The Culinary Camping Connoisseur #3: Deconstructed Croque Monsieur

Deconstructed Croque Monsieur (serves three) 

Ingredients 

One baguette cut in three and sliced lengthways 

Cherry tomatoes as needed 

4 fresh basil leaves 

Salami 

Pesto 

Cheese 

Equipment 

Cutting board

Knife 

Gas cooker 

Handheld grill 

Scissors 

Method

1. Slice your bread.

2. Cut all your other ingrediants; slice cheese thinly and cut tomatoes. 

3. Spread a later of pesto on your bread, place slices of cheese on top, then garnish with tomato slices and salami. Open your grill (see below) and delicately squish between. 

4. Here is our grill, use whatever you can get your hands on! Hold grill above a medium heat until cheese is melted. Be careful of setting your bread on fire .

5. Serve. 

Amsterdam Part III: The Strawberry Brushstrokes of the Pancake Eaters

Our last day in Amsterdam started out with a sumptuous breakfast of cinnamon apple and raisin mini pancakes with delicous strawberry coulis. We left the place staggering, thoughts of lunch far from our minds. 

We finally went to see the Van Gogh museum, something we had been meaning to do from the beginning. Although the busiest museum I had ever been to with lines for every painting, it was extremely well thought out and interesting.

The museum  went through Van Gogh's many different styles, from early sketches to his dark period (although sadly the potato eaters was not displayed here) to his much brighter colours he developed after his stay in Paris.  

Van Goghs easel and paints, it seemed so crazy to see the very paints he used! 

In Paris he became close friends with Degas and remained so for the rest of his life (below you can see a sculpture of Degas). It is clear from his letters that he thought highly of his friends and his brother (they had a lovely audio of his letters playing), often citing their importance to him and telling them about his progress in his current paintings. He even entertained thoughts of having an artists house where they could all live and work together but sadly this never came to be. 

Breathing fresh air after our interesting forey into Van Goghs life and art, we continued with our favourite past time, wandering the canals. We had a rather large mishap with Necia tearing her toe open and developing a strange rash which culminated in her going to the doctors to get everything sorted out. 

For dinner we ended up with a view of one of the pretty squares of Amsterdam, and I found another Trappist beer! How could I resist? 

We indulged in pub styled tapas of breads and dips and bitterballen.

 A fantastic end to an interesting and multifaceted city. 

The Culinary Camping Connoisseur #2: Porcine Confit Fussili with Citrus Emulsion

Porcine confit fussili with citrus emulsion (serves 3)

Ingredients 

Pasta

Pasta for three people 

Salt 

Sauce

3 lemons squeezed 

Cracked pepper 

1/4 bottle of white cooking wine

Toppings 

200g bacon roughly chopped 

70g finely grated Grana Padano

Fresh basil 

Equipment 

Frying pan 

Pot

Gas cooker 

Colander

Scissors 

Plastic or wooden spoon 

Chopping board 

Knife 

Method 

1. Chop your bacon.

2. Fry your bacon without oil on a low heat, once spitting cover with foil to avoid frying yourself as well as the bacon. Once nicely crisp all over (the bacon not your fingers) turn off the heat, remove foil and tip bacon into colander to drain fat and then place in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Fill pot halfway with hot water, place on high heat until boiling, add pasta and salt (until water is salty like the sea). Cook according to packet instructions or to taste, then drain and set aside.

4. In the pot, add your squeezed lemon juice and cracked pepper (to taste). Once heated, add white wine (the more the merrier). Cook off the wine for about ten minutes, tasting as you go (the sauce not the bottle) and adding more wine if needed (which it probably is). Add freshly cut basil a few minutes before the sauce is ready.

5. Tip the pasta and bacon into the pot and stir until it is all heated and mixed through.

6. Serve with Grana Padano (to taste).

Serving suggestion: to accompany this dish, try it with a light prosecco. 

Amsterdam Part II: The Girl with the White Paste

The next day was a bit of a food day for us, we had decided to get stroopwafel for breakfast however the bakery we had scoped out the day before wasn't open yet. Improvising we found this bakery down the street, with very nice pain au chocolat and a rather delicious sticky caramel bun. That wasn't even the best part though! 

This delightful bakery was also selling pots of different types of spread, from apricot to chocolate to white chocolate. We spontaneously bought a jar of white chocolate paste, which we soon discovered tasted slightly like raw chocolate chippie dough - we forwent bread in favour of spoons. My favourite moment however was sitting on the metro on the way back to the campsite that night (all our adventures seemed to happen on the metro!) with our shopping at our feet, when the jar of white chocoalte must have rolled out, and the girl opposite us suddenly piped up in a thick Aussie accent to say 'excuse me, you've dropped your...paste' with obvious confusion as to what to call this strange white pottle. 

Focaccia bread from the breakfast bakery in hand, we stopped by this amazingly named 'Winkel' cafe to pick up apple cake and then headed to the park for lunch. 

The bar Eijlders called to us from the pages of Lonely Planet, so we obliged. Used in the 1940s as a meeting place for local artists who disagreed with the nazi regime and refused to adhere to their propaganda, this bar has long been politized. Now, it is a dark and cosy place, lit by dim lights and candles, and serving delicous beer and the best bitterballen I tried in the Netherlands. I had as usual taken a random stab at the beer menu and picked one I didn't recoginze. The barkeep quickly came back to tell me he didn't have that exact one, but he had the same type but better! I happily agreed, and it was just as delicous as promised. As we were taking to the kindly barman and lamenting the number of tourists in Amsterdam (hypocritical I know) he told us during the five minute walk between the bar and his home, sometimes he hears no Dutch at all on the street! To me, that shows perfectly how touristy Amsterdam has become. Quite sad really. 

Old buildings on our wanderings. During our travels to see the old houses and streets of the city, we were approached by a Canadian asking directions to a McDonald's for wifi. After regretfully telling him that for some stupid reason McDonald's in Amsterdam had no wifi, we struck up conversation generally about where we were going and so on. Eventually he wandered off on the hunt for 'space cakes'. 

The Archives of Amsterdam was another building I was looking forward to; for one thing it was free, for another it contains the records of the city through written history. The downside was the descriptions were all in Dutch, the upside was the English-subtitled short film that was playing! Concentrating on Amsterdam and it's colourful political past, it traced the movement 'Provo' that occurred in Amsterdam in the mid 1960s which focused on provoking authorities with non violent protests. It centred on anti smoking protests as well as the ban-the-bomb movement. It was disbanded at the end of the 1960s but soon followed by the hippie movement. The stir that it caused in Amsterdam was something I had never known about and found very interesting. 

The entrance to the archive itself was through a bank vault which I thought was pretty damn cool. 

The records of the city. Apparently there is a police report somewhere here documenting that an eight year old Anne Frank's bike was stolen, but we unfortunately couldn't find it.  

The building itself was in a cool Art Deco style which made the displays all the more interesting! The outside was rather geometric also, and had the great name of 'De Bazil' (after the architect).

De Pieper was the name of this interesting pub, built in the 1600s, it suprisngly didn't show it's age too much and I would never have guessed the date if I hadn't already known (although the rather vertical winding staircase to the bathroom did give it away a little). Here I was able to have my favourite beer - La Chouffe - on tap! 

Amsterdam Part I: A Case of ye olde Polish Munchies

Amsterdam was our next stopping point, and we spent a good five days there. Amsterdam was busy, tourist filled, and smelled like marajuana. It was also full of interesting museums, cobbled streets and pretty canals however, which balanced out the negatives. Although I much prefer small towns to big cities, it was still a very enjoyable trip. 

We had lunch at a small restaurant simply called Pancakes! 

Traditional Dutch pancakes were of course the theme here, and man were they good! Slightly thicker than french crepes, interestingly the toppings (bacon, cheese, mushrooms and capsicum in my case) were cooked into the pancakes rather than placed on top. It was extremely nice and very filling. 

The taste I tried of Yannick's one (he continued his chocolate theme) was scrumptious. 

Our wandering soon took us to this 14th century Begijnhof that I was interested in seeing as it's the oldest inner courtyard in Amsterdam. Once surrounded by a moat with only one way in or out this secure location was the home of young and unmarrried women who were not nuns but took vows of chastity and lead religious lives of prayer and privacy (however they could leave to marry at any time). It is quite cool that even to this day, only women live here. 

A flower market proved to be somewhat disappointing as it mainly involved bulbs -it was the wrong season for flowering and had been advertised as a floating flower market which apparently simply meant buildings backing onto the canal.

The array of plants was quite impressive however, from multi coloured cacti to bulbs for black tulips! Tulips in fact have a long and interesting history, introduced to the Netherlands in the late 1500s they gained popularity until the 1600s saw a movement now known as 'tulipmania' where these bulbs became extremely overpriced, resulting in people selling their land and belongings simply for a few of these precious bulbs. The market eventually collapsed of course, and some argue that this economic downfall affected the Nethelrands for many years afterwards, a medieval economic crisis! 

And of course, we wandered many, many canals, some large and industrial, some full of houseboats, and others graced with little bridges and rowboats. 

On the metro on the way home we were talked to by two polish guys who seemed high as kites and couldn't stop eating. They demanded to know why we hadn't been to Poland yet, and then upon finding out about our own origins, one of them went on a tangent - although we couldn't quite work out whether he was saying he'd visited New Zealand, he knew someone who had visited New Zealand or simply that he had heard of New Zealand. The only thing he seemed certain of was Marlborough wine.

The Culinary Camping Connoisseur #1: Caesar salad à la washtub

Due to our purchase of a gas cooker, we now had the ability to cook real camp food rather than surviving on increasingly inventive sandwiches. We needed recipes suitable for camp cooking (only one gas element thus one-pot meals, and a small gas canister limiting our cooking time) we have been wracking our brains for recipes. This is the result. 

Caesar salad (serves 4)

Ingredients 

croutons:

3 slices of white bread chopped

3 cloves of finely chopped garlic 

Olive oil as needed 

Salad:

A packet of bacon chopped (quantity depending on your taste) 

4 small Cos lettuces chopped 

8 semi-sundried tomatoes roughly chopped 

Grana Padano cheese 150g roughly sliced 

Dressing:

Salt and pepper 

Lemon juice of 2 lemons 

Dried basil to taste

Equipment :

Frying pan

Aluminium foil

Long plastic or wooden spoon for mixing 

Chopping board 

Chopping knife 

Large serving bowl 

Colander 

Method

1. Once bacon is chopped, place in non-stick pan on low heat. When it is going lightly brown, turn up heat and cover with foil to avoid spitting. Leave for five minutes, turning occasionally. Turn off element and wait for bacon fat to cool slightly before removing foil. Tip bacon into colander to remove excess fat.

2. Turn element on to medium, add a dash of olive oil or use a little of the leftover bacon fat, then toss in chopped garlic. Once an aroma of garlic is present, throw in all the chopped bread. Add olive oil to cover bread, tossing constantly until evenly covered. Cook until lightly brown and crunchy, tossing occasionally to cook evenly. 

3. Squeeze the juice of two very juicy lemons (use more if your lemons are small) into a large bowl, add basil and cracked pepper to taste, and a little salt (remember your bacon is already adding salt). Give it a quick stir.

4. Toss all your remaining ingredients into the bowl with the lemon dressing (or in our case, yes our washtub!) 

Den Haag: A brief foray into Dutch Masters

Den Haag was a rather industrial city with only one draw for me, an art museum which was known for its many masterpieces. There were other attractions such as an unassuming royal palace, a fancy shopping street and rather a lot of modern art, none of which interested me overly. 

My favourite area of Den Haag was the section of buildings in front of the lake which were not only gorgeous and imposing, but had even featured in some of the medieval paintings from said museum, looking rather unchanged but for the horses and armoured men prancing in the front. 

Mauritshuis was the art gallery we went to, and although somewhat expensive, it was well worth it. One of the noteworthy paintings found here was that of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painted by Johannes Vermeer. What was cool about this was that it is in fact on 'Tronie' meaning a made up person. There never was a girl with a pearl earring, Vermeer painted her from his imagination. The other cool thing was that Vermeer was from Delft which we had just visited! 

I had never really known the difference between Rubens and Rembrandt up until this point, often mixing them up and only aware that they were known as great painters. After this museum visit I will never mix them up again! Having masterpieces from both painters starkly showed how very different they were. I loved every work of Rubens, the realism and expressions on peoples faces was stunning.  Rembrandt however I felt a little more neutral about, some paintings such as the one below I quite liked, others I didn't at all.

This was one of my favourites by Peter Paul Rubens, although perhaps it's difficult to see, the illumination on the their faces is so realistic it's almost odd realizing it is only a painting. They look like real living people, about to move at any moment.

The next morning was a rainy dark day, I took refuge in McDonald's for wifi while Yannick and Necia checked out the Escher museum. 

Gouda and Delft: Hobbit-sized treats among Waags

We went to Gouda for one reason only and it was all in the name. Cheese. And what cheese it was! The town itself was also far nicer than we had given it credit for, little medieval streets, a Waag (more on that later) and all sorts of delectable delights! 

It was a small town, but full of canals and very pretty. We wandered around on the evening and simply took in the sights before a sudden deluge from the sky sent us running for the car. Yannick and Necia had an umbrella but at that point I hadn't bought one and was just using my waterproof jacket, there was a funny moment when a couple of old men walked past us and shouted goodnaturedly to Yannick in Dutch to what amounted to (we think!) that Yannick should give the umbrella to the girls. We couldn't help but giggle. 

We also went to a little bar for wifi and some relax time out of the dreary weather, my favourite part being when we somehow got onto the topic of cheese with our waiter, who sagely told us that his cheese tastes "depends on the weather, unless I'm drinking beer - then I want to eat everything!"

For breakfast the next morning, Necia had discovered a particular dish called "stroopwafel" originated from Gouda so we decided try the local speciality. 

Created in the late 18th century by a baker using off-cuts of pastry sweetened with syrup, it soon became extremely popular with 100 waffle bakers operating in the 19th century. It wasn't until the late 1800s that stroopwafel began to be made outside of Gouda. Nowadays, only 4 factories still operate in this little town. 

Stroopwafel turned out to be a thin waffle which was split in half when still warm and filled with a caramel syrup fusing the two parts together. When eating it as part of the consumption process it is necessary to place the stroopwafel over a hot drink (coffee in my case) and waiting a few minutes. The steam from the drink on the waffle softens it, partially melting the caramel inside also. It is then ready to eat! (And delicous). It was also rather nice dipped in the coffee itself too. 

We made an adorable friend whilst consuming our breakfast snack: this three legged cat was an affection machine demanding to be patted. 

After breakfast we took a walk around the main square and found a Gouda shop! We of course went in. They had tasters for most of the cheeses which was brilliant. The Italian (full of herbs) was extremely good, but the plain traditional Gouda won out in the end and we bought a large wedge. 

The main square consisted mainly of two buildings: The Waag (fortunately not like the marauding Wargs from Tolkien's world) which was a old cheese weighing house in the centre of town. It had been turned into a restaurant and wasn't too photogenic aside from a relief work on the front which actually depicted cheese being weighed. The more attractive building (pictured below) was the town hall. 

Morning complete, we headed for Delft for the afternoon. Lonely Planet had told us that a visit to the Netherlands wasn't complete without a trip to Delft, and it was true. A beautiful town of canals and medieval streets, it was just like how I imagined quintessential Dutch cities to be. 

One of the defining landmarks was this crooked tower named Oude Kerk. A Gothic Protestant church, it was built in 1246 and although perhaps you cannot tell from the photo, it was at a two meter lean due to the foundational weakness. 

The Waag in Deflt had been turned into a gorgeous bar, atmospheric and full of interesting things to look at. For once I abstained from beer in favour of soda water. We did however treat ourselves to a speciality of the country that Necia had heard of, called Bitterballen.

Bitterballen turned out to be a delicious savoury snack, made from beef or veal with beef broth, parsley, salt and pepper which is made into a ball, refrigerated to keep its shape and then covered in breadcrumbs and deep fried so it goes all gooey inside. Amazing! It came with mustard on the side too but I found it overpowering and prefered it plain. 

Finding a campsite proved rather difficult, however eventually we prevailed and it was even in walking distance of the town! It was drizzling so umbrellas in hand we wandered the darkening canals and glistening streets. 

The next day we were delighted to discover there was a Friday market on in Delft so we loaded up on supplies: numerous bags of fruits and berries (including the best blackberries and raspberries of my life) salamis, and best of all, cheese. 

Whilst cheese may not sound exciting, we had decided to be ambitious and attempt to make a cheese fondue as we hadn't had the chance to try it at a restaurant yet. Instead of simply buying some cheese, we asked a cheese stall man what type of cheese was good for melting for fondue, and gosh did he rise to the occasion! He provided us with two types of delicous cheese that he told us must be mixed together and melted, and even calculated the grams of cheese needed for three people for the recipe. He certainly knew his cheese.