Oliebollen a Dutch Sylvester speciality

Like i said before they taste much better than their name suggests.
Oliebollen aka oil balls are dumplings made from a yeast-based dough.
They are traditionally eaten the 31 December and are part of the potluck buffet or eaten after the dinner as a all-nigh snack. The morning-after on the first day of the New year they are great hang-over remedy with lots of warm caffeinated beverages.
In Holland you can buy them at stands during the holiday period and some are open all year. You can buy them in all kind of varieties: just plain, with raisins, with pineapple, with apple, with ginger etc.
You can also buy them in supermarkets but then they are not so good because not so fresh..
Self made they are best specially if you can't buy them in your country.
Count around 5 per person this recipe is for around 25 Oliebollen:

you need
200 gr raisins >soak them in some hot water
1 sour backing apple > cut in small pieces and mixed with some lemon juice to avoid they brown. I added a spoon of ginger on syrup cut in really small pieces this time it gives a more interesting flavor to it.

400 ml warm milk
1 spoon of sugar
1 package dried yeast
> mix together and put aside for about 10 minutes

in a large bowl
500 gr of white flour (don't forget to add a good pinch of salt!)
make a well and break an egg in the well

whisk in the milk mixture (if needed add some more warm milk the mixture should be sticky not too dry not too liquid) add the drained raisins and apple pieces.

Cover and leave at a warm place to rise. (Make sure you have a large enough recipient because it can rise high and then you have a big mess to clean up)

Stir after about 1 hour and leave again at a warm place.
Heat the oil to 175°-180° C
With an ice cream scooper or 2 spoons make a golf ball size portion and let it slide into the hot oil. After frying they have more then doubled the size. Make as much the frying pan can hold they should be able to swim around comfortably.
Fry them until golden brown outside and smooth, soft, cooked yet juicy from the inside.
Get them out of the oil when done and let them rest on some absorbent kitchen paper.
Serve sprinkled with icing sugar.

If cooked at the right temperature they should not be greasy. Besides if you want you have all year to get rid of the extra pounds you've put on these holidays.
Now it's not the time to worry about that!

Have a great and peaceful new year!!

What's cooking at Margret and Helen's Blog

The blog of Margret and Helen was already delicious, filled with well written, thoughtful and hilarious words. And for the latest holiday post they share recipes (Helen's stuffing). And so do many many readers leaving their favourite recipe in the comment section.
So if you don't know what to cook, go check it out. Also go see the blog and add it to your RSS reader if you're done eating, because laughter is the best digestive!

Have fun

PS i'm preparing mentaly to make the Dutch 31 December speciality "oliebollen" aka oil balls. They taste much better than it sounds (-:

Food Time-Line

Today on Twitter i found this most interesting link: a food time line. Now we can check out when our ancestors started eating what and why.
Who would have thought that Popcorn made its first appearance in 3600 BC . What the heck where they looking at while eating popcorn? Cinemas didn't exist, not even open air!
Make some popcorn while browsing this site and clicking on the links it's very entertaining and educational. Next time at the dinner table with friends you are sure to impress them with your knowledge!

Happy Thanksgiving !

Today i want to give thanks to the people who stopped by and read this and to the people of 8-legged Entertainment who kindly created, or captured if you will, Taco the cooking Octopus. And some great cooking this Octopus does.
The animations are not only highly entertaining, the ROFL kind, but the recipes are likewise good. And you get a lot of background information and scientific food facts.
Taco the Octopus has cooked up some Thanksgiving treats: Deep fried Turkey and Pumpkin Flan. Try the Cookies too they are the best!

Last year we tried to cook Deep Fried Turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner we had with a Franco-American family. My friend PJ made the corn dressing according to her Southern family recipe. Delicious and rich. And there was loads of other stuff with pumpkin. I don't remember exactly because I ate so much and felt so terrible, that I discarded the memory of it.
But for the Deep Fried Turkey à la Taco the Octopus i have photos and video to prove and remind. The original recipe talks about a hole turkey, but we don't have a big enough frying pan and miss other utensils like a cooking thermometer to control the temperature of the oil. I had to go to the pharmacist to get a seringe with a needle to inject the cut-up turkey with the marinade. The lady gave me a curious look after i told her what i need it for. She probably thought i was crazy but was intrigued by our cooking endeavor. That was the day before when we prepared the bird. On the day self Philippe enjoyed getting every thing ready for the frying. And had developed a methodic plan of action. This deep frying is better done well prepared. The turkey was okay, some pieces a bit dry maybe. We need to perfection our skill and get the cooking times right.
Philippe is ready to try it again this year.
(We'll do it this weekend for it's a normal workday here, so no time to prepare and no time to digest afterwards)



Happy Thanksgiving to all !

Sinterklaas, St Nicolas, Saintnic, Santa

You probably know already vaguely, but are not aware of it all the time that Santa is just an American made, though not entirely, impostor.
The real deal is St Nicolas or Sinterklaas, as the Dutch say.
He arrives by boat by half November, shown on national tv as the event of the year. Then you get to eat all these treats, sweets, backed specialties. The high light is the evening of December 5th when the Holy man visits mysteriously your home and brings gifts. Most of the time it's a knock on the door and you find a bag of gifts. Sometimes you get lucky and the man himself pays you a visit.
Please note the generous way to celebrate his own birthday of december 6, giving presents the evening before.
Then in the night he goes back to Spain (which is a sort of Florida for the elderly Europeans). His departure is not covered on national TV.
Although the man is a Saint this is not a religious holiday. That's what's so good about it. It's fast and sweet and rarely reason for family disputes like Christmas...
Since I'm Sinterklaas's biggest fan in France (where they do some sort of celebration in the east and north or North-East, but not as elaborated and perfected as in Holland) I take this occasion to write some foody stuff and share some recipes to promote Sinterklaas and get him out of the shadow of his big incorporated rival.

If you can only do one recipe then this is the one you want to try:
Pepernoten or Péfénock as Emma used to call them, are like spicy mini cookies. Peper in Dutch means pepper. Pepper is not in the spice mix aka Speculas spice. But there is cinnamon, nutmeg (i think that's what gave it the name Peper), coriander, ginger, cardamon and cloves. And i think i have had another brand of this spice mix which contained some pepper.

Here's what you need:
250 gr flour + 3gr backing powder or 250gr self-raising flour
mix with 10 gr of ready made spicemix you can buy in Holland, or your own spicemix: 5 gr cinnamon, 2 gr clove, 2 gr cardamon, 1 gr ginger powder, (optional about 1 gr nutmeg and or coriander)

melt 125 gr butter with
125 gr dark sugar (if you can't find the dark brown sugar you can use the raw unrefined sugar from the organic store)
50 gr of syrup or melasse

add the melted butter-sugar mix to the flour mix and knead it to a ball. It will have a brown color from sugar and spices.

Now the fun part starts for the kids you want to involve in this work. They have to roll little balls at the size of a marble. the challenge is to get the equal sized so they will back evenly, and you won't end up with the big ones raw inside and the small ones burned!
Put them on sheet of backing paper. you might have to work in batches.
Preheat the oven to 150°C and back the Pepernoten for 15-20 minutes. Let them cool so they will have their crunch.
Serve with hot chocolate et voilà! you have a nice treat on any winter's day and/or Sint Nic's season

The pictures here are of what you can buy in Holland, but it's full of E-numbers additives crap!