Ilse's Kitchen - culinary adventures of a girl who loves to eat

Do you ever food-google? I do it a lot, and sometimes I come across really nifty ideas. Like this one: a five-minute crowd pleaser... strawberry dipped in chocolate set in ice cube trays! Brilliant! I have a heart shaped one and used that.. look how pretty they turned out :)

Strolling along the Albert Cuyp market, something drew me to crab legs. The North Sea crab (Noordzeekrab), widely available in the Netherlands, is a think-shelled bugger, large and brownish-white in colour. Boxes full of crab claws were just sitting there, staring at me. The fish man came at me before I had a chance to move on. I was trapped, and bought crab claws for two. This wasn't the first time I'd come home with crab legs. Same crabs, same fishmonger. Last fall, I'd bought them to make a crab curry inspired by a Portuguese Mozambiquan girl I used to know. I'd had them the same way when she made them once - boiled and left in the curry, claws and all. When we ate, we had to break open the curry-laden shells with a hammer, and wound up splattering orange sauce all over ourselves. Not really in the mood for clearing orange stains, I figured I'd take a safer route by removing the crab meat from the shells before serving it up. Now what to do with it...? A...

From 2008-2015, I had a cooking blog - this blog. It started out small and slow - I travelled a lot back then and putting my favourite recipes online was a far lighter way of carrying them around than dragging physical cookbooks. I didn’t take pictures and was still teaching myself how to cook - much of it by way of experimentation. I was looking for a way to keep track of what I’d made, and lo and behold - Ilse’s Kitchen was born. Years later, I began working for an NGO called foodwatch. When food became work, the blog became complicated and I took it offline. But I work elsewhere now, and food is a hobby again. And the blog has been on my mind - a lot. So after giving it some thought, and then some more, I decided to put it back up. The principle will be very much the same as it was when I first started out - I’ll do this mostly for me. But while I’ve taken a few courses here and there, I’m no master chef - so if I can do it, anyone can. I’m happy to pass on what I’ve learned and...