Crockpot Hutspot

I am so excited! Last night, I successfully converted one of my husband's favorite (time-consuming!) recipes into a crockpot recipe. Hello, crockpot hutspot! If you don't have a crockpot, you can still make this traditional Dutch dish the old-fashioned way).

I've written about hutspot before, but I'm so happy to be able to make it without standing in the kitchen for an hour and a half.

Ingredients:

• 6 onions (3 cups)
• 6 carrots (2 cups)
• 8 potatoes (5 cups)
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• salt to taste (I actually like to use garlic salt)
• pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Dice onions, carrots and potatoes and place in crockpot. This is still the most time-consuming part. If you really like this recipe, you could chop twice the amount and freeze the extra in a bag for the future.

2. Add butter, condensed milk, salt and pepper.

3. Cook on low for 3.5 - 4 hours.

 4. Vegetables should be very soft, and mashable with a fork when done.

 5. Use a potato masher to mash the vegetables. If you have an immersion blender, that would give your hutspot a smoother texture. 

6. Serve in bowl.

Many people like to enjoy hutspot with sausage. The Hubs doesn't care for it as much, so we often eat it plain. If you do want to include sausage, just puncture it with a fork and then place it on top of the vegetables before starting the crockpot.

Eet smakelijk!

Casserole with Meatballs & Carrots

Ovenschotel met gehaktballetjes en winterpeen

(English: Casserole with Meatballs & Carrots)

translated from the Albert Heijn website

When we were in the Netherlands over the holidays, I was happy to notice that most of the groceries stores provided free magazines filled with recipes. I brought about four of these home and dog-earred all sorts of possibilities. Even though my Dutch has improved quite a bit since meeting my husband, I still needed a little help translating the recipes.

I've had my eye on this one for awhile and WOW! It's is SO good. It has quickly become my favorite Dutch meal. It's not complicated, though you will save a LOT of time if you have a food processor. It's basically (turkey) burger, carrots and potatoes seasoned with thyme, salt and pepper.

The secret ingredient is...
...ketjap mantis, which would I would describe as a thick, Indonesian sweet soy sauce. It's a bit tricky to find here in the States, so we brought some home with us. I would think you could maybe find it in an Asian grocery store, otherwise you can find a good homemade recipe here or here.

Ingredients:
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1lb (2 cups)meatballs ( used ground turkey)
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 teaspoons thyme
• 2 Tablespoons ketjap mantis or soy sauce (I think if I used soy sauce, I might add 1/2 Tablespoon brown sugar and a pinch of coriander).
• 700g carrots, sliced.
• 700g potatoes (about 5), sliced
• Pepper and salt to taste
• 5oz cold water or broth

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 350F.

• Use a food processor to chop up your veggies.

Use big fat carrots so you don't have to peel this many carrots.

• Heat up the oil in a frying pan and sauté the onions in about 3 minutes.

• Add the meat balls/burger and cook until the meat balls are nice and brown.

• Add the garlic, thyme, soy sauce, pepper and salt.

• Add 150 ml water (or broth) while stirring and deglazing the pan.

• Bring to a boil.

• Add the mix from the pan into the oven dish using a slotted spoon, so the juice remains in the pan.

• Add the carrots.

• Then the potato slices.

• Spread the frying liquid over top.

• Cover and bake for 40 minutes, until golden brown.

Eet Smakelijk!

Paasbrood (Dutch Almond Raisin Bread)

A few weeks ago, my friend Jen made a special trip for us to one of the Dutch stores in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I used to live. She picked up a new "NL" sticker for The Hubs, and asked if there was anything else we'd like. The Hubs requested some almond paste because it's hard to find around here. When it arrived, I asked him what he wanted me to make with it. The verdict: Paasbrood.

Paasbrood, which means "Easter Bread" is a very popular Dutch raisin (or currant) bread that includes a large log of almond paste in the center. The authentic Dutch almond paste is a little less refined that what you find in the states, but it tastes the same. The bread also often includes bits of fruit. Think of it as the Dutch version of fruit cake, only much, MUCH better!

I've been looking for a good recipe for quite some time, but haven't been able to find one that wasn't too complicated or intimidating. Since I've been having so much luck with BudgetByte's Cinnamon Raisin Bread, I thought I'd use her recipe as a starting point, and then improvise.

That said, here is my version of Paasbrood.

Paasbrood

inspired by Budget Byte's Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2.25 cups bread flour
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1.25 tsp salt
• .75 Tbsp yeast
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 Tbsp orange peel
• handful of slivered almonds (optional)
• approximately 1/3 pound almond paste
• 1.25 cups warm water

Instructions:

• In a large pot or bowl, combine the flours, brown sugar, salt, yeast, orange peel and raisins.

• Stir everything until evenly mixed (break up any raisin clumps).

• Add the warm water and stir. If the dough does not come into one cohesive ball (with no dry bits left at the bottom of the bowl) add a little more water, one tablespoon at a time, until it all comes together.

This is my secret to not killing the yeast.

• Loosely cover the bowl and let it rest for 2 hours at room temperature. (Jen says: I'm not sure why the dough is supposed to be covered and I've read that the towel should be wet, dry, hot and cold. I usually use a warm, wet cloth.)

• Let the dough rise for two hours. After two hours, it should be roughly double in size.

• Turn it out onto a floured surface. Give it maybe one or two turns or "kneads" in the flour just to work in enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands. Flatten and stretch the dough into a long rectangle. The short side of the rectangle should be the same length as your bread pan, the long side double that.
  
• I sprinkled the dough with slivered almonds. This is the not traditional, just my own improvisation.
• Next, roll your almond paste into a log the same width as your dough, and place it close to one end. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Roll the rectangle up and place it in a bread pan coated with non-stick spray.

• Let the bread rise for 1.5 hours or until it has risen up and out of the pan.

I love how the sun shines on my pretty loaf!

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Brush the top of the bread with water to give it a nice crunchy top.

• Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
• After baking, turn it out of the bread pan onto a wire cooling rack. Let cool completely before slicing.

Eet Smakelijk!

Hutspot

Note: My note yesterday about The Hubs having Hutspot for dinner last night prompted me to pull this modified post from our family blog. This was posted there on May 6, 2010.

In our household, every year has had a theme. 2006 was "Fall in Love." 2007 was "Adjust to Marriage." 2008 was "Pregnancy." 2009 was "Adjust to Parenthood."

2010 is "Family Fitness." In addition to making an effort to be more active, both The Hubs and I are trying to get to a healthy weight. This makes meals interesting, because he is trying to gain weight, while I am focused on losing it! And, now that our kiddo eats what we eat, we've been much more mindful of what we serve. Last year we started a habit of trying three new recipes a week. We didn't always make our goal, but we did greatly expand our menu options. We've continued this tradition this year, and as my confidence has grown, so has the variety of our meals.

One of The Hubs' favorite Dutch meals is hutspot, which is basically potatoes and carrots mashed together:

Hutspot

(follow the link for nutritional information)

1¼ hours | 20 min prep

SERVES 8 -10

Ingredients:

6 onions
6 carrots
8 potatoes
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup butter
salt
pepper

Directions:

• Dice & boil onions and carrots 20 minutes. I actually found some rainbow carrots. They come in shades of red, orange and yellow. I thought they'd add a festive look! Aren't they pretty?!

• Drain.
• Boil peeled and quartered potatoes 20-25 minutes, til tender. We use red potatoes because they taste great even with the skins on them, and I'm all about saving the time of peeling them!

• Drain and dry thoroughly.
• Add onions and carrots mash well.
  
• Add salt, pepper, butter and milk.
• Mix.
• Warm all together and serve hot.

In Holland, this is usually a meal by itself. Occasionally, it is served with sausage, but that's more for stampot, which is a recipe for another day. I've started playing this recipe by substituting sweet potatoes, rutabega, and parsnips for some of the potatoes to make it a little healthier. Eventually, I will figure out a way to make it in the crockpot.

Fun (kinda somber) fact:

Hutspot is more then just an answer to mashed potatoes - it is a dish full of history and tradition. The ever-helpful Wiki says: According to legend, the recipe came from the cooked bits of potato left behind by hastily departing Spanish soldiers during their Siege of Leiden in 1574 during the Eighty Year's War, when the liberators breached the dikes of the lower lying polders surrounding the city. This flooded all the fields around the city with around a foot of water. As there were few, if any, high points (and September in the Netherlands is not exactly a warm month), the Spanish soldiers camping in the fields were essentially flushed out.
The anniversary of this event, known as Leidens Ontzet, is still celebrated every October 3 in Leiden and by Dutch expatriates the world over...During the Nazi occupation the dish came to represent freedom from oppression since its ingredients could be grown beneath the soil and thus somewhat hidden from sight, and the carrots gave the dish an orange colour, which represents the Dutch Royal Family.