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

The day I made this soup is the day I learned to recognise the flavour of star anise in food. I’d known it in licorice, but had never realised what it did to hearty dishes. Star anise, I learned, is one of the five ingredients in Chinese five spice powder - (along with cloves, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorns and fennel) - the Chinese have been using it for ages. And I never would have guessed it, but it does something quite amazing.  Ingredients (serves 2): 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 large shallots, minced 1 bunch scallions, chopped. Set the green aside for the topping.  4 cloves garlic, minced 2 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced 2 whole star anise 1300 ml chicken broth 2 tablespoon soy sauce 240g mushrooms, sliced 1/2 head of large bok choy, roughly chopped 120g rice noodles 4-6 quail eggs (or 2 regular eggs), medium-soft boiled garnish: red pepper flakes or sesame seeds Instructions: 1. Take the olive oil and heat in a medium sized soup pan, then add the shallots and cook for 3-4...

Today is day 100 - day 100 of 100 days on which I’ve posted a recipe on this blog every single day. 100 - it sounds like so much. Honestly, I’m proud. I did it to bring some of my hobbies back to life, I did it to learn, I did it because I love taking food photos and because I love to eat.  I especially love, love looooooove dumplings. Potstickers, momos, gyoza, dumplings - I’ll have them any which way. Up to now, I’d been stuck with home delivery or eating out whenever I had cravings - but as of now, no more.  I’m now proudly dumpling-self reliant, and I’m posting this potsticker recipe as the closing recipe of this challenge because at the beginning of this year, I wouldn’t in my wildest dreams have pictured myself making these. But here I am - and here we are. Crazy things are possible if you only try - and it’s not half as hard as I’d thought. Fear was, once again, an irrational obstacle.  I’m grateful for this beautiful recipe from Healthy Nibbles & Bits, which w...

Radishes are a vegetable I’d always filed directly in the ‘resistance corner’ of my brain. I think, maybe, because I associated it with bitterness. When I read that cooking - sautéing, roasting or stir frying - softens the taste, I thought it worth a try. And what do you know, it’s true - stir fried radish tastes nothing like fresh radish and is actually quite refreshing. This dish makes a lovely side dish - not just surprising, but also and easy. Serves 2-4: 2 bunches radish both ends cut off, then halved 2 shallots, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon ginger, grated 1 tablespoon sesame oil 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 teaspoon honey handful fresh cilantro, chopped Instructions: 1. Pour the sesame oil in a wok pan and add the radish, shallots, ginger and garlic. Stir fry over high heat for 3 minutes. 2. Add the soy sauce and honey and stir fry for another minute. 3. Serve warm topped with fresh cilantro.

Baked potatoes are always good. And then there’s hasselback baked potatoes - a ridged version that you can dress up by sticking all sorts of interesting things between the slices. Like bacon. And cheese. And garlic. You get my drift: yummmmm. They make a pretty handsome dish too.  Ingredients (serves 2): 2 large sweet potatoes 6 strips bacon 50g grated cheese (I used Gouda) 150 g sour cream 1 tsp chives to top Garlic herb butter: 1 tbsp olive oil 3 tbsp unsalted butter 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 tbsp fresh garlic 1/2 tbsp fresh parsley Pinch of nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Instructions: 1. Clean and pat dry the sweet potatoes. Slice the sweet potatoes into about 3mm slices, as uniformly as possible, without slicing all the way through to the bottom (leave the bottom 1/4 of the potatoes unsliced so that the slices don’t separate from the potato altogether). 2. Stir together the herb butter ingredients. 3. Li...

In the midst of this crisis I’ve been making extra effort to support our local stores. These days, I   do most of my produce shopping at smaller shops instead of the supermarket. Far more often than I used to, I go to Turkish shops - which have surprisingly good produce and delicious, much more affordable lamb than I can find at the supermarket. And so I came home with lamb chops - again. The next challenge was to find a recipe. I’d made this one once before, but all my pictures failed. So to share it with you, I had to try again. Not that that was something to be sorry about... :)  Ingredients: 6 lamb chops (about 600g in total), french trimmed 200g mixed colour baby carrots (out of season here, so I stuck with orange) 3 oranges 8 cloves garlic, unpeeled 15g thyme (about half a bunch salt and freshly ground black pepper olive oil Instructions: 1. Score the fat of the lamb chops, and season them with salt and pepper. Then line them up like a rack...

I was feeling rather lazy today, so instead of a real meal I decided to make myself a tapas-style dinner. This Spanish recipe for 'champignoñes al ajillo', put up at a girlfriend’s request, came from Linda's Top Tour of Spain website a million years ago. And having spent a year there myself, I feel pretty comfortable vouching for the result. Ingredients (serves 2-4): 400gr mushrooms, quartered if large, halved if small 4 cloves garlic 1 red chili pepper (if you prefer them extra spicy, use 2) 1 tbsp chopped flat-leaved parsley olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper Instructions: 1. Finely chop two of the garlic cloves and the red pepper. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, and when hot, add the chopped garlic and pepper. Sauté for a minute, then add the mushrooms. Sauté for two more minutes. 2. During this space of two minutes, take the remaining two cloves of garlic and press through a garlic press. Add a little bit of salt, the chopped parsley, and ...

It’s not for nothing that an entire page on this blog is dedicated to risotto & pasta. Let there be no doubt: if there’s a team pasta, I’m on it. I like the versatility, and being able to throw in whatever inspires me. I like how little time it takes. I like that I can go for whole-wheat, and feel like I’m being somewhat healthy despite the carbs. I like carbs. Ingredients (serves 2): 120g whole-wheat spaghetti 300g spinach 100g Parma ham (or another cured ham), shredded into smaller pieces. 100g sun dried tomatoes, chopped 2 shallots, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 100mL cream 20g parmesan cheese 2 tbsp butter pinch of nutmeg salt and pepper to taste Instructions: 1. Boil the spaghetti according to the instructions on the package. 2. In the meantime, bring water to a boil in a large pan. When boiling, add the spinach and stir for 30 seconds or so, until the spinach is all wilted. 3. Drain, and cool the spinach in icy cold water to bring the boiling process...

Ahhh, the joys of meatballs in tomato sauce. They serve them in just about a dozen different countries - as albondigas in Spain, polpetta al sugo in Italy, or just good old meatballs for the native English speakers out there. And yes, the meatball is a common phenomenon here in the Netherlands too. My grandma’s generation served them the size of a small fist (gehaktballen) with potatoes and gravy, or smaller (gehaktballetjes) in vegetable soups. And yet, they never really had me convinced. I wasn't a meatball kinda gal. Meatballs, to me, seemed boring. Until one day, when a friend came over and made some meatballs with a packet of minced meat and a handfull of leftovers from the fridge and the pantry. The sauce was amazing. So were the balls - succulent, aromatic, mmmm. I became an instant convert. Of course, I had to try a repeat. With the pantry fully stocked with nuts for the breakfast bars I made earlier, I decided go a little nuts myself and toss some in. It goes with...

Having just returned from 3 1/2 weeks in Mexico, my first post of 2014 was inspired by things Latin. In Mexico City I spent some time at the house of a friend whose mother was known for her empanadas. No better time and place to learn the tricks of the trade - and as with most things I hadn't tried before, after a bit of practice it turned out to be easier than I had expected.

For a while, I ordered vegetable delivery crates filled with seasonal veggies. By way of the crate I discovered cavolo nero... if it hadn't been chosen for me, I might never have given it a second look. And that would have been too bad, because then I would never have learned about all the wonderful things you can do with it. Cavolo nero (black kale, Tuscan cabbage, or palmkool in Dutch) is an Italian cabbage with dark soft leaves. Instead of growing in heads like some other cabbage types, its leaves grow straight up like fronds... and it is, it turns out, a beloved ingredient in minestrone soups, Tuscan risotto, pasta, and even lentil dishes. I put it to the test with the first best thing I had in the pantry: some carnaroli rice. The cavolo nero passed the test with flying colours.