White Gazpacho
An unusual version of the traditional Gazpacho made using bread, garlic, almonds and grapes. It has an amazing creaminess and sweet and sour flavour. Serve as a small shot before lunch or dinner.
Serves 8 in shot glasses
Ingredients
2 cups cubed stale white bread from a baguette or sliced bread (crusts removed)
375ml cold water, divided
1/3 cup whole, blanched almonds
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons chopped shallot
2 cups diced, peeled English cucumber (about 1 large cucumber)
3/4 cups green grapes
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 1/2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
Chives for garnish (optional)
Method
Place the bread cubes in a bowl and pour 1/2 cup water on top to soften them.
Place the almonds and garlic in a blender and purée until finely ground. Add the shallot, cucumber, grapes, oil, vinegar, salt, and softened bread to the blender along with the remaining 1 cup water. Purée until smooth. Taste and adjust salt as needed. Add more water to the soup as needed to achieve desired consistency. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Serve in bowls or glasses and garnish with sliced grapes, almonds, and chives, if desired.
Cauliflower and Fennel Salad with Preserved Lemon Dressing
This is a fantastic spring salad which is filling enough to be a complete meal. It's also completely vegan.
English
Serves 2
Ingredients
2 fennel bulbs
1 small cauliflower
60g smoked almonds
1/4 preserved lemon
2 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons agave syrup of coconut sugar
1 container mustard cress
1 bunch watercress
5 tablespoons olive oil
salt and epper
Method
Preheat an oven to 220°C. Cut the cauliflower into large florets and the fennel, lengthways into 6 wedges. Finely slice the garlic.
Place the cut vegetables on a roasting tray and drizzle over 3 tablespoons olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes (keep an eye on the vegetables that they don’t get too dark).
Remove the flesh from the preserved lemon and finely chop the skin. Place the garlic, agave or coconut sugar and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a container. Add a splash of water and blend to a dressing with a stick blender.
Coarsely chop the almonds and remove the tough stalks from the watercress.
Remove the vegetables from the oven and gently transfer to a serving platter. Scatter the watercress over the vegetables and spoon over the dressing. Snip the mustard cress and sprinkle over the warm salad together with the smoked almonds.
Nederlands
2 personen
Ingrediënten
2 venkel
1 klein bloemkooltje
60g gerookte amandelen
1/4 stuk ingemaakte citroen
2 teentjes knoflook
2 theelepels agave of kokossuiker
1 bakje tuinkers
1 bos waterkers
5 eetlepels olijfolie
zout en peper
Bereiding
Warm de oven voor op 220 C. Snijd de bloemkool in grove stukken en de venkel over de lengte in 6 parten. Snijd knoflookteentjes in plakjes.
Leg de gesneden groenten op een ovenplaat en sprenkel er 3 eetlepels olijfolie overheen. Bestrooi met zout en peper. Zet plaat in de oven voor 20-25 minuten (houd goed in de gaten of het niet te donker wordt).
Verwijder het vruchtvlees van de ingemaakte citroen en snijd ¼ van de citroen fijn. Doe de knoflook, citroen, agave of kokossuiker, 2 eetlepels olijfolie in een bakje. Verdun met wat water en maak er een dressing van met een staafmixer of in de blender.
Hak de amandelen grof. Haal de steeltjes van de waterkers.
Haal de groenten uit de oven en schep ze voorzichtig op een schaal. Verdeel wat waterkers over de groenten en lepel de dressing er overheen. Knip de tuinkers los en strooi deze samen met de amandelen over de warme salade en serveer.
Sumac Veal Schnitzel with Cauliflower Salad
Serves 2
Ingredients
600 g cauliflower
2 Tablespoons tahini
1 lemon
2 veal schnitzels of 150 g each
2 Tablespoons sumac
50 g rocket
40 g almonds
40 g raisins
50 g panko breadcrumbs
olive oil
salt and pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 200° C. Cut the cauliflower into florets and place them together with the almonds in a roasting dish with 2-3 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes, stirring now and again.
In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons tahini, 2 tablespoons olive oil, lemon juice to taste and 6 tablespoons lukewarm water. Season with salt and pepper. This is the dressing.
Rub the schnitzels in with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix the panko and sumac together in a bowl. Run the schnitzels through the panko mixture, pressing the crumbs well on to the meat. Heat a frying pan with 3 tablespoons olive oil and fry the schnitzels until golden on each side. Remove the cauliflower from the oven.
Add the raisins and rocket to the cauliflower. Divide the schnitzels and salad between 2 plates, drizzling the tahini dressing over the salad and serve straight away.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Biancomangiare
This is the first recipe and piece of writing from one of our new contributors, Jorgina Catala. Jorgina hails from Barcelona and recently moved to The Netherlands. We hope you enjoy this piece and we look forward to more contributions from Jorgina in the near future.
Biancomangiare, a sweet treat from the Middle Ages.
With a presence in several European countries, known as blanc manger in France, or menjar blanc in Catalonia, biancomangiare is the Sicialian version of what we could consider one of the most celebrated and well known medieval recipes. It’s name litteraly means “white dish” and emphasizes the whiteness of this sweet pudding based on almonds and white sugar.
Have you ever thought about the meaning of colour in food?
During the Middle Ages, food banquets where often used to display the power of the high classes; being able to prepare recipes with rare and expensive ingredients would give a hint of the hosts power to all the banquet attendants.
Serving biancomangiare to your guests would mean that the powerful host had access to the extremely expensive and refined white sugar, very difficult to obtain in the XIV century and would also symbolize good values as purity and refinement. The name biancomangiare was a generic name given to different kinds of savory and sweet recipes, based in chicken breast, rice, milk almond milk and other ingredients that gave the dish its characteristic white color.
Today, we are sharing with you the most traditional Sicilian sweet version, a delicious almond pudding, with a delicate almond flavour, lemony fragrance and of course, with its elegant snowy white presence.
Ingredients
1 litre of almond milk (you can buy it or do it yourself using 300gr of peeled almonds and 1,5 litres of water)
Zest of 1 untreated/organic lemon (avoid the white, it will make it bitter)
200g refined sugar
120g of corn starch (Maizena)
a pinch of cinnamon
Method
Keep aside a glass of almond milk.
Pour the rest of the almond milk in a saucepan and heat over a low flame. Add the lemon zest, pinch of cinnamon and the refined sugar.
Meanwhile mix the corn starch with the almond milk you kept aside. Once the corn starch is dissolved, add the mixture to the saucepan through a sieve.
Keep stirring the mixture, preferably with a wooden spoon, till it starts boiling. When it will starts to thicken remove the saucepan from the fire.
Pour the mixture into moulds of your preference. You can choose single portion moulds or a large one. Let it cool down to room temperature and only then put it in the fridge until thick.
The pudding will be ready after around 4 hours. You can then unmould it and decorate as you please. Its delicious eaten on its own, but you can also add some of your favourite jam, some chocolate sauce or cherries and syrup. Just remember that the biancomangiare has a very subtle taste that shouldn’t be over-powered by a strong sauce.
Pistachio-Olive Oil Cake
A delicious and unusual cake with a flavour of the middle east. The cake gets it's beautiful green colour from the pistachios and the olive oil keeps it moist. It's quite a rich cake, so a small piece will suffice. We usually serve it as part of a dessert with a parfait or some marinated pineapple. Yum!
Serves 8-10
Ingredients
50 g fine polenta
200 g ground pistachio nuts
50 g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
125 ml olive oil
100 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs
200 g caster sugar
juice and grated zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 orange
icing sugar for dusting
Method
Preheat the oven to 160 C. Mix the polenta, ground pistachios, flour and baking powder together.
Add the olive oil to the melted butter. Whisk the eggs and caster sugar until pale and fluffy, then slowly whisk in the olive oil and butter. Whisk in the pistachio mixture, then add the lemon juice and zest and orange juice.
Pour into a greased and lined 24 cm springform tin and bake for about 40 minutes. The cake should be slightly underdone in the middle, so that if you insert a skewer it will come out with a little of the mixture sticking to it. While cooling down, the cake will finish off cooking through. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin.
Once completely cooled, cut into slices and dust with icing sugar.
We, the Amsterdam Flavours chefs, hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. If you have any questions on how to prepare it or just want to send us your feedback, you can reach us here Contact Amsterdam Flavours
Bilder & de Clercq's new recipes week 32
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:
