Kwarktaart

Last week, we made kwark, a dairy food that has a key role in the Dutch kitchen. Whether used as a base for savory dips, nutritional snacks or in cooking, kwark is healthy, light and pleasant. So what better than to whip it up with some good old cream, add a pleasing dose of sugar, throw in some cookies and butter, load the whole thing up with fresh, seasonal fruit and make ourselves a traditional old-fashioned Dutch kwarktaart? Exactly, not much. If a little bit is good for you, a lot is better, right? Right :-)

The kwarktaart is a traditional choice for dessert, for birthday celebrations or for any other celebration for that matter, whether it's made up or real. We do love a party, and any excuse will do! The taart can be served plain or flavored (usually with fruity flavors such as lemon or mandarin orange), but don't let that stop you. Nobody says you can't make a lovely chocolate kwarktaart so if that's what you're craving, go for it!

Summertime especially is a great time for kwarktaart. Served chilled, with a good cup of coffee, and adorned with seasonal fresh fruit, it is a pleasant reminder of the goody good goodness that Holland has to offer.

Kwarktaart
10 cookies (approx. 1 1/2 cups when crumbled)
9 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 tablespoons (75 grm) butter
1 cup (250 ml) heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon vanilla essence (or 1 envelope vanilla sugar)
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk
1 envelope gelatin (or 3 sheets)
2 cups (500 ml) kwark*

Put the cookies in a plastic bag and roll into crumbs with the help of a rolling pin. Add to a bowl. If you selected fairly bland cookies, like tea biscuits or Maria cookies, mix in 2 tablespoons of sugar and one teaspoon of cinnamon. If the cookies you picked are sweet and flavorful on their own, like Bastogne, speculaas, or Oreos, you can skip the sugar and cinnamon. Melt the butter, pour it over the cookie crumbs and mix until the crumbs are wet and soaked through.

Place a circle of parchment paper on the bottom of a spring form pan. Press the buttery cookie crumbles in the bottom and flatten with the back of a spoon, so that the layer is fairly even. Put the pan in the fridge so the cookie bottom can harden.

Gelatin Powder: mix 3 tablespoons of sugar with the contents of the gelatin envelope in a bowl. Bring the cup of milk to a boil and pour over the sugary mixture. Stir until the gelatin has dissolved.

Gelatin Sheets: soak the sheets in a bowl of cold water, for at least ten minutes, but longer is better. Warm up the cup of milk, squeeze the water out of the sheets and stir them into the warm milk. Stir until they've fully dissolved.

Whip the heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar and the vanilla. Stir the whipping cream into the kwark, and carefully fold in the last tablespoon of the sugar, if needed, for extra sweetness. Taste first!

When the warm milk has cooled down, carefully stir it into the kwark and whipped cream, until it's a smooth, creamy liquid.

Pour this into a 9 inch (23 cm) spring form pan. Tap the sides carefully to pop any air bubbles, cover the pan with plastic film or aluminum foil, and place the pan back in the fridge. Let rest overnight for best results, preferably 24 hours, but at least a good four to six hours. Test the consistency before you pop open the spring form: if the mixture has not set, leave it a couple of hours longer to set. 

Carefully slide a knife along the rim to loosen the cake. Spread with fresh strawberries, mandarin oranges or any other fruit you may like.

I made a quick puree from the leftover strawberry trimmings (cut up, and simmer in a small saucepan with a tiny bit of sugar until it has reached jam consistency, then cool) and spread it over the top of the cake before layering it with the fruit. It's a great way to use up all the scraps and contributes to the strawberry flavor. You can do the same with any other fruit you may use.

*If there is no quark available, or you don't want or can spend the time making it yourself, try using plain Icelandic skyr instead. Whole milk plain yogurt works as well, as long as you can suspend it for a couple of hours so that the whey can drain and the product thickens. If the yogurt has any kind of gum, starch or anything else besides bacteria and dairy (read the label), the whey will probably remain suspended in the yogurt and not drain. Check before you buy!

Kwark

Kwark, or fresh cheese, is one of the many dairy products that our country is rich. Mixed with fresh fruit, it is a light dessert, and spread on bread it can be used as a calorie-poor substitute for butter or margarine. But where kwark is probably at its best, is in a luscious kwarktaart, or fresh cheese cake. More on that next week, let's start with making kwark first!

Kwark is more about patience than skill. Make sure you avoid any buttermilk that contains any kind of gums, cornstarches or any other ingredient that is not natural to cows: it suspends the whey in the liquid and does not allow for proper drainage.


Kwark
6 cups of whole milk
2 cups buttermilk (avoid buttermilks with gums, cornstarch etc)

Pour both milks in a heavy pan and slowly bring up to 100F. Cover the pan and let it sit at room temperature overnight. The next day, the whey should have separated from the milk solids. Pour everything into a tea towel, knot the four ends together and suspend the package from the kitchen cabinet’s door knob. Place a bowl underneath to catch the whey. Suspend for a good three hours or until the whey has stopped draining.

Scrape the kwark out of the towel and fluff up with a fork. If it’s too dry, add a tablespoon or two of milk. If it’s still too wet, continue to drain for a little bit longer. You are looking for a thicker yoghurt consistency.

Makes two cups of kwark.

Gado Gado

And lastly, but surely not least, the final dish on our mini-rijsttafel series: gado gado. These last weeks we've discovered rendang, saté, and atjar. Combined with a big bowl of steamed white rice, these dishes will give a you a great start on getting familiar with one of Holland's colonial cuisines, Indo food. At yet at the same time, it doesn't even begin to cover the vast variety of dishes, colors, flavors and textures that a larger rijsttafel can offer. I encourage you to visit some of the Indo food sites on Facebook or the web, like the Dutch-Indo Kitchen: recipes, opinions and flavors vary according to regions or even down to families, so it's a great culinary adventure that you can certainly set to your liking!

Gado gado is a warm vegetable salad, served with a spicy peanut sauce and topped with crushed krupuk, or shrimp crackers. Krupuk can be found in Asian food stores and is prepared by frying the pieces in hot oil on the stove. The salad can be assembled with as many vegetables as you like. Cabbage, bean sprouts, carrots and green beans seem to be the more traditional choices but use whatever you have available to you that showcases a colorful plate, and a variety of textures.

Not preparing a rijsttafel? Blanch the vegetables in half water, half coconut milk and finish the salad off with some grilled chicken (check the saté recipe for a tasty marinade!) to make a flavorful and refreshing summer salad!

 

Gado Gado
¼ green cabbage
2 large carrots
2 cups green beans, fresh
1 cup bean sprouts
1 cucumber
2 boiled eggs
2 boiled potatoes
½ cauliflower

Cut the vegetables in bitesize pieces and blanch in boiling water for a minute or two, depending on how crunchy or well done you like your vegetables. Peel the boiled eggs and slice them in half, lengthwise. Cut the potatoes in half. Arrange the vegetables on a plate, drizzle the warm peanut sauce on top or serve on the side. Recipe for peanut sauce in the Saté Babi link!

Saté Babi with peanut sauce

One of the expected dishes at a rijsttafel, or Indonesian rice table, is without doubt the skewered and grilled meats, called saté. Served with a warm peanut sauce, satés are not only an intricate part of the rijsttafel's offerings, but have worked their way into the Dutch culinary cuisine as a lunch item, served with white bread, or as a late night snack.

The sauce itself can also be found on  patat oorlog: a serving of French fries doused in mayonnaise, chopped fresh onions and a generous helping of hot saté sauce, or as a dipping sauce for other meats, breads or vegetables. As an indispensable part of the blanched vegetable salad, gado gado, saté sauce can also spruce up a roast beef sandwich if you don't feel like cooking much. Make plenty of sauce in advance, as it freezes well and can be kept in the fridge for several days.

If you don't care for pork, you can use chicken or tender beef cut instead.

Saté Babi
2 lbs pork shoulder
2 tablespoons brown sugar
6 tablespoons ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce)

1 teaspoon coriander, ground

1 tablespoon oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

Juice of half a lemon

Cut the pork shoulder into 1 inch cubes. Mix the brown sugar with the ketjap, coriander, oil, minced garlic cloves and lemon juice into a marinade. Toss the meat with the marinade in a bowl,  making sure each cube is covered. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate, for at least four hours but preferably overnight.

Soak wooden skewers about an hour beforehand, or use metal skewers. Thread five pieces of meat onto a skewer and roast over a medium fire until done. Pay attention and turn the satés frequently, as the sweet marinade has a tendency to scorch.

Serve the satés with the warm peanut sauce.

Peanut Sauce
3 cups natural peanut butter
1 cup water

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon sambal oelek (spicy chili paste)

3 teaspoons brown sugar

¼ teaspoon trassi (shrimp paste, optional)

3 tablespoons ketjap manis

Milk (possibly coconut milk, if you prefer)

Warm the peanut butter with the water in a small saucepan. Stir in the garlic, the sambal and the brown sugar and bring up to heat, stirring well so that the sauce doesn’t burn. Add the trassi and the ketjap and stir until blended. Taste. If the sauce is too thick, stir in a tablespoon of (coconut) milk at a time.

Serve hot.

Rendang

Food is about love, about family (related or not), about community. No Indo event goes without food, no Sunday afternoon visits to family or friends goes without eating. The first question, after you've been greeted at the front door, back door or garden path is "Would you like something to eat?" And if you don't want, or don't have time to eat, you'll go home with a care package.

I have fond memories of an Indonesian family, friends of my father, that lived across town. We didn't interact very often, on account of me being busy with studying and eh....researching the Nijmegen nightlife, so to speak. On the occasions that I visited, their grandmother would immediately get up from her chair and go into the kitchen to cook, regardless of the time of day. If they had a particular kind of food they knew I liked, they'd call me to ask if I wanted some, and they would bring over a plate. Sometimes I would find a grocery sack hanging from the door knob with dinner, other times with a piece of spekkoek. At the time, as a young student and away from home, it made me feel welcome, loved and a part of something bigger than just my own little world. Nowadays, I find myself doing the same thing: sharing my food, showing love.

Braised meats, tender stews, marinated satays.....all foods that require attention and dedication. Rendang, today's dish, is one of those foods. With an intriguing variety of flavors, rendang takes time to prepare and mandates close attention towards the end, but the end results is very much worth the effort. It's Indo love on a plate.

Rendang

2 lbs beef chuck roast

4 shallots

1 lemongrass

4 cloves garlic

1 inch ginger, fresh

2 tablespoons of oil

1 cinnamon stick

3 star anise

1 lemon grass

1 cup coconut milk

1 cup warm water

2 teaspoons tamarind paste

4 kaffir lime leaves

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Remove the fat from the beef and cut it into one inch cubes. Blend the shallots, the lemon grass (the tender white part), the garlic and the fresh ginger into a paste. If the paste gets too thick, add a tablespoon of oil.

Heat a skillet and add two tablespoons of oil. When hot, quickly sear the meat on all sides. Remove it from the pan and set aside. Reheat the skillet, add another tablespoon of oil, stir in the paste and toss in the cinnamon stick, the star anise, a piece of lemon grass that has been pounded so it will release its flavor and fragrance. Stir on high heat until the paste thickens and starts releasing its smells, and then add the seared beef. Lower the heat and add the coconut milk, water and tamarind paste (you may need to dissolve the paste in the warm water). Stir to make sure everything is mixed well, and simmer.

After half an hour, stir in the kaffir lime leaves and the brown sugar, cover the pan and simmer slowly. The goal is to braise the beef to the point where it is very tender, and at the same time to reduce the liquid in the sauce so that it practically clings to the beef instead of swimming in it. You achieve this by moving the lid partially off the pan or crockpot after an hour, and letting the liquid slowly evaporate.

Atjar Tjampoer

The first item we're going to prepare for the rijsttafel is an atjar. A sweet and sour pickled vegetable dish, it's served as an accompaniment with the rijsttafel. The sourness will cut through some of the richer dishes, and the sweetness will offset some of the spicier ones. Atjar tjampoer, a pickled combination of a variety of vegetables, is best after it sits for several days. The flavoring and coloring comes from turmeric, a much used spice in the Indonesian kitchen.  

Cut your veggies small, and blanch them quickly, so they remain in shape and keep a bit of bite. A nice crunch is perfect to balance out the softer and creamier foods on the menu!

As turmeric is not necessarily a spice that we use often in our own kitchens, make sure that what you have on the spice rack is not past its date, or too old. As you only need a little bit, it might be worth purchasing a little bit from the bulk spice bins in specialty stores to ensure a good flavor and bright coloring.

Atjar Tjampoer
1 cup cauliflower florets
1 carrot
1 cucumber
1 medium sized yellow onion
1 cup bean sprouts
¼ green cabbage
2 cups white wine vinegar
2 cups  water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon sambal oelek
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon coriander, ground
2 teaspoons turmeric

Wash and cut the cauliflower into smaller florets. Blanch them in boiling, salted water for a few minutes. Peel the carrot and slice thinly. Peel the cucumber, cut in half lengthwise and remove the seeds with the tip of a spoon. Peel the onion, slice in four quarters and cut into thin slices. Wash the bean sprouts and remove any brown skins or soft ends. Slice the cabbage into thin strips, removing the hard vein.

Bring the vinegar and water to a boil and stir in the sugar, the sambal, the ginger, coriander and turmeric. Add the vegetables and leave the mixture on a rolling boil for a few minutes, making sure you stir the vegetables well.

 

 

Strain the vegetables from the liquid and pack them in a clean, sterilized canning jar (depending on how small you cut the vegetables, you may need more than one jar). Pour the boiling liquid over the vegetables, making sure all vegetables are covered and there are no air bubbles in the jar. Screw a clean lid on the jar. Let it cool on the counter for two hours, then move it to the refrigerator. The atjar is best after three or four days, but will not hold indefinitely.

Rijsttafel

First published in Dutch, issue #5

In many ways, my dad’s past is a mystery to me. His life in Indonesia, his childhood, even the years he first lived in the Netherlands or his time in the Japanese camps, where he was kept with his brother and his mom: I know so little about it.  When asked, he’ll give an evasive answer at best, or claims he’s forgotten since “that was such a long time ago.”

But about once a year, during my own childhood, I’d get an opportunity to delve into his world. I must have been about six years old when we visited the Pasar Malam Besar in the Hague for the first time, during the mid-seventies. Walking through those doors opened up a whole new world for me, and allowed me to enter my dad’s world, even just for a day, just to catch a glimpse. I stepped straight from the soggy Dutch soil into the bustling, busy atmosphere of a colorful, enticing and dynamic Indonesian pasar malam, the night market…the colorful dresses, the grace of the dancers, the sweeping melodies and most overall, the pride that people had: presenting their art, sharing their food, telling their stories. It was so different from our daily, Dutch lives.  As a child, I soaked it all up. This was my father’s world, his culture, his background. 

I savored those days I got to go with my dad to the pasars. After listening to the music, we’d scout out the food stalls. He’d look at each stall, ask a question or made small talk with the vendors, and we’d move to the next one. I knew that it was just a matter of time before he’d buy something and we would sit, side by side, eating without saying a word.  Sometimes he would tell me it tasted just like he remembered from his childhood, other times he’d wait for me to finish up so we could move to the next stall, without saying a word.

It was here that I first tried tjendol, a sweet milk beverage with tapioca tears and flavored with rose syrup. Where I once sank my teeth into fried frog legs, and where I ate so many satés that it almost made me sick.  This is where, after a reprimand from my dad, I learned how to take small bites of my thin slice of spekkoek, honoring and respecting all the hard work that went into making this layered spice cake instead of devouring the delicacy in two big bites, like I used to do.

My Dutch and Indonesian roots are inseparably enlaced and it’s often hard to determine where one begins and where the other one ends. Those twinings are not only reflected in the history of the unique Indo culture: it is also expressed in its cuisine, of which the rijsttafel is possibly its capstone. A Dutch concoction, fathered perhaps by necessity,  greed or nescience, the rijsttafel or rice table contains a myriad of dishes, showcasing the large variety of colors, flavors, ingredients and cooking techniques that encompass the regional Indonesian kitchens.  Small plates containing meats, vegetables and condiments grace the table, sometimes up to 40 dishes at a time, and are a feast for both the eye and the eater. 

During the summer time, we will showcase various dishes to create your own rijsttafel, with as little or as many dishes as you like. Selamat makan!