

Have fun with it and Keep Experimenting!

Broccoli-Risotto à la Chinese Pesto Chicken

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I like to experiment with food and sometimes it will be a miss or a hit. I use dishes that I know and cook something new by combining the knowledge received from making various dishes and food experiences.

This time it is East meet West, an idea that is inspired by my fathers Chinese Pesto Chicken or just Ginger scallion chicken. It is one of the plain chicken dishes that we used to have at my parents place. Instead of having it in it’s Chinese form (Chicken, ginger/scallion pesto and accompanied with rice), I tried to combine it with an Italian dish the Risotto. Switching out the white rice with a risotto.

Ingredients: for 1-2 person
200grams of Risotto rice
50grams of Butter
1 Onion
1 small Broccoli
100-150 mL of Mirin
500 mL of Chicken stock
A pinch of Salt
A pinch of Pepper
75 gram of Ginger
5-6 Scallions/spring onions
1 piece of Chicken breast
20-25 mL of Sesame oil/vegetable oil

First the ginger scallion pesto. Take a cutting board and a good knife and start by peeling the ginger. Rinse the scallions and chop off the end part. (the roots) Cut the ginger and scallions in even parts and start to chop it finely into a paste like substance. (Use a food-blender if you do not want to chop it yourself.) When you chopped it all finely into paste put it in a bowl and add the sesame oil or vegetable oil to it. Mix it up and you  have ginger/scallion ‘pesto’. Set it aside for later.

Get the broccoli and cut it into small flower bunch. Give the cut broccoli a rinse and pre-cook them. Take a pan, boil some water and add some oil in it. When the water is boiling add the broccoli. Cook the broccoli until it soft with ‘a bite’ and pour it out into a colander to rid it from the water. Put it aside for later.

Chop and dice an onion for the risotto. First peel the onion and chop it in the length into two pieces. Cut it in a way in which you can dice it into bits.

Get a frying pan for the risotto, heat the stove and put it on. When it is heated add half of the butter in the pan and let it melt away. Add the chopped onions and saute it a little bit before adding the rice to the pan. Stir the pan a little and add in the Mirin. Let the risotto rice soak up the fluids and stir once in a while. When the fluids have dried out add a scoop of chicken stock. continue to do this process until the last scoop of chicken stock.

While repeating the process of adding stock to the rice, stir and let it dry out. Start heating a second fry pan for the chicken breast. When heated add a little bit of butter or oil in the pan. Turn the heat to low when the butter is melted and add the chicken breast. (slow cooking the breast meat for a tender breast.) Season the breast with a little salt and pepper. At around 2-3 min turn the chicken, when it gets plummy turn off the heat and let the chicken rest on a plate.

Around the time that the chicken breast is done, it’s somewhere near the last scoop of the chicken stock for the risotto. Now  with the last scoop of stock give the risotto some salt and pepper and add in the other half of butter. Add the pre-cooked broccoli and the ginger and scallion ‘pesto’ paste. Stir it all well and it will be a creamy with a rich body dish of risotto. When ready plate the risotto.

Now cut the chicken into stripes and add it to the plate of risotto. And it is done, Enjoy.

The broccoli risotto à la Chinese pesto chicken has a salty, creamy and rich body. Also the combination of the ginger/scallion and soft tender chicken makes it very tasty. The dish can be filling because of the rich body. If you can handle it have it for your own, otherwise share it with others.

Have fun trying this out, Share and Keep Experimenting.

naffa: Taste of Vietnam, Amsterdam

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Nocsta and Friends: Food Adventure take you this time to yet another Asian Cuisine, to Vietnamese Food to be precisely. This time was with two lovely ladies, who I had met during my student days. In the past we got together multiple times to have sushi or korean food. It was the time when we were the early-adopters of the now mainstream sushi and korean food.

The ladies and I have decided to meet up on 14th of Jan at Amsterdam Central. That day was a rainy day like buckets pouring out of the sky. Normally I would have been more prepared and on time, but this time I made the ladies wait. :s I was fifteen minutes late, supposed to meet them at 19:00. We greeted in a quickly and were heading off in the rain to Taste of Vietnam at Herenstraat 28c. The girls were starved after a long day of work and I was ready to taste Vietnam as well.

Walking through the Jordaan in the city center of Amsterdam, I noticed a lot of shops and restaurants. the Jordaan a neighbourhood that I still need to explore.. It was dark, cold and wet so, we hurried to the place. In the far we saw the signpost of the restaurant, we quickly entered into a warm, light and bright restaurant. Upon entering we were lead to our table by the two employees. The restaurant was hosted by a guy and a girl, (the girl was kinda cute.)

While seating we ordered some drinks, ice tea for the two ladies and I just stick it to water. My friends were hungry so we took a look at the menu and ordered an entree to begin with.

The three entree’s were a shrimp roll, fried shrimps and a beef roll. We decided to share the entree’s, to have a taste of each dish. The first dish is the shrimp roll with veggies, shrimps and vermicelli inside, on the sides are three dipping sauce, peanut sauce, sweet and sour vinegar and Hoi sin sauce. The shrimp roll definitely needed the sauce to give it a flavourful taste.
The second is a deep-fried prawn wrapped in a crunchy skin, accompanied by a sweet and sour chili. Nothing special, but always nice to have a crunchy fried prawn.
The third is similar to the first roll, however it had more flavour to it with out the sauce. The beef in it was seasoned well and it was the better one of the two rolls.

On to the main dish, all three of us had chosen for a beef Phô. It tasted great, but the soup was a bit oily and not as clear as some other I had. I expected the noodles of the Phô to be bit thinner, but at least it wasn’t a thick rice noodles that was sticky and starchy. The ladies and I quickly devoured our foods and talked about how everyone is doing. The two were both happy in life, one was married and the other was engaged to be married by the end of this year.

It was fun meeting the girls again, I have not seen them for a long time. The food was nice, the service was good and the atmosphere of the place was great.

Try this place out and see for yourself the Taste of Vietnam.

nocsta and friends: Food Adventure. Izakaya Tanuki, Amstelveen.

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The first ‘nocsta and friends: Food Adventure’ Izakaya Tanuki, in Amstelveen. I had great ideas of doing this, but forgot all about it and just had a very good dinner with friends. I have not seen them in a long while, so it was just great to have fun and enjoy the moment.

The Idea of Food Adventure comes from a Youtube channel, Justkiddingfilms. The channel shows a group of friends making video-content on youtube and one of their video-topics are their Food Adventures. The JKF-group will often make a video of a foodie-hotspot where they showcase the delicious foods of the establishment they visit.

The videos are entertainment that I enjoy to watch and I wanted to have something similar. That’s why I started with this new blog subject of Naf:fa, (food and friends). At the moment I am just starting out, so bear with my materials for now. I hope to gradually to create something like a photo blog content and eventually video content.

Izakaya Tanuki

Amstelveen has one of the largest Japanese community in the Netherlands and is not that strange to find a hidden gem inside the Dutch horeca-landscape filled with All-you-can-eat-Sushi places. (horeca is the dutch term for the HOtel, REstaurant and CAtering service industry.)

Izakaya: is like a tavern, but Japanese style. Tanuki has a definitely a modern Japanese feel to it, with a Japanese looking building. It has his own garden which you walk through it from the main-entrance to the sliding door entrance. Follow through  on the inside, the restaurant contains an open kitchen with bar seatings and regular chair-and-tables seatings, at the wall-side in a L-shape are the tatami style seatings with boxed in tables.

The dinning style is somewhat different than you would expect. The menu has a lot to offer and ranges from various Japanese dishes, like [sushi and sashimi] cold dishes to [karage] fried dishes and [yakitori, ramen] warm dishes. The style of ordering is similar to all-you-can-eat but without the rounds or filling some paper or pc-tablet. Old-skool style with your waiter/waitress on paper and pen. And it can be done whenever you like to order from the menu.

That night we had some fresh made sushi’s. The rice of the nigiri and maki sushi’s were at the right warm temperature and the fish toppings were freshly cut and layed on top.
We ordered various skewers to share, from yakitori (chicken skewers) to other kushiyaki (meat and vegetables skewers). The Tsukune or chicken meatballs were interesting a different way of what you normally would expect of yakitori. Other skewers which were nice are the Gyutan or cows tongue. Cow tongue needs to be grilled well or it will be really tough like chewing on a leather belt.

The dishes of Izakaya Tanuki that I liked the most that day were two meat dishes. The first one is the Japanese fried Chicken or better known as the Tori Karage. The dish what we had was the Wakadori No Kara Age described as Japanese style marinated chicken. The meat was very tender and the chunks of chicken were huge. The next dish was the MVD (play on MVP) of the night, The Wafu Steak. We ordered it two times and if we had known it was that good from the start, we would have ordered it more times. The beef dish was sharable and it was deliciously good and done well. Seriously yummy tender steak and I was able to enjoy it multiple times with every piece that’s on the plate.

It was nice to have a good quality meal with my friends. Although this time I haven’t made a lot of food pics, on the next naffa I will show a more foodporn post with lots and lots of food pictures.

Until next time, Like, share and Keep Experimenting!

Noodlesoup? Won Ton and Sui Kau noodlesoup, homemade style!

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Damn, Still neglecting my blog posts and recipe’s…
To be honest I have been lazy.. to do the work.
I’ll try to keep it up and post on the days that I spoke off.

This week (last week) is the Chinese Noodle soup with homemade Won Ton and Sui Kau. Won Ton noodle-soup or the Sui Kau noodle-soup are one of the Cantonese staples of lunch items. It is a nice hot broth soup with noodles, some veggies and meat(or shrimp) dumplings. The dish got everything that you need Fat, Carbs and Proteins (maybe even vitamins), what more do you want? Joking aside, it is a noodle dish that warms you up and gets you through the day of “hard” work.

Ingredients:

Won Ton
250 grams of Pork Belly or Bacon
250 grams of Peeled Raw Shrimps
1 pack of Won Ton Pastry
1 Spring onion (other recipes have Shii-take mushroom)
Salt
Black Pepper
Sesame Oil
Soy sauce

Sui Kau
500 grams of Peeled Raw Shrimps
(some recipes has bamboo shoots)
1 pack of Won Ton Pastry
Salt
Black Pepper
Sesame Oil
Soy sauce

Noodle soup
1 pack of Egg noodles or Won Ton noodles
100 grams of Chinese Cabbage
4-5 Won Tons
4-5 Sui Kau’s
A few drops of Sesame oil
Some flavoured broth or stock (powdered or fresh)

 IMG_3769-0

Making the Dishes:

Won Ton:
Rinse the spring onion with some water and chop it into fine bits and put it aside for later. Put 250 grams of Raw peeled Shrimps on a chopping board and bash the shrimps with the back of a chopping knife (or a kitchen mallet/hammer.) Fold the the flatten shrimps bash them again until it turns into a paste-like-substance. Do the same with the Pork belly/bacon. (if it is to time consuming, use a food-processor/mixer to mix/grind it into paste-like-structure.) After having the pork and the shrimp made into paste-like-substance, mix it all in a big bowl with the spring onion and season the mix with salt, pepper, sesame oil and a splash of soy-sauce. Use your clean hands or a spoon to mix it all up. Cover the bowl of won-ton-mix and refrigerate it for one hour in order to let the seasoning takes it effect.

After refrigerating the won-ton-mix for an hour take it out and get ready to fold the Won Tons. Take the pack of Won Ton pastry and the won-ton-mix. Grab a spoon to scoop up the won-ton-mix with one hand and put one piece of Won Ton pastry on the other hand. Put the won-ton-mix on the pastry and fold it semi-diagonal and seal the pastry around the mixture in a ripple/zigzag way.

Sui Kau:
Making Sui Kau is somewhat the same as making Won Ton. The difference is a shrimp paste mixture instead of pork/shrimp paste mixture. After refrigerating the Sui-Kau-mix fold it in the same way as the Won Tons.

Once you made a bunch, it can be boxed and frozen for whenever you like to cook up Won Ton or Sui Kau.

 

Noodle soup:

First set up two pans one a big pan and one smaller pan. The big pan is used to cook the ingredients to nearly done. The smaller pan is used to add the flavour of the broth or stock to the Noodle soup.
Pour enough water into the pan, so that they are half filled. Heat up the pans with water and let them boil. *(I used powdered instead of fresh broth, so that is why the small pan is also filled with water.)

Take the Chinese cabbage and chop an enough amount for use. (A whole cabbage can serve about 5-6 noodle soups.) Take the chopped off cabbage and wash it with water, after cleaning, put the cabbages into the boiling big pan and boil the cabbages till they are done. When the cabbages are cooked or done, take them out of the pan and set them aside.

Next are the Won Tons and Sui Kau’s. A total of 8-10 pieces is enough for one bowl of noodle-soup. The same as the Chinese cabbage boil it in the large pan. It takes around 5-10min until the Won Tons and Sui Kau’s are done. Normally you will see them float on the water when they are done cooking. When it is ready scoop them up and set them aside.

Get a noodle bowl and drop some sesame oil in it, then add the cabbages in the bowl. set it aside for now.

Take the Egg noodle (per portion) and cook it in the large pan for 1-2 min. So that it is just undercooked. (This is done to boil off the excessive flour or fat on the noodle)

Put in the powdered stock or broth into the smaller pan with the boiling water (Self made or fresh stock/broth can be used, but the smaller pan shouldn’t be filled with water beforehand.) Add the Cooked Won Tons and Sui Kau in the small pan. This is to warm them up and give them some more flavour. Next is to add the undercooked noodles to the smaller pan and cook it all to well done. When everything in the small pan is ready, pour it into the bowl with the cabbage. The bowl should be filled with cabbage at the bottom with noodles and the dumplings on top. The result will look like the picture on the front of this post.

Have fun trying it out! Like, share and Keep experimenting.