We went to the garden on Sunday – for about half an hour. It was sunny but very cold and since the soil is still completely frozen, there was little to do but walk around a bit and discuss some…
Oven baked gnocchi in tomato sauce
Categorie: Winter
Week of eating from the garden – December
Boy, is my oven getting a workout at the moment! I’m roasting all the vegetables that I come across, I bake cakes and make granola. It’s been cold, even snowing, and since we do not have a wood stove (maybe…
Butternut squash and ricotta gnocchi
Our supply of home-grown butternut squashes is dwindling. The good thing about that is that it frees up space under our bed which is where I’ve been storing them much to the chagrin of my son who’s the one doing…
1 butternut squash, 3 dishes
If you’ve watched my video about the 7 winter squash varieties we’d grown in 2016, you’ve heard me talking about what I call ‘one-meal-squash’ varieties. I prefer squashes that don’t get too big so that we can use a fruit…
Maple apple tart
Today is my daughter’s birthday and this is the tart she has asked for. Which should be all the information you need before running to the kitchen to make it, because when it comes to tarts, Esther is the pickiest…
Sinuses clearing garlic soup
Tomorrow we get a visit from Spain – Sebastiaan is participating in an exchange program with a school in Valencia, so there will be a Spanish boy of as yet unknown age staying with us next week and then Sebastiaan…
Tagliatelle with chard, kale, currants, walnuts and brown butter
While I’m sowing spinach, carrots and beets and planting shallots anywhere I see an empty space in the garden, what we are harvesting are vegetables sown what seems like a lifetime ago. The kale and the chard that we’d been…
A week of eating from the garden/ winter
As the winter is slowly coming to an end, the homegrown provisions are running low and it becomes impossible to harvest enough for a full week of meals. We are digging up the last parsnips, cooking the last homegrown dried…
Nearly candied quince
The general rule for pruning fruit trees is that it’s best done when the trees are dormant, during a cold and dry spell. That, for those of us living in the Netherlands, constitutes a problem. The winters are often not…
Leek and goat cheese galette
Every season should have its own galette. Don’t you agree? I love galettes for their rustic elegance (or is that an oxymoron?) and the ease with which they can be prepared. Even if you cannot roll out dough into a…
Radicchio and chicory with pan-roasted pears
So – it’s been a while. I took a break from my computer for most of our Christmas break which was good and a little weird. I focused on spending time with people I love and see too little of.…
Spiced chickpeas and roasted winter squash salad
On 14th September I sowed rows of hardy greens in our cold frame: rocket, purple mizuna, different kinds of leaf mustard, parsley. This was a week earlier than usual and with late sowings a week can make a big difference.…
Poached pears with saffron and cardamom
Last week we went to a fruit exhibition at “Olde Ras”, a conservation orchard and a museum of old varieties in Doesburg, about an hour drive from where we live. Sebastiaan took some convincing because unlike me he thinks…
Rosemary spelt cake
Many years ago I read a historical novel where the Russian Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna having moved to the Netherlands after marrying the future King William II was reported to complain that the wet Dutch climate was not suitable for…
Beetroot, carrot and apple salad
It’s the kids’ spring break this week and we are at my sister’s in the Czech Republic. We might be disappointed by the lack of snow and winter conditions in general, if the weather weren’t just so beautiful. We are…