plate 13: the netherlands

I’m confused. Is it Holland or The Netherlands? I’m a little worried I don’t know – surely I learned this in primary school. For those of you who are as clueless as me, the official tourism site – www.visitholland.nl - clarified that technically it’s incorrect for the country to be called “Holland”. This is because North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country’s 12 provinces. Weird then that the website is “Visit Holland” and not “Visit The Netherlands”. Anyway, I’ll stop stewing on this and just focus on the food.

The last few weeks have been savoury dining, so it was time for some sweets in the Destination Degustation journey. It was also the weekend before Passover and, since I observe this holiday that requires refraining from yeast, flour and wheat products for eight (torturous) days, I needed to get my flour fix.

I’d heard of poffertjes (“POF-ert-jez”) before. Reading up about these mini Dutch pancakes I found that they’re often served at fairs, sold on the streets from portable stands called poffertjeskraam and eaten in homes for anything from breakfast to dessert.

Making the mixture was really easy – dissolve yeast in milk, add it to a bowl with buckwheat flour, plain flour, eggs, sugar and milk then let it rest for an hour.

The cooking part wasn’t so easy. Unfortunately my kitchen cupboard doesn’t feature one of those poffertjes pans that allow you to cook about 15-20 poffertjes at once so that they come out looking totally uniform. I just had my large frying pan, which according to the recipe would do me just fine. It kind of did, but it was fiddly.

I had to negotiate placing teaspoonfuls of the mixture into my sizzling pan while carefully watching them cook, but the poffertjes were ready so quickly that by the time I’d put the second spoonful in, the first spoonful had to be flipped over. Needless to say there were a few burned ones in the batch. Plus, the mixture I made was enough to produce what looked to me like a thousand poffertjes (it really was about 60), so standing over the hot stove for 20 minutes caused profuse and uncomfortable sweating.

While the end result wasn’t disastrous – they sure looked cute, especially with a sprinkling of icing sugar – it wasn’t anything to write home about. Sadly this week was a bit, well, meh. On their own the poffertjes tasted a bit bland, which was interesting given everything I’d read about them said they should taste nice and sweet. With a smothering of butter and a dollop of sweet berry jam, they tasted OK, surprisingly even a little addictive (not ideal when they constituted our dinner). Maybe it was the recipe, maybe it was my cooking, maybe it was because they weren’t piping hot from the pan … I don’t know, they just didn’t excite me. For all those poffertjes lovers out there, I’m sorry.

plate 12: peru

I've got to say I was dubious about cooking this week's dish. "Cooking" fish in lime juice scared me slightly - would it really be cooked? And more importantly, would it cause a nasty tummy upset? I was determined to find out. However, I was comforted by the fact that ceviche ("se-vee-chay" or "se-bee-chay") is a centuries-old Incan tradition, a technique used to preserve fish. It was also stomach-settling to read a quote from a New York chef who explained that the acid in the citrus is less likely to cause food poisoning than uncured sushi.

I know I've said it in other Destination Degustation posts, but this one was extremely easy to make. All you do is slice a few fish fillets, put it in a bowl with finely chopped chilli, thinly sliced red onion then pour over lots of lime juice. Some recipes say to marinate it for 3 hours, while others instruct just 10 minutes. Due to my aforementioned fear, I marinated mine for about 45 minutes. That's all you need to do: whack stuff in a bowl and put it in the fridge. It seemed too easy and too good to be true. But it tasted amazing. I was impressed by the delicious tang from the lime and the spice from the chilli. Sydney had a scorcher of a day yesterday, so it was a super-refreshing light dinner.

I didn't keep the pots stashed away in the cupboard entirely this week, though. To accompany the ceviche I cooked another ancient Peruvian staple - quinoa ("keen-wah") in a salad. These seeds of a plant are cooked in the same way as rice, but don't make you feel as heavy. It's got a really nice nutty kind of flavour and, when mixed with cucumber and tomato, doused in a mixture of lime juice and olive oil, and served with ceviche, it's tops. Sources say quinoa has as much protein as meat, so it's an overall winner really. What won me over even more than the dish itself, though, was how much my mum liked how I cooked it. You see D Rose (the affectionate moniker I've bestowed upon my mother) was an early adopter of quinoa and has been cooking it for ages. I was chuffed when she tasted my quinoa (that I'd cooked for the first time) and said hers is never as soft and fluffy. Now I know mothers always praise their kids for a job well done even when it's not done well at all, but I'm taking this compliment as real and I'm running with it.

These Peruvian beauties are great when the weather's hot, so while the sun's still shining, give them a go and let me know what you think. x

NB Apparently ceviche is great if you have a hangover. Drink the lime juice marinade - known as leche de tigre (literally meaning "tiger's milk") - and that thumping head is said to magically disappear.

plate 11: korea

So I felt a little blah yesterday, and you know what pulled me out of my funk? Cooking plate 11. I know gazillions of people swear by the formula: me + kitchen = relaxation, but I'm only finally realising this for myself. Not only am I excited by this, but I'm sure my mathematician dad will be pleased I'm learning a new formula, too, years after I've left school. See, maths still does have a place in society. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking, but I think because I've always been so rigid with following recipes to the letter that it's often been more of a stress than it should be.

But back to plate 11. Bulgogi (said "bull-goh-gee") was first up on the menu. This is famous barbecued beef that's been devoured in Korea for thousands of years. It literally means "fire meat" (bul meaning fire and gogi meaning meat). The key to its success is how long you leave it in the marinade - the more time it marinates, the more tender, flavoursome and all-round awesome it's going to be. You also have to make sure you cut the meat into really thin slices - some say you should partially freeze the meat first to make this easier, but I found you didn't need to. Just make sure your knife is sharp and you'll be fine.

I hadn't had lunch, so luckily bulgogi doesn't take long to cook. All it needs is a quick sizzle on the barbecue - traditionally it's cooked over coals or you can use a tabletop hibachi grill if you have one) - and it's ready. We loved it. The delicious flavours from the marinade - lots of garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce and honey - made it super tasty. It was fun to eat, too - you just wrap up the meat in a lettuce leaf and smear on some Korean red pepper paste (if you can't find this in Asian supermarkets, use chilli sauce) and you're away.

Second course was bibimbap - it's such a cute little word, isn't it? Bibimbap. I love saying it. The Koreans love it so much that in a city called Jeonju there's actually a bibimbap museum. I hope the museum is filled with information about the dish and not hundred-year-old bowlfuls of it!

 A bowl of bibimbap has rice at the bottom and is topped with marinated meat, a mixture of raw and cooked vegies (I used carrot, cucumber, shiitake mushroom and spinach) and a fried egg. It's a lovely mix of colours, tastes and textures and it's so great because every time you dive in with your chopsticks you get a different flavour hit.

As for dessert, it came from a box. This is normally a no-no and I actually wasn't planning on sweets for this meal, but a bright yellow packaging and the distinctive Korean script caught my eye in the Asian supermarket, so I took it home to try it out. The surprise inside was mini peanut-flavoured cookies. Not too sweet, but just the right end to the meal. x

plate 10: south africa

Howzit? As a self-confessed word nerd, something caught my eye on my journey to South Africa this week – South Africans seem to love the letter “B”. Some of their favourite foods include: boerewors – a coiled sausage; biltong - salty, air-dried meat (similar to beef jerky); braai – the South African barbecue; and bobotie – a curried meat dish baked with an egg topping. Oh, and one of the country’s rugby union players is Bakkies Botha.

Before you get too excited, no, I didn’t cook all of these – bobotie was my choice because it appears to be the South African home cook’s treasure. Apparently it was declared the South African national dish by the United Nation’s Women’s Organisation in the ‘50s.

I didn’t know what to expect with bobotie, but I was intrigued by its medley of spicy, savoury and sweet ingredients. The flavours of the dish reflect the history of South Africa, in particular the Dutch settlers and their Indonesian slaves.

When you type bobotie into Google, you’ll find dozens of different recipes - some being spicier than sweet and vice versa - but for the recipe I chose, lamb mince is cooked with curry powder, lemon juice and zest, mango chutney, sultanas, toasted almonds and milk-soaked bread. Many tastes, but one word – YUM. The traditional side is yellow rice (the yellow comes from ground turmeric). Because of bobotie’s curry flavour, AJ and I thought it would be a great pie filling, too. If you want to try that, don't make the egg top and don't bake the bobotie, just cool the mixture after cooking it on the stovetop then pop it into pastry cases.

While I didn’t cook any of the other famous South African dishes, I stumbled across a packet of biltong when grocery shopping today. We snacked on it while the bobotie was baking and wondered why we couldn’t stop. A glance at the packet revealed the culprit: flavour enhancer 621 (aka MSG). If you don’t want to eat too much of this nasty artificial flavouring, here’s how to make your own biltong. And to enjoy it in true South African style, serve it with another "B" word - "beer" - while watching the footy.
   
I really hope you love the bobotie as much as I did. x

plate 9: vietnam

AJ and I have been to Vietnam and, just like the locals, religiously slurped up a bowl of pho (pronounced "fur") for breakfast every morning, which gave us incredible energy to get through days of walking and sightseeing. Pho, the Vietnamese national dish, is a noodle soup typically made with beef and rice noodles, topped with bean sprouts, shallot, Vietnamese herbs and chilli, and served in an aromatic broth. There are heaps of variations, but it's sold everywhere in Vietnam - from street stalls to chain stores - and we loved it. As most people do after a good holiday, I vowed to cook this adored Vietnamese dish upon our return - it's now been almost two years since our trip.

I was really excited for the memories, smells and flavours of this warming soup to resurface. Along with my mate Al, we met our mate Sal in her hood of Marrickville - which is like mini Vietnam - who took us on a fabulous tour of the Asian grocery stores that the suburb's famous for. Meandering the aisles transported me back to the trips AJ and I took to the supermarket in Hanoi - for me, first port of call in most cities is a visit to the local supermarket. I loaded my basket with fresh herbs, ginger, limes, lemons, noodles, cans of lychees and a wok. Armed with my foodie goodies, I headed into the kitchen to make the key to a good pho - the stock.

God knows what happened, but as I was halving the recipe, I somehow read 2L as 2 cups. How I didn't tell that this clearly wasn't going to make enough broth for two I've no idea, but in the end the pho had good flavour, but I would've done one thing differently. To save time I made the stock a day ahead and drained it from all the beautiful spices (cinnamon, star anise, cloves and ginger) but I really should've drained it on the day I wanted to eat it so the flavours were more intense. Keep that in mind when you make it.

Next up was the deliciously fresh and super easy-to-make Vietnamese chicken salad. All you have to do is poach the chicken - I used thigh fillets - (just boil some stock or water, plunge the chicken into the pot and let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes), shred it, then mix it with pickled leeks (buy them in a jar from Asian grocers) - fresh chilli, bean sprouts, Vietnamese mint and dress it with lime juice.

It was now time for dessert. I realise I've cooked a Western-style three-course meal here and that dessert isn't massive in Vietnam, but I couldn't help myself when I came across the lychee and ginger granita recipe in Vietnamese Home Cooking. It's a shame that today - now that summer's sadly officially ended - was the coldest day we've had in Sydney for a while, but the rain put no dampener on this granita. WOW it was deeelish. It's fabulously refreshing and the ginger (it uses crystallised ginger pieces) gives an awesome spiciness after each mouthful.

It's taken a little while to train my palate to like ginger and fiery fresh chillies, but I'm so thankful I have because these are vital in the Vietnamese kitchen. If you haven't had Vietnamese before, definitely start with the pho - happy cooking x