Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 14 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 13 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 12 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Amsterdam Chocolate Festival
This past weekend we paid a visit to The Amsterdam Chocolate Festival. The festival documented an array of chocolates made using cocoa from around the world.
Products, for example soaps, made using cocoa butter, were also on show. There are so many different chocolates available at the moment and this gives one the opportunity to be able taste and understand the differences and nuances that can be found in chocolates from different countries.
What is chocolate and how is it made?
Chocolate is a typically sweet, usually brown, food preparation of Theobroma cacao seeds, roasted and ground, often flavored, as with vanilla. It is made in the form of a liquid, paste or in a block or used as a flavouring ingredient in other sweet foods. Cacao has been cultivated by many cultures for at least three millennia in Mesoamerica. The earliest evidence of use traces to the Mokaya (Mexico and Guatemala), with evidence of chocolate beverages dating back to 1900 BC. In fact, the majority of Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Maya and Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning "bitter water". The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste and must be fermented to develop the flavour.
After fermentation, the beans are dried, cleaned, and roasted. The shell is removed to produce cacao nibs, which are then ground to cocoa mass, pure chocolate in rough form. Because the cocoa mass is usually liquefied before being molded with or without other ingredients, it is called chocolate liquor. The liquor also may be processed into two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Unsweetened baking chocolate (bitter chocolate) contains primarily cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, a combination of cocoa solids, cocoa butter or other fat, and sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder or condensed milk. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk but no cocoa solids.
For more information on the festival visit Amsterdam Chocolate Festival.
A great magazine available for the coffee and chocolate industry is Koffietcoao.
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 9 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Sous Vide Cooking
Grant Sous Vide machines recently joined us as a prestigious partner. Founded in 1952 and based near Cambridge, UK, Grant Sous Vide water baths and modular cookers are used all over the globe by some of the world’s most prestigious catering establishments and venues. Their machines are used by some of the worlds most well known chefs including Marcus Wareing, Ashley Palmer-Watts and Angela Hartnett, MBE.
As we are in the process of creating our new catering and dinner menus for Spring, we thought that our new sous vide machine would offer us the inspiration needed.
But what is sous vide cooking? Sous vide is a method of cooking food sealed in airtight plastic bags in a water bath or in a temperature-controlled steam environment for longer than normal cooking times, at an accurately regulated temperature much lower than normally used for cooking, typically around 55 °C to 60 °C for meats and higher for vegetables. The intention is to cook the item evenly, ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside and retain moisture.
We are still in the testing fase, but the results are promising. Keep an eye on the site, we'll be publishing some of our sous vide recipes soon.
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 8 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 7 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Bilder & de Clercq's New Recipes Week 6 - 2015
As you may know by now, we are the chefs behind Amsterdam hotspot, Bilder & de Clercq. Every week we develop 3 new recipes for the stores and we'll be keeping you updated with the week's newest recipes. This weeks new recipes are:
Hofstede De Nieuwe Donck
Last Friday, we catered a dinner at Hofstede De Nieuwe Donck. This is a beautiful estate in Langbroek, not far from Utrecht.
It can be used for hosting meetings, workshops and dinners. There is also accommodation for up to 20 people.
We had serious kitchen envy, for the large open, country kitchen. It was a pleasure to cook in and we hope to use it more in the future for cooking workshops and dinners.
We made a delicious 4 course dinner of salmon marinated in ginger and lapsang suchong tea, sole and scallop roulade, venison fillet with parsnip puree and deep fried kale and lastly, poached and caramelised pears with rum and muscavado jelly, milk puree and croissant ice cream.
A little interesting fact: the Christmas Special of Heel Holland Bakt (the Dutch version of The Great British Bake Off) was filmed in this kitchen a few weeks ago and will be broadcast on Saturday 20 December 2014 at 16:50 on NPO 1.