Croquettes, a little taste of Dutch culture

I've been living in Canada since 1993 but I was born and raised in the Netherlands:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe/netherlands_rel87.jpg

My hometown is Amersfoort, in the province of Utrecht:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amersfoort

The dutch have some interesting traditional foods; some delicious, some are a more acquired taste (salt herring with raw onions, for instance...my mouth is watering)

Last December I found some beautiful beef stew at my grocery store and was inspired to make 'Kroketten'.

I found the recipe on this website:

http://www.coquinaria.nl/recepten/03.1recept.htm

Along with the recipe there is tons of information about different kinds of croquettes and how to eat them.

I fried and stewed the meat in the evening. By the time I went to bed it was nice and tender.

I doubled the recipe and had to finely chop two large onions.

It was easy to shred the meat since it was nice and tender.

All the ingredients.

The Ragout. It doesn't look all that exciting but tasted really good.

After the ragout had cooled in the fridge overnight it was time to roll the little sausages.

The floured sausages were given an egg bath and rolled in breadcrumbs.

I used Panko, Japanese breadcrumbs, I like the texture best.

Traditionally you would crunch up Rusks and use that for the breading.

Then they have to chill out again...

I use Canola oil for deep frying.

To check if the oil is the right temperature, carefully drop a breadcrumb in the pan, if it sizzles the oil is hot enough.

This is how we ate them for lunch on Saturday: On a bun with mustard.

Hmmm, delicious!

It was fun to make these 'Kroketten' but very time consuming. They taste absolutely delicious. I doubled the recipe and ended up with 39 croquettes. They freeze well.

To save money it's a great idea to make them yourself. They are for sale at Dutch deli's and do not come cheap.
The fact that it is so time consuming to make them must have something to do with that.

I had fun doing it, for me the taste of that croquette on a fresh bun with some Dijon mustard was well worth it.

Until next time,

eet smakelijk*,

Jurrina

*enjoy your food

Do we really need another blog?

For the last little while I've been wondering if we indeed need another blog.

I like blogging a lot.

I used to blog about my kids when they were little.

It was a nice way to keep the extended family informed of all the things we were up to.

Last year I guest-blogged for my friend Rosa:

http://rosa-pottingshed.blogspot.com/

The idea was to blog weekly posts for a year about my vegetable garden.

Sadly, my computer got sick. After I got rid off the virus I wasn't able to sign in anymore.

I have no idea why, maybe I reset something and the computer didn't recognize the website anymore. Pretty annoying though because I still had quite a few ideas to blog about.

So, after some encouragement and a brand new camera for my birthday I decided to start blogging again.

It will be about my adventures, my hobbies, books I read, food I like, movies I see, the weather.

Just the usual stuff.

Tomorrow I will be making soap with my friend Loretta.

We have a little home based business called Rub It In and we make soap, bodylotion, lipbalm etc.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Rubitin

I have a feeling my next post will be about making soap...

So, do we really need another blog? Probably not, but I like to write and I like to take pictures.

And this way I can keep my family in Holland informed of my adventures.

Who knows, there might be some interesting stuff going on in my life.

Until next time,

take care, Jurrina