FoodBlogSwap: American Pancakes

The FoodBlogSwap is a swap between bloggers from the Netherlands. This month I had to pick something from the blog Mammatje van Alles, which is a blog about mommyhood. The blog of course also has a lot of recipes. I had 3 recipes in my pre selection, but I decided to go back to basics and choose for American Pancakes. I have a lot of pancake and fritter recipes on the blog, but I seem to skip the basic recipes. The original recipe had blueberries in them but Nick doesn't like them, so we went all natural. Sadly the pancakes that we made aren't as thick as the original either. That is just our skill I guess. We need more practice. The taste was delicious though and that is all that matters in the end.

American Pancakes:

- 250 gr wheat flour
- 250 gr wheat meal
- 700 ml milk
- 6 eggs
- 1 tsp salt

Separate the eggs. Clean a bowl with a paper towel and some lemon juice. Beat the egg whites stiff until they have peaks. In another bowl mix the flour, meal and salt. Add the egg yolk and milk. Stir through. Lastly add the egg whites carefully in 4 parts. Heat some oil in a frying pan. Bake small pancakes golden brown on both sides. 

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Bento for week 12 and Japanese Sweet Potato Muffins

Soooo yeah... remember last week's bento post where I said I was ill but would try to post...? Well... I have been ill most of the week, still went to school... you get my point. So today I will share a recipe with the bento post that I wanted to share last week, but couldn't. I will try to post something Easter related tomorrow. No promises though ;) But I did a;ready write and schedule the Food Blog Swap for March, so there is something to look forward too. The recipe for the sweet potato muffins comes from Mama Loli.

I will only post one bento this week. This is the one I took to school with me. Nick's were the same for two days and the last day he just took muffins and bread with him. In the bento there are some leftover beans in tomato sauce, Greek style, that we had for dinner. Some Kisir, Japanese Sweet Potato Muffins, cheese cubes and hot chocolate Pocky sticks.

Japanese Sweet Potato Muffins: (makes about 12-16)
- 200 gr sweet potato (about 1 medium)
- 115 gr unsalted butter
- 135 gr sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 250 gr cake flour
- 0.25 cup milk
- 2 tsp honey
- 1 tsp baking powder

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease your muffin tin, but I use silicone ones so it isn't needed. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes (they should be sugar cube size) and boil them for about 5 minutes. Mix butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the eggs one by one in the mixture. Do not add more egg until the previous egg is mixed in the batter. Stir in the honey.
Mix the flour with the baking powder. Add half of the flour mixture and half of the milk with the rest of the batter. Mix well. Then add the rest of the flour and milk. Mix once more.
Scoop the batter into the muffin tin and top each muffins with sweet potato cubes.
Bake for 25-30 minutes. The muffins are done when a toothpick comes out clean.

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Bento for week 11

In the past week I only posted one recipe because I had the mother of all migraines which kept me away from my computer for several days. Luckily the slow cooker did most of the work for me food wise in the past week and the recipes that I had planned, I just have to move forward. No biggie.

Nick was really craving potato salad so we made a big batch of Japanse potato salad for our lunches. There are also some Spinach ricotta muffins from the freezer stash with some cucumber slices and green tea Toppo in the lid.

Here there are some Dutch poffertjes with powdered sugar and vegetarian roti from the slow cooker. This was the recipe that I wanted to share so I could link back to it now, but I will try to share it this week. It is my school week though and while I mostly try to plan posts ahead for that week. This didn't happen either.

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Comfort Food: Pesto Ricotta Risotto

Last weekend I wanted to make risotto again. It was too long ago since we ate it, so I went through my risotto map on Pinterest to see if there was a new recipe that I wanted to try. I found this pesto Ricotta Risotto on Lekker en Simpel. It is by no means healthy because it hardly contains veggies, but it was so good! And sometimes you just have to treat yourself to something comforting. The recipe was for 2, so we doubled it to eat for two days. This risotto holds up really well the next day and isn't dry at all.

Pesto Ricotta Risotto: (serves 4)
- 300 gr risotto rice
- 2 litre vegetable broth
- 1 small onion, minced
- 25 gr butter
- about 5-6 tbsp green pesto (but adjust to your own taste)
- 4 tbsp ricotta
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 hands Parmesan cheese

First make your vegetable broth. I just put on the water in a water boiler and stir in the broth cubes.
Let the butter melt in a large pan. Bake the onion and garlic for about 3 minutes. Then add the rice. Make sure you stir well so the rice is coated with a layer of butter all over. Bake for 1-2 minutes until the rice becomes translucent. Then add about 2-3 large spoons of broth so the rice is under water. Keep the heat on medium-low and stir until the rice has absorbed all the broth. Repeat until the rice is soft. This will be around 20-25 minutes. Stir regularly and never leave your risotto alone. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in pesto and ricotta. Make sure you taste. You don't want the pesto to taste too strong. Lastly stir in the Parmesan cheese.

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Bento for week 10

The past week was a pretty normal week. I had more energy because we finally had some good weather, which makes such a huge difference in managing my illness. I am in less pain and I am less tired. bento wise we didn't do anything special this week. There were pancakes on sale so we got those and stuffed them with a mixture of 250 ml Boursin cuisine cheese, 400 gr mushrooms and some spring onions. Just bake the mushrooms and onion shortly before you add in the cheese to melt. Really easy and hardly noteworthy. But it was tasty!

Here are the pancakes in the left tier and some pasta with spinach and cream cheese in the right one. It was just leftover from dinner. I made an extra large portion so we could both eat some for lunch as well. In the lid there is Green Tea Toppo.

More Toppo green tea flavoured sticks here. Together with a sweet potato vegetarian minced meat casserole from the evening before. In the right tier there are more pancakes, and Nick already ate his spinach ricotta muffin it seems ;) That spot wasn't empty ;)

So yeah, the bento aren't that special this week. But sometimes you just have to keep it simple :)

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Slow Cooker: Sweet Sauerkraut

I have never posted a sauerkraut recipe on the blog before. And this is because I absolutely don't like it. At least not prepared in the regular way how my mom used to make it. Everything sour and bitter I don't like. But Nick loves sauerkraut, so when I saw a recipe by Jay Bee on the slow cooker Facebook group, I thought, why not give it a try? The verdict? Even though I don't expect sauerkraut to be my favorite, I liked it enough to finish my plate.

Sweet Sauerkraut: (serves 2)
- 1 package of sauerkraut
- 150 gr dates
- 1 apple
- 1 coffee cup of apple juice
- 1 tbsp curry powder
- dash of black pepper
- mashed potatoes for serving

Place the sauerkraut in a colander and rinse it. This way most of the sour taste gets washed away. Remove the pits from the dates and cut them. Peel the apple and cut them in to cubes. Put everything in the slow cooker and cook for 3-4 hours on low.

We served it with mashed potatoes. I often add the potatoes in the slow cooker as well for a mashpot. However with sauerkraut this is a bad idea because of the sourness from the cabbage, the potatoes will not soften.

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Typical Dutch: Mashpot Blote Billen in het Gras

This is a recipe that I loved to eat as a child and still have on the menu now. It is a mashpot with white beans and green beans. In the Netherlands we call this naked bums in the grass mashpot. I am sure you can understand why ;) Mostly when we make mashpot we use milk and butter, but in this mashpot I always use some creme fraiche. Because it just gives it a little extra flavour. The recipe is really easy and because you don't have to cook any fresh veggies, it is a quick mashpot too.

Mashpot Blote Billen in het Gras: (serves 2-3)
- 500 gr potatoes
- 1 jar (680 gr) white beans and cut green beans combination or about 350 gr of each
- 125 ml creme fraiche
- pinch of salt and pepper

Peel, cut and boil the potatoes. Rinse the beans in a colander. Then put them in a bowl and warm them in the microwave just before the potatoes are done. Drain them in the collander onces more, or else you will get too much fluids in your mashpot. Drain the potatoes and make a mash of them with the creme fraiche. Stir the beans through the mash and season with some salt and pepper.
We served them with some cheese sticks. But you can serve them with vegetarian sausages too.

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