Steak with garlic dirty mashed potatoes

Can you tell I don't like to peel potatoes? I wash them real good and cut them in quarters, add salt and one good size peeled garlic glove. I use an old fashioned potatoe masher, my girlfriend Lidia always just jused a fork - but skip the beaters for this one. Add lots of butter and pepper and a little bit of milk before mashing. William was late coming home from Gent so I turned the oven on low - made a well in the middle - and put one last glob of butter in the middle and kept them warm for an hour.....they kept beautifully.

About the drawing

This our girlfriend Marlou Pluymaekers. She sketched me in my kitchen in Wemeldinge at the last edition of the Art and Nature Route in August, 2009. I loved it so much I had to start a blog about cooking! Marlou is our resident artist during the route and often paints or draws while she's here. Check out what Marlou is up to at her own internet site - it's in Dutch but the pictures are great to look at! http://www.marloupluymaekers.nl/

Tomatoe sauce with fresh roasted tomatoes

These are plum and cherry tomatoes from my garden - the skins are always pretty thick here in Holland so they're not always ripe and soft. I added onions, garlic, fresh tyme and oregano, sea salt and crushed pepper and some olive oil - back for 1 and half hours at 360 (180 in celcius).

I throw it all in the blender AFTER its cooled-off - please don't ever put anything hot in a blender or you''ll have a huge mess on your hands. Remember burnt is good! And there ain't no way I'm gonna peel all those tomatoes - when it's pureed the skins disappear.

I wish you could smell it - it's thick and smells glorious. I'm freezing this batch. This picture is slightly deceiving - it wouldn't blend in the blender - too thick - so I had to do it in smaller batches in my food processor - a staff-mixer would also work fine.

Sometimes frozen pizza is good enough

We like to put our own fresh eggs (fuck you Martha Stewart- no really we love you - october issue of Living is fabulous) on our frozen pizza - William wanted two tonight don't ask me why. I grate some fresh parmesian and put Lidia's Argentinian ground red pepper mix on it - and a little olive oil. To choke it down we opened a bottle of champagne - we bought a few cases over a year ago in France and brought some to William's parent's as well.....his mom drank one and said it was starting to go bad - oh no! We still had 4 left and now we feel like we just have to drink them all as soon as possible...we're still searching for that bad one (notice bubbles in glass...photo was taken of course before the pizza went in the oven).

Leftover Uncle Dick Chicken á la King

The first night after the roast I just warmed up some things more or less. ...leftover scalloped potatoes and chicken but I did make fresh carrots.

I don't always have chicken stock and often use the boullion cubes - I cooked the carrots with some water, one cube of chicken boullion and a bayleaf - I saved the "water" from the carrots to use the next day.

It looks a lot like Uncle Dick's Chicken á la King - but we don't make it exactly the same way. I made a rue with flour and butter and used the carrot-water for the base - I added a little cream - some green beans from a jar (prefer frozen or peas but didn't have any) and some white wine to give a little body...the leftover chicken and veggies..bayleaf...tyme...fresh ground pepper - the carrot-water makes the whole thing slightly sweet. I served it over rice - a one dish meal!

Faye's Scalloped potatoes

This is my mom's recipe - minus the parmesian. I didn't bother to peel the potatoes - we didn't even notice the difference...flour...butter...onion...milk...I just brought the Wonder back from US

Not too much milk - just below the topmost potatoes..check with a fork after an hour. Start by buttering the dish - then a layer of potatoes, more butter pieces, onion chopped fine, a little flour and lots of salt and pekker and continue layering. It will boil over - put something underneath your dish in oven!

Backed at 360 for an hour and half and it was done - you don't taste the cheese really but it browns nicely on top..my mom insists that you let it sit 15 minutes after cooking - if you don't it looks separated.

Roasted Chicken

The chickens in the Netherlands and Belgium are small - for US standards imagine the smallest chicken you can - more like a huge cornisch game hen. I sharpen my knife before I cut my chicken - I love the FUJI knife sharpener - they say it houns and sharpens and considering I know nothing about knives this suites me well.

You get eight pieces - the back is pictured here as well - I freeze that to make my stock.

This time I used a red pepper, onions, mushrooms, carrots, cherry tomatoes, garlic, tyme, salt & pekker and a little bit of olive oil.

Roast it in the oven at 360 for about 1 and half hours. Some black is good!

To get 3 or 4 meals from this chicken (really, you'd be surprised) I have to control which parts William eats first - I serve the leg and the wing - I pre-occupy William with the scalloped potatoes so he doesn't mind eating these parts first.