Mommy, let’s cook!
Our daughter Sara (6) still wants to become a chef, and I couldn’t be more over the moon with her current career choice. Imagine a daughter who’s a chef ! (She’s also secretly in love with Courtney’s son Easton so if all goes to plan, Courtney can consider herself a lucky mother-in-law too.) Anyway, I recently got this cookbook ‘Mummy, let’s cook!‘ and both Sara and I LOVE it. Recipes are organised in chapters such as ‘Sunday Brunch’, ‘Spring Picnic’, ‘Mother’s Day’, and ‘Santa Claus is coming!’. There’s a guide to setting the table (don’t forget the wine glass for mummy and daddy!), kitchen cleanliness and safety and table manners. All very nice, but best of all are really the recipes, accompanied by gorgeous (GORGEOUS!) photos. Risotto with crispy artichokes. Chocolate buns. Couscous with chickpeas and vegetables and gingered chicken. Wild strawberry and honey smoothie. Tuna, cheese and arugula filled bread. Sounds appetising? And this is only a small selection of the wonderful recipes. A book to recommend!
xxx Esther
Pepernoten, a recipe
Sinterklaas is back in the country! The yearly national craze has started again here in the Netherlands, with an old man dressed as a saint (Sinterklaas, or: Saint Nicolas, who is the predecessor of Santa Claus!). After his long trip on a steam boat from Spain (where he lives), he arrived last weekend and has been personally welcomed by the majors and burgomeisters of every little and big town of the Netherlands. Children are in a continuous state of nervousness and excitement, because the Good Man knows everything and writes every act of mischief in his big book. And good behaviour will be rewarded of course, on those days that the kids may put their shoes in front of the fireplace…
Sinterklaas has a lot of helpers, the so called Black Peets, and they bring the most delicious little ginger-cookie like treats called ‘Pepernoten’ (pepper nuts) with them. They traditionally leave them in the pre-mentioned shoe in front of the fireplace, together with a little gift.
Making your own pepernoten is super easy and a fun activity to do with children (and also really delicious even if you’ve never heard of Sinterklaas in your life). They taste especially good with hot chocolate, I feel.
Here’s the recipe:
- 150 g (2/3 cup) butter
- 135 g (3/4 cup) brown sugar
- 10 g (2 teaspoons) ’speculaas spices’ (if you can’t buy them ready-made see recipe below)
- 250 g (1 1/4 cup) self raising flour
- a pinch of salt
- 4 tbsp milk
For the speculaas spices, mix:
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground aniseed
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Preheat oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cut cold butter in little chunks and knead through sugar, speculaas spices, salt and self raising flour. Add the milk bit by bit until the dough is smooth and supple. Start making little balls (a bit smaller than a marble). Your kids can help with this: if you give them little pieces of the dough, they will love making the little balls! Line the little balls up on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten them slightly with your thumb (I make two batches). Bake for about 15 minutes until light brown.
Bon appetit!
xxx Esther
PS If you want to read more on Sinterklaas, please read this post I wrote a few years ago!
Italian Savoury Pumpkin Pie
I need to start this post off with a caveat: I am not sure how authentic this recipe is! Part of my family comes from Liguria, Northern Italy. Everytime we visit, the girls and I lust after the savoury pumpkin pie that is made in a nearby village called Calizzano. The pies are so good that we normally smuggle a few back with us to Paris.
Now, no-one seems to be able to explain to me exactly how to make this pumpkin pie, so I have come up with my own version. Basically this pie is as Italian as Deep Pan Pizza, but if I may say so myself, it does taste delicious. I think the biggest difference is the dough, as I find French Puff Pastry too buttery for this dish and I cannot figure out how the Italians make their pastry (I think it is olive oil based and flakey, if anyone has any suggestions, please do let me know). So I am using normal short crust pastry for this pie, which is delicious too!
Here is the recipe:
- 1 kg of Pumpkin
- 2 eggs
- 125 g of ricotta cheese
- 3 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese
- 1 cup of boiled Arborio rice
- 1 onion/ 2 cloves of garlic
- salt and pepper to taste.
For the crust:
- 200 g of flour
- 100 g of butter
- cold water
- salt
First make the pie crust by mixing together the flour and the butter with a bit of salt until you have crumbs. Add enough water for the mixture to turn into a ball and put it in the fridge to rest for 1 hour. Heat up the oven to 200°C. Peel and cube the pumpkin and put it in a roasting tin, together with an onion and 2 cloves of garlic. Roast until soft. Put the roasted pumpkin into a sieve and let all the excess water drain. Now mix together the eggs, the ricotta and the pumpkin in a food processor until almost smooth. Add it the rice and add salt and pepper to taste. The pie filling is ready!
Roll out the pie crust and line a 24 cm pie tin. Pour in the filling and bake for 40 mins.
We eat this pie with a simple great salad for lunch! You can download the recipe here.
Saturday night sushi
Apparently my daughter’s favourite food in the whole wide world is sushi. Usually we go to our local Japanese restaurant but I have made sushi in the past and decided that since she wanted to eat it she could ‘help’ me make it. Sushi is actually super easy to make and is a fun activity to do. We used 5 ingredients to fill our sushi and mixed and matched them. The ingredients we used were; cucumber, smoked mackrel, salmon, avocado and toasted sesame seeds.
This weekend we went all out and even made our own vegetable tempura with a batter mix bought from our local supermarket. It was also very easy to make. Probably not the healthiest way to cook your veges but they sure were delicious!
Steph xo
Pumkin Pie recipe
Pumpkin pie is not a traditional dish here in the Netherlands — neither is carrot cake or zucchini bread or the like. I think baking with vegetables was simply not in our system before! Thankfully with all of this internationalism going on you will now find more than just apple pie in Amsterdam (although, I have to say, there’s nothing wrong with a good piece of traditional Dutch apple pie). I personally love pumpkin pie, and since the canned pumpkin puree is not available here I have to create the whole thing from scratch. Which might, arguably, be even better.
Anyway, I thought I’d share my favourite pumpkin pie recipe here. It sounds more complex than it really is, so do give it a try and let me know what you think… I think it’s really, really good!
Made from corn!
Ava is now 18 months old, and she’s quite a little character. She knows exactly what she wants and is incredibly clever in communicating it. One of the things she’s adamant about, is that she wants to eat her own food, and (attempt to) drink from her own cup. Preferred tableware: plastic. However, most plastics have a risk of leaching BPA and phthalates, and shouldn’t go in the dishwasher because of this. So I’m extremely pleased to discover zoë b’s newest product, the fantastic anti-plastic dishes: the world’s only dishwasher-safe dishes entirely made from corn! Safe for our kids (entirely BPA and phthalates free), safe for our environment (these dishes are completely compostable), and best of all: kind to the parents (who dislike washing up).
xxx Esther
Homemade Muesli
I am a huge fan of homemade muesli. I make tray loads of muesli every few weeks as it’s super popular in my house — the kids love it with greek yoghurt, but I like mine with milk. The best thing about muesli is it’s really filling, so you don’t get hungry again until lunchtime. Also, you can add what you want to it and you know exactly what you are eating, there is no hidden sugar in homemade muesli! I’m not a fan of raisins but love chopped up apricots and I love big chunks of toasted almonds. Yummy! (Can you tell I really love muesli?!)
This is how I make it but you can take out and add as you please. Just keep a close eye on it when you are baking it so it doesn’t burn.
- 500g oats
- half cup ground linseeds
- half cup seseme seeds
- half cup sunflower seeds
- half cup chopped almonds
Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Then melt half a cup of honey and mix it with half a cup of olive oil — mix through the dry ingredients. Cover a shallow oven tray with baking paper and spread out the mixture. Bake it at 150 degrees for about 15 – 20 minutes, taking the tray out every 5 minutes or so to stir so it all gets evenly toasted.
When it’s toasted take it out of the oven and sprinkle dried apricots or cranberries or whatever fruit you like. I also sprinkle over a large handful of shredded coconut.
It’s the perfect way to start your day!
Steph xo
After school dinners
School in France finishes 4.30 PM, and if you add on an after school activity, kids only get home around 6 PM. The deadline of getting children fed, the home work done, kids bathed and off to bed at a decent hour is TIGHT! Try to throw in a bit of down time to wind down their day and it turns into a military operation!
To have dinner made as quickly as possible, I have been focusing on fast recipes and wanted to share some of my favourites with you. (Here in France kids eat a 3-course lunch at school (my 5-year-old source tell me it is DELICIOUS) which takes a little of the pressure off!) Here are a few of my staples:
- I love Courtney’s tuna pasta, as the whole dish only takes as long as cooking pasta.
- Another favourite is Croque Monsieur with a salad on the side.
- We often eat a frittata filled with whatever veggies we find in the fridge.
- A yummy vegetable soup or this lentil soup with nice bread to dip
- An English breakfast for dinner — baked beans, toast , scrambled eggs and a simple tomato salad. In fact, breakfast served at dinner time often works
- When I was a kid in Germany we sometimes had waffles and apple sauce for dinner. Now, I have no idea if this is a German thing, but we loved it, so I have done this before to put exhausted kids in a good mood.
What about you, do you have any easy, quick dishes? I would love to hear!
-Emilie
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• Ribbed Hooded Jacket from Nui Organics• Little red riding hood — pop-up!
Breton Bowls
I am a big fan of French beachside resorts and also of all the things that go with them. Sun (sometimes), sand, smurf-blue and bubble-gum pink ice-cream, crazy looking postcards and gift shops with a huge selection of tacky, cheap gifts in them, etc. In short, French beach resorts are heaven for kids.
In the gift shops you will almost certainly find these Breton bowls with first names written on the side, which have been ubiquitous with French seaside resorts, at least since I was a kid. I remember my grandmother coming back from a trip with one of these bowls for each grandchild. At that time, we still drank our milk out of a bowl in the morning, so it must have looked really cute having all of us sitting around the table draining our bowls.
Why were we draining our bowls? Because inside the bowl is the little iconic image of the Breton farmer and his wife and we needed to finish every bit of milk to make it appear! Last year, on a seaside holiday, I got a pair of these bowls for my girls. Partly for sentimental reasons and partly because I just think they are cute and very français!
Smoked Mackerel Pate
We almost always have some smoked mackerel fillets in our fridge — I like having them around because they are so healthy, keep for a long time, and are easy to serve (breakfast, lunch, dinner — you name it)!
This smoked mackerel recipe is super simple to make, and our kids (and we!) LOVE it:
- 100 g smoked mackerel fillets (skin removed)
- 100 g cream cheese (Philidelphia or the like)
- 75 g sour cream
- A squeeze of lemon
- Fresh ground pepper
- Some dill if you have it (optional)
Puree everything in a blender and serve on toast or yummy bread!
xxx Esther
Duralex Glasses
In a household of 3 clumsy girls (I can bank for the fact that clumsiness is indeed genetic), we need hardened utensils, that can survive a lot of rough and tumble. Thus, I am a big fan of Duralex, famous for making the same iconic hardened glasses for the last 60 years at least.
Have you ever been served a coffee in a little glass in a French café? Probably a Duralex Gigogne glass. Show any French person a Duralex Picardie glass and it will take them back to their school cantine days, where everyone got to drink out of Duralex glasses. I love their utilitarian chic and the fact that they are almost unbreakable (I say almost, as I will never forget my mother trying to demonstrate how unbreakable these glasses are by hurling one on the floor, where it smashed into a thousand pieces, much to her embarrasment!). They are perfect for families with young kids, especially if you are getting a bit tired of colourful plastic cups.
I picked my glasses up at Merci, but I also found them on this website which deliver internationally. Alternatively, you can find them in most French hardware shops. For our readers on the other side of the Atlantic there is a dedicated USA Duralex website!
-Emilie
Sunday Waffles
A few years ago our really good Canadian friends moved back to Canada from Amsterdam leaving with us their waffle iron and amazing waffle recipe. Now every Sunday for brunch without fail we have waffles. There is nothing better than fresh waffles, fruit, bacon and gallons of maple syrup. The other month I upgraded our waffle iron to this beauty from Amazon (UK
Here is the recipe for the best waffles ever:
- 250 grams of flour
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- ¼ teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- 450 ml of karnemelk (buttermilk)
- 75 ml of oil ( I use rice bran oil but olive oil works just as well)
- 2 beaten egg yolks
- 2 well beaten egg whites
Take all the dry ingredients and sift together, make a well in the centre. Measure out the milk and oil and mix together with the egg yolks. Then, pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined. Then fold in your egg whites until just combined. My favourite topping is bacon, sliced bananas and maple syrup. Delicious!
Stephxo
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
I stumbled upon this post on the Little Brown Pen blog the other day and seconds later I was literally drooling onto my keyboard and within an hour I was baking them with my kids! Chocolate cookies with a peanut butter filling. Need I say more? And my kids always love when baking cookies involves rolling the dough in sugar, so even the baking part was a hit. You can find the recipe here.
-Courtney
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• My son’s favourite tee from Fabric Flavours• Amazing Grass Kidz Superfood
Perfect by Felicity Cloake
I am a big fan of Felicity Cloake’s “How to make the perfect…” column in the UK’s Guardian newspaper. She saves me a huge amount of time and energy by testing the same recipe on loads of different cooks and then taking the best bits out of every recipe to come up with the “perfect” dish. Genius idea, don’t you think?
She has now published a book of her best recipes. Spag bol, poached egg, mayonnaise and brownies… all things I have wondered how to make and now have the solution for. I love the fact that they are all basic, simple recipes but they are all the kind of dishes that can either be sublime when done well, or taste like the sole of a shoe. I cannot wait to start cooking with this book!
-Emilie
Tomato Crumble
I think one of my all time favourite desserts is apple crumble. I love it: so easy to make and sooo good to eat. I had no idea that a crumble could also be a savoury dish (did you?). This summer I became a savoury crumble convert when my friend Heather baked up a storm with a tomato and goat cheese concoction.
It is so quick and easy! Here is the recipe:
- 4 to 5 ripe big juicy tomatos (chopped)
- 2 shallots
- a handful of chopped parsley and a bit of garlic if you feel like it
- salt and pepper
- goats cheese
- 200 g of flour
- 130 g of cold butter
- 100 g of grated hard cheese (cheddar, comté)
Preheat oven to 180°C. Sauté shallots and chopped parsley in a frying pan and add in the chopped tomatos, add salt and pepper to taste. Let the tomatos cook until they start falling apart, but are still chunky. While the tomatos are cooking, make the crumble. Cut up the butter and mix with the flour to make crumbles (if you like fine crumbles, add a bit more flour). With your fingers mix the cheese into the crumble mix. Season with salt and pepper. Spread the tomato mix into an oiled dish and lay on a few slices of goats cheese. Crumble the crumbles on top. Put into the oven until golden brown.
It’s good warm and cold and is lovely to eat with a nice salad as an equivalent of a vegetable tart. I think I might start experimenting next time and maybe add in some courgettes into the tomato mixture…
Here is the recipe to download!
One for the Guys
When we were staying at my dad’s house in France a few weeks ago, there was a copy of ‘Fired Up‘ by Ross Dobson hanging around in the kitchen. Obviously left behind by one of the house guests — my dad never cooks! My husband on the other hand, even though not the cook in our house (that’s me!), does like some occasional, manly ‘outdoor cooking’ (modern term for BBQ), and spent a good few hours digging through the book. Consequently he cooked up a salmon, which was wrapped in a newspaper (the FT, of course, he’s such a nerd), and slow cooked it on the hot plate. And it was the most delicious salmon I’ve ever had!
We’re now back in Amsterdam, and his own copy of ‘Fired Up’ has just arrived (and I have also renewed our subscription to the Financial Times). Next on the menu is Beer-can Roasted Chicken — exciting!
If you have a man in your life who loves to BBQ, then this book comes recommended. Available through Amazon (UK
xxx Esther
Back to the Bib!
Baby Ava obviously wears a bib when she’s eating and she can’t say too much about that yet, but the other two kids have been feeling WAY too old for a bib for years now … which is kind of annoying, because dinner never seems to escape their clothes, no matter how hard they try. But since I brought home Deuz Napkids for them they have been requesting their bib! I didn’t introduce them as bibs of course, I said that these were ‘clever napkins’ — they are in fact packaged as napkins (very cool) so that was totally plausible. The design, size and colours of the Napkids are aimed at bigger children, so they don’t feel like babies at all when they’re wearing them. And they have seriously helped me cut on the amount of laundry so far!
Napkids by Deuz are ethically made in India from 100% certified organic cotton and printed with non toxic inks. Check here for points of sale.
xxx Esther
Aubergine and Tomato Salad
I have a new organic (or bio as we call it) shop up the road from me. When I moved over to France, shops like this were few and far between, but now they are everywhere! This place is great and it has something I love: a bag of seasonal vegetables that changes every week. I have a tendency to get a bit complacent with my cooking, so it is great to get given some new challenges by the way of rutabaga and the like…
The last bag I got had three massive aubergines (eggplants in the USA, I believe) in it, so one night I did a bit of surfing to find a nice summery dish to prepare with them. One of the things I found was an Aubergine and Tomato salad (I think originally Armenian) and I appropriated it to our tastes. It is so easy to make that it almost does not need a recipe and tastes absolutely delicious.
Here is the recipe!
- 1 large aubergine
- 2 tomatos (or more depending on size)
- salt and pepper to taste
- half a clove of garlic and herbs (I used parsley, but coriander was in the original recipe)
- olive oil
- lemon juice
Prick the aubergine a few times and stick it under the grill for at least 20 minutes, turning it occasionally (the pricking prevents it from exploding, which is no fun to clean up. Trust me, I have been there). Once it is charred on the outside and completely soft on the inside take it out and let it cool off. In the meantime, chop the tomatos and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Mix in a few swigs of olive oil, juice of half a lemon and garlic to taste.
When the aubergine has cooled down, peel of the charred skin and chop up the flesh. Mix in with the tomatoes. I prefer to let the flavours mix for a few hours. When you are ready to eat, mix in a handful of chopped herbs.
Perfect to eat as a mezze with flatbread and humous. You can print out the recipe here.
Swoop Bags
Leave it to a mum to design something so simple, so durable, so innovative as these brilliant Swoop Bags! Aren’t they so clever? Each Swoop Bag is a playmat and toy bag in one, making tidying up toys quick and easy. As the name suggests, you can throw all the toys (legos, playmobile, blocks, cars, etc.) onto the playmat and then ’swoop’ them all up with an easy pull of the draw-string. And then, my favourite bit, you can just hang the bag up on a hook for easy toy storage. I’m thinking about buying several colours and then colour-coding the toys…. or am I going a bit too far now? Either way, I’m so happy to have discovered them!
x Courtney
Sweet summer bowls
We’re vacationing in France at the moment, and I came across these adorable bowls in a store yesterday. Of course I just couldn’t resist — thinking they would just be perfect for breakfast in the garden, or for serving summery dishes like blackberry cobbler! They are available online through the online store of Comptoir de Famille, or in the UK at Divertimenti.
xxx Esther
