Auteur: vera@gtc

Very chocolatey brownies

Yesterday we went to the International Specialist Nursery Days at Bingerden. A wonderful event held in the historical gardens of one of the country’s oldest estates where specialist nurseries bring their collections and only your iron will and the fact…

Asparagus frittata

Probably the best investment you can make if you have a vegetable garden is sowing a packet of asparagus seeds. Yes, you have to wait 3 years before the plants are strong enough to take regular picking, but after that…

Speculaas spice chocolate chip cookies

It’s been almost exactly six months since Sinterklaas, the good old saint and Santa Clause’s Dutch cousin, showered us with presents and then swiftly left for Spain. I can’t blame him for wanting to live in a more favorable climate.…

Braided bread rolls

When I teach a gardening course, it always includes lunch. I serve a freshly picked mixed salad from the garden to show off the variety of greens that you can grow. This is especially impressive if the course is in…

Spinach, citrus and feta salad

The only spinach in my childhood was a frozen puree. I had no idea what the plant looked like and it is a testimony to my parents’ cooking skills that they were able to turn the indiscernible khaki mass into…

Rhubarb tart with orange custard

Some of the questions I had to answer while typing the recipe: – How do you draw a snowflake? – If you could control one element, which would you choose? (Answer: water) – How do you say “strawberries” in French?…

Broccoli rabe pizza

Do you grow broccoli rabe (also known as crimi di rapa, broccoli raab, turnip broccoli)? If you don’t, but have a veg patch, however tiny, please, consider it. In Joy Larkom´s classic `Grow your own vegetables` which makes most other…

No-knead pizza dough

As I mentioned before, the holidays of my childhood were rather different from today. We celebrated International Workers’ Day (compulsory) and International Women’s Day (ditto) but I hardly knew anything about, say, Halloween. I was however aware that in other…

May bowl

Because I was born in an Eastern European communist country, and my husband grew up in Western democracy, our childhood memories are sometimes rather different. To him, 1st May has always been just the day after Queen’s Day. But in…

Chocolate cinnamon rugelach

Last Monday, the whole Dutch nation celebrated the Queen’s birthday. This might lead you to believe that queen Beatrix was actually born 30th April. Not so, it was her mother’s birthday. But upon inheriting the throne, the queen very wisely…

Ricotta al forno with spring herbs

The wonderful thing about perennial vegetables is that in spring they grow a lot faster than their annual counterparts. Because they start growing from well established roots instead of having to germinate first and make roots later, in our edible…

Rhubarb cobbler

It seems that the two main harvest from the allotment at the moment are rhubarb and daffodils. No problem, I like both a lot. They both signal the start of a new garden season; daffodils are the first flowers that…